Just as sprawling interstellar empires are a staple of space opera, so are the plucky rebels that fight against them. From Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica, Firefly to FTL, there’s no shortage of characters in science fiction trying to stick it to the man.
I’m not sure how it is in other cultures, but in America, it seems like science fiction upholds a host of values closely related to rebel tropes, such as self-reliance, individualism, freedom and independence, frontier justice, enterprising self-made men, etc. A lot of this probably grew out of the genre’s early ties with pulp-era adventure fiction, which often featured former Confederate soldiers leaving the civilized world for the realms of adventure following the US Civil War. That’s certainly the case with John Carter in A Princess of Mars, and echoed to some extent with the Browncoats from Firefly.
It may go even further, though, to the revolutionary origins of the United States itself. The frontier has always loomed large in our culture, shaping our values in the early days of settlement and, now that the age of the frontier is largely over, standing for an idealized nostalgic past. Americans have always favored the self-made individual who stands up to injustice and corruption in high places, and we’ve always had an aversion to the centralization of power and authority.
Back in the days of the Cold War space race, when writers like Heinlein and shows like Star Trek really started to popularize the genre, there seems to have been a real push to promote American identity and values. The science fiction of that day certainly got caught up in all that, which is weird because as pro-Americanism became the establishment, a genuinely rebellious counterculture began to push back. To its credit, though, there was plenty of science fiction that embraced the counterculture, especially in the New Wave movement that followed the Golden Age.
So why are we so enamored with rebels? Probably for the same reason that we all love a good rogue. Since space is the final frontier, it’s naturally the kind of place that would attract a more rugged, individualistic type. At the same time, rogues and rebels are much more likely to have exciting adventures than the more mild-mannered folk who are apt to stay at home and conform. Let’s not forget that most people who read science fiction are adolescent boys (of all ages), hungry for adventure and often a little rebellious themselves.
Though the rebels are often the good guys, that’s not always the case. It all depends on who they’re fighting against, and how black and white the story is trying to be. If they’re fighting against the Empire, then they’re almost always courageous freedom fighters standing up for truth and justice and all that, but if they’re fighting against the Federation, things can be a lot more gray. In FTL, for example, the rebels are the outright antagonists, and you have to save the galaxy by defeating them.
The rebels don’t always win, either. In stories like Star Wars that skew towards idealism, then in the end they usually do, but in darker, grittier tales (such as most cyberpunk), they may or may not. And even in some happy-go-lucky adventure stories, the rebels are apt to be martyrs for a lost cause–again, think of the Browncoats from Firefly.
The wide variety in the role of rebels in science fiction is a good indication of a healthy, vibrant back-and-forth in the genre that’s been going on for some time. It also means that there’s plenty of room for a new writer to take these old, worn tropes and shake them up in a new and exciting way. As much as we love Luke Skywalker, we love Han Solo just as much, and if you combine him with John Carter to get Mal, then you’ve got a rebellious character that a whole new generation can come to know and love.
I love playing around with these tropes, and do so quite often in my own fiction. In Bringing Stella Home, James McCoy is very much a rebel, though it’s not the Hameji that he’s fighting against so much as everything standing between him and his brother and sister. In that sense, he’s kind of a martyr without a cause, a determinator who shakes his fist at the universe even when the more sensible thing is to learn how to cope. Similarly, Danica and her band of Tajji mercenaries all fought in a failed revolution and have been wandering the stars ever since. Their backstory features much more prominently in Stars of Blood and Glory, in which things come around full circle. And then, of course, there’s Terra from Genesis Earth, who isn’t about standing up to the man so much as giving him the finger and running off somewhere where none of that even matters–the frontier ethic taken to its furthest extreme.
So yeah, I’m a fan of this trope, and have been ever since I saw Star Wars and fell in love with the genre. You can definitely expect to find lots of rebellious characters throughout my books in the future.
