September 2010

SF/F Commentary

Haul of Books 2010: Stuff For Me v.20

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The University of Florida bookstore had a clearance sale a few weeks ago.  I discovered it via my superpower, which is kind of a Sixth Sense meets Spiderman meets Wolverine’s nostrils.  The selection was somewhat limited–a lot of old textbooks and politics books–but there were a few books that were more to my liking.  All but one of the following books (Harmony is not one of them) is from that sale.  Hopefully they’ll be of interest to you all. So, here goes: Here are the descriptions, from left to right, top to bottom (from Amazon): 1. The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Worldview edited by Gregory Bassham and Jerry L. Walls The Chronicles of Narnia series has entertained millions of readers, both children and adults, since the appearance of the first book in 1950. Here, scholars turn the lens of philosophy on these timeless tales. Engagingly written for a lay audience, these essays consider a wealth of topics centered on the ethical, spiritual, mythic, and moral resonances in the adventures of Aslan, the Pevensie children, and the rest of the colorful cast. Do the spectacular events in Narnia give readers a simplistic view of human choice and decision making? Does Aslan offer a solution to the problem of evil? What does the character of Susan tell readers about Lewis’s view of gender? How does Lewis address the Nietzschean “master morality” embraced by most of the villains of the Chronicles? With these and a wide range of other questions, this provocative book takes a fresh view of the world of Narnia and expands readers’ experience of it. 2. Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids by Sidney Perkowitz Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life. In a lab at MIT, scientists and technicians have created an artificial being named COG. To watch COG interact with the environment to recognize that this machine has actual body language is to experience a hair-raising, gut-level reaction. Because just as we connect to artificial people in fiction, the merest hint of human-like action or appearance invariably engages us. Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger. In short, we are going beyond what was once only science fiction to create bionic people with fully integrated artificial components and it will not be long before we reach the ultimate goal of constructing a completely synthetic human-like being. It seems quintessentially human to look beyond our natural limitations. Science has long been the lens through which we squint to discern our future. Although we are rightfully fearful about manipulating the boundaries between animate and inanimate, the benefits are too great to ignore. This thoughtful and provocative book shows us just where technology is taking us, in directions both wonderful and terrible, to ponder what it means to be human. 3. Harmony by Project Itoh In a perfect world, there is no escape In the future, Utopia has finally been achieved thanks to medical nanotechnology and a powerful ethic of social welfare and mutual consideration. This perfect world isn’t that perfect though, and three young girls stand up to totalitarian kindness and super-medicine by attempting suicide via starvation. It doesn’t work, but one of the girls–Tuan Kirie–grows up to be a member of the World Health Organization. As a crisis threatens the harmony of the new world, Tuan rediscovers another member of her suicide pact, and together they must help save the planet…from itself. 4. Conversations with Isaac Asimov edited by Carl Freedman Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), one of the most popular and influential American authors of the twentieth century, sparked the imagination of generations of writers. His “Foundation” trilogy paved the way for science fiction that was more speculative and philosophical than had been previously seen in the genre, and his book “I, Robot” and his story “The Bicentennial Man” have been made into popular movies. First published as a teenager in John W. Campbell’s groundbreaking science-fiction magazine “Astounding, Asimov published over two hundred books during his lifetime. While most prolific writers tend to concentrate almost exclusively on a single genre, Asimov was a polymath who wrote widely on a variety of subjects. He authored mysteries, autobiographies, histories, satires, companions to Shakespeare, children’s books on science, and collections of bawdy limericks. A lifelong atheist, he neverthe-less wrote more than a half dozen books on the Bible. Asimov’s varied interests establish him as a premier public intellectual, one who was frequently called upon to clarify debates in science, in history, and on the effects of technology on the modern age. “Conversations with Isaac Asimov” collects interviews with a man considered to be — along with Robert Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, and Arthur C. Clarke — a founder of modern science fiction. Despite this, Asimov is perhaps best known for his many books of popular science writing. Carl Sagan once described Asimov as the greatest explainer of his age, and this talent made Asimov a natural for the interview form. His manner is always crisp and lucid, his tone always engaging, and his comments always enlightening. 5. Conversations with Carl Sagan edited by Tom Head Though a well-regarded physicist Carl Sagan (1934-1996) is best-known as a writer of popular nonfiction and science fiction and as the host of the PBS series Cosmos. Through his writings and spoken commentary, he worked to

