A Convenient Facade

In a review of John Scalzi's The Android's Dream, Dave Itzkoff asserts that Scalzi might prove himself worthy of comparison with an SF icon such as Robert Heinlien "if he uses [his future] work to articulate a firm position on the political issues that will inevitably define his historical moment, take a stance that considerate readers might potentially disagree with, and even risk the possibility that a half-century later, some petulant, know-nothing critic will dismiss his ideas as dangerous and obsolete".

I haven't read The Android's Dream, but if it does not "take a stance" on issues defining our "historical moment," for me that is in its favor and only makes me more likely to give it a try.

Itzkoff's take on science fiction in general (or at least that branch he calls "military sci-fi") leads me to think I might not clearly understand the ambitions of science fiction, at least among its more serious-minded authors and critics. Although I have only relatively recently begun to sample noteworthy science fiction novels and writers (that is, I am most assuredly a johnny-come-lately), I have done so under the assumption it is a genre that seeks to provide an alternative to "realism" and other conventionally "literary" practices, not just by evoking speculative worlds and looking to the future rather than the past or present but also by creating alternative forms and experimenting with the established elements of fiction (plot, setting, point of view, etc.). That SF is inherently a kind of experimental fiction is a proposition I have been convinced to take seriously by some of the more intelligent critical discussion of the genre, both on SF litblogs and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find this proposition very persuasively confirmed. The novels I have attempted, by among others Philip K. Dick, China Mieville, and Samuel Delaney, while they certainly do engage the imagination well beyond what is offered in most humdrum literary realism, do not seem to me especially preoccupied with formal experiment or stylistic innovation. (Which is not to deny that the latter two, at any rate, do write well.) Traditional plotting prevails, setting is described in the kind of minute detail a Flaubert-inspired realist would almost certainly admire, and point of view (at least in the particular novels I have read) remains transparent and undisturbed. They are, finally, resolutely traditional novels, if anything overloaded with conventional storytelling, marked as "other" only by their deliberately exotic subjects.

And now Dave Itzkoff tells me that SF writers ought to emphasize "stance" and "ideas" in a way that makes even these exotic subjects just a convenient facade behind which to hide the writer's ultimate intent to "articulate a firm position." Indeed, writing science fiction, it turns out, is just another way of conveying a "philosophy": In one of Scalzi's other books, the characters read Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which "they collectively decide 'had some good action scenes but required too much unpacking of philosophical ideas.'" "Heinlein may have cultivated a philosophy that now seems distasteful bordering on appalling," says Itzkoff, "but it is unfair to criticize him for simply having a philosophy. At a time when endless war is not just a nightmarish fictional scenario but a real and looming possibility, there is still a position less commendable than having dangerous ideas, and that is having no position at all."

Perhaps having "no position at all" on real war isn't very "commendable," but declining to take positions in fiction, even if war is the ostensible subject, brings no moral opprobrium at all. In purely literary terms, refusing to "take a position" by sticking to, well, literature, and leaving the moral or political discourse to other, more suitable forums is as much of a "stance" most fiction writers ought to feel comfortable assuming. If John Scalzi thinks his job is to write engaging works of fiction rather than "cultivate a philosophy" by indirection, it's all to his credit. But is Itzkoff's own position, that the work of the science fiction writer can be reduced to the attempt to stake out a position on this or that, really shared by most writers and readers who lay claim to this genre? Is it the literary "philosophy" of SF?

I have every intention of carrying on with my survey of science fiction, both current and classic. The next writer whose work I've decided to assay is Stanislaw Lem. Perhaps here I will find at least as much art as philosophy, an equal effort to explore the possibilities of fiction as a literary form as to "say something." I continue to expect (hope) that eventually I will find that science fiction truly can be a genre that expands these possibilities, that in my initial forays into SF I just didn't get it because of my own limitations or presuppositions. That critics like Dave Itzkoff themselves underestimate SF's potential to escape the tedious restrictions of polemics and "message."

UPDATE In a response to this post, Niall Harrison at Torque Control suggests I am "under the unfortunate impression that Dave Itzkoff knows what he’s talking about." This may be right. I don't know much about Itzkoff, and I should certainly be wary of taking reviews that appear in the New York Times Book Review as representative or authoritative about anything. Otherwise, Niall says that my attempt to find SF that does "something formally new not found in other kinds of fiction" is probably "doomed to fail" because "sf stories won’t often look like experiments, because the point is the subject." I'm not sure I know exactly what he means by that last statement, but at first glance it doesn't seem that far removed from Itzkoff's "taking a stance" except that the "point" to be made is inherent in the act of imagining alternative worlds.

Comments

[Rocco DiStreitlmahn]

Didn't Ray Bradbury say once that SF was just another way of doing philosophy?

[Steven Augustine]

Too true!

