November 2007

    I recently found this link over at the lovely SF Signal. It’s an article in the Guardian by Brian Aldiss that discusses where the future of SF is. The article is called “Our Science Fiction Fate” with a caption that reads “The planet’s dire state makes the imaginative leaps of dystopian SF writers redundant”. First off, I don’t know if Aldiss is proposing that Al Gore is correct on his assertions that we, human beings, are screwing up our planet and it’s our fault that things are changing, or that the climate is changing, but the means by which this is happening are up for interpretation. He does posit that there are too many of us here, which is very true. Things are changing on this planet. People like Gore, who may think they are doing something for the betterment of mankind, are the wrong sorts of people to tell us about climate change. Why? Because when we first started listening to people who are hypocrites, we ended up with the skewed and failing governmental system we have today. Regardless, there are changes on this planet and it is ignorant for any of us–being humans–to assume that we know what the hell is going on. We know nothing. None of us have lived through a warming period and our history is nothing but a blip on the Earthen screen. The evidence that is constantly presented is skewed.    First it was those saying nothing was happening at all. These were the same people who took all the evidence that supported their argument and ignored anything that suggested otherwise. Then things changed, and we ended up with these Global Warming enthusiasts, people that don’t really know anything about the state of the planet, but ignorantly assume that everything told to them in the 100% truth. The sad thing is that the same narrow minded, oppressive view that their predicessors had is present here in these new world thinkers. There is a lot of evidence to show that the planet is changing, and some evidence to suggest that it has something to do with humans, but in the wake of that is a mountain of evidence that suggests that humans have little influence on the direction of the planet. This evidence is ignored. People assume that it is conservative propaganda when really it is evidence provided by a group of very well minded scientists that are more concerned for the well being of our planet than the Global Warming enthusiasts are. Why? Because they have taken into account that radically changing worldwide policies will have adverse effects on everyone. Wouldn’t you want to be 100% sure before making changes? Imagine this is making the decision to shoot someone because they are evil. If your evidence is 50% that he is evil and 50% that he’s not, would you feel okay shooting him anyway? I fully understand the logic that change needs to occur and I am in no way proposing that we don’t make societal changes. Inevitably we have to make changes because oil is growing thin and we need sources that can easily be replicated and will not disappear. But I also understand that if we’re wrong and we make radical decisions, we could inadvertently destroy millions of lives and have to live with that on our consciences when the truth comes to the front.    Now, Aldiss, it seems, is making the argument that science fiction writers have a problem with addressing what he calls ‘global threats’–Global Warming probably being the main thing to consider here–and with recycling ideas.    To the first point:    I cannot say that I agree with this, but only because I’m not overly familiar with any SF being written that addresses global catastrophes that we believe are around the corner. Certainly movies like The Core and The Day After Tomorrow–one that I refuse to see and one that I thought was rather entertaining–are examples of science fiction in the film industry. I can’t imagine that nobody is writing about Global Warming though. Perhaps what is happening isn’t that people aren’t writing about it, but that people who wouldn’t be considered SF writers are putting out books that are labeled as mainstream rather than SF. If that’s the case, then it’s no wonder we’re not hearing much about it in the SF world. I’ve seen some books that weren’t labeled SF about global catastrophe. So it seems that books on this subject exist, but perhaps not in the frequency that Aldiss would like, or at least not in the manner that Aldiss would agree is definitively SF.    The second point:    How does one avoid redundancy in any type of fiction, not just SF? When we look at fantasy, for example, there is a great tendency to be redundant because people constantly repeat the same basic things over and over. What makes it good is the writers. Someone can take a story about elves and make it really fascinating. Alternately, someone can write a story about traveling to Mars and do the same. But the argument seems directed towards dystopian redundancies–what I call commonalities. This is very true that dystopian ideals are repeated ad naseum. But this is the nature of SF. Our future seems very bleak, for good reason. Aldiss even points them out–the cold war, nuclear war, etc. When we look at it, we are constantly devising new ways to destroy ourselves, our governments are corrupt and manipulative, wars are being waged that shouldn’t, wars are dehumanized for those with technology, etc. We live in a world that is dystopian, as Aldiss has pointed out. Does this make for redundant SF though? I can’t say that it does, at least not in any different sense than the fact that fantasy is redundant too. The fact is that it’s human. SF simply addresses it a lot. There are still wonderful stories being told with gloriously fascinating futures intermixed.    Another question that should be asked is whether people are even interested in other forms of SF.

I was originally going to do this as a video blog, but decided the subject couldn’t wait until I could get the time to actually write down all the main points, find the time to do a video blog, etc. So I’m doing it here. Now, Vandermeer already discussed this over on Clarkesworld, at least to some extent, and I too have talked about it before. I have to agree to some extent that indeed people are rather preoccupied with the idea of speculative fiction being against the mainstream or everything else. That is very true. In reality, specfic is practically mainstream anyway. The books are generally selling very well. Fantasy has exploded, partially thanks to Harry Potter, and while science fiction may not have superb sales, it too is doing very well in the fact that many books are actually being turned into films. Whether these films are of good quality and represent the greatness of the literature they are attempting to portray is an argument for another time.One point, though, that I have to make, and have made, is that despite the popularity of specfic, despite its acceptance by the masses as a valuable form of literature, it is still being fought against by the academia. I will not deny that there are now colleges that teach specfic and neither will I deny that a lot of colleges do offer some courses in the subject. What must be realized, however, is that there are very few colleges that actually offer degrees in the field of specfic–mainly science fiction or fantasy–and of the colleges that offer coursework in the field the genre is not taken seriously at all. I will give you an example:I took a science fiction & fantasy lit course at my previous school, a community college. Now, before one treads upon the quality of community colleges I will make a comparison to UC Santa Cruz, where I am studying now: they are almost exactly the same, with some very minor differences in leniency in the community college. The class, I will admit, was absolutely awesome, but for different reasons than one might think. It was a course that didn’t look at SF & F nearly in the same light as a class studying British lit. In fact, the class was almost like a giant forum for discussion, with minor amounts of reading. There was no reading into the history of SF & F, nor into the history of the authors we were reading. Given that, the course was basically open discussion, which never lent itself to deep analysis or otherwise thorough understanding of the text itself.This is, unfortunately, the model by which many colleges treat specfic, if they deal with the genre at all. Most colleges don’t offer much in the way of studying specfic. This is an issue that has to be rectified if specfic is to be taken seriously in the literary community. More degree programs have to be offered that allow you to focus in the field. Four or five major programs in the world isn’t enough. There is an enormous field of analysis available by studying specfic. Science fiction, for example, is constantly raising questions about our society, our technology, and our species, drawing upon everything from physics to sociology. Just as one could look upon the many literary theories of criticism and draw information from a literary text, so too can you use such things on science fiction, meaning that a school could very well address science fiction texts without having to fully change their way of thinking.While obviously specfic has come a long way in the last fifty years, heck, even in the last twenty, it still has a long way to go. People should stop complaining that specfic isn’t being accepted, because it is, but they should strive, or rather, push, to see specfic involved in teaching students at all levels about literature since specfic is extremely influential in our society–a fact that cannot logically be denied. Despite where it stands now, we still have a long way to go everyone. Let’s get over that next milestone and start claiming victory. For now, realize that we’ve achieved success in one arena.