Russian writer told me, “The government keeps one eye closed,” in its tolerance of science fiction. Social criticism is permitted—as long as it is criticism of a future world, not the present one.
But is it art? Arnold Klein, a poet and book reviewer, wrote in a recent issue of Harper’s magazine that “sci-fi 1 is a hormonal activity, not a literary one. Its traditional concerns are all pubescent.... Aliens have tentacles. Telepathy allows you to have sex without the nasty inconvenience of touching. Womblike spaceships provide balanced meals. No one ever has to grow old.... As for the adult world, it’s simply not there...”
v~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~v
1 Sci-fi is an abbreviation that is abominated by most science fictionists. Generally, it is used only by the uninformed or to be deliberately denigrating.
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
Klein is obviously discounting works such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. For several generations now, the so-called literary world has labored under the misapprehension that “if it’s science fiction, it can’t be good; if it’s good, it can’t be science fiction.”
Science fiction practitioners freely admit that literary standards have usually been less important in their field than idea content and narrative drive. It is all too easy for stories of the future to degenerate into “space operas” set on distant planets, in which alien “bug-eyed monsters” are the villains.
Theodore Sturgeon, one of science fiction’s most literate writers, long ago coined Sturgeon’s Law:
“Ninety percent of science fiction is crud; but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.”
Sturgeon has established himself well within the good ten percent of the field, with novels such as More Than Human, in which he examines the next step of human evolution—“Homo gestalt”—a group entity consisting of several individual human beings linked by telepathy into a single, superior, but touchingly vulnerable creature.
Lester Del Rey, a veteran of science fiction’s “Golden Age” of the early 1940s and now Fantasy Editor of Del Rey Books, has a different view about literary quality. Admitting that science fiction “doesn’t come off too well” in the usual terms of characterization and psychological insights, Del Rey then adds: “But if you want to take some of the added things that science fiction brings to literature—the ability to have a much more flexible attitude, to think of things in different ways, not necessarily accepted ways... to recognize the reality of the world, because science is the reality of the world and this is almost totally neglected in general fiction—then you’ve got a new set of standards, and those standards would say that current [straight] fiction is totally junk.”
In the view of Del Rey, and many others in the science fiction field, contemporary literature sees the human individual as a tragically flawed creature, unable to understand the world around him and doomed to inevitable failure and death. It is generally pessimistic and anti-heroic, because it is based on the notion that humankind has fallen from grace.
Science fiction, on the other hand, is built on the fundamental optimism of science itself, the belief in the perfectability of the individual human being and of human society. While admitting that technology is not an unmixed blessing, science fiction maintains that humanity cannot exist at all without science and technology. A man without technology would not be a noble savage in some idyllic Eden; he would be a dead naked ape.
In science fiction, the human mind can not only create problems, it can create solutions. Rational thought is our saying grace; we can understand the world around us and our place in it. Albert Einstein summed up the attitude of scientists and science fictionists alike when he said, “The ultimate mystery of the universe is its understandability.”
Frank
But is it art? Arnold Klein, a poet and book reviewer, wrote in a recent issue of Harper’s magazine that “sci-fi 1 is a hormonal activity, not a literary one. Its traditional concerns are all pubescent.... Aliens have tentacles. Telepathy allows you to have sex without the nasty inconvenience of touching. Womblike spaceships provide balanced meals. No one ever has to grow old.... As for the adult world, it’s simply not there...”
v~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~v
1 Sci-fi is an abbreviation that is abominated by most science fictionists. Generally, it is used only by the uninformed or to be deliberately denigrating.
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
Klein is obviously discounting works such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. For several generations now, the so-called literary world has labored under the misapprehension that “if it’s science fiction, it can’t be good; if it’s good, it can’t be science fiction.”
Science fiction practitioners freely admit that literary standards have usually been less important in their field than idea content and narrative drive. It is all too easy for stories of the future to degenerate into “space operas” set on distant planets, in which alien “bug-eyed monsters” are the villains.
Theodore Sturgeon, one of science fiction’s most literate writers, long ago coined Sturgeon’s Law:
“Ninety percent of science fiction is crud; but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.”
Sturgeon has established himself well within the good ten percent of the field, with novels such as More Than Human, in which he examines the next step of human evolution—“Homo gestalt”—a group entity consisting of several individual human beings linked by telepathy into a single, superior, but touchingly vulnerable creature.
Lester Del Rey, a veteran of science fiction’s “Golden Age” of the early 1940s and now Fantasy Editor of Del Rey Books, has a different view about literary quality. Admitting that science fiction “doesn’t come off too well” in the usual terms of characterization and psychological insights, Del Rey then adds: “But if you want to take some of the added things that science fiction brings to literature—the ability to have a much more flexible attitude, to think of things in different ways, not necessarily accepted ways... to recognize the reality of the world, because science is the reality of the world and this is almost totally neglected in general fiction—then you’ve got a new set of standards, and those standards would say that current [straight] fiction is totally junk.”
In the view of Del Rey, and many others in the science fiction field, contemporary literature sees the human individual as a tragically flawed creature, unable to understand the world around him and doomed to inevitable failure and death. It is generally pessimistic and anti-heroic, because it is based on the notion that humankind has fallen from grace.
Science fiction, on the other hand, is built on the fundamental optimism of science itself, the belief in the perfectability of the individual human being and of human society. While admitting that technology is not an unmixed blessing, science fiction maintains that humanity cannot exist at all without science and technology. A man without technology would not be a noble savage in some idyllic Eden; he would be a dead naked ape.
In science fiction, the human mind can not only create problems, it can create solutions. Rational thought is our saying grace; we can understand the world around us and our place in it. Albert Einstein summed up the attitude of scientists and science fictionists alike when he said, “The ultimate mystery of the universe is its understandability.”
Frank
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