Science Fiction Criticism

by Rob Latham;

  Critical survey of SF (and related fantastic) magazines, fanzines, and journals, 551 in all, which are canvassed in insightful capsule histories with comprehensive publishing and editing data. Ashley has also authored a useful four-volume history of SF magazines for Liverpool University Press (2000–16).

  Wolfe, Gary K. Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986.

  Useful, if dated, glossary of critical terms used in the study of SF and fantasy. A more up-to-date reference work is Jeff Prucher’s Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (2007), which offers definitions of key terms in SF literature and history, as well as examples of first and subsequent usage.

  Part 1

  Definitions and boundaries

  This section opens with influential early definitions of the genre advanced by two important figures in the field: Hugo Gernsback, editor of the first SF pulp Amazing Stories, and H. G. Wells, author of classic scientific romances such as The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898). Writing in 1926, Gernsback offered an ostensive definition of what he called “scientifiction”: by this term, he meant “the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story . . . a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.”1 Such stories, he stressed, were only possible in a world being rapidly transformed by technoscientific change—thus his emphasis on prophesy, the ability of SF to predict futuristic marvels that would eventually come to pass. This focus on prediction, as well as Gernsback’s brief for the genre’s didactic quality—its “knack of imparting knowledge, and even inspiration, without once making us aware that we are being taught”—would prove highly influential as the specialty SF magazine began to establish itself in the United States.

  By contrast, Wells, in the introduction to a 1933 omnibus edition of his most famous SF works, drew a sharp contrast between the “anticipatory inventions” of Verne and his own “scientific fantasies,” which (he claims) rely on central premises—time travel, invisibility, anti-gravity—that are logically or scientifically impossible but that, once posited in a narrative, must be extrapolated with the utmost realism. “Touches of prosaic detail,” he argues, “are imperative,” along with “a rigorous adherence to the hypothesis,” however fantastical. Rather than didactically displaying the wonders of scientific progress, as Gernsback suggests SF does, Wells’s tales use “magic tricks” to illuminate social life from a fresh angle or to satirize human foibles and pretensions.

  This contrast between SF as predictive and didactic on the one hand, fantastic and satirical on the other, runs through much of the criticism of the genre produced in the wake of Gernsback’s and Wells’s interventions.2 The third reading in this section, a 1947 essay by American SF author Robert A. Heinlein, directly confronts the division between what he calls “gadget stories” and “human-interest stories,” with the latter seen as a richer and more compelling vein of literary exploration. Like Wells, Heinlein argues that an SF story must contain some significant divergence from consensus reality, a speculative postulate that the author works through with great care, showing how human characters learn to “cop[e] with problems arising out of the new situation.” Unlike Wells, however, Heinlein affirms that the element of novelty in the story must be scientifically plausible, not mere fantasy; indeed, premises in SF stories “must not be at variance with observed facts.” Heinlein’s essay is widely credited with coining the phrase “speculative fiction” as a way of registering the genre’s imaginative engagement with futuristic possibility.

  Subsequent critics—such as SF author-editor Judith Merril, an excerpt from whose 1966 essay “What Do You Mean: Science? Fiction?” follows—have taken up Heinlein’s term in order to argue for speculative fiction as a more sophisticated form of writing than what she calls “teaching” and “preaching” stories, whose impulses are more limited in effect. Merril follows Wells and Heinlein in arguing that the best SF introduces “a given set of changes—imaginary or inventive—into the common background of ‘known facts,’ creating an environment in which the responses and perceptions of the characters will reveal something about the inventions, the characters, or both.” She goes further, however, in claiming a prestigious pedigree that transcends the pulp tradition inaugurated by Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, which was always only a limited subset of a more encompassing tradition that included the voyages fantastiques of Cyrano and the contes philosophiques of Voltaire. Moreover, true SF, in synch with cutting-edge trends in modern science, is less didactic than speculative in nature: dynamic as opposed to mechanical, relativistic rather than positivist. The best trends in SF will always, according to Merril, move along speculative lines, and her piece concludes with a brief for “a more radical and more exciting” form of writing, then emerging especially in Britain, which would eventually become known as the “New Wave” movement. Indeed, during the 1960s, Merril became an increasingly vocal evangelist for the New Wave as a crucial avant-garde within the field, combating the vestiges of the Gernbackian gadget story with surrealist satire.3

  Merril’s meticulous discussion of the intellectual and commercial milieu within which the genre evolved makes clear that definitions should not be seen as fixed and ahistorical but rather as developing in response to changing cultural and institutional pressures. Indeed, what essentially counts as science fiction is perennially revised as new generations of editors, authors and readers contest the genre’s scope and boundaries. During the 1980s, the most visible—and voluble—of these groups were the so-called cyberpunks, and the next selection, Bruce Sterling’s introduction to his 1986 anthology Mirrorshades, addresses how cyberpunk at once continues earlier trends and brings new energy to the field. On the one hand, cyberpunk draws upon the tradition of “hard SF” pioneered by John W. Campbell’s magazine Astounding during the 1940s, as well as the New Wave’s “streetwise” stylishness; on the other hand, it responds to fresh trends in 1980s culture, such as punk music and the ethos of the computer hacker. SF, in short, cannot be defined purely in terms of allegedly timeless formal qualities because the genre is inextricable from the historical influences that shape it at any given moment. Indeed, for Sterling, cyberpunk is merely the “literary incarnation” of a global phenomenon that fuses “the realm of high tech . . . and the modern pop underground.”

