Literary SF Discussion Thread

[mike alexander]

Title taken from a question by Paul Beardsley.

I like the idea. As long as we don't discuss the politico/philosophical implications of Starship Troopers.

How would this work?

[Dr Nigel]

"Human culture would rapidly be eradicated by contact with the Moti civilisation from Larry Niven's The Mote in God's Eye. Discuss."

[Paul Beardsley]

I've not read Mote yet, but when I do I will follow up the suggestion!

Thanks for starting the thread, Mike. My big question is, what is the value of science fiction?

In some quarters SF is derided for its lack of literary qualities. I think this is due, in large part, to the fact that the genre is typically judged by its worst examples - and the best examples are "disqualified" as not being SF. But this is a well-worn path, and I'd like to see discussion explore other areas.

In recent years, the literary qualities of SF have been much more evident than in the past. But, more importantly, is SF doing something that the mainstream, and other genres, are not doing?

I suspect it is. SF takes an objective look at ourselves and our societies in a way that others do not. SF attempts to dramatise and otherwise tackle with new scientific concepts - whereas other genres pretend they have no relevance.

I'll have better examples later, but I genuinely believe SF has nothing to apologise for, and a lot to be praised for. And I am speaking as someone who mostly reads outside the field these days.

Hope the ball is rolling...

[mike alexander]

I agree. Dr. Nigel, please hold that thought! We're just in the pages with roman numerals.

John W. Campbell once wrote that all other literatures are subsets of SF. Now, Campbell could be a bit of a crank (Dianetics: strike one; the Dean Drive: strike two), but I think he was saying something similar. SF begins with the idea of change and goes from there.

In that respect, it is far more perilous. All writing depends upon a certain shared universe between the writer and reader. In SF, that universe may be far different than the one we occupy. The writer's task is to bring in that universe without losing the impact of the story. In this, it is similar to historical novels (I'm working on one now, and know just how hard that is).

I'm not sure how one defines 'literature', but I will go with 'excellent writing wrapped around a powerful idea'. That idea can be anything: coping with crushing personal loss, receiving a message from God, inventing a machine that lets you travel through time. In SF, sometimes an idea can be so good it can make up for run-of-the-mill writing (Robert Forward's novel 'Dragon's Egg' comes to mind). Sometimes the writing can be so good it overpowers a fairly commonplace or trite idea (like Bradbury's 'A Medicine for Melancholy', which I suppose is on the borderline of SF/fantasy, but rings a lyrical turn on the old adage 'What she needs is a good screw').

SF assumes change, not continuity.

[ToSeek]

I see two main appeals of science fiction:

- Pure sense of wonder.

- Putting characters into a situation that they would only encounter in science fiction.

The latter, I think, is a very legitimate literary use. (The former is more just for fun!)

[satori]

Putting characters into a situation that they would only encounter in science fiction.

what about creating otherwise unlikely characters as acceptable role models for fringe types.........such as... let's say semi humans

[Paul Beardsley]

All good suggestions so far.

There's another: defamiliarisation.

20-something years ago, I was going through a jaded-with-SF phase. I was walking through Chichester one evening with a friend called Nev (an occasional poster here). We were passing through alleyways and arches in Roman walls, past noisy pubs and so on. I was thinking about similar cities in SF and fantasy novels. I said to Nev, "Is there really any point in reading those novels when you've got a real-life city like this?" And he replied that the reason the quite mundane surroundings were affecting me so strongly was because I'd seen the mundane from the point of view of those very novels. Suddenly a very ordinary (some would say dull) city in the real world was exciting because my reading of SF had made the familiar seem remarkable.

[Paul Beardsley]

what about creating otherwise unlikely characters as acceptable role models for fringe types.........such as... let's say semi humans

I've already acknowledged this post in my "all good suggestions" comment, but are you thinking of Cordwainer Smith's Underpeople?

[darkhunter]

Other forms of fiction are (usually) limited to the past, present, or fantasy. Science Fiction gives us our dreams of tomorrow, next year...the future.

I'm not putting down other types of fiction--I read all sorts of book, fiction and non-fiction.

The best fiction books I've read (of any genera) were the ones that you didn't have to know a thing about the background to enjoy the book. However, I've seen several people be put off of a good book because "I don't know anything about science" (sometimes smugly), "I don't know anything about the old west", "I don't know anything about the military" (They get a dumb-founded look if they're someone I work with ).

