Why Traditional SF is BETTER Than ‘Literary’ SF

Forbidden Planet's C57D Cruiser and Star War's Imperial Star Destroyer - A canvas for the imagination or eye candy?

Most, if not all, of you are already familiar with the recent Hugo rant from Nameless Across The Big Pond.? For the few who aren’t the argument can be summed up as follows:

“I have a Doctorate in literature and am a science fiction author.? This makes me the only person in the world qualified to judge the merits of the Hugo Awards. I have deemed most, if not all, of the works nominated for the Hugo from the beginning of time to have no literary merit. Therefore, I, on the basis of my expertise and unique position as All High Arbiter of Things Skiffy and Literary, declare that your award – and YOU – fail.”

Plenty of folks have jumped in on both sides of the Nameless One’s bandwagon; including, I suspect,? a number of less well educated ME-TOOS, a healthy handful of chronic bandwagon jumpers, a few perennial Hugo Haters, a couple of ‘My Fave Is Better Than That Hack Niven (and should have won the awards he was given even if they weren’t born when he won them)’ collusionistas, and a few VOICES OF REASON buried somewhere deep down in the bubbling froth.

(I’m one of the VORs, in case you can’t read a program.)

Several have been groping toward an explanation for the disconnect represented by the Nameless One’s tantrum by offering statements akin to ‘but SF is a literature of ideas’ or ‘good SF does not have to be literary, though it can include that element’ as well as ‘you just don’t get what SF is all about’.

While gathering up links to Amazon offerings of all of the Hugo winners and nominees so that rather than dismissing fifty years worth of literature out of hand (ooops, should have said ‘non-literary scribblings’) you can judge for yourself (fairly easily and not that expensively) I’ve been thinking about that question.? What’s the indefinable something that makes for a good SF novel – even if it isn’t a masterpiece of Shakespearian word play.? And I think I’ve found at least part of the answer.

Good SF fosters the imaginitive powers of the reader.? The reader is a participant – not a mere observer.? (Yes, this IS an aspect of sensawunda.) Like the Rooney & Garland flicks, the author says “Hey kids! Let’s put on a play!” and they do.? The author provides the working script and some of the props, while the reader throws in background and scenery, costuming and a bit of their own creativity.

The difference between (many) literary speculative fiction works and (many: good) SF works is, in a lot of ways, the same as the difference found between old cinema and new cinema.? In 1977, Lucas SHOWED us everything.? Here’s what I mean. Just for fun, compare Star Wars (now ‘Episode IV A New Hope’) with Forbidden Planet.

The alien monster in FP is represented not by a physical reality, but by visual hints as to its nature – footprints, deformed metal, hazy, animated outlines, sounds. The aliens in SW are right in front of you: hairy, mutli-eyed, snouted, multi-limbed. They’re not hinted at or shadowed – they’re right up on the screen playing musical instruments.

The spaceships: the C57D Cruiser is a stereotypical flying saucer.? Smooth, clean and without detail.? We glimpse it in operation only twice during its arrival and landing. We spend a decent amount of time underneath it, where all we can see is a landing leg and a ramp. The interior consists of one set – though much more is hinted at (where did the tractors come from?? Where’s Cookies galley?)? In SW, there are numerous ships and we spend a goodly portion of the opening of the film becoming intimate with the vast detail glued on to the Imperial Star Destroyer.? Inside various ships we visit lounges, brigs, hanger decks, hallways, powerplants, weapons stations, conference rooms and even the waste-disposal system.

Planets are given the same treatment.? In FB – there is only one and we see little or nothing of it – vast featureless plains, some vague and blurry mountain ranges.? In SW, we go on a virtual tour of all of the hotspots on Tatooine – even to the point of getting sand in our sandals.

Robbie the Robot is a general purpose bot based on a Krell design – about which we know nothing. C3PO is a linguistics bot – built for a specific purpose. R2D2 and all of the other ‘bots are obviously extremely specialized (and detailed).

When we (finally) visit the Krell city, a great deal of effort is put into making sure that the viewer understands that there is far more to it than our brief and fleeting glimpes reveal.? In SW, when the Deathstar is finally revealed, we’re given specifications, maps, diagrams and again, lots of highly-detailed model shots.

The change, and the difference, between old cinema and new cinema is that new cinema no longer relies on or factors in the audience member’s participation. You don’t have to imagine what a battlestation on a spaceship looks like – it is shown to you.? (I’m not necessarily indicting this, just illustrating the difference.? Given the tools now available for filmmaking, it is inevitable that they’ll get used to show us things we’ve never seen before.? But: take Cloverfield as an example.? It can be argued that one of the primary reasons for the success of this minimalist movie is its return to old cinematic techniques.? Hints, glimpses, shadows – but hardly ever a really good look at ‘the thing’. The viewer is forced to employ their own powers of imagination.)

Literary works are often described as stories that are concerned with conveying intimate detail from the writer to the reader.? Characterization – in intimate detail.? Setting – in poetical, lyrical detail.? Emotion – in excruciating detail.? The use of language in uncommon, often experimental and highly granular ways.

Listen to an interview of an author of literary works and the discussion often turns to the ways that they used language in an attempt to engender a very specific emotional or intellectual response from the reader; they’ll often have had a plan for their use of language as a major component of their creative work.

Like new cinema, literary works (the ‘many, not all’ is implied throughout here) attempt to show you everything.? They seek to engender specific emotions, create characters so rich and full of emotion you ‘know’ them and can empathize, set scenes so rich with sensory impressions that they appear fully constructed within your minds eye.

Like old cinema, good ol’ science fiction places that big dumb, detailless, formless, undiscovered object in front of you and asks “what do you want to do now?”

The literary author often has a a goal – a purpose and a specific target – for their work. The science fiction author often has no goal other than the journey itself. (Let me explain something to you – vs – hey, check this out!)

The difference between the two bodies of works (literary speculative fiction and so-called non-literary science fiction – and I use the different terms deliberately) is not one of skill versus lack of skill, not one of hack versus auteur – it is a difference of authorial objective and, in fact, a difference ginned up through an unfair comparison between two completely different literary genres.

Science Fiction, in its philosophical, stereotypical, a priori form is a literature in which the art displayed is deliberately minimalist, vague, inconclusive, ephemeral; detail is a tool that when properly constructed, rather than revealing, creates ambiguity, engenders questions and opens up visions of even more uncertainty.? Voids are included not through lack of literary skill, but as a necessary component of engendering the imaginative participation of the reader. The picture forms in the reader’s head, it is not displayed on the author’s? page.

Deliberately or accidentally, the author of Science Fiction shuns many of the conventions of ‘literature’ as comprising the wrong kind of detail; word play is mostly avoided as distracting to the experience; (with the exception of low-brow puns – deliberately so because high-brow puns would also be distracting); characters are often drawn from ‘cookie-cutter’ molds in order to remain blank canvases upon which reader imagination will draw.

Science Fiction is not ‘bad literature’ – it is actually very good literature of a specific kind that employs different tools and reaches for different objectives than other, more traditional forms – including literary speculative fiction.

At least in this respect the Hugo Award nominees and winners HAVE, for over half a century, reflected the best the field has to offer.? They are, after all, the SCIENCE FICTION awards.? You can compare those works to anything you want to compare them to and, while it is true that Ringworld makes for a very poor sandwich, it happens to be an exemplary science fiction novel.