Due to circumstances beyond my control which involve several people raising interesting ideas in reply to my tweets about my essay “Why the SF Canon Doesn’t Exist,” I’m now neck deep in a massive research project on the formation of literary canons and their placement in SF scholarship (and wider discourse). In reality, I’ve been curious about this for a while, but I’ve never taken the time to do the deep dive because my research has demanded my attention elsewhere (ugh, tenure needs) and there hasn’t been an urgent need to do the work. After all, most people are either pretty satisfied about there being no official SF canon OR perfectly fine with the de facto canon, which we can piece together through a combination of “important anthologies” and aggregating the works people decide are Important™.1 One might, for example, start with NPR’s reader-selected list of the Top 100 SF/F books and its related list of the 50 best SF/F books of the 2010s.2 I, however, want to look more deeply at why these types of lists and the “de facto” argument are so prevalent in SF discourse AND what efforts have occurred to put together a legitimate canon of SF works.
With that in mind, I’d like to turn to two curiosities on the path towards canonization in SF: Robert Silverberg’s The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 (1970) and Mark R. Hillegas’ “A Draft of the Science-Fiction Canon” (1961; in Vol. 3, Issue 1 of Extrapolation).
Red Rover, Red Rover, Send an Anthology On Over!
Silverberg’s collection was first drawn to my attention by the Hugo Book Club Blog (run by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk). Conceived as a collection of the “best science fiction ever written,” a fairly common practice in the SF anthology “market,” it was partly put together by members of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA)3 and Silverberg’s editorial discretion (for 11 of the 26 stories). Nominations and votes ran for a year, and members were encouraged to consider the historical development of the genre when they selected works (they could not nominate themselves). For his part, Silverberg stated in the introduction that he “exercised certain limited prerogatives of selection” but mostly did not alter the list of the “fifteen most popular stories.” What Silverberg means by “limited” is important here. Given the space of a single collection, it was necessary to prevent any one author from having more than one place in the book; in that case, Silverberg chose the story he deemed most valuable by the author in question. In another case, Silverberg dropped an author from the top fifteen to make room for another author whose work was deemed significant but whose breadth of work had resulted in a vote split. Authors also had some say here, including one author who preferred a work with less votes be considered over a work with more. From there, the limiting factor was simply space, as the cost of publishing large volumes exceeded the implied mandate of the collection.
While Silverberg’s collection is not the only one purporting to present us a kind of “canon” of SF — there being subsequent volumes in this series edited by Ben Bova and numerous “best of” books throughout the last 70+ years — it is important for signaling what were the primary channels for such conversations. While academic work had been written by the time of this particular collection, the bulk of writing about SF existed (or would exist) in popular books such as this. These included visual histories, general histories, collections on specific genres (see Brian Aldiss’ Space Opera), and so on. Thus, we are presented with a work based on a popular vote rather than a robust conversation about the value of the work held within (observation, not problem); additionally, that vote is one made by writers of the genre rather than critics or academics (the primary audience for canon formation). This is not to suggest that the general public cannot be a space for canon formation; rather, this is typically not its function, in part because canonization tends to be associated with education (explicitly and implicitly) and spaces for intense literary debate. The general public, as such, tends to be less interested in that role and more interested in consuming the work.
In terms of the stories themselves, we’re presented what most people would consider to be some of the classic writers of short SF (and some of their classic works). This includes Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall,” Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God,” and Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon” (before it became a novel). Other stories by major writers also exist here (Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and James Blish) alongside writers who were quite significant at the time but have mostly faded from contemporary discussions of SF in fan circles (Stanley G. Weinbaum, Lewis Padgett, and Murray Leinster). This gives us some sense of who might have been considered the important writers of the time in the short form, but like any collection attempting to represent a history of the genre, authors and works fade away over time. Some of the authors here are represented by works that are unlikely to be the recommended starting point. James Blish, for example, is perhaps best represented by his novel work — especially his Cities of Flight series — even though some of his short fiction netted him award nominations and one of his novels, A Case of Conscience (1959), actually got him the rocket.
