Move Over L Ron…
04. Jan, 2010 
3 Comments
Via Bibliophile Stalker, a piece from NPR about the interesting juxtaposition of Margaret Atwood’s “literary science fiction” and Karen Armstrong’s The Case For God.
Meh. Folks keep on trying to find some relevancy for religion and I suppose they always will (without religion you’ve just got to face up to that great unknown and lord knows very few of us advanced evolutionary end-products are willing to do that).
Nice stretch (Armstrong: you can read the first chapter of her book on the NPR site, as well as the first chapter of Atwood’s latest The Year of the Flood); but the consistent thread throughout this particular conflict (science vs religion) is religion’s relentless and inevitable giving up of ground. Armstrong seeks some kind of harmony between the two, when what she is really saying is – if we close our eyes a little bit, there’s still a place in the modern world for religion. No, there isn’t, but it’s going to take at least another half-century for the majority to wake up to that fact.
Anyway, I didn’t come here this morning to discuss weighty and perhaps off-putting, contentious issues. I actually came here to note the latest in Margaret Atwood’s science fiction definition shuffle.
I note (with some glee) that the NPR writer identifies Atwood’s body of work as “literary science fiction”. Atwood either didn’t see this before print or has finally acquiesced to the words touching her work in at least some small fashion. (NPR has good reach so you tell me, which of those adjectives is going to stick in the mind of a casual reader/listener? Science Fiction or literary? SF, naturally. The brand has been struck. Let’s see how Maggie’s sales fare now (doubt very much there’ll be any difference at all, which kind of highlights her silliness in avoiding the connection to begin with).
She seems to have found a comfortable niche within the genre – or at least figured out a way to put most of what she finds abhorrent in the genre into one of those scented garbage bags, while keeping her own brand pure:
“Atwood says science fiction became necessary when the contradictions between objective reality and religious orthodoxy became too difficult to ignore.
“Those things that we used to just believe in all the time went to Planet X where they are alive and well,” Atwood says by way of explaining the alternate realities that populate the genre. “Angels with flaming swords, the burning bush that speaks, you know, all of those really quite science fiction things in the Bible.”"
OK! Now it has been explained. SF that Atwood doesn’t write is all that fantasy stuff – angels, talking plants – all alive and well on Planet X. And those greenly religious Gardeners? That’s not an alternate reality, (nor are catholic sex slaves) that’s the new genre of literary science fiction, the one where we can pretend that SF never invented any religions before (except of course for L Ron Hubbard, he’s just way too big to ignore) and the whole idea of starting a fictional religion and turning it into a real one with the author as pope is just so way new and outrageously ridiculous that….“Atwood says with a chuckle. “I don’t have any adherents yet. But, who knows?”"
Anyone got a lollipop?
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I guess my only comment at this point is, re: Atwood, who gives a hoot? If it quacks like a duck…
I’m just interested in watching the convolutions and the slow, yet steady (grudging) acceptance that what she writes is science fiction, whether literary or not.
The benefit to stuff like this is sometimes these so-called literary writers actually manage to add a bit of insite (for example, Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron). The train wreck is, of course, watching someone not versed in the foundational literature come up with all kinds of nutty, unworkable, stupid, not thought out to the logical conclusion ideas as they “play” in the genre.
The ultimate, however, is watching the big checks and voluminous public accolades they receive, and wondering about the mental capabilities of the folks who read “literary SF” and swallow it whole.
I kind of (almost) ran into some of that with Veracity (reviewed here a couple of days ago). I think the mistake that folks coming from the literary side of things make is failing to understand/appreciate/utilize world building techniques. Fortunately, the author (Bynum) was either smart enough (or had a good editor) to stay away from detail on almost everything that might have revealed flaws in logic. Some remain, but they’re neatly supported by the entire mythos of the novel and therefore don’t really get in the way.
(In this case I’m speculating on the devices that everyone has implanted that prevents them from speaking ‘red listed’ words. My first thought in “attacking” the concept was American Sign Language. The device would have to be implanted in the brain to prevent you from “speaking” red listed words with your hands. Then I remembered disemvoweling and things like rap music, where the convention seems to be that you’ll change the meaning of the rhyming word to suit the song (and always comes across to me as – you didn’t work on your lyrics long enough to find real words that really rhyme…) Humans are resourceful and WILL say what is on their mind. If a word is red listed and speaking it out loud will get you killed, why, just euphemize or mispronounce. We do it with the dog all the time. We dare not say ‘cheese’ around here, so instead we say ‘coagulated milk product’ (pretty soon we’re going to have to find a substitute for that too!).
But like I said in the review, that kind of thing you do after the read and, on balance, despite the bad ’science’, the story itself was not interfered with.
But back to wasting time on Atwood. She obviously put her foot in her mouth way back when originally dissing the genre, and wouldn’t have done so if she doesn’t have real disdain for what she thinks is SF (ray guns and squiddy aliens). And now she’s getting back in spades.
Makes sense to me.
Oh, and ray guns and squiddy aliens? Sounds great! BEMs, chemical rockets that land on their tails, it’s all good.