i could be brave

Friday, July 28, 2006

More Than Science Fiction

Categories: Books • Life • Movies • Religion • Technology • Writing

I enjoy reading Science Fiction. I think it would be a safe bet that roughly 75% of the novels I read would fall under the Science Fiction genre. I find the ideas and situations that are explored in Science Fiction to be incredibly interesting. Things can happen that never happen in traditional literature.

Yet, despite how much I enjoy reading Science Fiction I'm sometimes embarrassed to admit it to people.

Why would that be? Lets explore the issue.

Science Fiction immediately makes people think of Star Wars. And if they aren't thinking of Star Wars they are thinking of Star Trek. In either case great literature is not the thing that comes to mind. Even before Star Wars and Star Trek the genre had a bad rap. Science Fiction was relegated to the Pulp Fiction level. It was viewed as juvenile. And much of it was. The predominant reader of Science Fiction was the young male American of the 1950's. It was even at one time extremely difficult for female authors to get published. Alice B. Sheldon an early female author in the genre actually used the Pseudonym of James Tiptree Jr. and was very successful. So successful in fact that prominent critics and readers of the time often used her as an example of why men were better Science Fiction authors then women. Of course that audience did eventually grow up and as a result the genre grew up too. Not that anyone noticed.

There authors who are considered to be both Literature and Science Fiction. These authors seem to have transcended the genre and become well known names in literary circles. George Orwell and Ray Bradbury come to mind, though the latter only considered one of his novels Science Fiction (Fareheit 451). Mary Shelly is often cited as an early author of the genre though again I doubt she would have considered herself such and the genre didn't really exist during her time. And of course, there is always Jules Verne the venerable father of Science Fiction. And to round off the name dropping Poe is often cited but again really existed before the genre had truly taken hold.

Why did the above authors succeed in literary circles when others did not? I think it is because they wrote Science Fiction before people really knew what it was. Now that people think they know what it is they blithely ignore it. It isn't really literature. Its just a bunch of laser gun fights and space battles. Nothing deep can be confronted by that. Nothing worth an intelligent person's time.

I've heard some authors who published their first novel as Science Fiction comment that they wish they had never done it. The reason being that the literary cognoscenti have decided that it isn't worth paying attention to. Science Fiction has its own prestigious awards within the genre The Hugo and The Nebula. But if you want a literary award that people know the name of? Here is a little advice. Never publish a Science Fiction novel. Once you have you are marked, for life. A well known and incredibly successful Science Fiction auther named Orson Scott Card has published upwards of 5 or 6 novels (that I know of) that are not in the Science Fiction genre. Where will you find those novels? In the Science Fiction section. Where will you find reviews of those novels? In the Science Fiction magazines. Who published those novels? A Science Fiction publisher.

One of my favorite authors is Mary Doria Russell. She wrote two Science Fiction novels and then a Historical novel about WWII in Italy. Where did I find a copy of her 3rd novel? Not where I looked the first time. Amazingly enough she managed to get nominated for a Pulitzer. Which is, I think, a sign that people are beginning to realize that there is more to Science Fiction, or at least to authors who have chosen to write Science Fiction, then laser guns and space battles.

However, thats quite enough of my complaining about the treatment of my favorite genre. I obviously think the genre as a whole is very much worth a person's time. But what books do I think transcend the genre itself? Are there any that weren't written be the ancient names above?

Of course there are. And in no particular order, and with the knowledge that I'm going to inevitably leave out some very deserving books, these are the ones I feel deserve to be recognized.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Canticle is one of those books that is not only strange literature in general it is strange Science Fiction. There is no particular plot in the usual sense; which causes many readers to get frustrated and bored waiting for something exciting to happen (a space battle perhaps?). There is only one reoccurring character and he isn't exactly what you would call a main character. In fact there really isn't a main character. Rather than being about an individual person the book is about people in general. Our faults, our virtues, and our propensity for self destruction are all major topics. The book is also about God and how he might fit into the mess of our lives. What makes the book Science Fiction? The fact that it takes place in the future with a post apocalyptic backdrop is the main reason. The book is one of those books you find yourself thinking about a lot when you aren't reading it. Something most authors would be proud to do regardless of the genre they write in.

The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss

The Dazzle of Day is a Science Fiction novel about Quakers. Really. The novel uses the setting of a multi generational spaceship taking a colony of Quakers to a new planet to examine how a closed society might change when their entire existence has been aboard a spaceship. What would it be like not to know what it is like to live on a planet and deal with things like weather? What would these people think and how would they react when confronted with the planet their great great grandparents originally set out for generations ago? Molly Gloss doesn't focus on the technology that makes all of this possible. Rather you are simply asked to accept it. The characters certainly do. It is all they know. Rather, Molly Gloss focuses on the people and their quiet lives. Most of the story could have taken place anywhere but the setting does add something new and faintly alien. You recognize the emotions but don't always recognize why the emotions are being felt and it all makes it feel very strange. Why Quakers? Who better to survive a generations long trip on a spaceship with a little sanity then an already closed and close-knit society of avowed pacifists?

