I will kiss the girl from Venus — for SCIENCE! (updated)
(It’s a They Might Be Giants reference. An obscure one.)
So (and this is of course what spurred the question about the recommended list) I just filled out the Locus poll. At the end of it was the following “Bonus Commentary Question”:
Current cutting-edge science fiction is sometimes thought too abstruse or in-bred, too dependent on knowledge of past works in the field, for new readers to understand or appreciate. On the other hand, SF and fantasy films are popular as any, and novels like Fahrenheit 451 and Flowers for Algernon are routinely taught in high schools. If you wanted to attract a young reader to a committed interest in SF and fantasy books, what titles would you recommend? Or what strategy would you suggest? The best responses will be posted on Locus Online.
Against the possibility that my response isn’t one of the best, I reproduce it here.
Wikipedia, ca. 2020:
Science fiction: A twentieth-century literary movement, largely American, that grew out of the contradiction between late-Victorian inventor-worship and the destructive potential of technology as embodied by mustard gas, the machine gun, and the atomic bomb. It gained strength in the early years of the Cold War, when science was one of the war’s major fronts, but likewise weakened as the American victory in the so-called ‘Space Race’, the lessening of tension between the US and USSR, and discontent with the ongoing war in Vietnam combined to reduce enthusiasm for both the Cold War and for ‘Big Science’.A revival in the 1980s, spurred by alarm over the rise of Japan as an industrial and technological power, again lost steam with the collapse of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ and the near-simultaneous rise of the Internet, which inaugurated a new period of perceived American technological leadership. In the twenty-first century, as climate change and radical postcolonial insurgency replaced superpower confrontation and technological advancement as major sources of societal anxiety, science fiction became essentially a niche form of primarily historical interest, kept alive by a small community of specialists, antiquarians, and historical reenactors, but of no broader contemporary relevance.The future, however, remains as relevant as ever. If science fiction wants to attract and hold a wider readership, it needs to stop looking back to Heinlein juveniles and start looking around and forward. I love cosmology, neurology, and complexity theory as much as the next guy, but only if the next guy’s a geek. There are enough geeks out there to make that a great career, as Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross can attest. But science isn’t what the world is about any more, if it ever was. Stop leaning on Asimov and Clarke and start leaning on Brunner and le Guin. Stop expecting the kids to read Peter Watts and Vernor Vinge and start hoping they read Bruce Sterling and Geoff Ryman.
Fantasy, by the way, is doing just fine.
The astute, WisCon-going reader will note that the history of SF above is one fat Neutral Point of View violation. Namely, it views SF through that peculiar hard-SF lens that is incapable of transmitting photons reflected from any social-SF writers, most of the interesting SF writers of the 1970s, and most women SF writers. Thing is, I still think that’s SF’s core self-image, and the point of view that defines what the industry press, e.g. Locus, calls “cutting edge”. Which is either part of the problem, or evidence that the problem is basically a perception problem. I kind of tried to get to that in the major non-Wikipedia paragraph there, but to cover it properly would have been a whole additional essay.
And how embarrassing is it that I couldn’t come up with any women other than le Guin to mention in that last paragraph? I would have mentioned Maureen along with Sterling and Ryman in that last line, as someone writing science fiction that’s directly relevant to what’s going down in the world today, only… well, she kind of isn’t writing much science fiction these days. Actually there aren’t a lot of SF novelists of any gender that strike me as being relevant right now in the way that, say, Stand On Zanzibar was relevant or The Word for World is Forest was relevant or even the Foundation trilogy (no, really, look at what was going on in economics and sociology and psychology) was relevant. Who am I missing?
Oh, and, since we haven’t had a good fight around here for ages, am I right or wrong?
Update: Who am I missing? #1: Barth Anderson. Have to see what he does after Patron Saint of Plagues…
February 6th, 2007 at 11:59 am
The problem with finding the “relevant” SF novel of today isn’t that worthy candidates don’t exist… but that the total number of new books (in addition to the backlist of classics!) is just overwhelming. So many books, so little time…
J’Accuse: How many people on the Web today talk about “important” books that they haven’t yet had time to read?
February 6th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Bah. If talking about books you haven’t read is wrong, I don’t want to be right. As for the problem being the sheer number of books published: Somebody must have read some of them. I await the adduction of examples.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
And how embarrassing is it that I couldn’t come up with any women other than le Guin to mention in that last paragraph? Tokenism really is much better than a complete vacuum, as I am learning to my cost. And admitting you have a problem [before I can make it to the bottom of the post to comment on it] is the first step to curing tokenism.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
So, medium embarrassing, is what you’re saying.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
medium rare, really.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Hmm. Gwyneth Jones? Tricia Sullivan? Octavia Butler for someone to lean on?
And on the relevance front more generally, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ian McDonald, Paolo Bacigalupi?
(Your post deserves a more substantive response, but my brain is too fogged right now to manage it.)
February 6th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I haven’t read Sullivan and I haven’t read Jones in, oh, let’s not think about how long, but quite possibly. Octavia Butler, yeah, definitely should be in there (although I haven’t read any of her stuff for quite a while either).
Paolo needs to write a novel.
Ian McDonald, again, I haven’t read, but it sounds like it. I don’t know why I’m reluctant to put KSR in the category — maybe I’m overloading it, expecting not just “relevant” but “accessible,” particularly to readers who aren’t necessarily “literature of ideas” types. Which I don’t think KSR is, very, although it’s hard to put my finger on just why. This quote from Clute, though, might be relevant:
Looking forward to hearing more when you’re less fogged.
