On Books: Retro Versus Visionary

[J-Sun]

On Books: Retro Versus Visionary by Norman Spinrad

EDIT: Archive.org link: On Books

Trivial side-note to a generally interesting - even absolutely essential - essay (which includes reviews of books written and/or edited by GRRM, Dozois, the Brothers Benford, and Moriarty): I found his use of the phrase "[a]nti-science fiction" particularly interesting, given my use of it when reviewing Dozois' 29th Annual (in the "The Varieties of SF Experience" section - specifically, the "3: Anti-SF" sub-section).

 

[Bick]

I liked the essay - thanks for the links J-Sun. I tend to agree with the central theme. Hard speculative fiction is my favoured genre so it also rankles slightly when I see fantasy set in space described as science fiction when it clearly isn't.

 

[Toby Frost]

Hmm.

I've never been much interested in the various forms of science fiction, which feel like splitting hairs to me. I'm quite happy with the talking squids and don't feel cheated if the Competent Men turn out to have rounded characters.

I do see the point, but I don't think that SF is in imminent danger of stagnating, and I would ask what the criteria for stagnation are. While I think that a fair amount of steampunk is the rearranging of a small number of slightly tired tropes, it and fantasy have plenty of opportunity to comment on now, both as direct satire and otherwise. I think it's easy to see the visionary, forward-looking aspect of SF as just realistically trying to predict the future or extrapolate from the present.

Perhaps I ought to attempt a "Why steampunk?" post since, now that the original infatuation has worn off, it does get a few detractors.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Am I mistaken in interpreting this as another "hard science fiction is the only science fiction" discussion?

 

[tinkerdan]

I want to first say that I thoroughly enjoyed both these post links here; and though I agree with many words they spoke I had some trouble with some basic concepts in trying to understand once again the great debate.

First: if one considers the word 'fiction' which often includes 'fantasy' as a synonym it's easy to see that in both these articles the gentlemen are fighting windmills.

Add to that the complaint that if they removed the science from these stories the stories would stand by themselves-as an argument that it's not (Simon Pure or Hard Science)-it's enough to make my head spin just like the windmill does from the winds strong opinion.

Pure 'Science' 'Fiction' by both somewhat hazy definitions seem to be an oxymoron in that there can be no such animal and in fact they would like to remove the fiction from the science. But what does that leave you, but science.?

Neither of these approaches seem to be comfortable with the notion that Hard Science fiction should be and Extrapolation (sometimes extraordinary) of our present understanding of physics into a universe with well defined rules that must be followed internally to keep the story consistent within it's own science. And by being removed from that; both seem hard pressed to find any of the current SF falling in their definition and they have to admitably make a stretch to include a few stories into that category. One even go so far as to discover that the closest contender was the most boring read. (Which should warn us all of something.)

The lament is that SF is dying, but in truth their definitions seem intent on putting the last nails in the coffin. If we take the fantasy out of the word fiction then what else should we remove of the synonyms : fabrication, invention, lies, fibs, untruth, falsehood, fantasy, nonsense. Or should we remove them all to create an new definition for fiction that meets the standard of those who want to have their cake and eat it also.

By their own definition they should be happy with the work that could survive if they took out the Science because that at the very least says that the story stands alone as good fiction. In the same token if we took that fiction and then added the Simon Pure by their definition 'science' we would have nothing more than good fiction with added science which in truth is what most fiction is anyway because everything around us reeks of that kind of basic fundamental science.

I'm pretty sure that would not make them happy.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I thought it was an interesting essay, though phrases like "macrocultural seppuku" were a bit...eh.

Substantively, I don't agree with the assumption that it is the "hardness" of the science that defines science fiction, nor the extrapolation that replacing "science" with "speculative" is a function of literary "value." (The term speculative fiction emerged from the New Wave, to describe work by authors such as JG Ballard who wrote speculative stories but we're not terribly interested in "hard" science, and saw their fiction as fundamentally different from, say, Clarke or Asimov.)

