I have to confess, I am a big science fiction/fantasy fan. No doubt this statement has already helped you, the reader, conjure up a picture of me. In your mind, I probably look like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, or the creepy pale-faced virgin who everyone used to pick on in high school. In reality I’m a female professional with every semblance of normalcy on the exterior — check my picture if you don’t believe me. So why do I feel constant embarrassment perusing the aisles of science fiction books in bookstores? Well I think it has something to do with the “ghettorization” of the genre.
People who believe themselves to be normal, well-adjusted individuals have a very strong and usually negative reaction to science fiction. Just look at how hard it's been for the critics to convince people to watch Battlestar Galactica. “It’s not your regular science fiction,” almost everyone who reviews the show claims. Some even claim that it’s not science fiction at all but political drama masquerading as science fiction. This seems like a highly odd statement to make, since without the science fiction element, there would be no premise, plot, or conflict and basically no show. Similarly, I have a friend who claims that Lost is really a drama about people, rather than science fiction, even though there’s a black smoke monster, and some freak utopian experiment going on on the island that proves otherwise.
Still, I can sympathize with reviewers and my friend. Science fiction is equated with campy trash in everyone’s eyes. Thus if something has merit, it needs to be separated from the genre to have a chance with a mass audience. A book/tv series is either science fiction, which means that it’s not worth your time, or it’s not really science fiction, but something more worthy masquerading as the genre.
The news is that well-written science fiction/fantasy does exactly what good fiction does - it tells a story, it explores characters, makes social commentary, strives to observe/mimic/reflect some semblance of truth about our world, our existence, etc. The difference is that there are very few boundaries in science fiction that exists in fiction. While this allows for your cheesy aliens, and prancing elves, it also allows more artistic license, the ability to manipulate the world to illuminate points, more experimentation, and it often makes for a more intriguing read than some of literary fiction that is out there. It also allows those of us with eclectic tastes to widen our reading horizons.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Great article--thanks and welcome to Blogcritics. (despite a disclaimer of my own: I'm not a SciFi/Fantasy fan).
2 - Christopher Rose
I am also a Sci-Fi fan. I don't recall the source but someone cleverer than me once said that much Sci-Fi is actually writing about the present whereas other literary forms are by definition writing about the past. This may well be the cause of some people's discomfort with the genre...
3 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Welcome to Blog Critics, CChen.
I have the feeling that I'm a bit older than you... I tend to enjoy works like "War of the Worlds," (H.G Wells) "I, Robot," (Isaac Asimov) "A Canticle for Liebowitz," (Walter M. Miller Jr.) a story about a man who achieves sainthood within the Catholic Church due to, among other things, the discovery of a shopping list to his wife to bring home bagel and cream cheese.
Chris is very right about science fiction/fantasy tending to be about the present (or the near future), and I agree with him that many feel uncomfortable with the genre for that reason. Each of the above cited stories was about the present when they were written, though Asimov's story laid the ground for serious scientific work later in the field of artificial intelligence, and his "three laws of robotics," will be the ground rules for the development of robots of various types.
Like you, I was unimpressed by "the Lord of the Rings," though it was obvious where JK Rollins got her "Dark Lord, and "Wormtongue."
A side note to Chris: true aficionados of the genre never call it sci-fi - to them it is also science fiction or science fantasy as the author has written it in this article. "Sci-fi" is a marketing term in the publishing business.
4 - Christopher Rose
Glad to know you still have feelings for Sci-Fi, Ruvy. I've read all the books you name check and many more by the same authors. My favourite writer is still Frank Herbert, although I much prefer his non-Dune related books, many of which explore the nature and meaning of faith and religion.
I've called it Sci-Fi all my life so don't see why I should change that just cos some corporate marketers have usurped the term...
5 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Heh! I liked science fiction long before I liked religion and continue to like it, though most of what I see in "science fiction" sections in bookstores these days have little or nothing to do with science and often little or nothing to do with fiction as well...
A neighbor of mine went to listen to the late Isaac Asimov give a lecture in his (the neighbor's)home town of Philadelphia some decades ago.
Asimov, a raconteur of the best sort, described going to a lecture in "modern trends of science fiction" some years earlier. It is especially apropos to Blog Critics...
