March 14th, 2008
by
tycho garen
There’s this quote on the side bar of Making Light by author Ken MacLeod that’s been rolling over in my head for a few days.
“Science fiction is an argument with the world. When it becomes (solely) an argument within science fiction, it breathes recycled air.”
The last time I visited this subject on my blog it was also in response to a quote from MacLeod. To be fair, I’ve actually really enjoyed the work of his that I’ve read, limited though it is. So this isn’t a criticism of his work, let that be clear. Also I should disclaim that I’m really just addressing science fiction here, and ignorance of other genres is mostly mine.
The problem with this sort of perspective, near as I can tell, is that it ignores that any literature (popular or otherwise) is always part of an ongoing discourse with itself. Space Opera, which has seen a number of major revivals in the last 60-70 years (and is what I associate MacLeod with, rightly or wrongly,) is a framework that is largely a discussion between SF writers/readers. It isn’t a strict extrapolation of a future based on current reality (even if they don’t use FTL), it isn’t an avant garde re-imagination of the future. Same with most of the currently sub-genres that we have come to know and love so well (cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history, space opera, swap-venus stuff1 and so forth).
I think to some extent, MacLeod is cognizant of this fact–hence “(soley)”–but I would offer the somewhat stronger corollary that to remain intelligible, science fiction, must make an argument inside of science fiction. Genres exist so that larger discussions can occur between connected/similar works.
At this point, I find myself somewhat dumbfounded by this argument. I mean, I support the idea that science fiction should strive to be “fresh,” but I think fresh ideas are the result of creative thinking and questioning, and not a product of which discourses you choose to participate in. And that’s always been the case.
So in some ways this quote and opinion, which I don’t think is unique to MacLeod, smells a lot like a hard SF vs. soft SF debate, and maps pretty well onto a discourse of self-hatred that pops up all over the place.2 “Our own work isn’t acceptable fodder for discussion, so if you want to seem legitimate, talk with the ‘real’ scientists.”
At the same time, he’s right: when creators look outside their own field/discipline for inspiration and focus, it’s usually good for the resulting work. My suggestion is that engaging a novel subject of broad interest and doing it within a familiar science fiction framework (and/or that responds to common questions within science fiction), aren’t mutually exclusive. And furthermore, it seems that the markers of “fresh” science fiction aren’t really that fresh themselves: they’re set in the present or near future and the science fiction is very “hard.” Which can easily be stale in it’s own way, really.
I think in the pursuit of explaining the craft of writing we tend to link too many factors with desired outcomes. So that, freshness is a function of “hardness,” and “grittyness,” and “realism,” and “contemporary-ness,” and staleness is a function of “overblown allegory,” and “fantastic technology,” and “genre tropes” when really writer’s and critics don’t know what the universal secrete to freshness and staleness, we just say stuff, because it seems like we should have a much better handle on what works and what doesn’t. It seems that prescriptive statements like the one above almost always end badly.
But I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this.
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- More blogging by
tycho garen at
http://www.tychoish.com/
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Filed under Books & Literature, Criticism & Scholarship | Comments (3)
My interpretation of the quote is that it’s less a criticism of the idea of the “genre conversation” than it is a criticism of the sort of sf novels that can only be fully understood by people who have been reading extensively in the genre (or, these days, by people who have been reading blogs and blog comments that have led into ideas for a novel.)
Those books are the professional equivalent of fanfiction; no matter the literary quality, they cannot stand alone.
Tycho, you’re constructing an argument against that quote by bringing in the concept of “freshness” in opposition to “recycled air” as a value judgement on literary quality so that you can put it in parallel to the “hard SF vs. soft SF debate” in order to make it circuitously relevent to a feminist discussion.
There’s *direct* feminist relevence to the consideration of engagement with the world as it relates to SF (aside from the way there’s such an abstraction of living subjects from the phrase “Science fiction is an argument with the world”) in the very politics of the “argument”.
If you want to argue judgements on literary quality, perhaps it’d be useful to bring the parties doing the judgements into it.
I think in the pursuit of explaining the craft of writing we tend to link too many factors with desired outcomes.
Who’s “we”?
engaging a novel subject of broad interest and doing it within a familiar science fiction framework
Whose “broad interest”?
***
Meanwhile, Meril, the “recycled air” metaphor speaks to you of unintelligible intertextuality, and you take a swipe at fanfiction because of it? Heh. One of the of the main advantages of fanfic, as I see it, is that it comes explicitly packaged with pointers to the decryption key.
(…also: If a work of literature stands alone, can there be anyone there reading it?)
I think in the pursuit of explaining the craft of writing we tend to link too many factors with desired outcomes. So that, freshness is a function of “hardness,” and “grittyness,” and “realism,” and “contemporary-ness,” and staleness is a function of “overblown allegory,” and “fantastic technology,” and “genre tropes” when really writer’s and critics don’t know what the universal secrete to freshness and staleness, we just say stuff, because it seems like we should have a much better handle on what works and what doesn’t. It seems that prescriptive statements like the one above almost always end badly.
I’ve always liked reading literary criticism about writing I know well – if, that is, the critic can herself write well. Good literary criticism dissects the writing down to bone and muscle – reminds me that the glorious story I plunge into was created, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. Writing a novel or even a short story is a process in time as well as creativity. I love seeing how it was made.
Writers writing about the method of writing are sometimes not bad at it, but in practice a writer can only say how s/he did it, not how everyone should do it.
I don’t like Ken McLeod’s novels at all: I’ve sporadically tried, on the basis that it is a bit of a waste to have an SF writer actively producing in Scotland and me not to be able to read them: but I don’t. (I don’t altogether get on with Iain Banks, either, except when he’s writing about whisky.) I’m unsurprised I don’t agree with what you quote him saying about writing.
I love Margaret Elphinstone’s SF, and wish she wrote more of it. (The Incomer, and A Sparrow’s Flight, both set in a future Scotland.)
Chacun ses goûts: I think Elphinstone is technically a better writer than MacLeod, and certainly what she chooses to write about interests me more. Her future is probably more “realistic” – at least, I hope so.
Yet Elphinstone’s SF novels can only be understood as SF by a reader so thoroughly familiar with genre tropes – the awful catastrophe that wipes out vast numbers and destroys cities, leaving survivors huddled together in small villages, without any technology beyond the medieval, to whom surviving vestiges of the pre-catastrophe culture are bewildering, incomprehensible, dangerous – that these tropes can be taken absolutely for granted and never directly referred to. The plot of The Incomer is the romance of a stranger who spends a winter in an isolated village: the plot of A Sparrow’s Flight is the romance of two strangers making a journey together, both of self-discovery and physically on the road.
A reader unfamiliar with SF could probably enjoy both novels without understanding the genre: yet the tropes that breathe through the novels may be ancient, recycled and rebreathed so often I could recognise the flavor at once – but found the novel richer for it.