But I do see the sense in questioning whether some things marketed as "science" fiction really are that at all. Steampunk, to me, is something that draws on SF but isn't SF--it's caught somewhere in the broad umbrella of "speculative fiction," as it is premised on speculation about the Victorian period, given specific alterations in the science and technology tree, but not strictly SF. And, to use J-Sun's language from elsewhere, it is decidedly "regressive" rather than "progressive."

That doesn't make it bad, just different.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I am putting quotation marks around “science fiction.” Much that is published as “science fiction,” or “SF,” or “sci-fi” these dim days is not just not “hard science fiction” at all, but not science fiction period, in terms of its literary and cultural definition that I will call herein speculative fiction.

rah rah sis boom bah

I am so tired of buying stuff called science fiction that people say is great only to find that it ain't science fiction at all.

Hyperion

Leviathan Wakes?

psik

 

[psikeyhackr]

Am I mistaken in interpreting this as another "hard science fiction is the only science fiction" discussion?

Yes, this paragraph is proof.

We generally count Orwell’s 1984 as speculative fiction, whose speculative element is political. Or Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, whose speculative element is psychological. Or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, whose speculative element is cultural. The speculative element doesn’t have to be scientific or technological. But speculative fiction does have to be something set in the future, at least in the immediate future, not the past, and not in a knowingly impossible realm of fantasy.

psik

 

[tinkerdan]

Yes I would agree if you read that article alone because it centers on such genre as Steam-punk with the notion that it is not speculation into the future.

Yes, this paragraph is proof.
psik

On the other hand- should speculation out of the past be excluded then he should mention all of those time travel novels that take us back.

In fact I think I'll write a science fiction time travel novel that only allows the characters to go into the future because it was proven long ago that time travel into the past was pure fantasy.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Also, speculative fiction doesn't and, as I understand it, never has meant speculation about the future. Most of JG Ballard's fiction is speculative about the present.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Also, speculative fiction doesn't and, as I understand it, never has meant speculation about the future. Most of JG Ballard's fiction is speculative about the present.

As far as I can tell it was Robert Heinlein who was first promoting the term "Speculative Fiction" and he meant for it not to include fantasy. But it seems to be something that got co-opted and corrupted.

In its English language usage in arts and literature since 20th century, "speculative fiction" as a genre term is often attributed to Robert A. Heinlein. In his first known use of the term, in editorial material at the front of the 2/8/1947 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, Heinlein used it specifically as a synonym for "science fiction"; in a later piece, he explicitly stated that his use of the term did not include fantasy.

However, though Heinlein may have come up with the term on his own, there are earlier citations: a piece in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1889 used the term in reference to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000–1887 and other works; and one in the May, 1900 issue of The Bookman[disambiguation needed] said that John Uri Lloyd's Etidorhpa, The End of the Earth had "created a great deal of discussion among people interested in speculative fiction".

Speculative fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But applying the phrase to Bellamy's Looking Backward would have been an accurate use of Heinlein's intent.

It seems as though a lot of people want vagueness maintained.

psik

 

[tinkerdan]

I would agree that I have also heard that Robert Heinlein was a supporter of the use of the term Speculative Fiction.

But I would qualify that that entire piece in Wikipedia contains elements that are suspiciously unsupported and need to be looked at and questioned before reading the whole as any substantial proof of anything in this regard.

 

[Bick]

I would agree that I have also heard that Robert Heinlein was a supporter of the use of the term Speculative Fiction.

But I would qualify that that entire piece in Wikipedia contains elements that are suspiciously unsupported and need to be looked at and questioned before reading the whole as any substantial proof of anything in this regard.

Heinlein's use of "speculative fiction" as a term to describe SF specifically is well recognised - it was indeed used by him in the 1947 essay citation given.

 

[Bick]

This is a transcript of an interesting lecture given by Heinlein in 1959 reproduced on the LoA website.

From the lecture, this is perhaps relevant to the discussion:

...the term "science fiction" is now part of the language, as common as the neologism "guided missile." We are stuck with it and I will use it . . . although personally I prefer the term "speculative fiction" as being more descriptive...

and...

When I say "fantasy fiction" I shall mean "imaginary-and-not-possible" in the world as we know it; conversely all fiction which I regard as "imaginary-but-possible" I shall refer to as "realistic fiction," i.e., imaginary but could be real so far as we know the real universe. Science fiction is in the latter class. It is not fantasy. I am not condemning fantasy, I am defining it.

and...

