Is Science Fiction in America Unique?
(This post is technically the last half of the post I started here, though it has diverged from a discussion of Alan Moore.) What is it about America and science fiction? We seem to have a love affair with the stuff as a society, with most of what we watch somehow associated with the genre. It is one of the largest and most influential genres in the country, secondary only to religious texts and, perhaps, fantasy. While the literary side of things may be lagging behind in terms of sales, its film side, for better and for worse, has controlled the market for the last ten years–with the exception of 2010, which has been heavily oriented towards fantasy titles (specifically, sequels to major franchises). We’re not the only country interested in SF, of course, but America is not exactly like other countries. I’m not suggesting that we’re “better” by pointing out America’s uniqueness, nor I am suggesting, as Alan Moore does in “Frankestein’s Cadillac,” that there might be something particular to America that has made it (and continues to make it) a breeding ground for science fiction. Instead, I want to suggest that America’s vibrant SF field is not necessarily unique to it, except in terms of its specific cultural eccentricities. So retro it hurts! First, I think it’s important to note that SF as a genre1 is, in most cases, the product of an extensive socio-economic process linked to the rise of industrialization (the second industrial revolution for the U.S.) and mechanized material production. I’m not the only one to suggest the link between genre-production and industrialization, but I may be one of the few to suggest that the same process that spawned SF in America and elsewhere is not only duplicable, but also happening right now. New, vibrant SF fields are springing up all over the world, most notably in China and Africa, but previously in places like the Caribbean, Latin America, and so on.2 These various “fields” share characteristics, but also differ both because of the cultural context and the ways in which industrialization arises in various parts of the world. In the case of America, there are few characteristics which make it “different.” We’re not wholly unique.3 The “melting pot” concept (which is, in part, mythical, but we won’t get into that now) is true of other countries too, such as the United Kingdom, parts of Europe, and so on. Even the way the U.S. has dealt with immigration (now and in the past) is not all that different from what is going on in other parts of the world. Our connection to technology is equally shared with other developed/developing/etc. nations, where science and its impact on societal production are desired over other methods of production. What seems to differ in the America is the way it is divided, which has led to a variety of connected, but unique “identities.” But because these individual States are “loose” States (the only “hard” border in the U.S. is the one that surrounds it, not the individual borders) and share a cultural background and governmental structure, there is considerable bleeding across lines. Other parts of the world have similar structures, such as Europe, which has tried, through the European Union, to form a collaborative “national” framework, to varying degrees of success. The U.S., however, has a rich history of hodgepodge “loose” States, and the linking of the national structure to industrialization, I think, shows how the formation of SF in America is unique, while also not entirely separate from other industralizing(ed) nations. Again, I don’t think we’re wholly unique, but rather sort of “eccentric.” America’s culture and history do contain unique characteristics. American nationalism and Imperialism are not the same as other nationalisms and Imperialisms, though there are, as always, similarities. Even certain aspects of our culture–like baseball–while now shared elsewhere, are at least inventions of the U.S., even if such things are transfusions (manipulated by America) from other nations. Like cereal, only spicy. SF in this country usually has a kind of “American” flavor, but trying to describe it is similar to trying to point out where American culture begins and where it ends. I like to think of America as an emulation of the world, because the world is already a hodgepodge of States, but America’s loose internal borders are different than those of the world as a whole. We’re not terribly concerned (right now) with culture bleeding over from other American “spaces.” But we are concerned with culture bleeding over from elsewhere. Almost all nations are. Nations have immigration control, deportation, laws that make explicit the privileging of local culture over foreign culture, and so on.4 But the U.S. has very little of that inside/between its borders (with some exceptions). Whether we can see that in American SF is hard to say. American eccentricities certainly show up, but I don’t think they change the core of SF or whether the U.S. is more suited to SF literary production than other nations. Looks like fun… But maybe the only reason Alan Moore originally brought this up, and why I’m talking about it here, is because SF in America is enormous in comparison to other places with SF traditions (the U.K., Russia, etc.). In that case, America is only unique in this context because it is one of the top producers of film and literature in the world (notice I didn’t say “good” or “bad”). But that’s not going to be for long. China is well on its way. Why? Industrialization (old form and new form–i.e., modern technological advances). Then maybe we’ll be asking if SF is unique to China. Do you think SF is unique to America? Why or why not? What makes American SF a unique literary form to you? ——————————————————————— 1. By genre, I mean a set of established literary modes that have concretized in the literary landscape; all genres have precursors–texts we refer to as “the beginning of the genre” or “early examples of