Another thing to note is the issue of time: 1929-1964. The original edition of the book doesn’t provide this date; it is appended on later editions, possibly to differentiate it from the Bova collections that followed. Silverberg does, however, mention this date range in the introduction in a parenthetical; this is presented as merely a statement of fact (“had originally been published between…”), and so I don’t think we can give any special significance to those years beyond what they tell us about what the SFWA membership considered to be the beginnings of the genre — namely, in the pulps and in the years immediately following Hugo Gernsbacks’ founding of Amazing Stories in 1926. Additionally, this runs counter to both the prevailing academic and popular conceptions of science fiction’s emergence (what I refer to as the retroactivist position), which places precursor works at least a few decades or a century before (the common denominator being Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)). In fairness to this anthology, it focuses on short fiction, and there is comparatively little short SF prior to the pulp era.
I’ll come back to all of this another day, in part to challenge what I’ve said here by looking at some of the writing about SF which was meant to present histories of genre to the public. These histories were not written for canonical purposes but to define, explain, and support the growing SF community. Yet, they served a vital function in the legitimization of SF. More on that another day.
What the What? A Canon, You Say?
The second piece is a curious snippet I discovered in a 1961 issue of Extrapolation by Professor Mark R. Hillegas. The full title of the piece tells us quite a lot: “A Draft of the Science-Fiction Canon to be proposed at The 1961 MLA Conference on Science Fiction.” In theory, this canon was, in fact, presented to someone at the 1961 MLA Conference. More on that in a hot minute…
Most of you likely haven’t heard of Hillegas, but he is quite significant in the history of SF scholarship. One of the first regular for-credit courses taught on science fiction was covered by Hillegas at Colgate University (the other by H. Bruce Franklin at Stanford).4 He also provided a variety of essays for Extrapolation and wrote a worthy academic book on dystopian literature (The Future As Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians, 1967). Prior to the courses of Hillegas and Franklin, however, SF had largely been relegated to the guest lecture “circuit” for the better part of a decade.5 Today, science fiction courses are relatively common.
On the subject of Hillegas’ canon, it seems important to acknowledge that I currently have no record on whether this was delivered at the 1961 MLA. Hillegas did give a talk on dystopian fiction (as evidenced by the MLA proceedings booklet), but this is quite different from presenting a canon for discussion and, if I interpret the introduction correctly, ratification. It’s hard to know, though. The document is remarkably sparse. It opens with two brief paragraphs indicating that Hillegas had consulted with members of the MLA Conference about a previous draft, but there is otherwise no record I can find. All we know is that a conversation occurred with someone (or someones). The introduction also acknowledges that it heavily focuses on novels to the detriment of the short form — arguably still the more important SF medium in 1961. As far as its influence on how we talk about canons in SF, it appears to have been largely forgotten. Thus far, I’ve been unable to find any record of any conversations occurring OR any records or later editions of this particular work OR any records of responses to this document. Hillegas did, however, talk about canonization briefly in some of his other academic work; otherwise, the issue seems to have remained unremarkable.
If you’re curious about this proposed canon, I’ve embedded the list below:
From a practical standpoint, Hillegas’ canon certainly has the mark of a possible canon, albeit one which is perhaps “too soon” and in need of a drastic update. After all, it doesn’t consider the New Wave or anything in the last 50 years because it simply can’t. Time travel does not exist. Yet, what is present on the list are some of the most significant works of SF, which could comprise a canon if we were to aggregate the most common references of SF scholarship. This includes works like Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Bester’s The Demolished Man, Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, Asimov’s Foundation, and Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. But Hillegas also includes works you’d find in a non-SF canon, such as Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, which suggests an awareness of the existing canon conversation. Historically, SF has attempted to latch itself onto works not written in its literary tradition which are basically SF anyway, in part to support legitimacy for the genre; academia did the same because there is value in comparative analysis between works nobody would question and works that might earn a side eye.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that Hillegas’ canon is a chronological one which extends from 1960 to 1607. I can’t say if this is the first instance of retroactive inclusion, but it is a familiar tactic to legitimize SF literature. Imaginative literature extends back centuries; to suggest that a modern genre links back to those in such a profound way that you cannot discount modern SF without also discounting Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Jonathan Swift, or Cyrano de Bergerac lends a credibility to the genre that most academics can’t ignore. Of course, the argument has to be made, and Hillegas’ canon doesn’t do so (other academics, however, do make that argument to a certain degree). Regardless, it tells us that some of the early efforts to form an SF canon had to consider not only the landscape of literary discourse within academia but also the meaning of a canon beyond its mere “these are the works you should read” framework. Hillegas’ canon is a historical interpretation of the genre in a way that Silverberg’s anthology is not. One can imagine the argument for this canon as one which attempts to identify the tentacles of genre reaching back to the 1600s: the tentacles are long, multi-colored, and become more variable the deeper they reach. This is, perhaps, one method I’d approach if I were to create a canon of my own: not a canon of explicitly SF works but a canon of the historical literary trends which eventually give us SF.