(I did kill the Blindsight discussion, didn’t I?)
February 6th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
God save us from relevance.
Give me big space shapes and lots of lasers. I crave vicarious excitement.
Of course, you could try Justina Robson. Relevant and exciting.
February 6th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Patrick, I very nearly mentioned Justina Robson, but I don’t think she’s quite — yet — firing on all cylinders. Plus, I’m a bit disappointed with the whole Keeping it Real series. But Living Next-Door to the God of Love is great.
David, that’s a great Clute quote, even if (or perhaps especially because) it makes KSR sound a bit like Asimov 2.0. And I think I can see where you’re coming from. But I have to admit, I’ve never really thought of KSR’s books as particularly inaccessible … just a bit dense, maybe.
(And the Blindsight discussion will rise again! Honest! I can’t actually believe I’ve been ill for as long as I have. I must have worked through my allocation of plague for about the next three years, I reckon.)
February 6th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Hmm. Maybe I’m just thick-headed today, but I’m not sure I really get the question you’re asking. I have to admit I’ve never really understood what’s meant by “relevant” in literature. It seems to mean something more than just “germane” or “paying attention to what’s going on around you” — that is, it seems to involve some privileging of specific aspects of what’s going on around you, and I’m not sure I get the weighting algorithm.
Is something relevant by virtue of the effect it has — that is, if when you dig into a large proportion of the histories of poly, etc., people, you find Stranger in a Strange Land somewhere, possibly a generation or more back, does that make Stranger in a Strange Land astoundingly relevant?
Or is the relevance you’re talking about a potential for such an effect, whether or not it’s realized? Or are you talking about a kind of engagement with what most people consider political, regardless of its effects, so that The Lorax is more relevant than The Cat in the Hat for all that the latter is more popular and just as engaged in broader philosophical issues?
Or is it simply an aliveness to what’s going on around you in the abstract, a vividness of observation? Is Mrs. Dalloway relevant? Is Emma?
Or are you talking about something specific in terms of “science fiction’s job” — that some books are merely the books they are, but others are engaged in a project, a social critique, say, of the effects and uses and imaginings of technology, and so “relevant science fiction” means science fiction that’s on the job, contributing to the project?
Or is this a phenomenological experience you’re talking about? Is your complaint that the books you’ve read are books lately that, at best, are pleasant to get lost in, but not books that make you want to jump up afterwards and go do something? (If so, what did Foundation make people want to jump up and go do?)
If I’m reading “relevance” even vaguely right — I await elucidation — there also seems to be a segue here between issues of what I can only, somewhat relucantly, call style, to issues of what I tentatively imagine to be political engagement. I mean, in the beginning, you contrapose Cory Doctorow with Geoff Ryman, but Cory seems to be at least as politically engaged a writer — to a fault, arguably. I’m squinting to figure out some set of criteria by which “Anda’s Game”, say, fails a relevance test (or even an accessibility test, given it publication and reprinting well outside the ghetto walls).
It feels like there are several things — political engagement, accessible style, technical vs. nontechnical issues, hard vs. soft science — that are conflated here to the detriment of any of the undoubtedly insightful arguments you could make about any one of them.
And if you are looking for a fight :-> , I’m willing to pick one over the general rhetorical strategy of “Stop expecting the kids to read…”, and specifically with “the kids”. In fact the kids are just as heterogenous a set, in terms of their preferences and desires, as any set of adults — the only difference is that, since they presumably don’t yet have fixed loyalty to any adult genre, they are territory to be fought over. But in fact some of them love Encyclopedia Brown and despise the American Girls and some visa versa, and the works of Clarke (or Russ) will be dead boring to some and a salvation to others. How about we let the kids read whatever the hell they want?
February 6th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
How about we let the kids read whatever the hell they want?
Don’t ask me, ask Locus.
It feels like there are several things — political engagement, accessible style, technical vs. nontechnical issues, hard vs. soft science — that are conflated here to the detriment of any of the undoubtedly insightful arguments you could make about any one of them.
Probably because none of them are my argument. My argument is that traditional SF reflects the concerns of a particular historical moment. An interest, today, in the literature arising from those concerns is an eccentricity, on the level of an interest in Victorian adventure fiction or Restoration drama or Knickerbocker Rules baseball.
There’s nothing wrong with having eccentric interests. (God knows I do: exploding spaceships and talking computers among them.) But no one should be surprised that as that historical moment recedes the proportion of the population that shares that interest is receding. If futuristic and irrealist fiction grow, it’ll be because they use futurist and irrealist techniques to deal with contemporary concerns, not because they get ever more accurate in striking the center of a shrinking target.
I will admit that stylistic inaccessibility is a different problem — though related, inasmuch as old-fashioned SF has a characteristic style as well as characteristic substance, and the same eccentrics that are interested in the latter are likely to be habituated to the former.
February 6th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I should add that I don’t actually think SF has a problem. Letting the kids read whatever the hell they want seems to be working fine, as far as I can tell. But Locus seems to want to know why (to paraphrase Alan) “more things aren’t being read that they like.”
February 6th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
(Why is it that whenever I respond to Ben or Ted I suddenly go all dull and pedantic?)
February 6th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Hmm. So what is the target that “traditional SF” is striking at, and what are the contemporary concerns it is not addressing?
On some level there’s a tautology here — Locus (or anyone else) complains that “kids today aren’t reading the stuff I read as a kid”; you (or whomever) reply “life moves on”.