A good story is one that you can set anywhere and it still make sence. A good Science fiction story would lose something if the background is taken any, just as a western would if it took place in a modern big city...

Taken this way:

Protector is the story of a parent making great sacrifices and paying the ultimate price to protect his children.

Camelot 30K is the story of one individual trying to spread the truth to save her people.

The Star Wars movies are the story of a father being saved from his own evil by his son who never gave up on him.

These stories would be changed to a greater or lesser extent by removing the science--Protector and Star Wars would lose their scale and magnitude, while Camelot 30 would need an entirely new danger for Merlene's people.

[mike alexander]

Somewhere else I read (echoing darkhunter's comments above) that the mark of a science fiction story is that if you take out the science elements, you have no story.

I don't think so, at least not necessarily. My best example of this is Heinlein's short 'The Green Hills of Earth'. Ostensibly it is about Rhysling, the poet blinded by radioactivity in an engine room accident in a spacecraft, who becomes the doggerel chanter of the spaceways and human expansion in the solar system (Kipling?).

But if you read the story, you realize he could just as well have been an ordinary seaman, blinded by steam in an engine room accident in some tramp steamer just off Djakarta in the latter half of the 19th century. The real story is about just two incidents in Rhysling's life (his initial blinding and his final sacrifice to save another ship) and his creation of a collection of poems and songs encapsulating the mythos of expansion. In reality, not very much happens in the story at all.

Maybe that's a mark of SF as literature. Yank it out of its own millieu and see if it still works, if the magic is still there. I can think of a comparison in the literature of mystery. Who has heard of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, raise your hand. Who has heard of Arthur B. Reeve and Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective? Uh huh. Both were wildly popular in their day, but Reeve has sunk without a trace, while with Holmes, the game's still afoot. If we figure out why, we may have a bit longer handle on the whole thing.

[satori]

Paul Beardsley,
the "morlocks" are the only (SF) underpeople i know of
and that should suffice to give you a measure of how narrow my horizon is with the topic at hand
what you choose to quote from me was merely a somewhat plump hint to the Spock character
(even if not entirely convincing) the Spock-Nimoy pseudo persona was just unescapable for my imagination (i know that the visual arts should be off topic here, but...)

for me the attraction of the genre was (past tense intended) surley in it's escapist nature, as i think i must have had a quite claustrophobic outlook on life in this world
(i remember for example (predating my first contact with SF) what fascination the Robinson Crusoe character held for me)

think about the Enterprise phenomenon ( not called "star trek" in my part of the world)........what made it's appeal?.......break it down to the primitives:
first there is the space ship (isolating you from the rest of the world and letting you slip the surly bonds of earth (escape))
than there ............
no i must shorten it........you will easily see for yourself that bulk of the attraction stems from the escape theme........after deconstructing it, all those fancy advetures seem to be only staffage to divert the attantion and to be able to serve the always equal beloved dish.......(you ever again want to see your same sympathetic and competend crew in this same reliable ship)
echoeing this, i remember Michael Collins when asked what drew him to his job, he answered with a single word : "it's about escape"...........no he did not say, "I wanted to see the moon from close up" orsomething........

now you know literature is about escape anyhow.....
so i should better fold this piece together and throw it away with great force ( as Occam would put it)
i have obviously faild to identify the one special ingredient...

anyway, let it peacefully sedimentate to the archives
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
edited to add: the correct Collins quote would be rather like: "it's about leaving" ( i am quite sure now, as i dreamed on it)

[mike alexander]

Satori...

I don't think (if I understand you correctly) that anyone is looking for the one special ingredient. We're just poking around to start.

You wrote

what about creating otherwise unlikely characters as acceptable role models for fringe types.........such as... let's say semi humans

and I would be interested in you expanding on your thought. You mentioned the Spock character (and why not bring him in; just about everybody knows who he is and probably has some ideas about what he is). Why do you consider him an unlikely character? Would you consider him an acceptable role model for semi-humans?

You mentioned the Morlocks as underpeople, although some might consider them as degenerate, sub-human. Paul Beardsley mentioned the Underpeople from Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality stories. Part of the 'joke' is that they are Underpeople by law and custom, not really because they are actually lesser beings (I still have the Virgil Finlay drawings of C'Mell, and she is definitely NOT UnderAnything).

Are you thinking about the use of SF as a probe into non-human or other-human ways of thought, of moral codes? It's a very interesting question, and I hope you won't just let sediment accumulate.

[Paul Beardsley]

A few interesting ideas here.