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Connie Willis is easily one of my favorite authors. I can truly say every novel she has written is delightful. Delightful despite the fact that she has a tendency to address things that are anything but. Doomsday book was the first novel of hers that I ever came across. The gloomy name is quite fitting as the novel is about the Black Death. Connie Willis' style of writing is often referred to as a modern form of comedy of manners. She almost always involves her main characters with people who are inane in one way or another. These inane characters are the agent for humor that Willis' intersperses among the pages as her characters maneuver through the terrible or sometimes painfully ordinary situations they are placed in. She uses the technique to great effect in Doomsday Book. The Science Fiction world took notice as the book won both the Nebula and Hugo awards the year it was published.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune is one of those books that inspires people to make movies. Don't ever watch those movies they aren't worth your time. The novel thankfully is. Dune takes some things we all readily recognize; The Feudal System, Religious Movements, Fear, Ignorance, and thrusts them into the far future. A future that is almost unrecognizable to someone from our culture. This is a future of intergalactic spaceships yet there are no computers to be found. This is the far future yet we don't have a glorious democracy we have fiefdom upon fiefdom of sometimes petty rulers who are all addicted to a drug that is actually good for you. We have what appear to be muslims but there is something not quite the same. There is an another religion centered around a bible that sounds vaguely similar but the members of the church are all women and are feared by other men and woman alike. They are called witches when their backs are turned. Again though these things are all interesting in and of themselves the story is really about the people. I wish I could say I enjoyed the subsequent books written by Frank Herbert but I did not. Whatever was inspiring him when he wrote this book got lost soon after.

The Speed of Dark by Elizebeth Moon

The Speed of Dark is written in the first person perspective. Not something typically worth commenting on but in this case it makes an incredibly big difference because of who that person is. Lou, is a high functioning autistic. He enjoys his life. He has a good job. He has good friends. He even has a beautiful girl whom he thinks might be interested in him. I can hear you asking, "OK, how is this Science Fiction?" The novel is Science Fiction because it takes place in the near future with the possibilities of medical advances that are in many ways very real. The main theme of the novel regards what things make a person who they are. Lou is in many ways defined by his autism. He is aware of it and knows that it causes him to react strangely to things. He also knows that it has prevented him from doing things he may have done otherwise. What if he could cure his autism? Would he still be the same person? Or would he fundamentally change? Would he want to change being that he is happy as he is now?

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel

A novel about a Catholic priest in space. Have you noticed yet that I have a penchant for Science Fiction that addresses religious questions? It would be easy to say that this book is about the implications of the existence of aliens and a belief in the Christian God. In fact many people have called the book just that. Instead, I found the book fascinating not for that implication, which I've already spent plenty of time thinking about myself, but rather the implication that an alien race might be both so utterly foreign and so utterly similar that we would misinterpret the evil for the beautiful and vice versa. What are aesthetics? I had an art class were we spent the entire day arguing about the answer to that question. If we can't decide as humans about a concept so integral to our lives how could we hope to understand how those ideas apply to an alien race? And how might we affect those aliens with our ideas and concepts. Could it be that God would mean for us to affect them for the better? How would you go about affecting that change? What would you do if you didn't get what you expect from your efforts? How would you react? What if what you got was so horrible that you have trouble comprehending how a God could allow it to happen? Almost immediately the book makes you aware that something horrible happened to the priest Emilio Sandoz while he was at the alien planet and the rest of the book slowly leads up to the revelation of what happened. I found it fascinating and refreshing that whatever happened did not cause Emilio Sandoz to no longer believe in his God. Rather it cause him to hate his God. Too often we are told there is only one choice or the other. You believe or you don't. But reality is much more organic than that; much more emotional.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

If you hate math this isn't your book. Otherwise you will be presented with a well written novel that can best be described as an exploration of how much the idea and implementation of Cryptography has shaped and will continue to shape recent times as well as the past. The novel takes place over 2 different time periods, WWII and the near future. An important book in that it really does change how you view your privacy in our current culture. As information gets easier to move around do to better technology things like cryptography take a more important role in protecting us from passing information to people we don't to pass it to. Its easy to think people are paranoid when they worry about their email being read by their boss. Or when the stress about using their Credit Card online. They have reason to be worried. The novel isn't a public service announcement though. There is a story here and a fascinating one at that. Again, it is the messy details of human life which add realism and better understanding to a topic that most people would normally find rather dull. And again the book is one you continue to think about long after reading it.

Posted by Jamie at 09:29 PM