But I’d be interested in your characterizing the argument with more specificity. Is Chandler/Hammett era detective fiction obsolete in the same sense as Clarke and Asimov? Is anything written consciously in the tradition of a book from 1950 equally obsolete, or are some books from 1950 better stylistic and topical guides to a book-for-today than others?
In other words, “traditional SF is old-fashioned” is kind of a tautology. Can you specify what about it you think is old-fashioned? If Ryman is the heir of Brunner and Doctorow the heir of Clarke, you seem to be making a claim that one of those strands is more obsolete than another, the way, perhaps, Restoration drama is more obsolete — for staging purposes — than Shakespearean drama. Not the greatest example. Let’s say, fox-hunting and tennis — pursuits of 18th c. English gentry, one now a niche sport for oddballs, the other attended to by the world.
I’m also not sure how much what you’re saying is meant to be prescriptive vs. descriptive. In your last comment you seem to be talking really about “popular”; I can construe it to mean “SF interested in solving the worlds’ problems through physics is now out of fashion; fewer people buy such books. That doesn’t bother me, but it appears to bother Locus.”
But before you were talking about relevant. There was a passionate call for someone to write books that in some way resembled The World For World Is Forest, Foundation, and Zanzibar. Those weren’t the biggest bestsellers of the years they came out in, so I don’t think that by “relevant” you just meant “popular”. I’m more interested in that part of the argument — what are you calling for, prescriptively? — than in another online conversation about the causes of SF’s supposedly declining sales figures.
Is Harry Potter “relevant”? In the sense you and Niall were using in agreeing that Octavia Butler was “relevant”?
Is there a call here for SF to do something, besides, you know, sell?
February 6th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
(Why is it that whenever I respond to Ben or Ted I suddenly go all dull and pedantic?)
It’s an inital gambit to draw us further into furious debate. We’re on to your tricks.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I don’t know how far I can get drawn into this, but I do think that Chandler/Hammett era detective fiction is obsolete, in the sense that I’m pretty sure the bulk of mystery fiction published today doesn’t have a strong resemblance to those writers. (Or, to cover myself here because I’m a hobbyist reader of mysteries rather than, like, an expert: the best-selling mystery fiction today doesn’t appear to resemble the big stars of that era. As far as I can tell.)
February 6th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I really like KSR and don’t find him inaccesible, and I tend to think of myself as a somewhat lazy reader too much of the time. I recently read both Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below and, while they’re not flawless works of literature, I greatly enjoyed both of them (though it took me a *long* time to get through the latter) and found them very relevant to the world’s issues today.
It was pointed out to me that nothing really happens in Forty Signs of Rain until the end, so as far as action packed science fiction goes, I can see how it loses readers. But I don’t think that means we should dismiss it from the discussion. Many younger readers — though admittedly, I’m talking high school, or even college aged — are also our activists (I assume because they have more energy and a less jaded worldview than older people), and I think KSR’s optimistic outlook (with his problem-solving, energetic protagonists) would appeal/ speak to them.
I strongly agree with adding Barth’s Patron Saint of Plagues to the list. Also, in a different way, Spin? I’ll try to come up with some more examples…
February 6th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
My mystery reading is pretty haphazard, but I like, for instance, Stuart Kaminsky, whose relationship to Raymond Chandler seems a good deal closer than, say, Asimov’s to Doctorow or Stross, and at least as close as Vinge.
Of course that’s a pretty subjective determination. But what I can say more confidently is that he’s in dialogue with Chandler, the way Doctorow is in dialogue with Asimov; whereas someone like Sue Grafton, whom I haven’t read, but judging from the cute book titles, seems more in dialogue with Agatha Christie.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Ow. My brain hurts. When in doubt: numbered points!
1. I think that one of the things David is saying is that there is a body of sf still being written that reflects the concerns of the historical moment in which sf came into being, rather than the current historical moment. I agree with this. But it’s part of the nature of sf — it’s what happens, to an extent, whenever a writer riffs on a previously imagined future. If the riff is sufficiently good, that can be a big strength; if the riff ain’t all that, it can be a big weakness.
2. I think trying to identify “relevant” fiction is a minefield. However. I also think there are stories I read and think — yes, that’s not just something that connects with me, it’s something that captures some aspect of the world, in a way that other stories I have read recently are not. A very wide range of types of story can do this. I think sf probably is, or at least should be, well-suited to doing this, not because “all sf is about the present”, per se, but because I think the act of creating a science fiction setting tends to foreground, consciously or unconsciously, what the writer is thinking abouut the world.
3. I think everyone should read The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings, which is in part about this process — the way the complexity of the world is reduced to make a story out of it. Ings seems to be arguing, at times, that writing science fiction is the grossest simplification of all, perhaps even irresponsible; I don’t agree with that, but I can see how it affects some science fiction. I’m put in mind of Mr Sleight’s review of Rainbows End (a book I haven’t read yet), which argues that the book fails in part because it describes such a small slice of the world, because it reduces so much of the complexity of the real world. I think that sf that tries to capture some of that complexity has a better chance of being “relevant” than sf that doesn’t. I think this has certain stylistic implications — 1950s-sf writing is obsolete, if you like, because it can’t adequately capture the texture of the world as it is today.