SF/F Commentary

New Weird and Scifi Strange: Part Two — Invented Genres and Moments More

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(See my previous post on New Weird here.) II.  Invented Genres and Moments More A lot has been discussed in the last year about the “Scifi Strange” subgenre.  One of the few people talking about it is its creator, Jason Sanford–contrary to what Adam Callaway says here, Sanford is, in fact, coining a subgenre, even if his intentions are not tied to the political reasonings tied into the business of genre-making.  Sanford has made his case quite clear:  he considers Scifi Strange to be an extension of traditional science (and science fiction) to its logical breaking point; stories of this genre seem to take a page from the theoretical and pseudo-philosophical fields of science (quantum mechanics, theoretical physics, and so forth) and imagine where science, in general, might go when directed under the same forward-thinking mentality.  Understandably, many of the stories Sanford considers to be emblematic of the Scifi Strange genre reflect this quality (more of his thoughts on the subgenre can be found in this interview).  I, however, have a few issues with the discussion, which I will try to elucidate here. A fundamental problem with “genres” seems, to me, to be that they are often poorly defined.  For overarching genres, this isn’t necessarily an issue, but for small subgenres it presents a serious problem.  Catch-all definitions seem to have more of a place for much larger forms (such as romance, speculative fiction, the novel, and so on), since they don’t require an excessive amount of exclusion to provide a reasonable category below which one can place related texts; subgenres, however, are meant to evoke one of two (or both) primary objects:  1) a period of writing (New Wave or Golden Age), or 2) a specific kind of writing, usually decided by a common theme or visual element, or the combination thereof (Cyberpunk or Space Western).  Scifi Strange, at least how it has been defined most recently by Jason Sanford and Adam Callaway, seems to lack, in part, both of these elements.  Specifically, I think a few quotes from Callaway deserve to be addressed directly, particularly since I am going suggest that Scifi Strange is not what people think it is in a future post–assuming, of course, that Scifi Strange actually exists. To start: SciFi Strange, on the other hand, attempts to evoke the sensawunda from the Golden Age, but combine it with the literary sensibilities of the New Wave, or, more accurately, writer’s who grew up reading the New Wave. The stories Sanford nominates as SF Strange do not sound like New Wave stories to me. They sound like stories written by people who read the Golden Age stuff young, and then the best of the New Wave during their formative teenage years. SF strange stories are like alchemical batteries combining elements that shouldn’t react with one another. If anything, the elements should repel each other. But give them the right catalyst (aka, the writer), and the elements respond in a barely controlled explosion. SF Strange stories are barely contained explosions. Callaway’s assertion, taken in part from Sanford’s various discussions of Scifi Strange, is less problematic than what he suggests moments before about New Weird, especially because he acknowledges, as do I, that the connection between Scifi Strange and New Wave is a thin one at best–although I say as much primarily because I think New Wave has become a catchall term in much the same way as other subgenres, rendering it somewhat useless to the discussion of science fiction “movements” and “classes,” since it should represent a specific group of texts, rather than a whole body of texts that simply do not fit together because they lack a connecting point.  For me, I look at New Wave and think of Samuel R. Delany and writers like him who were unafraid to use dense or experimental prose (by science fiction standards), to expand the horizons of science fiction’s discussion of gender, taboos, and so on, and who were also unafraid to shove aside linear narratives for something else altogether.  Maybe I’m wrong, but that is what the definition of New Wave evokes for me, and when I take that into account, I find the connection between Scifi Strange and New Wave almost non-existent.  Scifi Strange stories certainly experiment, but their experimentations, to me, seem to have less to do with the expansion of science fiction’s social horizons than they do with a general blurring of genre distinctions. However, while I agree with Callaway on the New Wave origins, I disagree with his argument that Scifi Strange stories are somehow a successful conversation of disparate elements.  Many SciFi Strange stories seem to blur the edges between fantasy and science fiction, albeit through the stretching of science to its mystical limits.  While these two genres imply an opposition, they have historically been quite the opposite.  One need look no further than the science fiction and fantasy bookshelf and early science fiction, in which the two genres blended almost effortlessly in the form of SF icons like Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon, Andre Norton, and so on.  Blending genre elements is a common occurrence in SF precisely because SF and F are not disparate genres.  Both SF and F draw from a similar source, and while they do attempt to go in different directions with the elements they draw from that originary scourse, it is not unexpected that the two would occasionally overlap without creating issues with narrative cohesion and setting.  There is no repellent nature to be exposed here, because SF/F are simply branches from the same tree and inherently complementary in their apparent differentiation.  As Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Scifi Strange embodies this very idea: that truly distant futures might not resemble a world we know and might instead look to us to be composed of elements that defy our understanding of the present–i.e. a limited, sometimes only near-future-oriented understanding. But Callaway has a little more to say about Scifi Strange: SF Strange

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