Introduction by James Gunn
Defining science fiction is like measuring the properties of an electron: you
may think you're measuring a solid object, but its really a wispy cloud. Even
its name leads to disputes. Jules Verne called what he wrote voyages
extraordinaires, and H. G. Wells called it scientific romance. When Hugo
Gernsback created the first true science-fiction magazine in 1926, he called
what he intended to publish
scientifiction, and he came up with the
phrase science fiction only after he lost control of Amazing Stories in
1929 and created Science Wonder Stories. Robert A. Heinlein suggested
that speculative fiction was a more appropriate designation. Abbreviations such
as sci-fi (liked by the media but not by most fans, who use it to describe bad
science-fiction movies) and SF (preferred by most readers) further complicate
the issue. SFs beginnings in the pulp magazines added to the confusion. While
readers understood what the magazines offered, some of them put out a different
mixture, combining SF with fantasy or science-fantasy or horror. And its origins
in the pulp magazines made the issue seem petty, except to fans. Academic
scrutiny was slow in developing, even though some scholars and teachers
recognized that some science fiction was written with skill and intelligence and
even, occasionally, grace. But what were writers writing, what were publishers
publishing, and what were readers reading?
Some students of the
genre, such as Samuel R. Delany, insist that, like poetry, science fiction is
impossible to define. Others have pointed out that genre titles are booksellers
conveniences, telling them where to put books when they arrive and equally, of
course, book buyers conveniences, telling them where to look for the books they
want when they go shopping. But what are they looking for when they look for
science fiction? My short definition: the literature of change. Brian W. Aldiss:
hubris clobbered by nemesis. John W. Campbell: science fiction is what
science-fiction editors publish. The fall-back position, epitomized by Damon
Knight when he said, Science fiction is what we mean when we point at it, is
that we know it when we see it. And even if we cant define it to everyone's
satisfaction, the effort helps us clarify our thinking about the genre. In lieu
of a definition that everyone or even a majority can agree upon, this volume
attempts to bring together a variety of views about science fiction by
influential scholars and writers that will allow readers and students to think
about the question and maybe come to their own conclusions.
The attempt to define science fiction, moreover, is like the attempt to measure
electrons in another way: you can determine the location but you cant also
determine the momentum every attempt changes one or the other. From the evidence
gathered in this volume, what is and isn't science fiction and the way in which
the consensus view has changed over the years has been a fertile topic. As
readers we make those distinctions, preferring one kind of narrative over
another science fiction over fantasy, for instance, and both over what fans call
mundane fictionand identify what we prefer by title and cover art or blurb,
or, if necessary, by reading a few paragraphs, or, preferably, by having a
publisher whose judgments we respect do the job for us by putting a label on the
book. Sometimes when we aren't sure of our identification of the genre, we seek
more books by an author we have enjoyed and move on tentatively to other authors
and titles, and even genres until we at last recognize that we are fans of a
particular kind of narrative. Amazon.com has tried to systematize this process
by its listing of other titles under the heading: Readers who purchase titles
by this author also purchased titles by these authors. . . . Computers may
eventually do the job for us.
The difficulty with identifying science fiction and proceeding from that to
definition is that science fiction isn't just one thing. It has no recognizable
action, like the murder mystery, or recognizable milieu, like the western, or
recognizable relationship, like the romance. It is about the future except when
it is about the past or the present. It can incorporate all the other genres:
one can have a science-fiction detective story, a science-fiction western, a
science-fiction romance, and, most commonly, a science-fiction adventure story.
It is best characterized, as I point out in The World View of Science Fiction,
by an attitude, and even that is hard to define. It is the literature of change,
the literature of anticipation, the literature of the human species, the
literature of speculation, and more. And because it is the literature of change
it is continually changing; if it remained constant, it would no longer be
science fiction. For that reason some of the essays that follow are like
snapshots. That's what science fiction looked like at that moment.
All that, of course, is what makes science fiction fascinating to read and to
discuss. And because the people who have speculated about it are interesting and
even special thinkers, they have written entertainingly about their
speculations. I have tried these speculations out in two graduate seminars and I
can testify to the fact that they produced vigorous discussion as well as
disagreement. That's okay. Uncertainty is a way of life.
Before We Begin: Some Notes on Early SF Criticism
by Matthew Candelaria
No anthology could hope to present all that has been
meaningfully said about any given subject, let alone one as broad,
controversial, and diverse as science fiction. However, this anthology assembles
many of the most important voices of mature science fiction criticism and,
therefore, needs only the smallest of caveats.
What do I mean by mature science fiction criticism? I do not mean to
suggest a contrast with immature or childish criticism, and perhaps my point
would be clearer if I called it ripe science fiction criticism, which I would
do, were it not for the fact that it sounds odd and carries a few unpleasant
connotations. Nonetheless, if you will indulge the vegetable metaphor, I hope to
make my meaning clear.
