Conceptual Fiction is a regular feature, contributed by Ted Gioia, focusing on major works of fantasy, science fiction, magical realism and alternate history. These books are celebrated in recognition that literary experimentation with ways of conceptualizing reality has been as important as experimentation with language in creating fiction of lasting value. Dismissing these books as genre or escapist works has created a blind-spot in literary studies that this feature aims, in some small part, to rectify.
At first blush, writing a novel that takes place on another planet seems like an easier proposition than, say, creating a historical fiction set during the Victorian era. The author of the historical novel must get the costumes and settings right, avoid anachronisms, make sure the language is idiomatic, and never violate our understanding of how things really were during the period in question. And we haven’t even begun to consider matters of plot, character development, etc.
The sci-fi writer, in contrast, can just make it all up. Mermaids, flying buildings, the proverbial bottomless cup of coffee . . . anything goes, as Cole Porter once said. What could be easier than that?
Yet when we encounter a book such as Dune, it becomes clear that imagining a whole new world is, in fact, a project on a grand scale. Anthropologists sometimes talk about “thin” and “thick” descriptions of cultures—a terminology originated by Clifford Geertz, but now borrowed by other fields. The “thin description” may describe a certain aspect of a social situation, but lacks the rich contextual information that only the “thick” account can convey. Frank Herbert’s Dune is the novelistic equivalent of the “thick” ethnography—indeed, almost a textbook case of what such a "thick" narrative looks like.
And what Herbert achieves is all the more striking, given that so much sci-fi is woefully thin. It is one thing to postulate the existence of intelligent life in another part of the universe, it is a much different (and more challenging) task to situate this alien culture in a rich world, fully equipped with distinctive flora, fauna, ecology, traditions, institutions, religious beliefs, ancestral conflicts, technologies, myths and other cultural bric-a-brac. The richness of this contextual framework is what typically sets the finer works of speculative fiction apart from the rest.
Article comments
1 - jamminsue
Thank you, for talking about this! I am a fan of all three of the authors you mentioned.
I often described Dune as a "Fat" story, meaning lots of detail, and am gratified to see Geertz call it "Thick," which makes lots of sense.
2 - Christopher Rose
I don't quite get the logic of lumping Fantasy, Science Fiction, Magic Realism and Alternate History together in this series.
Furthermore, I don't agree with the notion that SF writers can simply make stuff up; their work still has to have a consistent internal logic and, given that a lot of this genre is actually talking about the present as much as the future [unlike most other fiction, which is by definition talking about the past], it is arguably more challenging to do so. The past is even more inaccessible than the future in many ways and just as vulnerable to "creative interpretation".
I have never really found "so much sci-fi is woefully thin" to be the case either and would rather read SF than the turgid prose of many of the so-called great writers of the past.
With regard to Dune itself [which was primarily about human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics and power], the author of this article seems to have missed one of the key points about the importance of Arrakis and the spice Mélange. Its primary importance was not "its ability to prolong life, as well as enhance vitality and alertness" but rather that it was needed for interplanetary travel, rather like we need petrol or diesel today.
The Dune series of novels were great speculative fiction but not really the best of Frank Herbert's work. I think I'm close to having read everything he, and his son, have written and novels such as The Dosadi Experiment, Whipping Star, The Green Brain, The Godmakers and others are arguably even more important than Dune itself.
3 - Ruvy
Ted,
I'm shocked to find myself agreeing with Christopher Rose (copy this comment, Chris - you may not see another like it for a decade) here on the lumping together of alternate histories, space novels, magic and fantasy adventures all in one indefinite grab-bag.
While they may be found in the same place in a bookstore, they are most assuredly different genres. In a science fiction novel, or even the less rigorous phantasms of H.G. Wells, for example, there is a basic rule that must be followed; the real world (as imagined by the author) must be left alone as much as possible, with real consequences emerging from real situations much as one would find in any novel that deals with more prosaic issues like love or murder.
The re-creation of any universe by a science fiction writer is most assuredly not recreation and if it does not hold with the accepted principles of physics of the day, the book is unlikely to see light of day - as science fiction, anyway.
This rule is far looser with novels of the variety written by J. K. Rowling, Eoin Colfer or Philip Pullman, but as a writer, you should know this yourself.
Alternate histories are even more under this kind of pressure for exactness than are science fiction novels - for basically they are history novels with one or possibly two changes that launch history in a different path. Crosstime Engineer by Leo Frankowski is an example of this.
Having said all this, I've never read Dune or had the desire to. I have a preference for short stories myself, preferring "The Sentinel", for example, to 2001, the novel that emerged from "The Sentinel" which became the famous movie.
4 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, do you think your preference for reading short stories is based upon your experience reading them in the Tanakh?
5 - Ted Gioia
Christopher, if you don't see the connections between fantasy, sci-fi, magic realism, etc. hold off. I will soon be publishing my "Notes on Conceptual Fiction." This will outline my perspective on important connections between these so-called genres.
As to your comment that: "I don't agree with the notion that SF writers can simply make stuff up" - he should read my article again and he will see that I agree with him. That comment was intended facetiously.
