Science Fiction: It’s Not About the Future (Part Two)
Now to continue from where I left off in the post you can find here (based on this post by Joseph Robert Lewis). II. Science Fiction and Its Reflection on the Present Since I have already established that science fiction isn’t actually about the future, it seems prudent to now consider how Lewis’ own logic on that particular point works against him (and, thus, how understanding science fiction as a generic practice is crucial to not only writing and reading it, but also to even talking about it). Lewis’ second point of contention with science fiction as a written practice is that SF is a killer of drama: Think about your modern life for a moment. Thanks to the phone in your pocket, you’re never lost, never out of touch, never without access to detailed information. And you can photograph or video anything that happens so you have records or evidence. So you’re not going to have a lot of drama related to being lost, confused, or miscommunicating anything. He claims that this logic is the foundation for why he perceives SF to be a genre that only functions in short form (he cites Asimov and Dick as examples, since namedropping is better than actually supporting one’s claim with facts) and that the genre’s focus on technology makes it prone to imaginary conflict (i.e. that it embellishes or fictionalizes its conflicts to make them more than they actually are, such as in imagining robot rebellions) and mundanity. He, thus, refutes all major conflicts that have appeared in science fiction since its inception as nothing but operatic fancy (space opera), since, in his reality, these things cannot have happened. It should seem ironic at this point that Lewis’ claims are based on his own inability to think about how the present actually operates and how it influences visions of the future. Cell phones don’t always work, miscommunication occurs all the time, your GPS is imperfect (and sometimes sends you on strange paths it shouldn’t), and the reality that everything can be recorded and distributed, generally speaking, presents new problems that didn’t exist thirty years ago. To think that the prevalence of technology in our daily lives means that our daily lives are without drama–that empires and nation states are not forced to change with the sudden infusion of transparency in state apparatuses built on controlling analogue- and proto-digital-based information systems, and so forth–is to say far more about one’s perception of life than about the present in general. The interesting truth of the matter is that the present is loaded with drama, whether of a personal or political nature. Technology simply changes the dynamic. What once was a system of information transfer based on “old” media like television news programs, newspapers, magazines, and books has simply been thinned out by new forms of technology that make access to information (which is not necessarily good, in contrast to what Lewis implies in his post) easier. But how amusing that we as a society still have many of the same problems we always had: we still have imperialist states, massive poverty, politics-as-usual, social and emotional strife, personal and public problems (from the relatively mundane to the catastrophic), and much more. Life hasn’t become boring; many of us have simply stopped looking around, secure in our little bubbles. SF is, perhaps, a response to that, since it is the only genre with a dedicated author-base that is fascinated with how the present will be influenced by futures (close and distant) in which the dynamics have changed (slightly or greatly). Galactic empires, for example, may experience similar problems that we do today, but on grander scales. And even in the distant future, there are individuals who, contrary to Lewis’ assumption, will be a part of remarkably dramatic events on remarkably different worlds. SF is all about drama; it is, to repeat in a different way, all about staging the drama of the present (and the past) in radically new ways. Lewis, of course, doesn’t want to think about this. He spends more time ejecting classic SF themes from his bizarre view of realism than he does in trying to understand where he has misstepped. At one point he suggests that when technology goes haywire, it won’t result in robot rebellions; this statement might be true, but only because science fiction has shown us in almost every way possible why we must be careful about creating intelligence from nothing–the future’s absence of robot rebellions effectively relies on an intimate understanding of SF’s look at the theme (one which, in many cases, is allegorical for humanity’s questions about itself). What this all boils down to is one writer’s failure to imagine. SF is an imaginative genre, much like fantasy. True, it is a conceptually limiting one in those terms, simply because the possibilities for true (and serious) science fiction are not endless, but finite and subject to the reality from which it draws its themes and the reality in which it is based. But Lewis’ inability to actually consider how the very conditions he presents might be problematic (such as when he argues that all information will be monitored in the future, making it nearly impossible for rebel groups to do much of anything)–and, thus, drama producing–suggests that his biggest problem is in putting the pieces of a speculative puzzle together in his mind–in engaging with SF on its own terms (see Moylan, Delany, et. al. on this). As a writer, Lewis doesn’t seem to be able to look past his own nose. Once you delve into the actual dramatic elements, he discounts them as impossible, failing to realize that what seems impossible is probably more likely than ever (intelligent robots are likely to be here by 2030, if not sooner). SF isn’t the genre Lewis thinks it is. It’s a genre of complex thematic elements and technological/social splendor. There’s a reason why it is often called the genre of ideas: because as much as contemporary critics have