And So We Come to the Close
I don’t know exactly where this project will take me. The desk in my office at work is now covered in books on canons, canonicity, challenges to canon, and more.
What I do know is this: the history of canons in SF is a murky, messy, incomplete, and complicated disasterzone. But that mess is worth exploring to highlight the theories, ideas, and methods behind attempts to form a legitimate or de facto SF canon. This hasn’t been part of the SF community’s mission. Whether I’m up to that task is questionable, but I can at least bring up the bits and pieces I relayed here to explore what canons mean to us and why it might be worthwhile to consider what the future of the SF canon could be if we collectively saw fit to explore it.
And so here we are. Rambling our way towards an SF canon…
- Two other groups also exist. The first argues that there is a canon — or, at least, that there are classics — and then yells at other people about it. The second hates that the canon — or, at least, the classics — doesn’t much care for that version of the canon and hates being told they have to read that stuff (though some of them may read those things anyway). ↩
- For the record, I don’t think general popularity is a good way to form a literary canon. It should be considered, of course, but we must also consider factors such as influence, presentation, representation, etc. More on that another day. ↩
- SFWA now also includes “Fantasy” in the name. ↩
- I’m trying to get my hands on one of the essays Hillegas wrote on teaching that class. Unfortunately, it’s in a rare issue of a Colgate U magazine and may be inaccessible via digital means. We’ll see! ↩
- Sam Moskowitz’s 1953 course on writing science fiction is probably the first course of its kind. It was taught on a non-credit basis at City College of New York. Numerous SF writers of note showed up to give talks. ↩
11 Responses
I am in awe of your skills, work and diligence.
I almost feel I need to write a response to THiS entry, too 🙂
Go on, Paul. DO IT!
Wrote something else today, regarding a certain Kickstarter:
https://t.co/Pcy2WQ9ymz
Shaun: fascinating research on an important theme — I look forward to your further postings on this topic — and to reading the article(s) / book(s) I imagine you will write about it all. Best, Daniel
Thanks, Daniel! I’m doing a lot of weird deep dives on this lol.
I’m not sure your statement “there is comparatively little short SF prior to the pulp era” is quite accurate. I would say that there was short SF, but it was published in “general” magazines like The Strand Magazine (where Conan Doyle’s “The Horror of the Heights” appeared). Forster’s classic “The Machine Stops” appeared in The Oxford and Cambridge Review.
I read a collection last year by Joshua Glenn called Voices from the Radium Age that includes both those stories and several other pre-pulp SFF stories from diverse sources. You see a similar effect in Mike Ashley’s collection The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers. These stories are hard to find, because they’re not in a self-labelled magazine of SFF, but there are a lot of them out there.
This is more my fault in specifying terminology than it is being inaccurate. I should have said the pulp era in general rather than specific to SF. This would include The Strand, which is first published around the emergence of the pulps in the 1890s and would include the Radium Age (if I recall, roughly 1900 to 1935, right?). That whole era is the pulp era, though. Prior to that period, there’s not a whole lot of short proto-SF. The pulp era creates a huge boom in production of the form, both in the mags you cite which are not really self-labeled as such AND the stuff we know as SFF mags.