4. I think sf can be good, great even, without being “relevant” in this way. I might put Blindsight in this category, since to me it’s a fascinating, compelling, etc exploration of a cluster of ideas, the sort of ideas sf should be able to explore — but it’s also kinda abstract. Leaving aside the question of whether it can make its ideas interesting to someone not already primed for them, I’m happy to concede that as a starting point, its ideas are the sort of niche interest thing David was talking about. It shouldn’t be where the natural core of the genre is (insofar as there is any kind of core these days, etc), but that’s what it’s received as.
5. I am far too tired to tell whether the above actually makes sense, or is full of wild inconsistencies. I am therefore going to bed and leaving it for y’all to tear to pieces.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I don’t presume to speak for Locus, and especially not for the webmaster of Locus online (who wrote the question, though it’s an issue we talk about at the print magazine too), but saying “Don’t ask me, ask Locus” won’t accomplish much, since we’re mostly just acknowledging a question that’s coming up increasingly on convention panels, in blogs, and in our author interviews: is SF too self-referential? Are we becoming a closed system that discourages new readers who don’t know the rules? And, if that’s a problem, what can we do about it?
Me, I’m a fantasy writer, so I don’t see a problem.
February 6th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I think trying to identify “relevant” fiction is a minefield.
Welcome to the minefield!
I also think there are stories I read and think — yes, that’s not just something that connects with me, it’s something that captures some aspect of the world, in a way that other stories I have read recently are not.
I do not doubt it. However, I currently have no idea what sort of stories do that for you, and whether there is any interesting overlap between those stories and the stories that do it for someone else.
That sense of recognition — “capturing some aspect of the world” — is of course an enormous pleasure of fiction. Recently I have had this pleasure when reading George Eliot’s depiction of five-year-old Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss — wow, that’s exactly how a five-year-old thinks, it’s startling yet so true — and in reading Paolo Baciagalupi’s “Pop Squad” — omg — that is indeed the natural extrapolation of our growing power over life and death, and our values — that is indeed “if this goes on”.
Note that “Pop Squad”, in classic dystopian fashion, achieves this shock of recognition precisely by being stylized, by being extreme, by being a sketch — by reducing “the complexity of the real world”. Like Candide and Animal Farm, it is not by capturing that complexity but by eschewing it that it achieves the clarity that summons that shock of recognition.
The shock of recognition isn’t all fiction does — it’s not the only pleasure. There’s a purely aesthetic, syntactic pleasure of formal beauty, there’s an immersive pleasure of being in a dream-state, fully immersed, without being called to consider the relation of text and world. I think we generally aim for all three pleasures, in different doses.
But given that it does occur in such a broad range, and that I have no trouble finding that shock of recognition in works written in 1950 or 1860, what does it have to do with obsolescence of some literary form, say, “traditional SF”?
Is there anything more specific to say here than “Write well!”, “I like what I like”, and “fashions change”?
I asked a lot of “is this relevant” questions above, and I would really like y’all’s thumbs-up/thumbs-down on the relevance of the following works. I think that might illuminate whether, as it seems, there is general agreement aside from me on the meaning of relevance, or whether it’s just a word everyone likes.
This blog should have polls built in!
Go Here…
February 6th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Hey, I wrote a long comment, and after posting it didnt show up, and after reposting it said “you already posted that”, but it still hasn’t shown up. Is it sequestered somewhere?
February 7th, 2007 at 2:17 am
Oh, God, let’s not start on “what is tradition” again.
February 7th, 2007 at 2:59 am
No…you won that one, I believe.
I thought we were on “what is relevance?”
February 7th, 2007 at 5:30 am
So what is the target that “traditional SF” is striking at?
And what are the contemporary concerns it is not addressing?
If I knew, maybe I wouldn’t be writing a philosophical space opera full of talking aliens and exploding spaceships (or vice versa). But I suggested a couple above. And in general, too much of what little science fiction I do find time to read could have been written — apart from the gadgets, the equations, and the lack of Soviet Union — any time in the past 30 years.
Not to say that’s necessarily a bad thing, from the point of view of us eccentrics. One result is that a lot of stuff from the 70s and 80s still holds up rather well.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Heather, Spin, really? It struck me as one of the clearest examples of SF-for-SF’s sake that I’d read in years. Even Chronoliths you could at least read as an allegory, if you squinted hard enough.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Susan, don’t let Ben pull you into the “in dialog with” trap; it’s a tarbaby.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Niall, I agree with all your points. Well, okay, on no. 3, I haven’t read Ings, but the last part of it, about texture, I think is spot-on.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Ben, the reason I didn’t answer your relevance questions in the first place — and I hoped clarifying my original point would make this obvious — is that, me being a historicist, they make no sense to me in this context. What makes a book relevant to future generations is a totally different argument and I don’t want to get into it here.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Hm, well, I guess it was the mood of Spin that felt contemporary to me. Something about the way everyone was trapped in a horrible situation that they could do nothing to change reminded me of the way I feel about the way our country (and perhaps our world) is going today. Global warming, the war in Iraq, the US’s general decline in the good graces in the rest of the world, the right-wing take over of our political system, these are all things that I feel I’m too small and insignificant to do anything productive to change… and, like those trapped in the spin, I occasionally feel like everything I do is irrelevant, because before long one of those things is going to come to a head…
… It is entirely possible that I was projecting onto the book, but I did read it as metaphor. Honest.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Maybe if it didn’t have a happy ending.
February 7th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I asked a lot of “is this relevant” questions above, and I would really like y’all’s thumbs-up/thumbs-down on the relevance of the following works. I think that might illuminate whether, as it seems, there is general agreement aside from me on the meaning of relevance, or whether it’s just a word everyone likes.
