Killing Speculative Literature
In the last year I’ve been realizing some growing trends that have made reading very difficult for me. Some of these trends have been in books that have gained popularity and the worst part of this is that these books become examples of good speculative literature when in reality they are not even good literature to begin with. We should not accept these trends, or allow these trends in any way to shape the direction of speculative literature. To do so could very well kill the genre, or at least kill its chances to be accepted by the academic world. It is already difficult for the literary academia to accept science fiction or fantasy as true literature and they will have no reason and no desire to accept it if they are forced to sift through dozens of books just to find one that is written well. So here they are (feel free to add to this): POV ViolationsI’ve read two books now that violate POV. One time I can accept, even two times doesn’t bother me too much, but when it becomes common it drives me up the wall. I had to quit on a book recently because it constantly jumped around the POV in the midst of fight scenes and places where you have to be very focuses. I can’t stand it. What exactly has changed in our society to make this acceptable? Are we lessoning our standards? Why would an editor let this garbage slip by? Why would a writer or a copy editor let this slip by? Every time I see a POV violation in a book, I have to put that book down. POV has rules. If you’re not going to follow them, don’t write and while many rules can be bent, you still cannot expect me or anyone with a literary mind to take your work seriously or to even finish it if you randomly switch POVs. You can have multiple POVs without switching in the middle of paragraphs or scenes. As an example, read Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell (yes, I’m using you as an example again Tobias). Great use of POV. He doesn’t randomly switch in the middle of a scene, everything is divided appropriately so you know to expect a potential POV switch.Follow the rules. They were made for a reason. Even literary fiction doesn’t break this rule…as a rule at least (play on words there). Unrealistic FantasyFantasy writers, I think, have the hardest job of all writers. Why? Because they have to take something that isn’t real and never will be real. Science fiction writers are able to write things that could potentially be real; they have science behind them. But fantasy writers don’t have that luxury. At most they have access to medieval history, but that generally doesn’t help someone develop vast fantasy worlds like Tolkien.Given that, a fantasy writer absolutely must make his or her world believable. The creatures in it have to make sense. Mostly this applies to fantasy for adults simply because adults, in general, don’t have the wild, illogical imaginations of children.Unfortunately, some books don’t do this. They create creatures that are unbelievable. Four-winged dragons that have thoughts are not realistic. The only creatures on our planet that have four wings are insects, and insects can’t really think. Most birds are not intelligent in the sense that they have significant reasoning power. How is one to dispel disbelief if the very world he or she is trying to imagine doesn’t even make sense? Unbelievable CharactersThis applies to all literature. Characters have got to be believable. We have to look at what they do by the end of the novel and understand the reason for it. Their actions must make some sense, even if we don’t agree with it. Even aliens must make sense so far as we have to understand that their actions are simply alien, but at the same time there is a reason for it that is logical to that alien species.To sacrifice characterization for style should never be acceptable. Yet there are many books now out there that seem to ignore characterization. Why? Science fiction and fantasy are less about the worlds they are set in than about the characters that populate the story. Lack of characterization hurts the value of literature. SeriesI think other people have had this issue with fantasy already. One thing that is really hurting fantasy is the series. There are countless multi-volume series out there, all going beyond a simple trilogy. People are going to get sick of it. Generally we all don’t want to have to wait until the next volume to find out what happens. And what about the unfinished series? The unfortunate thing about series is that it takes a long time to do. Robert Jordan left an unfinished series behind and so did Roger Zelazny. It’s unfortunate that those two authors died before finishing, but I also feel sorry for the fans who will never have closure to the story. Hence why shorter series–trilogies or quartets–or even single volume books will do much better in the future. Complex ScienceThe good side of science fiction is that it is constantly being renewed as science advances. The bad side is when science fiction writers let science get in the way of the story or even in the writing. Most people who read books are not scientists, most people who read science fiction are the same. There is no need to bog down prose with references to things that people won’t understand, especially if you don’t intend to make it clearer to the reader. Just because Quantum Physics makes a marginal amount of sense to you doesn’t mean it will make sense to your reader. The reader needs to understand. That’s all I can think of right now. Any other ideas?
Will Science Fiction Die?