In order for a plant to produce fruit, it must go through a number of stages.
First, there must be a seed, which sprouts into a seedling, and this seedling
grows, producing a stem and leaves, perhaps even secondary growth, before
producing a flower that then (in most plants) needs to be fertilized before the
seed-bearing fruit can grow and ripen.
Science-fiction criticism has been around for almost as long as science
fiction, and it has gone through a great deal of growth before finally producing
its mature, ripe fruit. I wont belabor my metaphor by talking about which works
were the seed and which the stem, leaves, etc., and which authors the busy
little bees. Some people would find such a metaphorical flight to be amusing and
illuminating (actually, I must confess to being one of them), and for them I
reserve the pleasure of speculating at their leisure, but for most people it
would seem silly and unnecessarily controversial. For us, the only thing that
matters is the ripe fruit and what it says about the slight caveat needed for
this anthology.
What represents ripeness in a genre? I submit that a genre is ripe when its
practitioners rightly or wrongly cease to believe themselves isolated artists
exploring heretofore unimagined ideas and begin believing that they are part of
a coherent, continuous, and significant tradition of thought. Most people will
believe that this happened for the genre of science fiction with the advent of
Gernsback's Amazing Stories. Gernsback not only provided a forum for writers and
fans interested in the newborn genre of scientifiction, he also put the genre in
context with its literary antecedents and gave it a canon of recognizable
founding masters. Through Amazing Stories, the genre became a ripe, if at times
sour, fruit. The ripeness of a genre is a crucial concern, because it is only in
a ripe genre that tropes, such as faster-than-light travel or galactic
civilizations, can become conventions, building blocks toward more complex
ideas. It is only in a ripe genre that ideological debates can take place.
Unlike fruit, a genre does not begin to decay once it has grown ripe.
But when did this happen for the genre of science-fiction criticism? A
comparison between two anthologies of essays will serve to demonstrate when this
occurred. In 1953, Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning and Its Future, edited by
Reginald Bretnor, clearly presented itself as an originary text. Bretnor says
the criticism that preceded his volume is too widely scattered to be generally
available, and too unorganized to present a comprehensive picture. Besides, much
of it now is either obsolete or obsolescent (ix). Therefore, he says, it
seemed better to me to start afresh (x). He acknowledges that his is not the
first book to deal with science fiction, and cites Lloyd Arthur Eshbach's Of
Worlds Beyond, and J. O. Baileys Pilgrims Through Space and Time, but he still
claims to be the first general survey of science fiction against the background
of the world today (x). Furthermore, Bretnor takes care to stress that all the
essays contained in his volume (with one exception and a fraction), are
original. Bretnor saw no coherent body of science fiction criticism from which
to draw, and therefore sought to create one.
In contrast, editor Thomas D. Clareson begins the introduction to his 1971
anthology, SF: The Other Side of Realism, by citing the comments of Fred Pohl at
the 1968 Modern Language Associations (MLA) Forum on Science Fiction. In fact,
his entire introduction is dedicated to placing his volume in context with the
criticism that had preceded it. And Clareson was in a great position to do that
since he was at the time the editor of Extrapolation, the first journal devoted
exclusively to science fiction criticism. This placing of The Other Side of
Realism signals that sometime during the interval from 1953 to 1971, science
fiction criticism ripened, and the caveat necessary for this anthology is that,
for a number of reasons, we are not reproducing any of the key texts that helped
this ripening take place.
Damon Knights In Search of Wonder (1956) represents an important stage in
the fruition of criticism. A collection of Knights book reviews written from
1952 to 1955, this book may seem of dubious value for modern students of the
genre since so much of the commentary is on very forgettable novels of the
period, but in them Knight is making steps toward the first in-depth critical
study of modern science fiction. The first essay of the collection puts forward
the four critical principles under which Knight will operate throughout. His
first principle is that science fiction is a misnomer, but, despite the
existence of better labels, it is the one that he will use, and, rather than
attempt to define the term precisely, simply take it to mean what he points to
when he says it (1). This practical solution is much referenced, but few accept
it as the final word in defining the genre. His second principle is that
criticism should not be written to promote books, which is the job of the
publishers jacket blurb (1). His third principle is that science fiction is
a field of literature worth taking seriously and that ordinary critical
standards can be meaningfully applied to it (1). As will be evident in the
essays that follow, this is a controversial principle among science fiction
critics who often believe that science fiction should have either entirely or at
least partially different standards from other literary fields. His fourth
principle is that negative reviews are far less detrimental to science fiction
than the bad books about which they are written. By tearing apart the bad books,
Knight sees himself as doing a service to the field, trying to make it live up
to its complete potential. These are merely the introductory principles, and
scattered throughout the reviews in this collection are a number of explicitly
and implicitly stated opinions about the nature, function, and form of good
science fiction. James Blish's The Issue at Hand (1964) and More Issues at Hand
(1970) are also compilations of reviews that made a large impact at the time.