Is "escape" a bad thing? (I've often thought that the SF stories that are most attractive to readers are those that depict a world you'd either escape to or escape from.) But the very word "escape" has connotations of dodging real-world issues.

I remember in 1979, at school, in a discussion, a precocious individual was denigrating SF because it avoided real issues. At the time I was reading Hal Clement's Ocean On Top, which was exploring the consequences of the energy crisis in a way that nobody else was. Far from avoiding an issue, it was confronting it head-on. Needless to say, the individual who was denigrating SF had little experience of it other than in film and TV.

Satori, thanks for the quote from Michael Collins. It makes one think... His two colleagues are the highest profile humans in the history of humanity as they walk around on the moon, while he is alone in a capsule which, at some periods, is on the far side of the moon - out of touch with absolutely everybody. And he considers that escape. Astonishing.

I've just tried to link to the Virgil Finlay illustration of C'Mell. Annoyingly, it's taking forever to load for some reason. [Later - managed to get it. Nice red dress!] A side issue - I think it's a great shame that there are so few illustrations of SF stories other than the ones commissioned for magazine and book covers. Occasionally we get treats such as Barlow's Guide To Extraterrestrials (1980?) in which artists depicted various alien species from different books. But it would be nice if a few fan artists could display their work somewhere. (Perhaps they do.)

Morlocks - perhaps an underpeople in the most literal sense. I rather enjoyed the "new" Morlocks in Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, especially when the Time Traveller had to use his coat to protect one from the sunlight as he took one back to the present.

Mike - re the idea of SF without the science element. I think part of the point of The Green Hills of Earth was that the hazards of travel would be as much a part of the future as they were part of the past. Similarly, the emotional attachment you might have felt for your home town would later apply to your home planet. Even the idea that there would be blue-collar poets in the future - including those with a disability - was pretty radical, and it helped that Rhysling's poetry was the sort of thing you could believe someone would write (even if it wasn't necessarily the world's best poetry). I think the story worked because it projected normality (with all its associated discomfort and dirt) into a future that had traditionally been idealised. It must be 30 years since I read Green Hills, but it's still got a heck of a resonance for me. Had it not been an SF story - had it been a gritty merchant navy story - it might have been interesting but it wouldn't have had anything like the power.

[mike alexander]

Paul, I like your analysis of 'Green Hills', most especially the point that the future wouldn't necessarily be Raymond Massey striding around in a toga all the time. And that is exactly what makes it powerful; human feelings don't change, whether you're six days out from Djakarta or six days out from the Jovian moons. The science isn't strictly necessary to the tale, but it does add to it tremendously. And it passes the test of 'If you read it sixty years later, does it still say something?'

[And not necessarily just humans. Have you ever read the story 'Llulongomeena' by Gordon Dickson? (I think that's how it's spelled).]

[Paul Beardsley]

And it passes the test of 'If you read it sixty years later, does it still say something?'

Oy! Only 30 years - I'm not that old.

Seriously, thanks for the comments.

[And not necessarily just humans. Have you ever read the story 'Llulongomeena' by Gordon Dickson? (I think that's how it's spelled).]

I have - again, a very long time ago, but again, I can remember a lot of the details. An interesting companion piece - very different to Green Hills, but relatable on a similar level.

This thread is making me appreciate the value of SF short stories. As SF is often about ideas - including nifty single ideas - it naturally follows that some of the best explorations of those ideas will be in short work. And sometimes they can really pack a punch. What I particularly like is the way a range of shorts can add up to a series of glimpses of a future world. Samuel R. Delany did that very effectively with the likes of Drift Glass and Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi Precious Stones. It's a lived in future.

[mike alexander]

Of course, I meant to say that the story was sixty years old, and still works.

Blame it on Friday.

[Gillianren]

I was discussing this with Lonewulf a little last night as I read the Zelazny recommended on the other thread.

To me, the beauty of the story is as much about the quality of language used as anything else. I mean, the story's interesting, and I usually need to like the characters (it's why I never got into Catcher in the Rye; I hate Holden too much). But the words? That's where my heart really is.

