Picked up a natty, second-hand copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (pictured) the other day, and a thoroughly enjoyable collection of speeches/articles from the 1960s/70s it is proving to be.
A short piece on "Science Fiction" for the New York Times Book Review (about Vonnegut's own [alleged] status as a "Sci-fi writer", the amiable cliquishness of the SF world etc.) got me thinking about the gap between what Science Fiction offers/promises (quite a lot) and what it actually delivers (comparatively little). I’ve often described myself (when pushed) as a Science Fiction fan but have found 90% (at least) of the SF literature I've read to be absolute garbage…and this includes titles that have been recipients of Nebula/Hugo awards.1
In particular, I've never been able (try as I have) to develop a taste for the more wholly fantastic, 'space operatic' end of the market. I appreciate the narrative/thematic possibilities afforded by the creation of worlds totally 'other' from our own , but too often such 'Space Opera' descends into "I am Prelate Hrothnor from the Interstellar Brotherhood of Astragox"-type gobbledegook. On the one hand such fare seems completely exotic/alien (and alienating), but on the other it's often little more than a version of 'real life' (Terran) politics/culture with silly names and (Star Trek we're looking at you) bumpy heads.
The best 'extraterrestrial' fiction manages the (admittedly) difficult trick of simultaneously sucking us in/immersing us in a created world, while discombobulating us (in a provocative and stimulating way) with that world's 'alienness'. A common device, and a very useful one, in such scenarios is to have a contemporary Earth protagonist to stand in for 'us' - reacting to the alien environments, beings etc., as we ourselves might. When this is done well it can be extremely effective - giving us a sense of an individual's awed/frightened attempts to describe the indescribable etc. - but when done badly, as it more usually is, we're often left with paragraphs of turgid descriptive prose that feels balefully like a novelisation of an as-yet-unmade movie.2
Like anything else, I suppose, the potential of Science Fiction can only be fully realised when an author is prepared to go beyond the obvious, the trite, the conventional expectations of the genre's readership. The 'Scientific Romances' of H.G. Wells, for example, retain a vibrancy and freshness notably absent in some more recent SF, largely because Wells wasn't writing with a 'genre template' in mind. He cast his net wider, and brought a lot of material reflecting his various interests and concerns to the table. Thus while Science Fiction seems to offer ample opportunity for philosophical/political/cultural speculation, its potential is often unrealised by writers too hung up on narrow 'genre' concerns.
So taking all that on board, dear readers, perhaps some of you could steer me in the direction of SF literature that transcends the limitations (casually) outlined above.
I want to believe…
- Which makes you think…if this is deemed the best the genre has to offer, what’s the run of the mill stuff like? [back]
- Which reminds me of a delightful exchange about 'Roky Crikenson's' supposed abduction in the superb X-Files episode "Jose Chung’s 'From Outer Space'":
Scully: In short, Roky showed signs of being what is known as a fantasy-prone personality.
Jose Chung: Agent Scully, you are so kindhearted. He's a nut! I just read his manifesto!
Scully: How did you get a copy?
(He pulls out the manifesto.)
Jose Chung: One was sent to my publishers. I don't know what was more disturbing… his description of the inner core reincarnated souls sex orgy… or the fact that the whole thing is written in screenplay format![back]
Although i do often consider myself something of a science fiction fan, in film format anyhow, I have, largely, avoided reading almost anything in the genre. That was until recently when, because of the lack of anything else readable or even in english, i picked up a copy of “Glass” by Stephen Palmer from a book-exchange in a hostel i recently frequented.
Unfortunately, however, from the very outset in what, i suppose, was an effort to lend the book and the world it created a sense of otherworldlyness the dialogue was for the most part utterly incomprehensible.
Take this quote from page 3:
What?.. and this is on page 3 when you have no bloody idea what they are talking about. I agree with you fústar and think much of the genre does delve into gobbledegook on a large scale. I couldn’t bring myself to read this for 400 pages and alas gave up after about 40.