The short answer is yes. But I’m not here to give a short answer. Instead, I intend to try to explain why science fiction will find itself in a terrible bind at some point in the future. The sad part of this is that many of us may watch science fiction die, or perhaps our children will witness that, and for those of us who are in love with the genre it will come as a crushing blow.The sad truth is that science fiction cannot survive forever as it sits right now. There may come an opportunity to change directions, but when that happens it ceases to be science fiction and becomes something else. Science fiction is not dead now, and isn’t dying now, and issue I’ve already addressed. The fact of the matter is, science fiction is surprisingly fascinating right now not because it’s necessarily predicting unimaginably beautiful futures, like in the Golden Age, but more or less taking the world as we know it and bending it to give a new perspective on our species and the complex issues that plague us. But that cannot hold forever. It’s disturbing, considering how science fiction has come from nothing to what it is today. It started as novels of truly imaginative appeal, an appeal that found itself attacked by academics everywhere. Science fiction has struggled and fought tooth and nail to get where it is today and it still has one good fight left in it–the fight that will bring it permanently into the literary canon and ultimately into the academic world.There will, unfortunately, come a time when science fiction will not have a future to talk about. Once we, as a species, figure out how to go to the stars, begin creating vast interstellar empires, and meet aliens, all the stories that once addressed those subjects will either become fascinating reality, or forgotten relics, much as it seems the Golden Age of science fiction has. Science fiction writers will not longer be writers of science fiction, but simply writers of fiction. It’s unavoidable. This truth must be realized by all of us. While the literary academia fights hard to keep science fiction out of classrooms, the world around us is changing. One day we’ll be telling fictional tails of space battles from a realistic perspective–because in reality, it might have already happened. What will the literary academia do then? The death of science fiction, whether that be in one hundred years, or two hundred, or more, will also be the rise in its acceptance. To deny its acceptance would be paramount to blinding oneself of truth, an idea that seems to permeate the fabric of our society as we continuously make uneducated decisions in regards to laws and politicians.I do wonder what will become the new genre of fascination when science fiction loses its status as a precursor to the future. What sort of novels will we see that break the conventional mold that will be created? Who will be the new voices of that future? Will there be a future literary form as distinct as science fiction or fantasy, or will literature find itself in a bind as technology and the death of the genre push it into the background?
Dystopian Commonalities in SF
…or why dystopian fiction is so common We all know what the model dystopian novel is, since we had to read it in school. Some of us enjoyed it immensely; some of us hated it with a passion. In either case, we were presented with 1984 by George Orwell as the first true dystopian novel. Few of us probably questioned this, as many students seem apt to accept the almighty wisdom of their teachers. The truth of the matter is that dystopian fiction had already been invented before Orwell ever wrote 1984–a fact we have to accept because Orwell drew heavy influence from We by Zamyatin–and in a lot of ways, the idea of a dystopia is endlessly entwined into our literature no matter where we turn.But, that aside, it has been an interesting phenomenon to watch as science fiction paved the way for grander concepts in dystopia. Many who read science fiction and understand what a dystopia is will say “that sounds like half of all the science fiction books I’ve ever read”, or at least something to that effect. Those who criticize science fiction, for whatever reason, might be apt to use the common placement of the dystopia as a means to hurt the credibility of science fiction as literature. All of us should take a step back, however, and not criticize science fiction writers, whoever they may be, for their supposed lack of new ideas, but commend them for unintentionally realizing that you can’t escape the dystopia.Taking the definition of what a dystopia is–a work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror–we have to come to the realization that we live in a dystopia. While some of us live in what we might call a utopia, or at least as close as we as a society could come to such a thing, great masses in the world are living in a dystopia. You could say, then, that science fiction writers are not writing some unimportant, overused idea, but rather taking something that is common place in normal society and stretching it into the vastness of technological advancement. Science fiction writers tackle issues that plague us in our everyday lives, some more so than others.The fact of the matter is, if true literature must take from real life, must draw upon social or cultural issues of the times, then science fiction is doing this better than any other literature. Books like The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, while now considered a classic, took our world, flung it into the future, and showed us what could happen to a world subjected to militaristic capitalism and ultimately what a society could become if it succumbed to extremist genetic manipulation–a veritable utopia where war and hatred have been bred out of the human race. But, to add to the tension, to draw upon the idea that one man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia, we get to see what happens to the poor individuals who aged mere years in their long, faster-than-light travels, while the rest of society grew by centuries. How would someone who grew up in a world not far from our own deal with returning to a place that no longer resembles home? And how would one react to knowing that you are a relic of a time when to think andfeel as an individual was common, a relic of a time long