: Re: How do you handle it when a controversial philosophy is an essential part of your story? What do I mean? Well, teleporters: "Every room resets. Remember I told you that? Every room reverts

@Sarah872

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As a philosopher, I'm very sensitive to philosophical content in media, and there are definitely otherwise well-written works I've despised because of their philosophies: Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series, for example, or the films Friends With Money, The People Versus Larry Flynt, Million Dollar Baby, and Forest Gump. But there's also work I treasure that comes from (or dramatizes) philosophical viewpoints very different from my own: Sartre's No Exit and Camus's The Plague, Paul Russell's Boys of Life, Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, David Zindell's Neverness, and anything by Kurt Vonnegut or Samuel Delany.

What makes the difference? I think, at least from my point of view, the works I liked all had characters and plots that really lived on their own, whereas the other ones all felt fake, dishonest or heavy-handed to me. Even when I approve of a philosophy I rarely like it to be forced down my throat. Especially for a philosophy like the one you're describing, it makes most sense as part of the background of the story, something that people can easily suspend disbelief for, just the same way they do for teleporters and aliens. If it becomes part of the foreground of the story, you're probably doing it wrong.

That said, some of the best philosophical work succeeds by dramatizing the debate, not the answer. Heinlein's Moon is a powerful argument for his libertarian views, but it works because he's often dramatizing the ways libertarianism fails and isn't successful, not the ways it triumphs. Similarly, the debate over teleporters in the Dr. Who episode is there for dramatic interest, not because someone on the staff has a vested interest in the Ship of Theseus debate. Similarly, Asimov isn't evangelizing for the "3 Laws of Robotics" in his robot stories --they are there as a plot device. That's maybe why people find them compelling as an idea (and often fail to notice that Asimov never wrote a story where the 3 Laws work as intended).

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