Alan Moore, Science Fiction, and America (Part One: A Little History)
Alan Moore is perhaps best known for his graphic novel work–Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V For Vendetta, too name a few. His most recent venture, Dodgem Logic, is an underground magazine which seems to be about as quirky as they come (I might get myself an issue for the hell of it over Christmas break). Issue #4 is of particular interest to fans of science fiction. In it, Moore has an article about science fiction in America that makes a number of interesting points about why science fiction seems to be a particularly prevalent mode of literary discourse in American literature. It’s not a secret that the U.S. has been one of the top producers of science fiction (broadly defined), though the United Kingdom was certainly one of the first to build up a steady SF readership (according to my understanding of SF history). Moore, however, argues that America is unique largely because of how it attempts to represent itself to other nations. I’ll talk about that in my next post, since it relates directly to the intimate connection that Moore seems to set up between America and its propensity for science fiction stories. For now, though, it is necessary to disentangle a few problems with Moore’s initial logic, since it sets the foundation for how Moore thinks about America and science fiction. Moore beings his discussion with this: Most nations when required to stave up national identity, perhaps in times of difficulty, will call on reserves of national history or mythology. In Britain, for example, leaders will routinely summon up the spirit of the Blitz, of Winston Churchill or King Arthur when attempting to persuade the country to accept something that it isn’t going to like, like public spending cutbacks or a costly foreign conflict. In effect, what most nations are trying to communicate is ‘Look at what we were.’ America, conversely, is only a little over two hundred years old and its brief history is largely one of genocide and slavery, things that most usually require a veil drawn over them rather than celebration. Lacking myth or folklore and without a reservation of history to plunder, is America instead employing its projected science fiction futures to say ‘Look at what we will be?’ There are two enormous problems here. The first is that Moore assumes the United States lacks its own mythical framework due to its age (234). To say that this statement is patently false is to point out the ridiculously obvious, even to less educated Americans than myself. Americans are notorious for inventing their own mythologies and folktales (but, then, so are humans in general). What is unusual about our myth-building, as compared to, say, the United Kingdom (where Moore is from), is that most of our myths can be refuted by historical evidence. The story of George Washington and the cherry tree, for example, is completely fictitious, yet remains a staple in elementary schools as a morality tale. That’s not to say that George Washington wasn’t a great man, just that the stories we’ve concocted about him are extensions of the mythic birth of our nation. George Washington, of course, is not the only mythologized figure in U.S. history, as almost all of the Founding Fathers and the dozens of great American figures that followed them have been appropriated by mythical thinking and folkloric traditions. How else do you explain the near obsessive love for figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and so on? Half of them were slave owners, some had affairs with women (sometimes more than one), some participated in colonialism/imperialism and/or the extermination of indigenous peoples, and so on; all of them have been appropriated by mythology and folklore, masking, as Moore suggests, much of what made them flawed human beings. Why Americans adopt the myths and folktales about U.S history and the lands around us is something I can’t quite explain, since I am not an expert on mythology or folklore. What I do know is that the U.S. is not devoid of its own myths and folktales; it’s rife with them. Moore’s assertion that we lack myth, folklore, and a history to draw from is like suggesting that there were no lingering cultural effects from the Anglo-Saxons following the Norman Conquests. Both statements are practically myths themselves. But the problem here seems to be the same problem nationalism is quite apt to produce: false perspective founded on ignorance. Americans are perhaps most known for this due to our heavy media presence. Our leaders and regular citizens seem incapable of having a fixed head when it comes to the identities of other nations, often getting things so drastically wrong as to be laughable. The same is true of people who identify with other nationalities: they, as much as Americans, adopt perspectives of other nations based on inaccurate assumptions. This is part of nationalist identity, which most of us participate in even if we don’t mean to. As for the second issue in the above quote: I think it is interesting that Moore makes his argument about the U.S. and its missing mythical mythical/folkloric framework while also explaining how England is different by citing two things that are fairly recent even by U.S. standards (the Blitz and Winston Churchill). Of all the things he could point to, it seems odd that he would opt primarily for recent figures/events instead of choosing from the rich history of real and imagined British figures/events, such as Britain’s various kings and queens, its various mythic creatures, and so forth. World War 2 references, it seems to me, lack the power that the King Arthur reference evokes–a figure who is as important to British history (even with his historical question-ability) as George Washington is to U.S. history (who undoubtedly existed, but, like Arthur, had a great deal of myths attached to him over history). But there is a line of thought here that I think is worth
Harry Potter: Would it still be big if Harry was Harriett?