[SMEaton]

Argh!! I hate when I hit 'backspace' when I've accidentally clicked outside of the text box! Just lost two large paragraphs with one keystroke.
Come on short-term memory!! (rolls dice)
To expand on satori's, and now Paul Beardsley's, comments on escapism as an attractor to SF: fiction of any sort can be a source of escapism. But SF offers something more, and the best SF offers that something plus the possible advancement of humanity.
I just finished Phil Dick's Time Out Of Joint - a welcome break from Radio Free Albemuth and Valis - and the main character's final sentiments struck home. Don't worry: no spoilers! Ragle Gumm (what a name!) opined that we have a never-ending wanderlust that will and must eventually carry humanity away from this planet. Many authors use this idea. Our attraction to explore unknown ground (a recurring theme in the novel) is a driving force behind life. What other type of fiction can provide (somewhat realistically, at least) a way for us to do this?
I used to think that escapism was my reason to read SF, and honestly it was a big part of my enjoyment, but lately I've realized that it's been a long time since that has happened. Now, the main draw of the genre is purely adventurous. If I were a writer I might have been able to explain the above a little better. Oh well.
If you are for a merry jaunt I will try for once who can foot it farthest. - John Dryden

[mike alexander]

If you liked 'Rose', Gillian, you should also like some of Zelazny's other, earlier work; certainly 'The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of his Mouth'; '...And Call Me Conrad'; 'He Who Shapes'. If you can, work your way to Creatures of Light and Darkness, then Lord of Light.

[HenrikOlsen]

for me the attraction of the genre was (past tense intended) surley in it's escapist nature, as i think i must have had a quite claustrophobic outlook on life in this world
(i remember for example (predating my first contact with SF) what fascination the Robinson Crusoe character held for me)

Just remember that the ones who think escape is bad are the jailers

[Gillianren]

If you liked 'Rose', Gillian, you should also like some of Zelazny's other, earlier work; certainly 'The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of his Mouth'; '...And Call Me Conrad'; 'He Who Shapes'. If you can, work your way to Creatures of Light and Darkness, then Lord of Light.

Oh, I'll get to it. My roommate's been suggesting it for some time. I'm on a bit of a nonfiction kick (Seven Fires is really good), but I'll be back to fiction soon.

[darkhunter]

Somewhere else I read (echoing darkhunter's comments above) that the mark of a science fiction story is that if you take out the science elements, you have no story.

Clarification: I said that a story would change if you took out the science elements--it would no longer be science fiction, but still a story.

: )


Depending on how centeral the science is to the plot, the changes could be quite drastic.

In Asimov's End of Eternity*, at first glance it would appear that if there was no time travel, there would be no story. However, the story would still remain of the one individual slowly finding that his superiors are purposely stopping progress in certain areas that would actually be of great benifit to his people, and taking steps to stop them. You would, of course, still loose the grandfather paradox story arc, but the hero's job would still be to be in certain places to make sure certain things are or are not done.

If the story is soley about the science, of course taking away the science would take away the story. If you wrote a Western about the Lost Dutchman Mine, then took away the mine (or possibly the whole concept of mining), you wouldn't have a story

*I think that's the title--it's been (quite) a few years....

[Paul Beardsley]

I was discussing this with Lonewulf a little last night as I read the Zelazny recommended on the other thread.

Zelazny did some very good stuff - and some real hackwork too. I loved the first Amber chronicles, but ground to a halt partway through the second one. I got a bit fed up with every single character being in on the big secret, whatever it was.

I also liked the way he hurriedly got his planetary romances written when he realised the space missions were undermining some of the lovely imagery. Mars was no longer the land of canals and decadent cities; Venus was no longer the place of oceans under an overcast sky. So he wrote "Rose" and "Doors" while they still had currency.

Of course, nowadays SF writers have no compunction about writing "retro" SF, pretending the solar system really is as we thought it was back in the 1930s or whatever. (There's also the interesting-ish Space: 1889 game which got adapted as a quite good series of radio plays. Here we see the British Empire throwing its weight (not one third, alas) on an inhabited Mars.) Some of this stuff is fun, but I remember Stephen Baxter saying we are doing the planets (and presumably readers) a disservice. He wrote an excellent sort-of sequel to Jules Verne's From The Earth To The Moon in which he first of all rationalised the projectile gun so that it could launch the projectile without crushing the travellers; he then [spoilers] had his smug astronaut realise what he was heading for: the real Mars of stark deserts and thin atmosphere rather than the one he was expecting.

I thought the message of the story was clear and well made: these past visions of space were all very lovely, but the writers were forward thinking and trying to get to grips with the information available to them at the time. SF writers of today should be doing the same - do your homework, make some educated guesses, take some risks and so on.