I don’t think there’s ever going to be general agreement on which books are relevant or not. I think there might be agreement among some people that the idea of “relevance” is one interesting/useful filter for looking at fiction, but I would expect to argue on a case by case basis for any given book.
In the sense I’m using it in this discussion, though, to me relevance isn’t just a shock of recognition, it’s almost certainly a shock of recognition that is in some way specifically contemporary (for a relatively generous value of contemporary) and in some way more than just personal. So while I’m sure Eliot’s depiction of five year old behaviour is brilliant, for me it’s a different kind of recognition than, say, some of the observations William Gibson makes in Pattern Recognition.
I suspect that hasn’t cleared up anything. If it helps any, I do agree that this blog — and indeed all blogs — should include polls as standard.
February 7th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Niall, that helps.
So relevance = “recognition specific to historical moment”.
Are we talking here about a specific pleasure in fiction which incorporates the thrill of saying to yourself “this assertion would have been wrong or meaningless 10 years ago, but now it’s true…”?
(And if so: do you often (ever?) find “relevant” works you disagree with politically?)
btw, I certainly wouldn’t expect us to agree on books, but having people go “what? you think *that* was relevant?” is a good way to flush out criteria.
February 7th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Also, a correction to my questions about books, which our host pointed out are framed Platonically — as if relevance was something that inhered forever in a work, like the number of words it contains.
I’m asking *was* The Lorax more relevant than The Cat in the Hat? Was Dr. Suess being just as relevant, in writing about (1950’s!) children’s ambivalence about freedom and safety, as in his (1950’s!) environmentalist parable?
It’s a writerly question. What do I have to do, as a writer, for a work to have the quality of relevance, or to produce the effect of relevance? Is it enough to be an acute observer of the present moment? Or do I have to deal in explicitly political themes, allegory, and broad social scope?
Fair warning: if you say, “I dunno, you just have to get lucky”, I am going to be dissatisfied…
February 7th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Can’t say, but I’m inclined to think they were both more relevant than One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
Understand, this is all totally provisional and totally subjective, and maybe relevance is something that can only be determined in hindsight. Maybe in another hundred years all of English-language literature will just be an exotic footnote composed in some Malagasy / Cantonese / Bantu creole, and when people talk about the zeitgeist of the early 21st century they’ll be talking about the African AIDS crisis and the suppression of ethnic minorities in China and care about as much about contemporary European / American affairs as David Horowitz cares about the War of the Triple Alliance.
What I, personally, would like, is just to read more good science fiction that doesn’t seem like it was written primarily with the Analog demographic in mind. Or the WIRED demographic.
February 7th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Niall: “Patrick, I very nearly mentioned Justina Robson, but I don’t think she’s quite — yet — firing on all cylinders. Plus, I’m a bit disappointed with the whole Keeping it Real series. But Living Next-Door to the God of Love is great.”
I couldn’t disagree more. I think the Keeping it Real series is an enormous step up for her. You have the ideas that are her trademark, along with fast-paced action and real fun. I love Living Next Door too, but I’d take Keeping it Real anytime.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
The other obscured bit of thesis in the question is this: why target kids with this question?
Well, most people start reading SF as kids. This isn’t all that surprising, given the amount of SF that targets kids. Plus, some significant fraction of those kids go on to be fans who read almost nothing but SF, and everyone knows that fans are wonderful people.
Great, as far as it goes, but adults read more than kids do. What’s so difficult about the idea of writing SF that an adult might like? People come to plenty of other genres late in life; it’s not as though the millions of people who read crime novels now cut their teeth on L’il Contintental Operator at age nine.
I guess the answer is that writing SF for adults might actually involve something other than the goofy-ass shit that sells to the fans today.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Okay, someone’s gotta do Li’l Continental Op. Veronica Mars is all very well, but it doesn’t have nearly enough corrupt city bosses, union-busting gangsters, laudanum, stabbings, or ruthless amoral professionalism.
And then somebody else can do Encyclopedia Spillane as a cheap right-wing knockoff.
February 7th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Dave, y’know, I wrote that comment, went to bed, and thought to myself, “oh, lord, he’s going to point out it’s a happy ending”, but I was too tired to get back up and add to my comment. Heh!
Anyway, I guess I just don’t need my metaphors to map exactly, especially when it comes to endings. I mean, we don’t know how global warming, the war, etc. are going to turn out yet, do we? What’s wrong with a little optimism?
Ben, I’d like to think that even small, personal stories can be relevant, perhaps even more so than the ones that tackle huge social or political issues. I think there’s a great power in fiction to make the reader relate to a character in a very personal way, and once you’ve got them identifying on that level you can bring up issues far more subtle and morally ambiguous, but that might actually relate to contemporary life better than a “bigger” story might. However, I think, because it’s so personal, you’re not going to get the props for being relevant, not in the way we’re talking about here. Perhaps this is a failing of our genre. I dunno.
February 7th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
What do I have to do, as a writer, for a work to have the quality of relevance, or to produce the effect of relevance?
Answer unclear. Ask again later.
Ben, I’d like to think that even small, personal stories can be relevant, perhaps even more so than the ones that tackle huge social or political issues.
I don’t think “tackling a huge issue” has to mean foregrounding said issues, though it certainly can. I think it’s also possible to write small personal stories that are intimately related to huge issues — see, for example, Air. (Though it’s fair to say that absent that sort of context, I’m liable to wonder why the story is written as sf.)
