Doyce shares an interesting essay by Bruce Bethke on SciFi and the utopian impulse, particularly in the context of Firefly and Serenity.
Utopians — Left or Right, Fascist or Communist, Theist or Atheist — are almost always authoritarian*. That’s because, quite simply, They Know What’s Good for Everyone … and, like anyone else with a monopoly on the Truth, it becomes a moral imperative to see that Truth acknowledged, agreed upon, and followed through on, no matter how much collateral damage occurs the meantime.
I used to be amused by Utopians. With life experience, I have grown to fear them. The great failing of Utopians is that they can never accept that someone else might not want to be a part of their utopian vision. Like ill-mannered tourists, they assume that if you don’t agree with them, it must be because they’re not explaining it simply enough, or often enough, or loudly enough, or ultimately, because you’re stupid. Utopians always think achieving Utopia is simply a matter of education—and then re-education—and then coercion, legislation, litigation medication conditioning threats book-burnings eugenics surgical modifications hunting down the counter-revolutionaries killing the reactionaries genetic engineering—and ultimately all Utopians, no matter how nobly they begin, always end up at the same conclusion: that the only thing that keeps Man from building a secular heaven here on Earth is the nature of Man, therefore we must build a New and Better Man.
And for most of the history of orthodox, Campbellian and post-Campbellian science fiction, the science fiction community has largely agreed with and embraced this finding.
Utopians always begin with the best of intentions. But they always end by building their Utopia on a firm and level foundation composed of the crushed skulls of those who disagreed. And again, what I like best about the entire Firefly/Serenity creative enterprise is that, whether by accident or design, it really understands this truth and tells it.
Firefly is anti-Utopian. It’s not Dystopian either, per se, but it recognizes that life is messy, heroes have feet of clay, and good intentions by higher authorities (and lower beings) are always tainted by vice and rarely appreciated by the trampled-upon. “Keep flying” is not a Utopian goal, it’s a rejection of the Utopia envisioned by the Alliance — a Utopia the Alliance is willing to dictate to everyone no matter what the costs (as shown, ultimately and prematurely, in Serenity). That cowboy spirit, literal and figurative, is part of what makes the creation so positive.
That said, Firefly rejects the anti-authoritarian, libertarian, Randian “Utopia” as well. Life is not really a search for having no strings attached, survival of the fittest, isolation, the rise of the self-actualized super-man, who lets everyone else go to hell in their own way. There’s a strong message of social responsibility, of duty to others, of banding together to survive, of honor and morality, and trying to figure out how much of each you have and how that differs from what you say you have.
Ultimately, Firefly was about people — the folks on the good ship Serenity in particular — not about a System and High-Flying Ideals. Freedom was important, not as a Holy Goal or Ultimate Truth or Inviolable Philosophical Tenet, but in how it played out, for good and ill, in people’s lives. And that’s about as far from Utopianism as you can get.
*Utopians who are not overtly authoritarian tend to go off to carve their own little Utopias out — which then, in turn, take on authoritarian tones amongst their initially voluntary populations before they ultimately implode.