Science Fiction: It’s Not About the Future (Part One)
I suppose we have to get used to people saying really idiotic things about science fiction. Whether it’s some blogger telling us that science fiction is dead (again) or a non-reader telling us that science fiction isn’t literature, there seems to always be someone saying something wrong about the genre. This, however, is a new kind of wrong. Blogger and self-published writer Joseph Robert Lewis has written a post about why writing fantasy is better than writing science fiction, a seemingly personal sort of thing, but which bases its claims on an essentially childish understanding of the genre. And, as we all know, when someone is wrong on the Internet, you have to correct them. But where to begin? I. It’s Not About the Future Lewis opens things up with a fundamental misunderstanding of science fiction. Namely that to write (good) science fiction you need to understand the future, which is impossible…But to write “fantasy” you only need to understand the past, which is less impossible and people expect you to make stuff up, as opposed to actually predict the future on some level. If only that were true. The problem? Science fiction isn’t about the future. It’s only set there. Lewis assumes that setting determines what the genre is about, but since that doesn’t even work within his own logic (since there are plenty of fantasy stories set in the present, and, thus, for Lewis, must be about the present — see urban fantasy) it is remarkably faulty. Science fiction has never been about the future; it has always been about the past and the present. Hence the oft repeated claim (an accurate one, I might add) that science fiction is allegorical; something about the future cannot be allegorical, since the future, by definition, hasn’t happened yet. Whether traditional fantasy is about the past is debatable (most of it isn’t), but science fiction and the past/present are bosom buddies, and understanding that is crucial to understanding the genre. When one looks through the archives of science fiction, one finds stories about a range of topics: empires, alien encounters, technology gone wrong, rebellion, dystopian police states, and so on. And what all of these topics have in common is that they are extrapolations of past and present problems/events. Whether a science fiction story’s future is accurate is irrelevant. I sense a hint of that old axiom in Lewis’ first point, but it is, as always, a faulty one precisely because we can’t know the future. The future is a guessing game, and so science fiction writers only occupy themselves with future settings rather than future truths, leading us back, once again, to the genre’s love affair with the past and the present. After all, Asimov’s Foundation trilogy is not so much about future galactic civilizations as it is about attempting to apply (read: extrapolate) economics and psychohistory to a larger entity than a single nation state. Asimov was working through the idea of predictive economic models (and, thus, economic collapse), something that people during his day, and today, are constantly trying to build and understand to avert collapse, since even rich people don’t want economic collapses (generally speaking); Foundation, thus, could be read as an allegory for the Great Depression–which he lived through as a young boy–and earlier economic collapses and the politics involved (though, perhaps, this reading is too obvious). Then there’s Kage Baker–to use a more recent author–whose Mars novels–set, obviously, in the future–are less about predicting the future than transplanting capitalist and religious themes into interplanetary settings, thus presenting yet another allegory for past–and even present–events in which the capitalist-religious enterprise (associated as it was with colonialism and imperialism, and even postcolonial conditions/ing) fought over control of land and person–themes that play throughout her novels. So the idea that science fiction authors are interested in understanding the future is patently false. The truth: science fiction authors are obsessed with either their past, present, or both. This is in stark contrast to traditional fantasy–the form Lewis is occupied with–which is often little more than a repetition of Tolkien-esque fantasy narratives, without much in terms of variation. To be fair to Tolkien, he was occupied with the past, and his work reflects as much, but the level to which most fantasy writers are occupied with the past and with transplanting the past into their work is far lower than (good) writers of science fiction. That’s not a slight on fantasy, per se, because what fantasy has managed to offer is the adventure that Golden Age science fiction did, and that contemporary science fiction has been lacking, but it is important to note that a great deal of fantasy isn’t actually doing anything new with the past, which is the opposite with science fiction. Of course, there are fantasy novels which contain serious themes and that break the mold, such as the work of China Mieville and Jeff VanderMeer, and even less stylistically adventurous novels like those of Karen Miller (whose fantasy tales are often heavily political, while also being occupied with the trappings of the fantasy genre–and breaking them apart, as in her Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology). But they are exceptions, much like Tolkien. I’ll have more to say in a second post about other things that Lewis brings up in his rant. For now, I’ll leave you with what has been said here.