February 7th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Heather, my question was somewhat leading, in the sense that Mrs. Dalloway is obviously a feminist novel — Woolf’s close focus on aspects of daily life that other novelists of the time would see as beneath their notice was indeed political, and “pointedly of its time”, which seems like maybe what we’re using “relevant” to mean….
February 7th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Though it’s fair to say that absent that sort of context, I’m liable to wonder why the story is written as sf.
Is this the old rule that “true SF” requires “some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse”?
Because I don’t buy it. There are other reasons to invoke spaceships and robots and other worlds… ambience? Metaphor? Stylistic compatiblity, sympathetic sensibilities? An introduction of exoticism in order to tell an allegory; a statement of universality.
Some of that probably falls under space opera. Which still gets shelved under SF and read almost exclusively by SF readers, doesn’t it?
February 7th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
However, I think, because it’s so personal, you’re not going to get the props for being relevant…
Hey, Heather: Air. Mission Child.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Jackie, it’s a somewhat looser version of the rule, along the lines of “integral to the story”. So aesthetic effects are fine by me, but if you can transpose the whole thing to another genre with no loss of sense or effect I’m not liable to be very impressed. (I had a particularly egregious example of this in my head but it’s just gone. Dammit.)
February 7th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Crap in outer space is still crap, of course.
But I take you have NO USE for space opera for its own sake?
February 7th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Which definition of space opera are we using here? I likes me some Iain Banks, for instance.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Dear Jackie,
Henceforth all my stories involve time travlelers who will die if they return to their own (unspecified) time. Therefore, indisputably SCIENCE FICTION! or something.
love,
me
February 7th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
a story about exploding space ships and talking robots for no reason other than the author wanted to write a story about space ships and robots. Narrow down the generalization as you see fit.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Dear Chance,
As long as it doesn’t suck, and you include excerpts on your blog.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
(and excuse my typo, I blame London.)
February 7th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Dear Jackie,
Excerpt (with explosions!) coming soon. (That’s london soon though)
love,
me
February 7th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
ps. Does that mean you don’t want to read the space caper story, which was only written because I wanted to write a caper story IN SPACE. SPACE makes everything better.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Brown Harvest by Jay Russell is an Encyclopedia Brown story, all grown up. So that much we have covered!
As for the rest…relevancy! My God, where on Earth did that come from? Heck, where on Earth did the split between good book and bad come from? Locus just wants to know how to dragoon kids into reading SF, not into enjoying excellent novels.
The way to do that is to let the kid read whatever excellent novel, in whichever mode, he or she likes.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Dear Chance,
capers IN SPACE are awesome. Unless they suck.
keep up the good work,
Jam
ps. explosions are also awesome. see above.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Nick: But it’s not a crypto-fascist Encyclopedia Brown story. Also: hackers are boring.
February 9th, 2007 at 8:05 am
The direction I always find myself coming at this from is something like this:
Science fiction and fantasy have won in the movie medium. The all-time domestic (US) box office list (the non-inflation-adjusted one) has only one non-speculative movie in the top ten, and less than a dozen (depending on whether you count talking animals) in the top fifty.
And that’s not all fantasy, either. E.T.; Jurassic Park; Independence Day; Matrix Reloaded; Men in Black; War of the Worlds–all of those seem to me fairly clearly science fiction per se. Plus, arguably, the Star Wars movies and various superhero movies.
Okay, so really the genre of most of those movies is “action blockbuster” rather than “science fiction.” But they’re action blockbusters that rely extremely heavily on sfnal tropes.
So it’s not that the American public doesn’t get science fiction. It’s that they’re largely not into what we’re publishing as prose science fiction, unless it’s a movie tie-in.
So it seems to me that if one wants kids, or adults, to read more science fiction, then maybe one should look toward starting by giving them stuff similar to what we know they like.
And, from another side, work on making Hollywood movies smarter about their use of sf. I personally think there’ve been several major movies in recent years that are also good science fiction, but I realize that a lot of people disagree with me about that.
(I can’t resist naming some, if only to provoke cries of outrage. Terminator and T3. I, Robot. Pitch Black. I get onto shakier ground after those, but there are several others I put in the same general category.)
…I was going to try to respond to a bunch of other people’s comments, but it’s gotten late and I really ought to be editing, so I’ll stop here.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Note that strictly speaking they’re not asking about prose science fiction in general. They’re talking about “current cutting-edge science fiction,” which I take to be stuff like Accelerando and Blindsight.
February 9th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Just throwing a newly-acquired data point in here: I’ve got a seminar full of students who claim to have never really encountered science fiction before, but they all love Michael Crichton and Heroes.
February 9th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Man, I wish there was a progressive bestselling technothriller writer out there.
February 9th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
So it seems to me that if one wants kids, or adults, to read more science fiction, then maybe one should look toward starting by giving them stuff similar to what we know they like.
Really? Because it seems to me that a) the stuff that movies do works much better as movies than as prose, b) publishing houses are already frenetically working spin-offs and tie-ins, which is as “similar to what we know they like” as possible, and c) novels that do very well and attract subsequent hordes of imitators — whether we are talking about Tolkein, Dune, Neuromancer, Carrie, or Beloved — tend to be sui generis and rule-breaking and precisely not what everyone is used to (Harry Potter, as a highly derivative breakout marvel, being an exception that proves that this rule isn’t a tautology).
And, from another side, work on making Hollywood movies smarter about their use of sf. I personally think there’ve been several major movies in recent years that are also good science fiction, but I realize that a lot of people disagree with me about that.
