I mean yes, but that’s a bit of a surface level read and I would argue more of a trope than a theme. Like there’s a lot of fantasy where there is a scarcity based culture that makes for skilled people with very survival forward approaches to things normally governed by sentimental attachments that paint kindness as a privilege of those with resources to spare…
Those conditions in fictional tropes pre 1960’s were just more often than not just temporary generational stuff. Famine, war, extreme poverty and so on were popular places to draw touch characters from but the sci-fi boom just elaborated it into death worlds where things are always horrible as a matter of a more overarching environmental nature. People have otherwise been on their box about the effects of soft living on moral character since as long as the written word has existed.
If by surface level read you mean reading what the author wrote, then I agree. I think in this case, what the reader brings to the story is most important. I have training as a biologist so, survival of the fittest is right in my arena.
Dune has the sub-theme of tough conditions create tough people. The sand people were just waiting for the right spark.
I mean yes, but that’s a bit of a surface level read and I would argue more of a trope than a theme. Like there’s a lot of fantasy where there is a scarcity based culture that makes for skilled people with very survival forward approaches to things normally governed by sentimental attachments that paint kindness as a privilege of those with resources to spare…
Those conditions in fictional tropes pre 1960’s were just more often than not just temporary generational stuff. Famine, war, extreme poverty and so on were popular places to draw touch characters from but the sci-fi boom just elaborated it into death worlds where things are always horrible as a matter of a more overarching environmental nature. People have otherwise been on their box about the effects of soft living on moral character since as long as the written word has existed.
If by surface level read you mean reading what the author wrote, then I agree. I think in this case, what the reader brings to the story is most important. I have training as a biologist so, survival of the fittest is right in my arena.