To me, the beauty of the story is as much about the quality of language used as anything else. I mean, the story's interesting, and I usually need to like the characters (it's why I never got into Catcher in the Rye; I hate Holden too much). But the words? That's where my heart really is.

That's fair enough - and if you know where to look, you can get both. Gene Wolfe is an author who springs to mind, particularly The Book of the New Sun. Talk about love of language!

Generally, though, I'll settle for "adequate" prose if the events being described are interesting enough. (By "adequate" I mean a reasonably high standard - words used accurately, no jarring turns of phrase, and above all, clarity.)

I share your opinion of Catcher. I felt like a right philistine when I found myself forcing myself to continue with it, finishing it only so that I could put a tick in an imaginary box*. I remarked on this to a friend, who agreed. "It's about Holden finding himself," she said, adding, "and frankly he's welcome to himself."

*I was trying to get a few more books read on the list of 100 Great Books; perhaps that one should be on the list of Books You Feel You Ought To Have Read, and it includes E.M. Forster's A Room With A Vie-yawn, too bored to finish the title!

[HenrikOlsen]

Zelazny did some very good stuff - and some real hackwork too.

In my opinion, the hackwork came when he switched to writing novels, and as a result expanded some stories beyond their natural size.
He admitted that in the long run, novels pay more per word in royalties than short stories does, which was why he moved to writing novels.

I also liked the way he hurriedly got his planetary romances written when he realised the space missions were undermining some of the lovely imagery. Mars was no longer the land of canals and decadent cities; Venus was no longer the place of oceans under an overcast sky. So he wrote "Rose" and "Doors" while they still had currency.

Actually, "Rose" was written after it was clear there could be no life on Mars.
It's just not relevant to the story that it's on Mars, so he didn't care and kept Mars as a placeholder.

[Dr Nigel]

I was discussing this with Lonewulf a little last night as I read the Zelazny recommended on the other thread.

To me, the beauty of the story is as much about the quality of language used as anything else. I mean, the story's interesting, and I usually need to like the characters (it's why I never got into Catcher in the Rye; I hate Holden too much). But the words? That's where my heart really is.

I'm with you on that one, Gillian. One of the reasons I'm so fond of Pratchett is his control of the language.

When you mention Zelazny, do you refer to Nine Princes in Amber et al.?

[Dr Nigel]

One aspect of SF that I like is that it can ask all sorts of "what if" questions.

Take Fahrenheit 451: [Spoilers if you've been living in a box your whole life]

What if the purpose of "firemen" became lost in some future, ultra-repressive version of our own society? How do the members of that society behave and feel? And what does that tell us about our present society and ourselves?

Similarly, Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which, I must confess, I have only encountered as the film). This asks quite difficult questions about what it means to be human, and questions our assumptions about how we define ouselves.

SF can also give us insight into the impact of technology on us as people (I'm thinking of two novels, one of which is Neuromancer and the other whose title eludes me for the present, but it centres around the ability to download consciousness into an artificial body).

By creating these settings, authors can give us fresh insights into what is sometimes still called "the human condition".

[HenrikOlsen]

When you mention Zelazny, do you refer to Nine Princes in Amber et al.?

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, see discussion started here.

[Dr Nigel]

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, see discussion started here.

Thanks, I had missed that one.

And I've not read any Zelazny other than his Amber series (he does not seem to be popular with bookshops in the UK, so I was largely unaware of the corpus of his work).

[Paul Beardsley]

SF can also give us insight into the impact of technology on us as people (I'm thinking of two novels, one of which is Neuromancer and the other whose title eludes me for the present, but it centres around the ability to download consciousness into an artificial body).

By creating these settings, authors can give us fresh insights into what is sometimes still called "the human condition".

I wonder if the one whose title eludes you is Greg Egan's Diaspora? I've encountered a lot of stories about downloading consciousness, but many of them dodge the issues. Diaspora does not dodge the issues, and is very powerful for that reason - and yes, it gives insights into the human condition. In particular, I like Egan's observation about "the myth of the individual".

To give one example from the book, there is a scene where two characters who normally live in a virtual environment have downloaded their minds into a pair of robots. Whilst in the robots, they have to cross a marsh, and there is a danger that they might sink, in which case they might have to wait a very long time before they are rescued - and during that time they'd be isolated from everyone including each other. So they quite casually give each other back-ups of their personalities which they can activate if they are in need of company.

[satori]

Paul Beardsley,
you surely wouldn't have read my correction of the Michael Collins quote (done in my orig. post), so i repeat it here:

"it's about leaving"