Asimov entered the lecture hall and sat quietly in the back, not seeking any attention for himself, though his name was already world famous in the genre. The lecturer, a professor, went over the works of Heinlein, Herbert and others. Asimov waited patiently to see what he wold say about his own works. After some time he got to talking about "this fellow, Asimov..." He analyzed one of his stories, saying that it was completely obvious that the author (Asimov) was alluding to the issues and problems of the Irish and the English, and he pulled a number of examples from Asimov's story to illustrate his point.
Asimov sat dumbfounded. When the professor was done with his description, Asimov raised his hand to ask "how the professor knew that this was the intent of the author?" The professor looked scornfully at him and said he was "obviously not a man of letters with any understanding of literature or history." Asimov confessed to not being a man of letters - but stated that he was Isaac Asimov and had had absolutely no intent of writing about Ireland or the English in writing this particular story.
Completely unfazed, the professor replied that Asimov was unaware of his "unconscious understanding of the issues between the English and the Irish."
6 - CChen
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone, and the pointer on my picture Christopher. I have to admit that I am still very html challenged.
Ruvy - I am definitely going to pick up A "Canticle for Liebowitz" on your recommendation, I don't think I could pass up a book where bagels and cream cheese help a man to sainthood. I loved Issac Asimov's Foundation series, and I, Robot but have to admit that being forced to read HG Wells in middle school has made me avoid him ever since.
Christopher, I wasn't too impressed with Dune when I picked it up years ago. But I've always wanted to give Herbert another try. Any recommendations?
Please say tuned for reviews or rants about the books I love and in the mean time go try some of the authors I name, you won't be disappointed.
7 - Ian Woolstencroft
‘A side note to Chris: true aficionados of the genre never call it sci-fi - to them it is also science fiction or science fantasy as the author has written it in this article. "Sci-fi" is a marketing term in the publishing business.’
Or SF for short
Great article and nice to have you out of the closet CChen.
8 - Tim Gebhart
Great piece! I second Ruvy on Canticle and also HIGHLY recommend "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell if you want a thinking person's exploration of religion in science fiction.
That said, SF is truly personal taste. If I had to like all science fiction and fantasy, I would give it up. You'll also find tons of debate on Sci-Fi, SF, etc. Personally, I have moved to SF and it doesn't stand for science fiction but, rather, "speculative fiction." (But that's another debate all together.)
Here's what still bothers me, though. Both Cormac McCarthy and Kazuo Ishiguro have had bestsellers that are truly SF works. If you dare to call them science fiction, though, the literati would hang you!
9 - Christopher Rose
CChen: Four of my favourite non-Dune books by Frank Herbert are "The Heaven Makers" from '68, "Whipping Star ('70), "The God Makers" ('72) and "The Priests of Psi" from 1980, but my all time fave by him - and one of my all time best books ever - is "The Dosadi Experiment", which came out in 1977 and was a big influence on this then punk rocker.
10 - CChen
Very true Tim, I was in an online book group that got rather heated debating whether "Never Let Me Go" was science fiction or literary fiction. I just never understood the obsession of boxing each book neatly into a genre.
It helps sell the book, yes. It's useful to publishers, marketers, librarians, yes. But it should not be used by readers as litmus test of quality. Readers so often come to the table with so many preconceived notions. How many people do you think I can get to try “Never Let Me Go” if I call it science fiction? How many more people could I get to read the book, if I called it literary?
“Genrefication” limits what we read, what we watch, and what we listen to. It’s not all bad, but why must we strive so incessantly to categorize everything?
It can stifle creativity and experimentation because authors are discouraged to write uncategorizable books by the industry. It's a way of encouraging authors to be formulaic because it sells. I could rant on.
I think the point is--- if you are a reader, it doesn't hurt to do a little research, to get outside of a favorite type of fiction. I’m all for good literature, don’t get me wrong, but good literature exists outside of the handful of books that appear on this or that list, it certainly exists outside the boundaries of what we call literary fiction.
11 - CChen
BTW still having picture difficulties that should be fixed tonight. Hopefully then I can prove that at least superficially, I am normal as I claim. Let me know if its not working tonight, and thanks for everyone at blogcritics who have been so helpful in getting me started.
12 - MAOZ
FWIW, I've enjoyed Jerry Pournelle's works.