I can’t remember where I got the link to this thread at SFFWorld, but the second I saw it, I knew I had to talk about it here. The thread was started by a user named Rilzik, who asked a very peculiar, but interesting question about the Harry Potter series. Specifically, he or she asked: Would the books and movies be as popular and/or have made as much money if harry was a female and the supporting roles switched to reflect that. Would it have been more, the same or less popular? Could the story with a female lead have reached that sort of super stardom? Would/are females more willing to watch/read a male lead then males are of female leads? Is the audience the same as with twilight which does have a female lead? are these comparable? A lot of folks have said “it would be the same” to the first batch of questions and “no” to the very last question, largely because the series is not oriented toward sex appeal, for the most part. Aside from the fact that nobody can actually know what would or would not have happened if Harry Potter were a girl, I think it’s great to see people seriously considering the place of female characters in the SF/F market, especially without some kind of controversy as the foreground. There’s a kind of openness to a discussion that isn’t sparked by drama, and I think much more gets done and said that isn’t oriented towards making anyone feel bad about themselves and their mistakes. If you read the thread, you’ll notice a great deal of people considering everything from the gender ambiguity of J. K. Rowling’s name (who we all know is a woman), how gender forms opinions about characters, and so forth. The discussion, I think, needs to happen in this way so more people are exposed to the problems and progressions without forcing anyone to pick a side (and, thus, subject individuals to the penalties of side-choosing, which all serious political/social debates in the SF/F community have been oriented towards). In the case of Harry Potter–again, setting aside the unknowability of alternate history–I think there is something crucial that some individuals (with the exception of KatG) who have commented are missing: namely that Harry Potter was centered at the dawn of YA fiction, which preceded the vast majority of the major YA fantasy series with female protagonists (such as Twilight and the dozens of other urban fantasy types that followed in its wake). I would bet that if Harry Potter were Harriet Potter, the series would not have sold as well. It’s possible that we could chock this up to sexism, but I imagine it would be much more complicated than that. Today, the climate is different. Female readers are more common than ever (visually speaking), and female protagonists are in greater numbers in the YA market. But in 1997, when the first Harry Potter book was released, the reading world was a very different place, not just in terms of who was reading (which was largely the same as it is today, though more people are reading now than thirteen years ago), but also in terms of how books were marketed, what was being picked up by publishers, and so forth. That’s not to say that things are all peachy on the gender front–because they aren’t–but I think it’s absolutely crucial to note how different the climate is today from 1997 overall. Switching Harry’s gender likely wouldn’t have gone on so well with publishers, and maybe the same is true for readers. It’s not a simple task to switch the gender of a character, because to do so also means changing who the character is, how the character acts, and so forth. Remember that Harry Potter is raised in a very specific kind of culture–ours–and that culture is one that frequently normalizes certain kinds of gender roles and gender constructions, even when individuals attempt to reorient their children toward more open forms of gender formations. Harriett Potter undoubtedly would be an entirely different person; the result would be that readers would identify with the character differently and the books likely would not have become as popular as they are today, since it would not have appealed to the young male audience of 1997. But, again, this is all guesswork. Without a time machine, I don’t think any of us can truly know what would and would not have happened if things were different. We can guess, but guesses aren’t necessarily truth (they can become truth, though). In the end, it’s a fun exercise, but not one that is productive on its own–the productive discussions are all those things people have pointed out in regards to gender and writing, which point directly to the middle questions in the quote above. Maybe I’ll talk some more about those questions another time. So, what do you think? Do you think Harry Potter would have been just as successful if the main character was a girl?