I think part of the problem for SF is that a lot of fans of the genre wanted it to be taken seriously as something “not just for the kids” or “intellectually juvenile,” and so there are these early efforts to shore up the legitimacy of the genre at a time when the genre really hadn’t figured itself out yet. Sure, by the 1960s, you could easily say “this is a thing and it has these traditions,” but that’s still, at best, 40 years of a genre’s development, and you’d be hard pressed to justify canonization anything that isn’t at least that old at the time of your argument. So Hillegas was in a tough spot back then. How do you really argue for a work which is literally a year old? Can we say with any certainty that THIS work has staying power? I don’t think you can…
But it’s an interesting list nonetheless!
Also interesting that Hillegas’ first (i.e. most recent, published only one year previously) candidate for the canon is a story I’d never heard of that some reviewers on Goodreads consider one of the now-obscure author’s weakest works. Tells you something about attempting to canonize too soon.
I am, I suppose, in the anti-canon faction, This is mostly because I don’t know what science fiction is, and therefore I don’t know what a canon is supposed to epitomise. But there is also the fact that science fiction is a living literature, and each new book changes the nature of the beast in small but not insignificant ways, so a canon is marking out something that has already lost its significance in terms of what the literature is today. But if you are looking at the various multifarious “canons” that have been drawn up over the years (and there are so many of them) be wary of blindnesses and prejudices. The various Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies, for example, are drawn up through the offices of the Science Fiction (and Fantasy) Writers of AMERICA, and tend to be overwhelmingly American in character. It has been a long time since I read it, but I seem to remember that the Silverberg volume you quote has only one contributor who is not from North America (USA and the occasional appearance of Canada) and that is Arthur C. Clarke. To say this under-represents the British contribution to science fiction goes without saying, but it absolutely wipes from the record any non-Anglophone writing. There are no Russian, French, or German writers, not to mention any non-white contributor, and there are precious few women (C.L. Moore, I think, appears by courtesy of her collaboration with Henry Kuttner). A canon is not a representation of the key historical works of science fiction, but rather a representation of the particular tastes and prejudices of the people drawing up the list.
Hi Paul! Sorry this sat in my mod box for so long. Playing catchup here!
Some thoughts:
1) I don’t know that I’d call myself anti-canon so much as anti-stable canon. I’m working on something in response to myself here that asserts that the notion of canon as a stable construct is actually a myth even within academia. While we might argue that there are some texts that are more stable than others (even in SF), the fact that all literature, as you say of SF, is “living” means that what is considered of particular value will shift. This is more true outside of academia, where I think canon doesn’t hold much meaning beyond vagueries of caonicity, but it is also true within academia, where arguments are constantly being made (justifiably) for changes to what we should value. Certainly, some texts have remained fixed in the “western canon” in a way that isn’t quite the case for SF (with maybe exception to a few big names). And part of the reason for that is related to what I’ve talked about here: institutional weight. More on that another time, though.
2) I am absolutely watching out for those biases. They’re unavoidable when you’re looking back at anthologies of the best of the best of the best. Layers and layers of bias and prejudice… It dawns on me that your comment on this particular concern explains why I quite prefer the Vandermeer’s Big Book of SF to other anthologies of SF. It’s not perfect, but it does make an honest effort to try to account for written SF of note from across the globe. While I imagine you can make a better selection, it is a massive volume that probably can’t get much larger before it becomes ridiculous. Hence the need for lists, I suppose (the Western Canon being an example of a canon list that I have mixed feelings about…any list will probably be insufficient).
3) I don’t quite agree that canons aren’t representations of key historical works. I do agree that what is considered canon in any particular field would be the product of the tastes of the prejudices of those drawing up the list, and that’s even more so when one looks at individuals doing that work rather than institutional arguments featuring many voices over time (a silly example being Melville, perhaps, who wasn’t made canonical by one voice, and who required critics, professors, academic publishers, academic departments, and K-12 curriculum to get the status he has now with Moby Dick). It’s also worth noting, I think, that works may still be important even if they emerged in a period in which others were kept out of the conversation (i.e., publishing’s prejudices). Those works might still have had a substantial impact. I think the role of academics shouldn’t be to simply say “this work is important, and these others weren’t,” but rather to say “this work is important, and it exists in this period, which has these features and these other writers doing things.” But on this, we might have different ideas of what a canon’s purpose is or should be, which might be for another discussion?