Literary vs. Genre Fiction: The Line? (Part Four)
[The second to last piece in the series. You can read the previous pieces at the following links: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.] 4. What are some common myths that people have about genre fiction in general? I probably should have stuck #3 and #4 together, since this post is going to seem slightly anticlimactic. Regardless, Delmater makes both a false and a correct assertion about the myths about science fiction and its connection to television and film. I’ll tackle the latter first. Look, a giant smurf! Delmater begins her 4th true point (since the 5th is actually a short, but hopeful explanation about Abyss & Apex‘s purpose and, thus, has nothing to do with this series of posts) by saying that “Hollywood tends to simplify good science fiction or fantasy stories and rely heavily on special effects.” I’ve said as much before (oh, look, an Avatar link again), but what is most striking to me about this problem is that there seems to be very little reason for doing so, except, perhaps, to cut costs everywhere possible. Not every high-brow science fiction film has flopped at the box office–quite the opposite, in fact. In the last few years we’ve seen films like Inception and District 9 come out on top, both in the “serious” department and among science fiction viewers. The same is also true of other genres, such as fantasy (hello Lord of the Rings) or horror (The Sixth Sense or The Exorcist–to name an oldie). There simply isn’t a reason to produce garbage as far as I can see. But maybe Hollywood has insight into things that I don’t, because it continues to produce a combination of both forms, with the less adequate form dominating the slots. But Delmater also makes two rather interesting points: Potential readers assume that SF and F literature is no different than its film equivalent AND That the viewing public refuses to acknowledge that good genre TV or movies are actually genre to begin with (a kind of Atwood-ian reality denial, if you will). Both are false for rather complicated reasons. In the first case, I would argue that the reason SF/F viewers don’t read the literature has more to do with the fact that they know the literature is not like the film equivalent at all, except when it is made clear that a particular show or film is an adaptation of a book. There are Star Wars novels, of course, but the vast body of SF novels are not high-adventure, popcorn monstrosities, but forays into the serious side of things, to varying degrees. The sad reality is that most people do not read because they want deep messages or beautiful prose; they read because they want to be entertained. Genre fiction largely gets a bad rap in this department (particularly in the case of SF) because it tries so hard to be “legit.” There’s nothing wrong with high-brow genre fiction, but we shouldn’t be surprised that the general reading public is not necessarily interested in such things in book form, per se (why they are interested in the film versions is a different question). Still, there is a clear disconnect between genre literature and genre film, and I would argue that another contributing factor is the same factor that has led to decreased reading numbers: film is simply the desired mode of storytelling. We don’t have to like it, but there it is. Michael Bay kills this guy with a lens flare… As for the second point, I think Delmater is trying to place genre film in the same category as SF literature a la Margaret Atwood’s comments about the genre. Very few people are unwilling to admit that something like The Dresden Files (Delmater’s example) is fantasy, or that Battlestar Galactica is science fiction. Some viewers might not know what SF or F are (or they might have odd definitions for both genres), but that is a separate issue from refusing to acknowledge that something is SF or F when obviously it is. The film world is remarkably more open than the literature world. Why? Because without genre fiction, film would not be what it is today: one of the most lucrative entertainment industries in human history. Science fiction films have changed the game numerous times in film’s short history (2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and even Avatar); it will continue to change the game as technology improves and filmmakers experiment. But if we’re to take anything away from Delmater’s answers, it is that there are a lot of questions left to be answered. The bimonthly obituary for science fiction has proven one thing to me: that most of us have no idea what is causing the decline in SF readership. Figuring out what is causing the various problems that plague genre fiction will be beneficial to the genre as a whole. It’s time to stop guessing and start getting some answers. Once and for all. And that concludes my short series on the literary vs. genre fiction line. I hope you enjoyed them!