13 - SFC SKI
Despite your ambivalence towards Terry Pratchett, welcome!
For non-fans, Science Fiction is summed up by 2 things: Star Trek and Star Wars. This causes more than a few to look upon SciFi , and fans do call it that, unless you're some comic book store lurker trying to appear cooler-than-thou, as either juvenile fare or a cliched genre. Fans know that this is not the case. Heinlein, Clarke, Gibson, and Brunner are all science fiction writers; even though their themes might overlap, their themes are often also dissimilar, and vastly so.
The "science" in Science Fiction often includes all the sciences outside of engineering, and several of the arts. Often good "hard" science also reflects on the effects of technology on the society it serves. Personally, this is my favorite type, I came to reading John Brunner very late in life, but he wrote far ahead of his time in describing technology's effect in conjunction with social trends. "SF" also encompasses the realm of "Speculative" Fiction, a more specific term that could be applied , IMO, to the type of writing I described above.
I do agree, a lot of Science Fiction is hardly great, but satisfying.
I read far more Science Fiction than I read Fantasy, because I consider Fantasy almost played out. Though there are a few good authors, they are few and far between. Even then, a few of the good ones definitely string out an innovative series a bit too long after the charm has worn off and the story has been told. George R.R. Martin taking way too long to tell me what happens next in the Game of Thrones really bothers me, but damn if I am not willing to wait, impatiently.
14 - Dave Nalle
I don't have ambivalence towards Pratchett - I positively hate his work. Almost as much as I hate Dr. Who. Oh, and I think Galactica is boring as hell and preachy. Plus I can't stand Douglas Adams - I think he writes self indulgent drivel that's even worse than Pratchett.
Can I still be an SF fan?
Dave
15 - SHARK
Shark recommends:
His Dark Materials [Trilogy] by Philip Pullman
anything by Harlan Ellison
anything by William Tenn [Philip Klass]
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
=====
PS:
re: RUVY: "...I liked science fiction long before I liked religion..."
Oy! Of course. They're the same genre!
Couldn't pass it up; Dos iz alts...
xxoo
S
16 - gonzo marx
oh boy..science fiction
first, welcome to BC...hope to read more from you
that being said, let's have a look at some of the genre you may enjoy...
Heinlein - anything and everything, if you are unfamiliar then a fine place to start is
Job: a Comedy of Justice or Friday, both great Work and worthy of the Grand Master
Niven and Pournelle - both are solid writers by themselves, but there is a certain Magicke when they write together
Inferno and Lucifer's Hammer are great ones from them
and on the Obscure side...
Julian May - "the Pliocene Exile"... four books of a 10 book "series" that is one of the Wonders of the genre, imo...and is to modern speculative Fiction what Tolkein was to fantasy..
first book is called the Many Colored Land
Neal Stephenson - a modern Master
Snow Crash and Diamond Age are a related 2 part Tale that goes far beyond Neuromancer...
let's not forget Gordan Dickson and the wonderful Dorsai stories
on and on...
for "classics" try E.E. "Doc" Smith and the Lensman stories... this is the epitome of the olde school rayguns and rocket ships style, a progenitor for the Campbell Age in pulps
enjoy....
Excelsior?
17 - CChen
Dave - depends on what you do like (when it comes to books). Share! and I might be able to recommend you something in the genre. Or we may just have to agree to disagree when it comes to science fiction. Still I have to argue that there may be something you can read in the genre. Now if you have read Jeff Vandermeer, or China Mieville, or M. John Harrison, Iain Banks (the list can go on, let me know if anyone would be interested in a list of obscure SF or whatever you want to call it that I highly recommend) and hate all of those. Then I may not have anything for you.
As for Speculative Fiction v. Science Fiction, admittedly I read much more what I guess could be called Speculative Fiction than hard science fiction. I've also heard the term Slipstream, interstitial, fantastic fiction, or Weird Fiction being used by various people. Whatever it should be called, my goal here at blogcritics is hopefully get more people to check out things that they wouldn't normally check out due to what they perceive as a ghetoo of a genre.
I'm a big fan of well-written work, I'm also a big fan of well developed characters and big ideas. And I'm arguing that you can get that from SF in the same way that you can get it from good fiction.
