CONTEMPLATING THE DIVERSE BEAST: ANALYZING SCIENCE FICTION'S MARGINALIZATION

Jeffrey Vincent Yule

There is perhaps more nonsense spoken about science fiction than any other

variety of narrative.

—David Hartwell, Age of Wonder

There is an old Indian folk tale about four blind men who encounter an elephant and try to identify it. Since each man's vantage point is different, they all describe the elephant differently. One fellow finds the animal's tail and assumes it is a rope; another believes a leg is a log; the third man thinks an ear is a fan. The fourth man is sure that whatever he and his companions have found is infinite, because he cannot find an end to the massive animal's body. The "point" of this story is that our understanding of things depends on how completely we perceive them and how well we, as a group, synthesize the information we obtain. Science fiction's current situation on the margin of academia and criticism has many parallels with the situation of the elephant, with academics and critics most often filling roles analogous to those of the blind men. Everyone is quite sure of what it is they have found, but they cannot agree because everyone is too busy defining the whole based on its parts instead of synthesizing their findings to produce a more satisfactory answer.

The use of the word "beast" in my title is not meant to suggest that I consider science fiction a genre of beastly fiction. In fact, although much of the writing is clumsy, I consider the genre no more beastly than any other sort of fiction. (What fictional form, after all, doesn't have more than its share of clumsy writers and flawed texts?) Instead, I chose the term "beast" to suggest the great size and diversity of the science fiction corpus. Simply put, as the fourth blind man recognizes, the elephant is a very large animal. "Beast," for me, captures something of that magnitude which "animal," with its neutrality regarding matters of size, does not. My title is simply meant to suggest that the large, diverse genre of science fiction is often categorized by critics who are relying on insufficient information (critics, as it were, feeling the texture of only a tail or a leg) or who are drawing imprecise conclusions (assuming too quickly that the tail or leg beneath their hands reveals not only the texture of the entire object under study but its "true nature" as well), or both. In order to analyze science fiction's current situation in the academy and literary criticism, I will begin by setting my hands on the beast.

A Historical Overview

Hugo Gemsback coined the term "science fiction" in 1929, referring to the type of fiction he began publishing in the magazine Amazing Stories in 1926. "Science fiction" supplanted the earlier term "scientifiction," while still carrying the same meaning: "the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" (Gemsback in Fiedler, Dreams 11).

Gernsback's definition is serviceable although not particularly comprehensive, but it recognizes that science fiction predates Amazing Stories. Thus, although Gernsback mentions only Verne, Wells, and Poe specifically, he could easily have added Mary Shelley for Frankenstein (1818), Herman Melville for "The Tartarus of Maids," Samuel Clemens for the posthumously published "Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes," Nathaniel Hawthorne for, among other stories, "Rappaccini's Daughter," George Chesney for The Battle of Dorking (1871) or Robert Louis Stevenson for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).1 Certainly not all these works are charming in the modern sense of the term, but they fulfill the spirit of Gernsback's definition at least as well as Poe's fiction. Later in this introduction I shall return to the issues involved with defining science fiction; to prepare for that venture, though, I will first review some of the fundamentals relating to Gernsback's science fiction publications and their effect on the genre's literary status.

Before the 1920s, there was no stigma attached to science fiction, nor was it differentiated from other fiction as it is today (Blish 23; Fiedler, Dreams 11; Lern 49). H. G. Wells, for instance, was a central literary figure of his day and carried on literary correspondences and friendshipswith, among others, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. Although he eventually fell out with both men, in the years before those breaks they saw him as a talented peer.2 Thus, although James disagreed with Wells on numerous matters of style, he also praised some of his works, especially The Time Machine. Indeed, it is some measure of the Wellsian influence that after James's death, a substantial but unfinished story of time travel entitled The Sense of the Past (1917) was found among his papers (Franklin x), while parallels between Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907) and Wells's The Invisible Man (1897) suggest a similar Wellsian influence (McConnell 48, 116).