Literary vs. Genre Fiction: The Line? (Part Two)
[And now for the second part. You can read Part One here if you haven’t already.]2. Does the line do more harm than good? Delmater thinks so. She suggests that genre fiction has been ghettoized by being shoved into the backs of book stores, relegated to tiny little sections, or mislabeled to sell more copies a la Michael Crichton (her example). The problem? As far as I can tell, Crichton was already labeled as a genre writer, just as a writer of thrillers, rather than science fiction. Genre fiction includes a lot of genres outside of fantasy and science fiction, such as romance, mysteries, westerns, thrillers (of all varieties) and other categories that I can’t think of at the moment. Should Crichton have been categorized as science fiction? Yes, in most cases. The fact that he wasn’t doesn’t mean that he doesn’t write genre fiction, just that he wasn’t categorized as the most appropriate genre. At worst, Crichton has had his work shoved into the general fiction section, which is not actually a section that should be misconstrued as meaning “literary.” The kinds of stuff that appears in general fiction are just the things that publishers label as general fiction. Literary fiction sits in that section, but so does a lot of other stuff that is less-than-literary. But what about the whole shelving issue? Well, every chain bookstore I have been to has genre fiction rightsmack in the middle of the store (next to general fiction) and YA fiction to its own section (sometimes in the back, and other times not; the YA/children’s section is usually quite large, though). Small bookstores will sometimes have tiny sections buried in the back, but that’s largely because what sells for them isn’t genre fiction–otherwise they’d carry it. Most independent bookstores that I have been to, however, usually have a good supply of genre fiction on hand, and usually in a visible space. Maybe for Dalmater this is an issue of where she lives. If so, then I can’t blame her for thinking that genre fiction has gotten a bad rap when all you see is the evidence of such things. Such things aren’t “standard,” though. But Delmater also thinks that genre writers breaking into the “mainstream” are rare, citing J.K. Rowling as an example. I’m not sure that term means what she thinks it means, since “mainstream” readers do read a hell of a lot of genre fiction. In fact, if you look at the history of “mainstream,” it is typically used as a pejorative term to refer to what is considered to be the “popular” strain. Literary fiction is not “mainstream.” Not by a mile. In fact, there is so much talk about the general death of “literary fiction” these days and enough stories of literary authors selling only a few hundred copies of their recent literary venture that it’s almost impossible to suggest that literary fiction is “mainstream.” YA, fantasy, and romance, however, are mainstream. They are three of the dominant genres in terms of the reading public (though not necessarily in that order). One could argue that science fiction literature is no longer mainstream, certainly, but there is absolutely no doubt that the most read works these days are genre fiction, and that film is largely dominated by science fiction (thus, SF is mainstream in the film sense). Look at the hardcover bestsellers list. Right now, as of Oct. 9th, 2010, there are seven genre fiction titles in the top 15, with two or three others that could be argued as genre depending on whether you include historical fiction in that category (I do, but others don’t). On the trade paperback list, there are seven genre fiction titles in the top 20 and several that could be argued as genre. The list for mass market paperbacks, which sell better than the other two formats, shows fourteen genre titles in the top 20, and the number goes even higher if you decide to include historical fiction (once again). What does that tell you? People are reading genre fiction like crazy. There are all kinds of thrillers, mysteries, fantasies, and so forth in the top tier in terms of sales, and as soon as a Star Wars novel comes out, there’ll be more (incidentally, Amazon.com’s top 100 has eight genre titles in the top 20; this is in contrast to the NYT lists used earlier because the Amazon list includes non-fiction titles, which accounts for eight of the remaining twelve books). The argument that these things are not “mainstream” in the literary world is, as a result, total bunk. But–and here’s the clincher–Delmater is correct that many titles do get shelved in non-genre sections, and that this produces a problem. It has little to do with the literary mindset that “genre is not literature,” though. Margaret Atwood, for all her stupidity on the subject