Pastoral science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction which uses bucolic, rural settings, like other forms of pastoral literature. Since it is a subgenre of science fiction, authors may set stories either on Earth or another habitable planet or moon, sometimes including a terraformed planet or moon. Unlike most genres of science fiction, pastoral science fiction works downplay the role of futuristic technologies. The pioneer is author Clifford Simak (1904–1988), a science fiction Grand Master whose output included stories written in the 1950s and 1960s about rural people who have contact with extraterrestrial beings who hide their alien identity. Pastoral science fiction stories typically show a reverence for the land, its life-giving food harvests, the cycle of the seasons, and the role of the community. While fertile agrarian environments on Earth or Earth-like planets are common settings, some works may be set on ocean or desert planets or habitable moons. The rural dwellers, such as farmers and small-townspeople, are depicted sympathetically, albeit with the tendency to portray them as conservative and suspicious of change. The simple, peaceful rural life is often contrasted with the negative aspects of noisy, dirty, fast-paced cities. Some works take a Luddite tone, criticizing mechanization and industrialization and showing the ills of urbanization and over-reliance on advanced technologies.
Terminology The subgenre is also called "rural science fiction" (RSF) in some 2020s sources. Kirkus Reviews has noted the subgenre of "small-town science fiction" set in the countryside, which takes inspiration from Ray Bradbury's stories about bucolic towns. Simon Reynolds has applied this subgenre to film, stating that Super 8 is a "small town science fiction movie".
Theory American historian and literary critic Leo Marx's book The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea (1964) sets out the theoretical underpinnings of modern pastoral literature. He states that the pastoral setting has a "dynamic relationship with [t]echnology", which transforms the pastoral ideal of an idyllic paradise into "commodified nostalgia" about a "middle landscape" (which is in between the small farms that are still within the town gates and the wilderness that lies beyond) where lives can be "lived in harmony, momentarily unburdened by history." This sentimental version of the American pastoral uses rural landscapes and sublimation to create a sense of nostalgia and an "illusion of peace and harmony in a green pasture." Tom Shippey contrasts between the pastoral genre, which focuses on "rural, nostalgic, [and] conservative" communities, and genres focused on societies that use technologies to create new tools and devices. For example, in mainstream science fiction, there is often an emphasis on the role of advanced technologies (spaceships, robots, computers, etc.) and their impact on people and society. Shippey states that these literatures about innovation and technology-oriented "fabril" societies depict these cultures as "overwhelmingly urban, disruptive, future-oriented, eager for novelty,"' and "centred on the image of the 'faber'" (craftsman, from a root meaning "fashioning" or "fitting") which historically referred to a blacksmith, but in a science fiction context, it refers to creators, designers, and builders of new artefacts and devices. These could be new spaceships, laser weapons, artificial intelligence or other technology, which Darko Suvin collectively refers to as the "novum" element of science fiction. Andy Sawyer argues that the pastoral genre in science fiction depends on the "tension between these two modes", in which pastoral science fiction (SF) focuses on "anxiety about the future", whereas stories about urban faber society tend to enthusiastic about the future and the changes it will bring. Leo Marx gives an example of the busy, noisy urban life disrupting the peaceful rural realm with his recounting of Nathaniel Hawthorne working in the woods in the countryside when the quiet was shattered with the shrieking of a train locomotive whistle, showing "technology's intrusion into the pastoral landscape."
Pastoral stories have a nostalgic and sentimental focus on tradition, in contrast to "faber cultures which are obsessed with developing innovations. Darko Suvin states that due to "cognitive estrangement", the pastoral genre is closer to science fiction than it is to fantasy. Pastoral symbols and myths are at the roots of American cultural narratives. Along with apocalyptic and urban strands, pastoral symbols are "mutually interpenetrating elements" in American Protestant culture and part of the values of the Enlightenment. The pastoral opposition between the country and the city may be recreated by comparing Earth to a technologically advanced alien planet. Sawyer uses English literary critic and poet William Empson's 1950 argument that the pastoral genre "compress[es] complex meaning into emblematic ecological images" of "wilderness, garden and farm" that serve as "metaphor, a poetic idea" showing the impact of technology on how we relate to nature. Pastoral stories typically focus on communities and regular people's life events, such as falling in love, marriage, birth, and death, and on processes that are key to sustaining rural communities, such as harvesting food. As well, pastoral stories often use the changing seasons as an organizing framework and as metaphor for natural cycles (e.g., Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Spring). Sawyer argues that some pastoral utopias have a dark side, in that the idyllic setting for the few settlers or colonists was achieved at the expense of the land being turned into a dystopia for the Indigenous inhabitants who were displaced or used as slaves to clear the land.
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