During the last decades of the nineteenth-century and the first decades of the twentieth, nothing resembling today's well-established academic and critical circles existed. New novels were reviewed in a variety of newspapers and magazines, but fiction as a whole was not subjected to the sort of scrutiny characteristic of contemporary academic criticism. Nonetheless, as literature was gauged during this period, Wells was well-respected, both as a popular writer in the sense that his books sold very well and as a technician in that the authors of the period who aspired to art rather than simple craft took his work, including the scientific romances, seriously.

By the late 1920s and '30s, however, science fiction had fallen into disrepute due to a process which is commonly referred to today as "ghettoization." Traditionally, critics explain this phenomenon as the result of the inferior writing in Gernsback's Amazing Stories and its imitators (Aldiss; Blish 21-28; Hartwell; et al). Gernsback's editorial standards placed great emphasis on ideas but not on style, originality, or even what might best be described as simple linguistic fluency. As a result, works by authors like Wells and Poe were presented alongside distinctly derivative stories by writers whose fiction was limited by a lack of creativity or a lack of concern with the fundamentals of good writing—or both. The situation was exacerbated by commercial considerations. So many science fiction periodicals demanded material during the pulp boom that editors were forced to print inferior material if they were unable to locate anything better, and the dynamics on the demand side of the economic equation were equally problematic. Since pulp writers were poorly paid, they were forced to write quickly to make even subsistence salaries. As a result, productivity rather than carefully edited prose or stylistic innovation was their paramount concern. This insular, popular fiction environment is the ghetto where modern science fiction began. One can hardly be surprised that these manifestations of science fiction were not well-accepted by selective readers, despite their popularity with pulp audiences. But we ought to remember that science fiction was very popular.

Indeed, there was an explosion of science fiction during the '20s and '30s, in fiction as well as in comic books, films, and radio. Not surprisingly, however, science fiction's very popularity was a major contributing factor to its commercial, academic, and literary ghettoization, just as its popularity continues to contribute to its general marginalization. After all, to appeal to a broad, popular audience, any artistic form must cater to the lowest common denominators of taste. It must be simple so that as many people as possible can understand it. The result in science fiction is sci-fi—all the inferior manifestations of science fiction.

So it was that science fiction gained popularity and notoriety but not respectability. Later, a variety of editors would supplant Gernsback's authority and, working at other publications, dictate which sorts of science fiction would be published. John Campbell's Astounding, Horace Gold's Galaxy, and Michael Moorcock's New Worlds began to recognize science fiction's sociological and thematic possibilities, developed an interest with basic stylistic and grammatical competence, and established a hospitable environment for innovative science fiction. Since Gernsback, a host of authors, including but not limited to Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin, and Kurt Vonnegut, has written science fiction that bears little resemblance to the clumsy, ungrammatical fiction many readers associate with the pulps.

Many mainstream authors and academics have also experimented with and/or commented on one or more forms of science fiction, including Kingsley Amis, Margaret Atwood, Anthony Burgess, William Burroughs, Leslie Fiedler, Aldous Huxley, Doris Lessing, C. S. Lewis, and Robert Scholes. Samuel Moskowitz taught the first college class on science fiction at the College of the City of New York in 1953 (Delany, Starboard 166).

In 1959, the Modern Language Association inaugurated the continuing seminar on science fiction (Delany, Starboard 166), and now there are hundreds of science fiction classes at high schools, colleges, and universities all over the nation. Currently, numerous academic conferences, scholarly books, and journals are devoted to the form. Yet despite all these considerations and the fact that science fiction is now both widely published and available, the academic-critical community's acceptance of science fiction is at best qualified.

Many university English departments, for instance, still offer no courses in science fiction, while others offer them more as a concession to student interest than out of a sincere belief that science fiction is as worthy of study as Victorian novels, Renaissance drama, or twentieth-century poetry. The courses do exist, but they are taught by whichever faculty members or graduate students can be found to handle them, often regardless of their experience or familiarity with the genre. As Leslie Fiedler phrases it, the genre has been claimed by academics "who need it to bring life into dying classes in traditional literature" (Dreams 22). That core reading lists for masters and doctoral exams rarely include works of science fiction only further suggests that the universities' embrace of science fiction is halfhearted, especially in light of the fact that the genre has been one of the most prevalent twentieth-century fictional forms. Old prejudices die hard. And so it is that I come to this study.