As in the formation of the genre proper, science fiction criticisms
maturation was aided tremendously by the appearance of a periodical forum.
Extrapolation was founded in 1959, originally printing papers presented at MLAs
seminar on science fiction. In 1973, it also partnered itself with the Science
Fiction Research Association. It continues to this day to print articles of
serious criticism about science fiction. One of the greatest values of this
critical organ is its lack of stringent editorial guidelines about subject
matter, critical techniques, or approaches. Thus, it brings together a wide
diversity of essays on many texts and from many different perspectives, making
it distinct from the later Science Fiction Studies (1973), which publishes
primarily scholarly texts and in its early days was criticized for taking a
naively Marxist approach to the genre. Also during this time, the British
journal Foundation (1972) appeared and remains to this day a unique critical
voice, closer in form to SFS but in content more like Extrapolation.
Kingsley Amis New Maps of Hell (1960) derives from a series of lectures he
delivered at Princeton in the summer of 1959, and it retains from the lectures a
charming conversational tone that makes it an entertaining read. Amis positions
himself wisely, trying to appeal to people both within and without the science
fiction field. Through the story of his first encounter with science fiction at
age twelve, he shows that he is not that peculiarly irritating kind of person,
the intellectual who takes a slumming holiday (7) to discuss science fiction.
He also assures his reader that he is not a member of the field proper that
makes him free from its discreditable provincialism of thought and . . .
nervous or complacent reluctance to invoke ordinary critical standards (8). In
these lectures, Amis provides a brief history of the genre and some in-depth
analysis of texts and themes as well as one of the clunkiest definitions of the
genre ever forwarded: Science fiction presents with verisimilitude the human
effects of spectacular changes in our environment, changes either deliberately
willed or involuntarily suffered (20). Amis never hesitates to invoke critical
standards, never failing to let us know his attitude toward the texts under
discussion and heaping a bit more scorn than praise. If we take the enduring
nature of judgments to be a measure of their accuracy, then a great many of his
evaluations are very good, such as, for example, his critical appraisal of
Wells's work, dividing the earlier, more imaginative, and more successful work
from the later utopias which he says give a soporific whiff of left-wing
crankiness, although he, unlike some critics, would not exclude them from the
science-fiction canon altogether. With its attention to the unconscious and
sexuality, New Maps of Hell serves as an introduction to the 1960s as well as an
introduction to science fiction, and it approaches the genre with a decidedly
new wave slant.
H. Bruce Franklins Future Perfect (1966) makes an interesting play to create
science fiction as a significant category of literary production. His gambit has
two main components: arguing for the special capacities of science fiction for
representing some parts of the modern human experience, and arguing against the
genrefication of science fiction. First, Franklin points out the co-development
of science fiction and industrial society, and he claims that science fiction is
uniquely suited to discussing the perils, problems, and promise that science and
technology offer humanity. This part of Franklins argument is almost
universally accepted among science fiction critics, but his second part is not.
Franklin argues that since it was not considered a separate category of literary
production during the first century of its existence, and that most
nineteenth-century writers wrote both science fiction and what is remembered as
mainstream fiction, science fiction is not inherently a separate category of
literary production. As part of this argument, Franklin reproduces and discusses
the science fiction production of a number of authors who are considered to be
mainstream literary figures, including Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain. His basic
argument is that all fiction presumably seeks to represent some part of
reality. . . . One may think of realistic fiction, historical fiction, science
fiction, and fantasy as theoretically distinct strategies for describing what is
real (3). In this schema, science fiction aims to represent what is real in
terms of a credible hypothetical invention . . . extrapolated from . . . present
reality (3). This definition foretells schema like Darko Suvin's cognitive
estrangement that seek to put science fiction in close relation to realistic
fiction for purposes of making it equally worthy of serious consideration.
One final text worth noting here, which just barely squeaks in under the wire
because its first chapter was published separately in 1971, is David Ketterer's
New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American
Literature (1974). This study makes two significant statements about the genre.
Ketterer, like many critics, is unsatisfied with the inadequate label science
fiction, and though he continues to use the term, he subsumes the genre under
the larger category of apocalyptic literature. According to his definition,
Apocalyptic literature is concerned with the creation of other worlds which
exist, on the literal level, in a credible relationship (whether on the basis of
rational extrapolation and analogy or of religious belief) with the real
world, thereby causing a metaphorical destruction of that real world in the
readers head. Ketterer shows the spiritual dimensions of science fiction,
exploring the development of science fiction within the Christian tradition.
Ketterer stresses that the New World of science fiction seeks to supplant the
current world, a statement very much in line with others in this anthology about
the inherently subversive nature of science fiction. Ketterer's second major
conclusion is that science fiction is one of, if not the central mode of
American literature, and, at variance with critics like Delany and Gunn, he
freely makes comparisons between science fiction and non-science fiction texts.