I know there will be people who will always hate certain themes, who may try everything I recommend and still hate science fiction. That’s fine, we all have our likes and dislikes, and far be it for me to bludgeon anyone over the head with my tastes. M
y goal is to share certain books that I’m passionate about, and to persuade people to read these books. I realize that some of you will hate my recommendations, but it’s just as wonderful to have an informed debate about why you hate so and so as it is to have someone share your passion for a book. As a reader in an age where readers are becoming rarer species, I hate to see people generalize their distaste to a whole genre.
I mean many people hate Moby Dick, or Ulysses or anything by Faulkner. But most of these people don’t generalize their experience by saying okay I’m going to stop reading literary fiction, because the whole genre sucks. So until someone can say to me, okay I’ve read everything you’ve suggested and I think its all trash, then I will continue to preach what I believe is true, that you don’t have to be a certain type of person to appreciate SF and to find some of it comparable or better to good literature.
18 - Dave Nalle
God it distresses me that Shark likes William Tenn. Sort of ruins my whole perspective on him as a mindless knee jerk reactionary, though his fondness for Ellison makes perfect sense.
Chen, as for SF that I like and would recommend, I tend to prefer stuff which straddles genre borders, or at least has interesting characters.
I'm currently reading (and will review) James Herbert's Secret of Crickley Hall which is horror as far as I can tell 200 pages into it, but may well turn into SF and/or Fantasy before it's done given Herbert's refusal to be pigeonholed in any way. In fact, it's such traditional horror at this point that I assume it's going to take a radical turn at some point.
Things I've liked recently include just about anything by John Ringo or Eric Flint, particularly the alternate history stuff. Was also quite impressed with Geoffrey Barlough. Historically I've been a big fan of Heinlein, Vance, Resnick, F. Paul Wilson (there's my littany of libertarian/anarchist writers), Paula Volsky, David Weber, Philip Jose Farmer, David Drake, L. Sprague de Camp, A. Merritt, Robert McCammon, Charles de Lint, hell I even think Dean Koontz is a damned fine SF writer - he sure isn't writing horror.
Dave
19 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I try to stay away from the horror stuff unless it is true - like what happened in Amityville when I was a young man.
I tend to read what might be called speculative fiction, though I'm not going to argue points here. So, for example "Bring the Jubilee," Man in the High Tower," "Time Quake" - one branch of the tree - the other, "The Sixth Winter" (about a sudden ice age), "Heat" (about runaway global warming), "Warday" (about the consequences of a nuclear conflict, reviewed by yours truly at Blog Critics), Frankowski's "CrossTime Engineer" series (about a guy thrown back to 13th century Poland). I tend to view the latter as resource books rather than mere entertainment.
20 - gonzo marx
geeez, Ruvy..
yer gonna step into historical Fiction...ok
howabout James Clavell's body of Work, which is a great inside peek into Chinese/Japanese culture/history as well as a fine look at the beginnings of modern contact with the West and these civilizations...
Shogun, Tai-Pan, King Rat, Noble House, Whirlwind (Iran), Gaijin
on the other hand, there is the Baroque Cycle from Neal Stephenson.. a most excellent read
Quicksilver, the Confusion, the System of the World
all in the Spirit of Sharing....
Excelsior?
21 - ss
Thanks for the recommendations.
I've tried, without much success, to get people into Greg Bear for while.
'Hardfought' is hard to find. But great.
From what I've heard about 'Never Let Me Go' the two works sound extremely similiar, but Hardfought was written about twenty years earlier. And , well yeah, Hardfought occurs in a very slowly unfloding galactic war (Einstien's barrier wouldn't budge, so humans had to become more maleable) being waged against a much older, hydrogen based species for the survival of the human race. Which sounds geeky, I know, but trust me, it's extremely well done.
'Blood Music' is pretty good. It reads more like Steven King back in the Carrie and Cujo days, but the SF ideas include blood cells trained to work in teams and attaining a hive sentience, a plague, how evolution looks to the 'unfit', a rupture in Heisenburg's uncertainty barrier, the sheer terror of what might be a symbiant that makes anything we can imagine possible.
Blah Blah Blah
Not as well written, but not the usual either.
Most of the time, I have to admit, it seems like Bear's trying to hard for that series, and I can't really vouch for the rest of his work. Some of it might be good, but the synopsis and first couple of paragraghs never sold me.