6 - Dr Dreadful
I'm siding with Ted here. Although hard sci-fi, speculative fiction, alternate history, fantasy and so forth are distinct genres, there are no sharp dividing lines but rather a gradual continuum between them. I worked in a public library for fifteen years and took care of the sci-fi/fantasy section for a good portion of that time. I can assure you that there are authors and novels that straddle the genres at every point on that continuum.
And I'd say that authors like Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling and Herbert (and I would add Asimov and his Foundation series to that list), who have invented complete and compelling new worlds or universes from scratch in minute detail, are a distinct genre of their own.
7 - Christopher Rose
For once we'll have to disagree then, Doc; just 'cos administrators find it convenient (read "lazy") to lump such genres together, doesn't mean they are related. I love SF but find fantasy implausible and dull.
Sure, there may be stuff that straddles but exceptions don't disprove the general rule.
Bah, humbug!
8 - Dr Dreadful
I love SF but find fantasy implausible and dull.
So which is Dune, then - and why?
9 - Dr Dreadful
And librarians don't lump 'em all together because they're lazy - they do it so that their customers (and they) can find the damn things!
10 - Ted Gioia
I will deal with this genre matter more at a future date. But anyone can see that the existing genre classifications make no sense. Audrey Niffenegger writes The Time Traveler's Wife, and it shows up in the bookstores as mainstream fiction, but H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is sci-fi. Cormac McCarthy writes The Road, a book about post-Armageddon America and it is considered mainstream fiction, while Richard Matheson's end times book I Am Legend is classified as a horror novel. Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixes magic and reality in One Hundred Years of Solitude and that is considered mainstream fiction, while J.K. Rowling mixes magic and reality in her books that are considered fantasy writing for young adult.
I believe you can make a strong case that all these works of "Conceptual Fiction" - in others words, novels that tinker with our conceptions of reality - share common linkages that are obscured by traditional genre classifications. But this is a subject for a different day . . .
11 - Dr Dreadful
Ted, there you have one of the major challenges facing librarians and booksellers. The discrepancies you point out largely boil down to what genre the author is mostly known for. Most readers wouldn't think to look for McCarthy or Marquez in the sci-fi section, so they stay in general fiction.
Matheson is mainly known as a horror writer, as is the better-known example of Stephen King, even though some of his stuff - The Stand, The Tommyknockers and the Dark Tower series - are more strongly sci-fi/fantasy. Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities are historical fiction, though you won't find them classified thus in any library, because Dickens is now as much a part of history as the settings of those novels are!
Wells is a gray area: he wrote some straight-up sci-fi like The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, but also some mainstream fiction like Kipps and The History of Mr Polly.
Then there are folks like Margaret Atwood and J. G. Ballard, who like to get all metaphysical on you and it becomes a genuine judgment call on where to place their books.
12 - Porgy N. Bes
Thank you for the article. Loved Dune.
13 - Ruvy
Ruvy, do you think your preference for reading short stories is based upon your experience reading them in the Tanakh?
Nope: from reading the work of Isaac Babel - who drew on the Tana"kh in a lot of his stories. Since you like Harlan Ellison, go check out his story "I'm Looking for Kadak". He also draws on the the Tana"kh, as well as the Talmud.....
14 - Christopher Rose
My point is that you seem to have a short attention span, which is kind of ironic as your beliefs are based on 6,000 years of misunderstanding...
15 - Ruvy
What a pathetic comment, Chris.....
16 - Ruvy
Small minded - like you increasingly seem to be.
17 - Ruvy
Just wondering, Chris. Have you decided to fill the rather small shoes left by "Just One Braincell", the idiot you kicked off this list? Your comments lately appear to tend in that direction vis a vis yours truly.
And BTW. Have the heavy rains left western Europe? The weatherman here calls for rain.
18 - Ruvy
To pull this conversation back to a more literate track, on reflection, I realized that art is general - marketing is specific.
Ted Gioia's definition, "conceptual fiction" is that of an artist. The marketing genres by which books are sold are designed, like most marketing, to appeal to a specific audience based on past purchases....
So, while I am not pulling back on my original comments as to the way fiction needs to be written if it is to be seen as valid - they come from no less a source than H.G. Wells himself - I am pulling back on my comments on genres themselves. Even the great Mr. Wells was trapped into that in his introduction to one of his collections of novellas 74 years ago.
19 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, 24 minutes to come up with three personal insults and nothing substantive; is that the best you have?
Any time you want to engage with the issues rather than the personalities, do let me know. Of course, that would require a greater commitment to honesty rather than the self-serving subjectivity and egocentricity you espouse, so I'm not holding my breath.
Just one tiny example, you keep attacking science and reason as not knowing all the answers when it doesn't claim to, whilst holding on so fiercely to your own unsubstantiated perspective...
20 - Ruvy
Reread comment #10 if you wish to see dialogue on a civil and civilized level. It pulls back on my original comment #3 here - which you commented on not at all - except to try to set up an insult.
There is a reason I do not argue like I hang around in pubs (or bars), Chris. I don't hang around in pubs or bars.