lost? How would you adapt? Certainly, the end of The Forever War presents a position we might consider utopian, but to look deeper into the position of the characters, which we followed from the start of the book, we have to agree that they are not living in a utopia. They can never live amongst what has now become ‘regular people’ because, in essence, they are the abnormal ones and to agree to sacrifice what makes you who you are seems an idea of lunacy to them. Thus, they are outcasts who know are outnumbered by a population of ‘humans’ who can easily replicate themselves as super soldiers many times faster than the significantly old-fashioned population.Any time a character is placed in a position where things seem particularly bad, that is a dystopia. It doesn’t matter than the rest of world might be moving along normally, for that character normalcy no longer exists, only pain and suffering. One might look at Andorra by Max Frisch, a play written some years ago presenting a unique take on racism, anti-semitism, and anti-individualism (I made that one up). To live in a society where to be Jewish is cause for unnecessary stereotyping and maltreatment would be dystopian on both ends. The play begins simply as stereotyping, with the main character refusing to accept that he is different, but everyone else treating him as the adopted Jewish child. For the main character it becomes impossible to lead a normal life as the rest of society pressures him into certain life paths based on Jewish stereotypes–money, sensitivity, etc. For the main character, things seem rather dystopian, but it becomes clear that he is not the only one suffering this condition. The end of the play shows this perfectly when the “Blacks”–the people of a neighboring country that oddly feel like Nazis–invade, as feared, and take complete control. Only the main character seems solid in his attempts to maintain his individuality, while most everyone else has given in without a fight, despite their earlier claims to do otherwise, in one way or another. For the main character, a world that is slightly dystopic, comes fully into its own as a modern dystopia. For the others, their sacrifice of their individuality for social order brings them into an unimaginably strict and immoral society where the destruction of a people is accepted as a means to preserve the whole.In essence, one must realize that the dystopia has always been there. Science fiction, while more flamboyant–for lack of a better word–in its endeavors,
The Literary Nazis: Part Two
…or Why the Literary Academia Hates SF…from my viewpoint.Well, I thought I’d do a little extension on this post. What exactly makes those who seem to control the literary world and decide the fate of individual works of art hate science fiction so much? Given the discussion in my Literary Interpretation class, I think I have a couple ideas. Feel free to add your thoughts and ideas! Science: Most people who read are not scientists. Trends in science fiction have gone from fantastical truly unbelievable settings to ones rooted in reality. Some novels go as far as to bring up concepts that are rather complicated and hard to grasp for a lot of people–namely the current trend to use Quantum Physics. This can all be intimidating. Simplicity and Lack of Thought: I think I mentioned it in the previous article, but there is an unfortunate belief that science fiction is all pulp-fiction. They think it as simplistic, possibly formulaic writing. The likely reason for this is the overabundance, or at least the common presence of shared world SF. Things like Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and others. Sure, there are some wonderful books in those series’, but they’re not remotely the same as original SF. This leads the literary academia to believe that SF is simple, that it relies on the work of others to make its mark. Simplicity also seems to extend to the idea that SF doesn’t address valuable issues or have complicated internal ideas–mythological concepts, humanistic qualities, man vs. self, and the like.Perhaps the idea that SF doesn’t create situations that make people think is something that is holding SF back. My Professor for my Interpretation course spoke of this issue in conjunction with simplicity. When you go to Walmart, you rarely, if at all, see the works of SF that are truly the most powerful and influential. You see Star Wars and maybe a couple books by authors who are big names in the field. The books that end up on the shelf at stores like Walmart represent the simplified works in the field, in general. They tend to be the books of straight entertainment. Not only SF is in this bind, but other genres too, and when the literary academia looks up they don’t see all the works that really matter, but the works that are the ‘in thing’ right now. You can imagine what that looks like to them. Failure: This might turn out to work in SF’s favor, but there has been a steady decline in sales and popularity with SF. This seems to have a lot to do with the surge of popularity in fantasy. J. K. Rowling, Scott Westerfeld, and a myriad of others who are flooding the market with what the public obviously thinks is fantastic literature–that has a double meaning of course. Science fiction, on the other hand, seems to be dying, or at least falling slowly as fantasy continues its relentless dominance in the speculative field. On the one hand, this means that less science fiction is being seen, and inevitably losing some critical acclaim. This could be seen negatively. Perhaps literary critics see this decline as the mark of a genre that can’t survive. On the other, maybe they will see the ‘failure’ or science fiction as the public losing interest with something that actually is worth studying. They Just Don’t Get It: That should be clear enough. Literary academia just doesn’t understand SF as a whole. They fail to see its significance because they can’t see past their snobby noses. They’re Hypocrits: This is related to the point made before this. I don’t know if you could call it a reason for hating SF, but since some SF books have made it into the canon, primarily books of a literary or classical nature (1984 or Brave New World), they feel that they don’t have to count those as part of SF. So, did I miss anything? What are your thoughts?