of science fiction, doesn’t run away from the genre fiction title as Delmater suggests; she simply runs away from the science fiction title (speculative fiction, after all, is still a type of genre fiction). Atwood, however, isn’t “mainstream” because she’s a literary writer; she’s “mainstream” because she sells a lot of books. But she doesn’t sell as many books as Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Dean Koontz, and many others. They represent the “mainstream” too, and more effectively than does Atwood or the folks that Delmater suggests are behind the sublit-erizing of genre fiction. They are also all genre writers. When it comes down to it, the argument about the “line” hurting genre writers only applies if one is concerned with “literary prestige.” If we’re basing the value of genre fiction on whether genre writers receive top literary prizes such as the Pulitzer or the Nobel, then obviously the line is killing genre fiction (even if a handful of genre writers have slipped through the literary cracks for those particular awards). But I don’t think that’s useful. We need to stop trying to hold ourselves up to the
Literary vs. Genre Fiction: The Line? (Part One)
Abyss & Apex’s most recent editorial features a series of interesting questions asked by a seventeen-year-old student about the difference between literary and genre fiction. These are questions we’ve heard before that are worth answering, but what I find most curious are the responses by Wendy S. Dalmater (editor of Abyss & Apex). Her responses routinely drag up false stereotypes that we’ve seen perpetuated for decades, not because there is any truth to them, but because they’re convenient for creating that “us vs. them” situation. After all, the divide between literary and genre fiction has been a ridiculous battlefield since the non-genre world realized that genre fiction, in all its stripes, wasn’t going away. I’d like to dispel some of these stereotypes, and, by way of critiquing Dalmater’s responses, answer the questions myself (in five parts). Part One: Why do you think there is a line between literary and genre fiction? It’s all in your head! The first question is a big one. Dalmater argues that the line “exists only in the minds of academic” and in “literary circles.” If only that were true. In fact, the line has existed culturally since its inception. It’s not just academics who say “that’s genre fiction, and I don’t read it.” Millions of readers, some of which might be academics, hold this viewpoint. It’s about time we get past this “academics are evil” phase of discussion, because the reality is that academia has shifted remarkably since the 1950s. How do I know? Because I’m an academic. The two people who are on my M.A. committee study science fiction, at least five others in the department do so as well, and my M.A. thesis director was mentored by Fredric Jameson, one of the most important theoreticians alive today who has actually written a book on science fiction (Archaeologies of the Future, in case you’re wondering). Throw in the fact that dozens of universities all over the world are open to discussions of science fiction and you’re really going to have a hard time making the case that only select types of individuals think the line exists. But Dalmater then offers two very curious things: J.R.R. Tolkien is apparently a “literary masterpiece” in the minds of those who created the line, and her attempt to describe the line. The the latter: I don’t know if she is an academic herself (a teacher, yes, but an academic, not necessarily, since the student is likely a senior in high school), but it seems somewhat silly to say “only academics and literary circle people think like this” in a negative sense, and then to say “but here’s what the line is.” The implication of the argument that the line exists “only in their minds” is that it’s fictive. If it’s fictive, then it doesn’t exist. Strange. Said the kid to the writer! To the former: I don’t know many academics or literary circle types who would see J.R.R. Tolkien’s work as a “literary masterpiece.” Bradbury (who she also cites)? Yes, absolutely. But this isn’t hypocritical. The problem with the line between literary and genre fiction is that the two categories overlap. There is such a thing as literary genre fiction. Fahrenheit 451, for example, is generally considered to be both. There’s nothing wrong with that. But Tolkien’s work has had a hard time finding purchase within the academic community. There are academics who study it, and a few folks who have written papers and lectures on the man’s material, but because Tolkien is a fantasy writer, his work is often relegated to a lower status. Science fiction has had an easier time of getting past the stigma. Thus