April 14th, 2006 at 5:18 amI hate an awful lot of science fiction - I have no time for the “I am Zardor, and these are my Bestonian battlebeasts from the Tuskor delegation” nonsense, which is also why I hate a lot of fantasy writing - but I do love Vonnegut and I really like Connie Willis’s time travel books The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (she’s another Hugo and Nebula award winner). They’re set in a near future in which time travel is possible but is in the hands of university history departments. Willis can be a bit annoying, mostly because of her slightly ignorant and patronising Anglophilia - she can come across as someone who thinks England and English culture is automatically superior to that of America but actually doesn’t really get a lot of it. Her next time travel book is going to be set during the Blitz and she pompously announced in an interview that she’s going to write about subjects writers have traditionally ignored - like evacuees and Dunkirk. Yeah, Connie, those are uncharted waters! But the time travel books mentioned above, which are both set in Oxford, are still really entertaining and likeable, and the ending of The Doomsday Book left me in floods of tears.
April 14th, 2006 at 1:40 pmAlso, I should have actually made it clear that Connie Willis is American and lives in Colorado, so it’s not like her annoying Anglomania is national pride.
April 14th, 2006 at 1:43 pmHaven’t read any Connie Willis but I am a sucker for time travel yarns. I recently read David Gerrold’s enjoyable The Man Who Folded Himself - a book that candidly explores the possibility of ‘homosexual’ (?) interaction with one’s past or future selves. It’s well worth a look - for the ideas if not for the prose.
Can well imagine the clumsy Anglophilia of Willis’s work though. I’ve read a fair bit of American stuff about Blighty that ticks every Oxbridge/Punting on the river box one could possibly imagine.
April 14th, 2006 at 2:37 pmzoidberg,
Never heard of Stephen Palmer, and after that mouthful of an extract I don’t think I’ll be checking him out any time soon.
As Stella suggests, the worst excesses of this kind are to be found in the pages of Fantasy novels. As a rule of thumb I tend to avoid any works of fiction which contain maps (or have dragons on the cover). Life’s too short to spend one’s time wading through interminable fantasy trilogies (at, on average, 700 pages a volume).
Some of my favourite ‘genre’ novels probably straddle a line between sci-fi and horror…not that category distinctions are remotely important. Off the top of my head I’d say that Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau, Richard Matheson’s I am Legend & The Shrinking Man, and Karel Čapek’s (satirical) War With the Newts would be close to the top of my Desert Island reading list.
April 14th, 2006 at 8:39 pmRead the “Incarnations of Immortality” by Piers Anthony. It is one of my favorite sci-fi series available.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:53 amThanks for the tip Devin, although I have a bit of an aversion to sci-fi series in general. One good stand alone novel suits me fine. Will have a look at Anthony though…
May 8th, 2006 at 12:49 pmA common device, and a very useful one, in such scenarios is to have a contemporary Earth protagonist to stand in for ‘us’ - reacting to the alien environments, beings etc., as we ourselves might.
Tolkien, Lewis, Donaldson all spring to mind as ‘fantasy’ writers who used this device to good effect.
May 10th, 2006 at 4:01 pmHave you read Doris Lessing’s ‘Canopus in Argos’ series of novels. They are sometimes (inaccurately in my opinion)described as science fiction.
February 9th, 2007 at 9:50 pmIs this the same Doris Lessing of The Grass is Singing fame? If so, I haven’t read ‘em. If not, I still haven’t read ‘em. Even if they are only tentatively sci-fi, are they any good?
February 9th, 2007 at 9:59 pmYes it the same Doris Lessing. The novels are science fiction only in the sense that there is intergalactic and time travel, but there is never any attempt to explain the technology or to describe alien worlds in any detail. The science fiction element of the novels was a device whereby the development of human culture could be observed. There is also a strong mystical element; Lessing being interested in Sufism at the time. There are five novels: ‘Shikasta’, ‘The Marriages between Zones Three Four and Five’, ‘The Sirian Experiments’, ‘The Making of the Representative for Planet 8′and ‘The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire’. They were very popular in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Philip Glass composed an opera based on ‘The Making of the Representative for Planet 8′in the 1980’s with a libretto by Doris Lessing. I have not heard it, but it is probably worth listening to if his violin concerto is anything to go by.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:08 pmVery interesting. I was completely ignorant/unaware of said novels I’m afraid but I’ll definitely seek them out now. I’m happy to accept a fairly broad definition of “science fiction”: seeing various forms of fantasy, “fabulation”, futuristic parables/morality tales etc as part of the “genre” (though that word sounds restrictive). Are most Twilight Zone episodes (for example) sci-fi? Not by strict definitions perhaps, but they definitely speak the same language.
I’m off to track down the Philip Glass piece right now! I’m a fan of a lot of his soundtrack work, with Candyman (in particular) being one of my favourites.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:34 pm