The Literary Nazis (Against Science Fiction)
I wrote the following as a journal entry for one of my literature classes this year. It came up during class really, the idea that the literary world considers science fiction, and fantasy, to be either not really literature at all, or lesser literature. This has become a sort of campaign for me now–attempting to change the minds of people about science fiction. Someone also brought up the idea that the novel is dying. I decided to address the issues in a journal entry. Keep in mind, I may not be right, and this was somewhat of an emotional response. Here it is:Something I am finding rather difficult to deal with and accept lately is this somewhat negative concept in the literary world that books like The Immoralist and similar ‘classics’ are significantly better literature than books that hold somewhat more higher prestige with the majority, such as Harry Potter. It was brought up in class today whether it is true that the importance of the novel is dying. I think the problem isn’t that the novel is dying, because in reality, it’s not, but rather that the rigid and sometimes rather close-minded idea of what constitutes as true literature is no longer something that any significant majority of people are interested in. Certainly people read the occasional classic, and perhaps it is because those classics are somewhat simplistic, or perhaps it has more to do with the fact that people, in general, want to be entertained, and some classics still seem to do that. 1984 by George Orwell is a great example of a novel that still manages to captivate people. Even if you’ve already read it, another reading proves even more insightful than the last. So in reality, I don’t think that the novel is becoming less important, but more that there is a shift in what constitutes importance now. We’re a money driven society, and in some ways you could say that money tends to drive people as much as it drives the market. A book that sells is a book that gets heard about more often and is more likely to continue selling.Granted, I will admit that there must be more than a fair share of novels that have no literary merit, but of the ones that do have some significant importance socially and culturally seem to get shunned away by the literary crowd as simplistic or lower literature. Science fiction, for example, is one of the most influential genres in the history of literature. The computer, cell phone, space shuttle, moon missions, the Mars missions now and in the future, are all products of science fiction thinking. Science fiction’s influence is so great that there are actually websites devoted to keeping track of the technologies created in science fiction books that have become reality. And there is a stigma with science fiction that I would say exists due to the rise of the pulp magazine and pulp SF books in the early age of science fiction. Often people think of it as wild fantasy in space. They think green aliens that are evil with super spaceships, interstellar wars, hot babes in skimpy clothes, and suave Captains who always get the girl. In reality, the bulk of true science fiction is well-thought and more relevant now than it probably was during the early 20’s and 30’s. Many SF novels deal with real world concepts set in obviously futuristic landscapes. When you look right down into the bare bones of these novels, you realize that they are as complex and revealing as the classics. They deal with politics not only on an external scale, but on the internal as well. They deal with concepts such as stem cell research, genetic manipulation, nuclear war, global warming, and the like. These are issues that are strikingly strong in our society today. The stigma also extends to the authors themselves. On one side people think of these authors as the dork living in a basement—likely a relative—writing silly stories about stuff that isn’t real. The ironic part of the last part of that stereotype is that all writers write stuff that isn’t real, even literary fiction writers. The reality of the situation is that the majority of SF writers don’t fit into the stereotype at all. Isaac Asimov, who may very well have paved the way for true, gripping, and relevant science fiction, was a degree holding scientist who went off to write many papers and books on legit subjects. SF writers are biologist, astronomers, astrophysicists, sociologists, teachers, and political scientists, just to name a few. Carl Sagan was a scientist renowned for his representation of the cosmos and for writing many wonderful books on scientific subjects—a book of note would be the Dragons of Eden which, despite its fantastical name, was actually a study about the evolution of human intelligence that delved not only into the structure of our brains, but into the structure of our mind and