I agree with you there. I haven’t seen the ones you mention, but I thought The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and 28 Days Later were all impeccably sfnal, and fine movies.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
It’s worth noting that “SF has gotta be more like the movies!” has been everyone’s secret recipe for success for nearly two generations.
It hasn’t worked yet, and there is ZERO evidence that it ever will. It’s now simply an article of faith. The ghost dance shall do away with the white man, if we just dance it ENOUGH.
Movies are different than books.
It strikes me that if one wants SF to be a more successful genre in the book trade, then one should not mimic non-books, but more successful genres.
Romance, for example, has seen the rise of no fewer than FOUR new subgenres in the past ten years: Chicklit, urban romance, paranormal romance, and romantica are all major players in the romance field now. As much as that genre is dumped on for being formulaic and shitty, it is VERY dynamic. That’s why it has and has kept 50% of the fiction market for decades.
Also, check out mystery. You can find stories of any sort, in any setting, with any sort of conflict or conclusion on those shelves. And even the Old Guard gets it — the MWA’s Edgar awards (juried, not member votes) nominated Jeff Ford last year and Brian Evenson this year for paperback originals. Think Pynchon might get a Nebula nod this, even from the Neb additions jury? Never happen. They’d sooner eat glass. Mystery is very open to new trends, and quickly markets them so that they can be differentiated from the old stuff (which is itself still often in print, refreshed for new generations, etc.). That’s why it has a major market share too.
Compare this to SF. What’s “New Weird” or “New Hard Space Opera” but a mere handful of titles and a lot of backfilling to claim antecedents? There’s hardly any drive in the marketplace to educate readers as to what these things are. Hell, there’s hardly any difference in cover art signifiers between Accelerando and Ender’s Game (except for the YA edition of EG). As far as the casual reader is concerned, it’s all the same shit.
Movies and TV shows just don’t count. One doesn’t have to watch a movie or TV show alone, one doesn’t even have to pay much attention to them while watching. Books are designed to engross, while movies/tv shows are designed to dazzle. You can’t really cross the streams here. (There’s also a reason why major mystery and romance novels rarely make for very popular films, but that’s another post.)
February 9th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
is it bad if I find myself agreeing with Nick?
February 9th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
No time to reply in detail now, but just wanted to post a quick note to say I didn’t mean “more like the movies” in the sense of trying to reproduce the experience of seeing a movie in a book, nor in the sense of writing spinoff books.
I meant something vaguer: the mass public likes sf in movies. If we can figure out what it is in that they like about sf in movies, and if we can do something similar to that in books (and I don’t know whether either of those things are possible), then we may end up with books that both (a) contain sf, and (b) appeal to a mass audience.
My point really is that the assumption a lot of people start with — that science fiction is currently of no interest to a mass audience — isn’t true. It’s a certain kind of science fiction, as presented in a certain kind of book, that mass audiences don’t seem to be into; there are other kinds, as presented in certain kinds of movies, that they do go for.
Don’t know whether that clarifies, muddies, or just makes me sound so vague as to be useless, but no time for more right now.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
What makes you think that what the public likes in SF movies is the SF, Jed?
Further, I guess I can only repeat more specifically, you’re still offering up old wine in new bottles. You’re essentially arguing the Baen/tie-in fiction strategy. When Ordover was running the Star Trek line, he made the same point you did. Movies and TV shows are popular, the ST books he brought into print captured the bold heroes and great adventures people loved, and they were popular too and earned their shelf space. That’s why he rocked and the rest of SF sucked. He’d been selling this concept for at least a decade before finally leaving Star Trek.
(He also pointed out that popular mystery shows hadn’t led to any popular mystery novel series, citing the abortive L&O series of tie-ins. Since then, he’s been proven wrong by popular MONK, DIAGNOSIS MURDER, and MURDER, SHE WROTE tie-ins. Mystery readers and viewers want characters with fun quirks, and have since Holmes. L&O cyphers never had a chance on the racks.)
Ditto Baen. What’s the whole “beer money” argument around Baen Universe about but what you’re claiming here? It’s the same thing. Movies are about white guys or non-threatening blacks kicking alien/super-villain ass! So are Baen books and stories! That’s why Baen has remained solvent while other publishers of its size and type have been bought out by the congloms to work as loss-leaders and training pits for new publicity hires straight out of Vassar and NYU.
BUT, for all the bowing toward Boy’s Own Adventure, it’s worth noting that less cliffhangery Hitler-kitsch material — in the literary mainstream, and in other genres — also sells better than the average run of SF.
What people like about SF movies is that they’re movies, and they’re movies that kids can enjoy because bright colors are bopping around the screen. It’s a visual experience, not necessarily an intellectual or even an emotional one. Books just work differently, though now we are seeing people write books for both kids and adults, thanks to Harry Potter and such. (But those books still aren’t and cannot offer the same experience as movies.)
What SF should do is not chase after non-readers, but try to win a larger share of, you know, people who already read books. Outside of SF, you rarely see the kind of social identity as a “fan” for other genres. Most readers will pick up a mystery, the Oprah book of the month, a romance next, what their friend says was good, the book with the cover that looks cute or slick, etc.
But SF doesn’t get that audience. All SF has as its core is nerds that grew up, but not all the way. Thus the very junior high school cliquism of fandom.
February 10th, 2007 at 8:06 am
The counterpart of the science fiction action movie isn’t even the Baen novel, it’s the technothriller.