With the publication of these crucial texts, science fiction criticism
flourished from scattered pieces of unconnected notes, often repeating and
restating one another, into a mature genre, and it is not coincidental that the
Science Fiction Research Association was founded in 1970. It is the sad truth,
however, that even this caveat needs a caveat. I have here highlighted what I
believe to be the most important texts of modern science fiction criticism
during this period, but there are a few marginal texts that had I but world
enough and time, I might also have included. First, there are the two pioneering
books on the writing of science fiction: Eshbach's already-mentioned Of Worlds
Beyond and L. Sprague de Camps Science Fiction Handbook. Numerous surveys of
fantastic voyages and utopias further reinforce the canon that some say
anticipates modern science fiction, but in my opinion they are the last remnants
of the flower, still hanging on, not the mature fruit of science fiction
criticism. A couple of single-author studies are worth noting as well. Bernard
Bergonzi's The Early H. G. Wells (1961) is a valuable study of Wells
contribution to the origins of science fiction and is evidence of the genres
continued movement toward maturity, but I cannot help but feel that it and the
spate of other Wells studies appearing at about the same time are also part of
the clinging flower. However, Alexei Panshin's Heinlein in Dimension (1968) is a
huge leap forward. Not only is it the first single-author study of a modern
science fiction writer, one whose craft flourished after the advent of the mature
genre but it approaches Heinlein's work with no more apology than anyone writing
about a living, contemporary author would put forward. Panshin is not putting
Heinlein's work on a pedestal, but through careful consideration and criticism
of it, he proves that it, and comparable texts by other authors, rewards study
and deserves attention.
Finally, it would be remiss of me to fail to mention the works of Sam
Moskowitz during this period. The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction
Fandom (1954), Explorers of the Infinite (1963), and Seekers of Tomorrow:
Masters of Modern Science Fiction (1966) are all valuable texts in their way. As
the first text in the series suggests, these books are all written from the
perspective of the science fiction fan, and as such they are a little on the
disorganized side, and, although they contain valuable information and insight,
they lack the cohesion and seriousness of thought that characterizes the more
mature works of SF criticism. Seekers of Tomorrow, for example, is primarily a
collection of brief biographies and loose bibliographies of the major
practitioners of the field from the 1930s to the 1960s interspersed with
generous praise and occasional light criticism. In some ways, these texts,
especially The Immortal Storm, come close to what Barry Malzberg called the
true unwritten history of science fiction, but for obvious reasons they fail
to achieve that status.
The caveats all being made, let us sit in the shadow of the ripe fruit of
science fiction criticism and begin our speculations on speculation.
Below is the table of contents for
Speculations on Speculation:
Introduction,
James Gunn
Before We Begin,
Matthew Candelaria Part I: Identification
Chapter 1 Toward a Definition of Science Fiction,
James Gunn
Chapter 2 Coming to Terms,
Gary K. Wolfe
Chapter 3 Estrangement and Cognition,
Darko Suvin
Chapter 4 The Number of the Beast,
Barry N. Malzberg
Chapter 5 On the Origins of Genre,
Paul Kincaid Part II: Location
Chapter 6 SF and the Genological Jungle,
Darko Suvin
Chapter 7 The Readers of Hard Science Fiction,
James Gunn
Chapter 8 Science Fiction and Literature or The Conscience of the King,
Samuel R. Delany
Chapter 9 Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown,
Ursula K. Le Guin
Chapter 10 I Could Have Been a Contender. . . .
Barry N. Malzberg Part III: Derivations
Chapter 11 Introduction to Trillion Year Spree,
Brian W. Aldiss with David Wingrove
Chapter 12 On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley,
Brian W. Aldiss with David Wingrove
Chapter 13 The Roots of Science Fiction,
Robert Scholes
Chapter 14 Science Fiction and the Dimension of Myth,
Alexei and Cory Panshin Part IV: Excavation
Chapter 15 Some Notes toward the True and the Terrible,
Barry N. Malzberg
Chapter 16 Wrong Rabbit,
Barry N. Malzberg
Chapter 17 The Field and the Wave: The History of New Worlds,
Colin Greenland
Chapter 18 Space Opera Redefined,
David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer Part V: Infatuation
Chapter 19 The Golden Age of Science Fiction Is Twelve,
David Hartwell
Chapter 20 Some Presumptuous Approaches to Science Fiction,
Samuel R. Delany
Chapter 21 Touchstones,
James Gunn Part VI: Anticipation
Chapter 22 A Users Guide to the Postmoderns,
Michael Swanwick
Chapter 23 Science Fiction without the Future,
Judith Berman
Chapter 24 Slipstream,
James Patrick Kelly
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