the evolving nature of our psyche. But Carl Sagan also wrote science fiction. He wrote Contact, a novel that was eventually turned into a movie with Jodie Foster, and his son has continued the family trend.So, I continue to question this somewhat ignorant stance that science fiction is lower literature. And I also really question the notion that the novel is losing importance. Perhaps there is a hint of truth to this if you were willing to say that the novel is changing on an individual level, which would account for the flood of young adult fiction in the market and the surging sales and surplus of paranormal style fiction novels. But really the novel is doing just fine. As of yet the idea of eBooks has not quite caught on, and I don’t know that they ever will, though perhaps that will change in the next generation or two. Many of us cannot stand to read a book on the computer. Some of us reason this by saying that
Man’s Obsession With Predictions
We live a society constantly trying to predict, in one way or another, what exactly is going to happen in the future–near or far. We’ve all heard of Nostradamus–well most of us, look him up if you haven’t. So, what exactly is our curiosity with the future? The interesting thing is that, from the perspective of reality, there’s no sure way to even know what the future holds. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from trying to figure it out. Perhaps in the future some technology will come along that changes this, or maybe we’ll get smart enough to know the patterns of life. It’s very unlikely, but still.Even I am not immune to this obsession. In my first finished novel, WISB (the World in the Satin Bag, found on the right there), the main villain happens to be capable of viewing the future, and altering its course in the process by knowing what decisions he needs to make to correct what might come true.What predictions do you have?I recently found a site called Long Bets which takes things even further.Predictions of Interest: By 2050 we will receive intelligent signals from outside our solar system. Here. By 2050 no synthetic computer nor machine intelligence will have become truly self-aware (ie. will become conscious). Here. That by 2020 a wearable device will be available that will use voice recognition capability and high-volume storage to monitor and index conversations you have or conversations which occur in your vicinity for later searching as supplemental memory. Here. By the year 2020, the tickets to space travel – at the least to Moon, will be available over the counter. Here. That by 2024 “artificial” life emerging somewhere out of the soup of human technology will be given a Latin taxonomic name by biologists and others and declared viable for study. Here. By 2020, in real or artificial life, sustainable evolutionary progress in a genetically closed system will not have been demonstrated. Here. By the year 2040, AI will appear on computer viruses that will communicate with each other using a universal Internet language and will be programmed to fuse together and mutate into Computer Organs that will later be controlled by powerful search engines (Systems) diffused through out the Internet. Here. By the year 2020 solar electricity will be as cheap or cheaper than that produced by fossil fuels. Here. Evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence within the solar system will be confirmed before evidence from several light-years away. Here. By 2020 a completely propellantless (no material particles expelled for propulsion) or “field propulsion-type” aerospace vehicle will land on the Moon. Here. By 2025 at least 50% of all U.S. citizens residing within the United States will have some form of technology embedded in their bodies for the purpose of tracking and identification. Here. By the year 2020 the technology will exist that will allow for the “faxing” (teleportation- sending/receiving) of actual inanimate objects, such as text books, clothing, jewelery and the like. Here. By 2150 faster than light propulsion theory will become realized, but not implemented, either through black holes, worm holes or space time warping. Here. And some for the sake of humor! Within 100 years the citizens and companies of a large and prosperous country in excess of 100 million people will no longer pay taxes of any kind. Here. By 2007, the U.S. Government will intervene to prevent at least one of the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs)/Regional Bell Operating Companines (RBOCs) (e.g. Verizon, SBC, Bell South, and EXCEPTING Qwest) from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Here. An all-new Star Wars film will be released to theatres this century. Here. (Ignoring the ones that already came out of course). So, apparently we’re making all sorts of interesting predictions these days.