But of course SF doesn’t have the casual reader as its “core”. If they were “core” they wouldn’t be “casual”. There are still plenty of readers who’ll pick up a science fiction or fantasy novel off the New Arrivals table. Just not the ones with Realms of Fantasy- or Analog-style covers. And naturally you rarely see those readers at conventions or on the Night Shade message boards.
February 10th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
And naturally you rarely see those readers at conventions or on the Night Shade message boards.
Or reading Locus. The reason they ask about committed interest is presumably because they are interested not in people like myself who read a dozen sf books a year in with everything else I read but neither attend conventions nor read magazines, but the sort of person who becomes a subscriber to their magazine. Those subscribers do watch blockbuster sf movies (mostly), but are a small group of the ticket-buyers for the movies. Locus, obviously, is interested in making new subscribers, and I think it’s an interesting question from that point of view (for instance, at some point I went from a teenaged con-goer to a non-teenaged con-non-goer while still reading and watching sf; why?), but it isn’t the question you are addressing, I think.
Well, in some ways it is. One connection, it seems to me is (many millions of people like sf movies/TV but don’t read sf books)-(what are the sources of viewer pleasure in sf movies/TV that are not evident in non-sf action/adventure movies/TV)-(are those sources to be found in prose?)-(if so, how can the millions find them)-(having found them, will the millions identify themselves as having a committed interest in sf)-(subscriptions!) But the point of the question is the end bit, and I think y’all are more interested in the early bit. My guess, anyway.
Thanks,
-V.
February 10th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
The counterpart of the science fiction action movie isn’t even the Baen novel, it’s the technothriller.
Nah. Kids don’t read technothrillers. They do see SF actioners.
But of course SF doesn’t have the casual reader as its “core”. If they were “core” they wouldn’t be “casual”.
Clever-sounding, but not true. You keep mentioning thrillers, for example. Well, there is no core thriller audience. Thrillers are sold to hundreds of thousands of casual readers, and this happens without there even been a “Thriller” section in most bookstores, or even dedicated thriller lines in most publishers. The reason Clancy sells tons of copies is because he sells his books to people who only read a book a year, and it’s not even as though they’re just sitting around waiting for the next Clancy (though he does have his fans); it’s just because they’re in the supermarket and don’t have girls on the cover.
There are still plenty of readers who’ll pick up a science fiction or fantasy novel off the New Arrivals table. Just not the ones with Realms of Fantasy- or Analog-style covers.
And how many novels with such covers are published each year? And how many of those novels will SF fans either not pick up or will resent somehow?
Last year, at Arisia, I was on a panel with a woman who bragged that she got so upset at seeing Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent global warming books in the F/Li section at Borders that whenever she went she would take them off the shelf and restack them in SF/F. She also called the store manager and then the regional manager to complain, because someone in the store told her that they were in F/L because it was thought that those books were quite well-written and would be of interest to the general reader.
Well, ain’t no way was she lettin’ Stan out the ghetto, no suh! He was going to stay in SF/F where he belongs, and where most readers don’t go, if she had to visit the store and restack him EVERY WEEK!
Her declaration (not the ghetto part, which is mine, but the EVERY WEEK bit) was greeted with applause.
The reason they ask about committed interest is presumably because they are interested not in people like myself who read a dozen sf books a year
On the contrary, a dozen SF books a year IS a committed interest.
Hell, reading a dozen books a year of any sort outside of school is virtually subversive these days.
Locus isn’t looking to grow new subscribers from kids, as it’s an industry rag. It’s looking to talk about expanding readership in general, and thus the industry, so there will be more call to buy its ad pages within the industry. It’s just stuck in the fannish model of the nine year-old nerd imagining brave new worlds in which they’re not just miserable little bastards after all. (This theme crops up constantly…the usually excellent William Browning Spencer even shat out his worst story ever on this subject in last month’s F&SF.) They can’t even conceive of an adult wanting to read the SF book for the first time EVAR and then liking it and being interested in more.
Magazines often lose money on subscriptions, that’s why content is migrating online slowly but surely. Indeed, except for the SF digests and a few newsletters aiming for valuable niches of people who’ll pay a premium, consumer magazines just do NOT run on a subscription-based model. They run on an ad-based model, with subscriptions as a way to stabilize their print runs.
February 12th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
In order to follow what the heck Nick was talking about, I googled “romantica genre”, and found this discussion of genre border wars in RWA.
Somehow I find it very soothing to read about tiffs in other people’s writers’ organizations…
February 12th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I wouldn’t say “soothing” exactly, but the report on the 2005 RWA national conference was hilarious.
I assume “romantica” = “romance” + “erotica”?
February 12th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
(And where’s all the agapetica, anyway?)
February 12th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Yes, romantica is a horrid portmanteau of romance and erotica.
Gavin Grant suggested an alternative name: MANTASTICA! It’s like romance, but more MANTASTIC.
I’m with him.
February 12th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Make it “MANTASTIKA!”, with a K and an exclamation mark, and you could probably get Warren Ellis on board.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:45 am
With a cosplay spinoff of Mantasticats!
February 13th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
And a musical, The Mantasticks!
February 13th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
To further unravel the secrets of romance publishing’s success-through-genre-innovation, I googled “inspirational erotic romance”. It turns out this involves sex with angels.
February 16th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Oh, those silly micropress romance authors with their sex-with-angels book!
Good thing our rock-ribbed conglomerate SF/F imprints would never publish any such thing.
Oh wait…
February 16th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I think there’s a cross-marketing opportunity for Hal Duncan here somewhere, too…
March 5th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Ooh, “mage-heat”!