Defenses generally counter specific charges. Such is the case, for instance, with Sidney's An Apologie for Poetrie (1580-83) or John Dennis's The Usefulness of the Stage (1698), both of which replied to Puritan attacks—one on poetry and the other on theater. A defense of science fiction, or at least this particular defense of science fiction, takes a slightly different approach. I am interested in coming to a more complete understanding of science fiction's current marginalization. A blow-by-blow refutation of the attacks made against science fiction would be both simplistic and tedious. Thus, by the same principle that encourages reviewers and critics to expend as much time as possible paying attention to the best work available, I will focus primarily on the criticisms, both explicit and implicit, which are the most significant either because their incorrect assumptions have influenced the way science fiction is perceived or because those critiques accurately locate weaknesses in science fiction and suggest avenues for real improvement.

I shall begin by defining science fiction as I and others have used the term. This should avoid many of the problems which arise when critics use the same term to refer not only to different texts but also to different social or cultural phenomena. My first chapter locates science fiction on the contemporary academic-critical landscape and more clearly defines the nature of its current marginalization. Chapters two and three address the most significant criticisms of the genre, explaining how, despite their flaws, these critiques offer valuable insights into the genre. In my second chapter, I focus on the issue of characterization, both to address the matter on its own terms and to set the stage for the following chapters, where the matter of characterization remains a central thread of my discussion. Chapter three responds to the broad critique of science fiction offered by Stanislaw Lem's pivotal essays: "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case—with Exceptions" (1973), "Cosmology and Science Fiction" (1977), and "Metafantasia: The Possibilities of Science Fiction" (1981). In my final chapter, I move beyond an analysis of science fiction's current situation to attempt some corrective criticism by examining two overlooked examples of characterization. By offering a case study of William Gibson's short stories "Hinterlands" (1983) and "The Winter Market" (1986), I seek to show how criticism, even by well-intentioned commentators familiar with science fiction, can fail, while suggesting the manner in which both those inside and outside of the science fiction community can address the work of an author who is seen by both groups as a significant writer.

Definitions and Terminology

Although genres resist definition (Delany, "Reflections" 236; Rose 1 -4), and, indeed, the term "genre" is itself problematic (Frye 246-248; Roberts 199-204, 217, 225), critics traditionally open discussions of science fiction with definitions anyway. For the purposes of this study, I will outline the generally accepted boundaries which previous criticism has established for science fiction before explaining the specific terms I will use. The necessary starting point for both of these tasks is an overview of the difficulties in formulating specific, generally applicable definitions of science fiction. Existing genre definitions admit a wide range of works which quite clearly are not science fiction—including Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and Bram Stoker's Dracula— while excluding such central science fiction texts as John Campbell's "Night," Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz (Knight, "What Is" 62-63). John Campbell even states that since science fiction encompasses all fictional possibilities, all other fictional forms represent special cases of science fiction (Spinrad 35).

The overarching absurdity of attempts to define science fiction is perhaps best reflected by Roger Zelazny, who comments that whenever he hears a reasonable definition of the genre, he writes a science fiction story which violates that definition (Alterman 25). But this effort provokes more than authorial playfulness; it leads to the critical fatigue captured in observations that even a "generally acceptable literary definition" of science fiction is impossible (Spinrad 34). Briefly put, seeking a comprehensive definition of science fiction is something of a Grail quest, and past attempts suggest that the most critics can hope to do is describe the genre's overall tendencies (Delany, "Reflections" 236), defining science fiction as a historical phenomenon, "a developing complex of themes, attitudes, and formal strategies that, taken together, constitute a general set of expectations" (Roberts 200; Rose 4; Suvin in Stableford 68).

Fortunately, although I, like my predecessors, cannot formulate a comprehensive definition of science fiction, an overview of the genre's tendencies and the wide range of expectations readers bring to science fiction texts will adequately serve my purposes. Still, within the confines of that framework, a variety of distinctions will be both necessary and useful.