Speculative Horizons to Close For Questionable Reasons
I’ve nothing against James Long, author of Speculative Horizons–one of the good SF/F blogs out there. His blog has been in my Google Reader for almost a year now and I’ve enjoyed many of his thoughtful posts. But it appears he’s decided to close things down. Why? Partly because he’s going to be an editorial assistant at Orbit Books (congrats!), and partly because of this: Of course, this means I can’t continue with my blogging here. I’ve always tried to blog with honesty and integrity, and there’s just no way I could continue blogging while working for a major genre publisher – it would bring my personal and professional credibility into question. Wait, what? Stopping because of new responsibilities makes perfect sense. Working in publishing is a rough business, particularly if you’re in a lower position at a relatively major press (Orbit is pretty big in the SF/F world, after all). But instead of a perfectly reasonable reason, he offers one that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. How exactly is working in publishing and blogging at the same time a threat to one’s personal and professional credibility? Did someone bother telling Lou Anders about this, who is the editorial director of Pyr and blogs at the same time? What about the dozens of agents, assistants, marketing people, and so forth (and that link doesn’t include the dozens of others that are out there) who routinely blog about the things they love, whether it be about what they do or their personal lives (which might very well be about what they do too)? Is their credibility (personal or professional) shot to shit because they do both? Of course not. So what’s the real reason, James? Are you contractually obligated to no longer blog at SH? Does the new time commitment make it difficult for you to do both at the same time? Do you just not want to continue because you’ve moved on to bigger and better things (to which I would say “well, we love you too” in a very sarcastic voice, followed by “we appreciate your honesty”)? Because from where I’m standing, the rational sounds suspiciously like a slaughterhouse worker saying he doesn’t want to eat meat anymore because it might make people question his character, instead of saying he can’t stand the sight of meat because he sees it all day. The big question, of course is this: since when does being a blogger with “honesty and integrity” damage one’s credibility? Seems to me that the only time blogging kills your credibility as a critic (or anything) is when you intentionally lie or manipulate the truth–sort like what this douchebag did. Then again, maybe I’m just being a downer about this whole thing. Maybe I’m missing something. If so, someone can correct me…
The Production of Canon: A Pointless Argument?
An amusing discussion took place last week in one of my classes (the SF/utopia one). We were talking about Tom Moylan’s Scrapes of Untainted Sky and Luckhurst’s Science Fiction and how Luckhurst’s one-page claim about the awful practice of canon production in key theoretical texts (Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Carl Freedman’s Critical Theory and Science Fiction, and Moylan’s book) sets itself up as a contradiction. For Luckhurst (and this is based on reading one page from his book), the aforementioned authors are participating in political games: Suvin in a game of the literary elite; Freedman in an equally problematic project; and Moylan in utopian readings of SF. He views these authors as having agendas that “reflect back the ‘reader-critic’s cherished political dispositions’” (9) and argues that SF studies needs to be open to examinations and discussions of Pulp Era and Golden Age SF. Since even Luckhurst is participating in canon production–even though he is attempting to open up the critical framework of SF studies to more texts than Suvin and others have been willing to address–the contradiction should be readily apparent. Luckhurst’s solution is a good one (in my opinion). Since I’ve already written about the inside vs. the outside in SF criticism, it seems prudent to point out that political agendas play a crucial role in forming theoretical and critical texts. It also seems prudent to suggest that one can’t escape from political readings. But can one escape from the project of canon production? That is the question that I am concerned with here (and one that I was concerned with during class). Part of our discussion centered on the problem of canon production and the naive assumption made by Luckhurst that his personal vision of SF criticism was somehow apolitical (or at least non-ideological in a canonical sense). The problem, obviously, is that Luckhurst isn’t removing himself from the system of canon production. Instead, he’s as much a part of it as everyone else. All critical texts, thus, are participating in the canonical system, even if the author’s intent is to do otherwise. When you select texts, you are producing a canon, since no matter what you do, you are excluding some texts for one reason or another. Even if you acknowledge that space prevents you from talking about everything, you’re still making a decision on which texts you’ll talk about, and, thus, an assessment of their quality. The inescapability of canon production, however, is where I suddenly find myself asking “why.” Why are we talking about canon production at all if nothing you do can be anti-canon in a purist sense? Nothing a critic produces can be outside of the system, which suggests to me that talking about how an author is participating in it is similar to talking about how your neighbor breathes every day–they’re both natural features of a system of existence (one tied to life and one tied to the literary critical form). It seems to me that the only relevant time to talk about the production of canon is when one is personally invested in an ideological/political project related to canon, such as might be said of someone like Harold Bloom or the detestable E. D. Hirsch (whose “cultural literacy” is one of the most problematic canonical forms next to the literary canon). Beyond those figures, however, talking about canon is, as I just said, like talking about breathing; if your next door neighbor is breathing special gas to become a super mutant to take over the world, then maybe you should pay attention and have a discussion–most likely, however, your neighbor is just suffering from lung cancer. To put it another way: unless canon is being used to exclude for political, rather than critical, reasons (i.e. SF isn’t in my canon because it’s not real literature), we shouldn’t be talking about it. Argue about the exclusions, but don’t bother talking about how the production of canon is a problem that needs to be addressed. Sometimes talking about canon is pointless (read: without purpose or meaning). We need to move beyond canon and start asking why we make the selections we make, why others make them, and what the rationale behind all forms of inclusion and exclusion offer us. Sometimes we select texts to talk about because there is a relationship we want others to see, and as the “others,” we should be willing to set aside the pointless discussions and engage the material (critical or otherwise) on its own terms (just, as I said yesterday, as we should do when producing critical works on SF). But what do you think about canon production? Do you agree with me here or do you disagree? Let me know in the comments.
