Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

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Towards an SF Canon: Curiosities

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…


  1. 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).
  2. 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.
  3. SFWA now also includes “Fantasy” in the name.
  4. 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!
  5. 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.
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