My story Magic, Inc.; E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros; the Oz books; stories using talking mules, or Seacoast Bohemia, or astrology treated as if it were a science; any story based on violation of scientific fact, such as space ship stories which ignore ballistics, stories which have the lizard men of Zlxxt crossbreeding with human females, stories which represent the surface conditions of Mars as being much like those of Earth. Let me emphasize: Assumptions contrary to fact such as the last one mentioned do not in themselves invalidate a story; C. S. Lewis' powerful Out of the Silent Planet is not spoiled thereby as a religious parable—it simply happens to be fantasy rather than science fiction

 

[Nerds_feather]

JG Ballard's work that is typically described as "speculative fiction" isn't fantasy; nor is it "science fiction," of the kind written by, say, the American SF "masters" of the 40s and 50s. This is the kind of stuff that the term can capture that isn't adequately captured by the term SF. I'm thinking Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, Super-Cannes, etc.

 

[tinkerdan]

Thanks:: those are the kinds of citations that belong on wikipedia which don't seem to make it there.
That's basically all that I ask for.

This is a transcript of an interesting lecture given by Heinlein in 1959 reproduced on the LoA website.

From the lecture, this is perhaps relevant to the discussion:


and...


and...

 

[Toby Frost]

Without wanting to be rude to anyone on this thread - people are free to think what they like, of course - I don't think this argument really helps anyone. No matter what you think Star Wars is, the great majority of people are going to keep calling it science fiction because of the space ships and the aliens. I'm also not sure that anyone will really change their minds.

So thanks for posting the original link, but I'm stepping out of this one.

 

[psikeyhackr]

No matter what you think Star Wars is, the great majority of people are going to keep calling it science fiction because of the space ships and the aliens.

That is the curious thing about science and real science fiction.

According to our psychologists 75% of the population has IQs below 111. In order for a movie to be a blockbuster a lot of those people must come to see it.

But Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story called The Secret. It was about a colony on the Moon. No one could get a job there unless their IQ was over 150. Heinlein wrote stories implying the same thing about being qualified to get into space.

https://sites.google.com/site/higginsenglish/thesecret

So is good SF for "average" readers. Does SF have to be "elitist" to be good enough to qualify as competent SF. Asimov's IQ was 160. I have not seen numbers for Clarke and Heinlein but I am pretty sure they were not average. What kind of people want to watch Star Wars more than 20 times.

The problem is that real science is like that too. Look at this complex technology that is changing our lives and society. Is it invented and designed by average people. So are sci-fi stories with average characters reasonable or are they mere literature? So is the problem with science fiction for the last 20 years is that it has been invaded by writers trying to mine the Golden Ghetto but can't write good SF? But those people have a vested interest in maintaining semantic confusion about science fiction.

Maybe we need a new name: STEM Fiction.

S.T.E.M. == Science Technology Engineering Mathematics

http://www.cde.ca.gov/pd/ca/sc/stemintrod.asp

Fiction for the scientific mind set.

psik

 

[JonH]

To my mind Science Fiction follows the scientific method. It takes a hypothesis, makes a change to test the hypothesis and runs the experiment. Except the change is in the world or characters, and the experiment is the story.

Sometimes the change is a change from the real world, sometimes it's a change from common SF tropes, so I don't rule out using FTL, as FTL universes have been so well mapped that exploring a further change on top still qualifies as a valid experiment.

There can be many changes stemming from the original hypothesis in order to make the story's setting and characters consistent, but it preferable to only have one main hypothesis being tested.

There are a million holes in this definition (as there are in every other one), but that's my take.

 

[tinkerdan]

I tend to agree with this::

Without wanting to be rude to anyone on this thread - people are free to think what they like, of course - I don't think this argument really helps anyone. No matter what you think Star Wars is, the great majority of people are going to keep calling it science fiction because of the space ships and the aliens. I'm also not sure that anyone will really change their minds.

So thanks for posting the original link, but I'm stepping out of this one.

And based on sales of SF I'd be inclined to believe the publishing industry believes also.