Science Fiction Criticism: Inside vs. Outside
One of my colleagues recently asked me what I thought about the academic texts on science fiction we had been reading over the semester. Specifically, she was curious about my opinion on the inside and the outside, and who, more or less, has the “right” to comment upon the genre. Before I get into that, I need to explain what I mean by the inside and the outside. There are two kinds of science fiction critics (or maybe more than two, but I’m only dealing with two for this post): the critic who grew up in the “community” and transitioned into academia (the inside) and the non-fan who, by some twist of fate, perhaps, came to the genre having never had much interest in it before (the outside). The latter group might be comprised of fans, or it might not, but the first group most definitely is a fan-based critical circle, since the impetus for shifting to academia as a “science fiction critic” has everything to do with their experience with the genre. In principle, I have no problem with the outside. They are just as capable of talking about the genre as anyone else, and their opinions and knowledge may add something new to science fiction studies. Likewise, I have no problem with the inside, since having an intimate connection with the genre lends a kind of unflinching passion to academic life (as an academic, I can attest to the fact that many academics seem to lack passion for their field, or at least seem to lack that passion). But neither group is without flaws, and it’s when the flaws become noticeable in the critical product that I start to have a big problem. You see, sometimes those who are on the inside are often incapable of thinking on the outside. They have become so “obsessed” with the field in which they have extended themselves academically that they are largely incapable of dealing with the genre within its own terms and within the theoretical frameworks that exist outside of genre entirely. These are the folks who write about how much they love SF rather than about what SF does. These are also folks who should probably remain fans, since being an academic (within the academic world, obviously, since one should be able to separate the two) requires (or should require) a certain level of objectivity and intellectual breadth. For me, this has always been a problem, because waxing lyrical about my favorite science fiction texts means very little in the academic world (we care about “why” more than we care about “thought”). I’ve had to separate my fan side from my academic side enough so that the two only overlap in a very small space (as in a Venn diagram, for example). Some people can’t do this, though, and they need to understand that they’re doing the genre no favors by flooding the academic world with love that, inevitably, has very little meaning in terms of its substance and what it actually offers academics and the field in general (remember that academics, who may be fans, are still different beasts altogether). However, things become even more complicated when one starts to talk about the outside. In the last few years, there has been (or seems to have been) a surge of academics working on SF who have never done so before. Some of them have simply felt it was time to shift things over to other things they enjoy, but a good portion of them are individuals who have come to the genre without even understanding it as a genre and as a fan-element (i.e. as popular culture). This latter group is the problem group. These are the folks who treat books like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as though it is a remarkably original post-apocalyptic novel, intentionally ignoring that The Road essentially lifts every cliche and plot from the sea of post-apocalyptic novels that preceded it. These are the individuals who treat everything but a very small handful of SF texts with derision, isolating their work entirely from the critical framework of science fiction studies. They proclaim by action that they are “the outside,” proudly and with flare. They’re not interested in learning about the genre (except, perhaps, cursorily) nor about what makes SF texts function (which is essential to any academic project on an SF text). Now you might say that the outsider group I have just described is comprised of lazy academics. Perhaps they are, but that doesn’t change the fact that some of them get a lot of respect for talking about SF in an obviously lip-service sort of way. What they’re really interested in are the texts they happened to like (maybe they didn’t even know they were reading SF until it was too late or someone pointed it out to them). And these folks I have a huge problem with. It’s a territorial thing. I don’t care if outsiders come to SF, learn it, and write articles/books about it. They’re adding something valuable to the discussion. But I do care about people who come to SF with a clear unwillingness to address the genre on its own terms. That would be akin to a non-canon (genre-fiction only) reader waltzing over to Charles Dickens and claiming it as their own without looking at the historical and critical framework set up by Dickensian scholars. To me, that’s a slap in the face. To put it another way: if you have no intention of being a fan, then don’t write about texts within my genre. Outsiders can be fans. They might not like some of the stuff in the SF world (hell, even I don’t), but they are still willing to see the value in the genre and find their niche within it. They can become fans (perhaps not obsessive ones, but that doesn’t seem necessary). SF deserves passion from its academics. But when academics come to the field without embedding themselves into the field (even slightly), they