Octavia Butler's another one. Her short stories are really good and, sadly, relatively easy to find as she recently died.
22 - Brad Blake
SciFi has never gotten the respect it deserves. Writers like Harlan Ellison, Bear, Clarke, etc... should've been considered for Bookers and all those other "serious" awards over the years. Same with TV, when series like Babylon 5 should've received major Emmy recognition...
23 - JR
Gonzo Marx: for "classics" try E.E. "Doc" Smith and the Lensman stories... this is the epitome of the olde school rayguns and rocket ships style, a progenitor for the Campbell Age in pulps
Danger Will Robinson! The E.E. Smith books are classics that attracted a generation (well, part of a generation) to reading and in some cases writing science fiction, but they are basically unreadable today. It is exactly this kind of writing (bad) that gave SF it's reputation among those who never delved deeper into the genre.
Some people apparently still like his stuff - it does have a sort of operatic, over-the-top dramatic appeal; but I recommend you check it out at the library before you commit to buying any of it.
24 - gonzo marx
well now JR, i would disagree to your categorization of Doc Smith as "unreadable"
note, i did state that his work was in the "raygun and rocketships" category...read:space opera
the work is dated, and nowhere near as deep or polished as what came after...but they are still Classics of the genre
as the old Buck Rogers serials are still classics, even tho you can see the wires on the speaceships
or a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby comic from the '60s, dot color on cheap paper... even perspectives in drawing a comic a new thing, but horribly dated and simplistic by the standards fo today's graphic novels
just because something is improved, or grown beyond what came before...especially in media... that's no reason to toss it aside merely because it doesn't rise to standards set generations after the breaking of creative ground...
especially since those setting said standards are doign it standing on the shoulders of folks some might deem "unreadable"
your mileage may vary
Excelsior?
25 - Alec
Great post " This is right up my alley. I think that there are two reasons why a lot of people dismiss sci fi as a genre. As school kids some were hit over the head by lame teachers with the idea that there is “great literature” and trash, and that all great literature can have its “meaning” plucked from it the way you pluck a nut from its shell. As a result, some of these people can only accept sci fi if they can look at is an allegory, about something, anything other than space aliens. I took a friend and his sons to see a Star Wars movie for the first time, and my friend was uncomfortable until he saw a scene of the spacships landing at the capital. He whispered, “Oh, that’s supposed to be New York City,” and then having transformed the movie into an allegory about current events, he could relax and enjoy the show.
Note that although some classic sci fi TV shows like “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits” worked on multiple levels, if the main story didn’t grab you, any allegorical explanation of the episode was beside the point. And some of the best “Outer Limits” episodes, like the rightly acclaimed “Demon With a Glass Hand” is powerful despite rudimentary makeup and special effects, and resists any attempt to reduce the story to simplistic parable.
As an aside, some of the later Trek incarnations bored me because they failed to tell interesting stories and fell back on the totally pointless routine of reducing alien characters to humans with deficiencies. So Vulcans became humans lacking emotions, Klingons sometimes depicted as humans without compassion, etc. On the other hand, one of the greatest early Trek episodes, “Amok Time” intelligently expanded on what we previously thought we knew about Vulcans and surprised us in a way that was both satisfying and … logical.
Here is another reason why some people dismiss sci fi. For some reason, some people simply cannot suspend their disbelief and accept a depiction of a future world. This is odd and contradictory, but there it is. Some people can accept any movie about the past, no matter how historically inaccurate it might be, but just cannot take some sci fi seriously. There are even actors who have no problem playing an elf or a fairy in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” who think that playing an alien is somehow silly.
Recommendations? Tough, since sci fi has changed a lot since I read it regularly. I agree with you about the general lameness of the Tolkein books. I recently re-read two Alfred Bester classics, “The Demolished Man” and “Stars My Destination” and found them still to be strong works. I agree about “Canticle.” I think some Arthur C Clarke stuff still works (Childhood’s End, for example), CJ Cherryh short stories. I respect Asimov and note that his plots are good, but his writing often turgid and too slowgoing for my tastes.
When I was reading sci fi more steadily, I would always focus on anthologies, short story collections, “best of the year stuff,” and then look at the novels of writers who held my attention.