[Dan Green]

"In Science Fiction, the writer is often forced to load up on setting and exposition...to stuff details in...nothing can be taken for granted if you set your tale 500 years in the future, or 500 light years away and so forth."

Steven: You make a very good point. In my opinion, too many writes of literary fiction forget they can take such things for granted.

[Steven Augustine]

I was a Speculative-Fiction-mad college kid, without a doubt, but the limitations in the form (as it's often practised), now strike me as chiefly being in the fact that the 'best' literature is all about what the writer leaves out...the allusive core the writer carves the form down to. Literary Fiction can get away with this carving-down because so much of the setting, for example, can be taken for granted...we all know what a car, a street, a house look like. We all know what people look like, and so on.

Science Fiction, imagining alternative settings/eras/creatures/lexicons, etc., enjoys no such license, generally, to pare back. In Science Fiction, the writer is often forced to load up on setting and exposition...to stuff details in...nothing can be taken for granted if you set your tale 500 years in the future, or 500 light years away and so forth. This severely impedes the claims the genre can make, in general, on Art, I think. It ends up being closer to Tom Wolfe.

It's a rare writer (J.G. Ballard? Kurt Vonnegut definitely, but he's a special case, being a black- humorist) who can (almost) overcome this drawback in the genre. (with apologies to Harlan Ellison)

[Dan Green]

MELEAH: Wow. Thanks.

[melEAH rebeccah]

In lieu of it being "DELURKING" week (or so I've heard, over in blog land) You are supposed to comment on blogs you read all the time but never say anything.

I have commented maybe ONCE, but I wanted to take the time and let you know even though I don't comment, I READ you all the time, and LOVE THIS BLOG! so, um, thanks.

[Dan Green]

"these taxonomies a bit like genre ghettoization, don't you think?"

Actually I don't. They're imprecise, certainly, but ultimatety still useful, nevertheless. I don't see "experimental fiction" as a genre but as a name for the attempt--which I know when I see it--to expand fiction's formal possibilities.

[ed]

Dan: I don't think I agree with your framing of science fiction as "experimental" (and I am increasingly finding distinctions between "traditional" and "experimental" literature not to matter so much; these taxonomies a bit like genre ghettoization, don't you think?) or the idea that conventional narrative framed through an imaginative or phantasmagorical prism is a bad thing.

Nevertheless, I believe you might want to try Norman Spinrad's THE IRON DREAM or Jeff VanderMeer's SHRIEK (particularly the former) for sf books in which metafictional elements are employed. I don't know if these two books represent the kind of satisfactory "experimentalism" you appear to be looking for, but they are both worth a shot.

[Josh]

Well, a lot of the outrage Dhalgren inspired among some SF types had to do with its lack of "Traditional plotting" and the like; but that might only reflect just how reactionary certain elements in the field are. For a gloss on Delany's novels, I'd recommend Brian McHale's books on postmodern fiction.

Joanna Russ was an adept innovator in style and structure, whose skills are sometimes ignored by a too-exclusive focus on her "message." Avram Davidson's short fiction is stylistically vigorous; Theodore Sturgeon's "The Perfect Host" is an early example of SF that attempts to exploit metafictional tools.

[Dan Green]

Dhalgren is the Delaney novel I read. I can't say I found it very experimental.

[Ellen Datlow]

Samuel Delany's Dhalgren was experimental for its time, both sociologically and in its style.

[Zinnia Hope]

Haven't read that book either. I have a large stack of to-be-read books and only so much actual reading time right now.

[Niall]

Scalzi's own response to Itzkoff's review is here

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004704.html

With a roundup of links to other responses here

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004713.html

including this one by Sarah Monette

http://truepenny.livejournal.com/482813.html

on some common problems with "mainstream" reviewing of sf, Itzkoff included.

[Trent]

Oh, and what genre is good for--or WAS good for--are experimental philosophies. Weird shit. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land is wild because it helped instigate ideas for the sixties counter-culture. Otherwise, it's a lousy story. But it used to be more open to different philosophies. Now it's more codified than, retroactively at least, it seemed once to be.

So I would praise Heinlein for his politics--only because he introduced some weird ideas I hadn't thought of before.

[Trent Walters]

I've done a lot of experimenting with form in the genre. It generally isn't accepted well, I'm afraid. In fact, even when I think what I'm doing isn't that strange, I pull people up short. I've spent the last several years correcting my experimental habits because it isn't currently friendly to experiment. A few small magazine exceptions:

Full Unit Hookup
Grendelsong

There are probably others that I'm not yet aware of.

I was going to do an anthology of genre experiment--which I solicited you for, years back--but I've been wavering. I'm not even sure if my brain is built for the genre. I put a lot of effort into a manuscript and get dismissed with something like "I quit reading because it was in 2nd person."

Not to discourage your forays into the field, however. Just warning you if you are seeking experiment.