Most broadly, science fiction is a subcategory of fantasy whose events represent extrapolations of current scientific facts, hypotheses, or methods. Often, science fiction writers construct worlds and societies by positing fundamental differences between the technology, biology, sociology, and/or scientific advancement of our world and their fictional worlds. These differences are used as points of departure. Some obvious examples include dystopias such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell's 1984, as well as such diverse works as Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, William Gibson's Neuromancer, Robert Heinlein's Star ship Troopers, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, and Stanislaw Lern's Solaris. We cannot, however, readily distinguish between fantasy in general and science fiction in particular, because many science fiction stories, including most of H. G. Wells's scientific romances, straddle the boundary. The notable exception is The Island of Dr. Moreau, where the fantastic events—the creation of beast people from animals—represent straightforward possibility, as Wells himself realized.

The beast people created by Moreau's procedures are the stuff of "hard" science fiction; that is they adhere to the realities of scientific possibility. Current technology may not yet allow for such procedures, but they are certainly within human reach. In First Men in the Moon, however, Wells imagines a substance which directly contradicts accepted physical laws. The substance, Cavorite, resists the effects of gravity and allows Wells's protagonists to propel their ship to the moon. If we were to consider only Cavorite in making a genre evaluation of First Men, Wells's novel could hardly be looked upon as science fiction. There is nothing remotely "scientific" about Cavorite—it is a purely fantastic creation. Still, in a broader manner, First Men in the Moon exhibits the general tendencies I have outlined, because, like The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The War of the Worlds, it extrapolates carefully and systematically using evolutionary theory as a point of departure. The creatures inhabiting the moon in First Men, the Selenites, represent one potential outcome of evolution, just as do the Martians in The War of the Worlds, the devolving beast people of The Island of Dr. Moreau, and the Eloi and the Morlocks of The Time Machine.

In fact, science fiction, even the hard-core variety, almost always embraces at least some decidedly unscientific elements, including "impossibilities" such as anti-gravity, faster-than-light space crafts, and time machines, as well as occasional instances of sloppy science, such as a recurrent blunder in some science fiction works where Jupiter's gravity is erroneously described as "crushing" when it is approximately four earth gravities—significant by terrestrial standards but far from lethal (Blish 37). Of course the difficulty is that while we can identify sloppy science, we cannot be as certain about supposed impossibilities. There always exist a chance that some "impossible" science fiction creations might become possible as a result of future discoveries. Opinions vary among scientists— particularly physicists, whose field is most generally at issue—on the distinction between possible and impossible (Geffe et al), but one need only examine the theories of some physicists—Stephen Hawking, for instance— to see a wide range of remarkable possibilities that are being set forth as viable. Indeed, in light of theoretical work and recent discoveries made accessible to nonscientists by such scientist-authors as Stephen J. Gould, Carl Sagan, and Lewis Thomas, it has become something of a cliché to note that contemporary science is far stranger than contemporary science fiction.

To a large extent, the ambiguous boundary between what is possible and what is impossible prevents critics (and scientists) from formulating a comprehensive, generally acceptable definition of science fiction based on distinctions between scientific possibilities and impossibilities. The boundary between the two is simply too hazy, and even when it is not, the works under discussion, like Wells's scientific romances, contain a combination of hard scientific possibilities and apparent impossibilities. As a result, each reader must decide for her- or himself which works do or do not constitute science fiction. Consequently, definitions of science fiction remain remarkably subjective with individual sensibilities rather than standardized, quantifiable criteria determining what amounts of hard science, questionable science, and outright fantasy allow a work to be categorized as science fiction, as straightforward fantasy, or as a category which straddles the boundary, science fantasy. This subjectivity also characterizes efforts to define science fiction, since critics invariably define science fiction to match their own idea of the genre's "true" nature (Knight, "What Is" 62), particularly in their tendency to avoid describing the genre as it exists in favor of making prescriptions for its "proper" composition (Stableford 68). Still, as Delany observes, "Words mean what people use them to mean" {Jewel 9), so although definitions describing science fiction as those works we point to when we use the term (Knight in Gunn 71) may seem flippant, they actually recognize the broad definitional difficulties involved with science fiction.

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