came the novel… Dalmater’s explanation of the difference between literary and genre fiction, however, seems to suggest that she agrees with the notion that the two categories can overlap. She sees “literary” as an inherently aesthetic mode of textual creativity, and “genre” as an extension of the science fictional mode of “the literature of ideas.” I don’t quite agree, but I think the point is clear: the two genres do overlap, since one (literary) places focus on the style of writing, the emotional register, and the creativity of form, while the other (genre) looks at plot, ideas, and so forth. Those are basic distinctions, and it’s not unheard of for something from one side to have an affair with something from the other. In the last few years: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The City and the City by China Mieville, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon, and many more. The point is that the line between “literary” and “genre” is fuzzy, and, to be fair, always has been. It’s not distinct and never will be. So long as folks from both sides of the aisle keep flirting with one another, we’re going to keep ending up with unexpected generic mutations (two-headed literary scifi babies, if you will). But things are different now. Genre is widely accepted both among readers and academics. There are still folks holding back, but these are the folks in academia who are becoming, in my opinion, increasingly irrelevant. For now, though, we have to accept that it’s not an “us vs. them” thing anymore. It’s about finding out what we’re doing wrong and how we can make genre better. Science fiction isn’t hurting right now because academics hate it; it’s hurting because because the genre, as a whole, hasn’t figured out what it’s doing wrong. I have a few ideas, but that’s for another post. (Part Two and Part Three) P.S.: Special gold stars to whoever can find the hidden haiku. It’s not very good, but whatever.
The Problem With “Great” Science Fiction
Twitter is abuzz today with an io9 article called “What are the ingredients for great science fiction?” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this, since many of us in the SF community are constantly amused, obsessed, and/or perplexed by the attempt to define the “great” in the title. On some level, it’s probably good for us to be always conscious of the evaluative quality of what we read; after all, what we consider to be wondrous is inevitably what we will try to peddle to others, because, deep down, we want them to experience the same feeling, however unexplainable, that we did when reading a “great” book. On another level, however, I think we often forget that the “great” in the title is both relative and problematic. How do we define what is and is not a “great” SF book? When it comes to literature–or any creative project, for that matter–there are no hard-set definitions; there can’t be precisely because to provide perfect, exception-less definitions is to imply that literature cannot change, that it is hopelessly standardized into a set group of features and objects. Science fiction can never be that. We’ve had the arguments over what “is” and “is not” science fiction before, here and elsewhere, and those discussions rarely get anywhere. So why the attempt to define “great?” In the end, the term will remain hopelessly relative. There is no point at which we can ever set “great” down and say “this is what great means for science fiction, and there are no relevant exceptions to it.” What I consider to be “great” SF will likely run counter to another’s view on the subject. Even if one agrees with my view of “great,” there are bound to be varying degrees to that “great”-ness, to what one considers, as the author of io9’s post suggests, to be an appropriate description or address of/to the “human condition.” While I might agree with that, it doesn’t explain what one means by “human condition,” nor does it provide criteria one might say should go unspoken (the quality of the writing, for example, however relative that may be). I think the questions should be: Does explaining what “great” SF is really matter? If we can agree that evaluative qualities such as those that would apply to “great” are relative and malleable, then shouldn’t we wonder whether there is value in the term or in our opinions on “something?” How do we justify what is “great” in terms of its relativity, let alone the value of our opinions in a relative world? I suppose where I’m going with this is here: If we can’t say what is and is not “great,” then can we as readers, reviewers, or what have you justify saying anything at all about the quality of a thing? I don’t think there are any easy answers to that question. But I’ll leave that up to you.