  The final three readings in this section, all written by academic critics rather than frontline genre practitioners, continue even more forcefully the move toward an antiessentialist conception of SF: for these critics, defining science fiction and establishing its boundaries is inevitably a historical process, and the goals and motives of those doing the defining cannot be ignored in any responsible account of the genre. In her 1990 essay, Veronica Hollinger expressly agrees with Sterling that cyberpunk marks a breakthrough to a new historical form of SF, one that casts aside humanist verities in favor of post-human visions of cyborg possibility. In alignment with trends in postmodern theory and culture, cyberpunk embraces fragmented narratives, mutable subjectivities, and delirious transformations of self and society.4 Even more provocatively, Hollinger suggests that cyberpunk may augur an epochal breakdown in the boundaries separating the genre from the mainstream of postmodern fiction, though it still remains constrained by the commercial and ideological limitations of its “paraliterary” status. What these two pieces on cyberpunk show, above all, is that SF is always, in Hollinger’s words, “The product of a multiplicity of influences from both within and outside of [the] genre,” and any attempt to define its features must take this imbrication of factors into account.

  Roger Luckhurst’s essay, which openly identifies itself as “a polemic,” goes even further, attacking the very impulse to draw and police boundaries as a pathological condition endemic to SF history. As he shows, critics—such as Judith Merril, for example—who attempt to legitimate science fiction as literature are impelled to “isolat[e] a central definition through whi
ch all other cases can be rejected or shifted to the edges as impure.” Thus, so-called “speculative fiction” is elevated as a more genuine form than didactic gadget stories, which are dismissed as atavistic pulp survivals, and the ultimate effect of such proscriptions, according to Luckhurst, is to cast huge swaths of SF into critical oblivion. Yet the ritual impulse to transcend SF’s lowly pulp origins only serves, ironically, to reinforce the centrality of Gernback’s “initial elaboration of the conditions on which the genre has come to be defined.” For Luckhurst, the critical history of SF is a series of quixotic definitional shifts that are largely rhetorical and self-defeating.

  The final essay in this section, by John Rieder, offers a magisterial analysis of the contrast between essentialist and what might be called process-based definitions of SF. Rather than seeing genres as “fixed, ahistorical entities,” Rieder argues for them as the complex results of decisions and arguments made by particular subjects with identifiable motives and goals. As he puts it, “Categorization . . . is not a passive registering of qualities intrinsic to what is being categorized, but an active intervention in their disposition.” Definitions, thus, are modes of reading that connect texts with one another and draw borders between them and other sets of texts; rather than static, they are dynamic and relational. Historically, the key distinctions between SF and other forms of writing were established during the pulp era, with the advent of specialty genre magazines perceived as distinct from so-called “serious” literature. Like Luckhurst, Rieder sees genre attribution as a “rhetorical act” that intervenes in the processes of distribution and reception, though he does not see this intervention as necessarily invidious. Rather, it is simply the way that “communities of practice” pursue reading strategies based on their particular interests and values, and the field that today constitutes science fiction is traversed by multiple such communities, each with its particular vision of the genre’s scope and limits. The project of definition is thus not pointless, but it can never be settled once and for all.

  Notes

  1. The unlovely portmanteau word “scientifiction,” which was Gernsback’s coinage, did not catch on, being eventually supplanted by the now-common “science fiction” during the 1930s. For a discussion of the consolidation of Gernbackian conceptions of the field, see Gary Westfahl’s The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1999).

  2. Some critics have argued that this contrast highlights a significant difference between the American and British SF traditions, with the former being a gadget-driven writing dominated by “gosh-wow” emotion, while the latter is more philosophical and pessimistic. See, for example, Brian Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985).

  3. For a discussion of Merril’s role as a passionate advocate for speculative fiction, see my essay “The New Wave” in David Seed’s Companion to Science Fiction (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 202–16.

  4. Hollinger was one of many critics during the 1980s and 1990s who argued for the convergence of cyberpunk with postmodern literature and culture. See, for example, the essays gathered in Larry McCaffery’s Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991).

  1

  Editorial: A new sort of magazine

  Hugo Gernsback

  Another fiction magazine!

  At first thought it does seem impossible that there could be room for another fiction magazine in this country. The reader may well wonder, “Aren’t there enough already, with the several hundreds now being published?” True. But this is not “another fiction magazine,” Amazing Stories is a new kind of fiction magazine! It is entirely new—entirely different—something that has never been done before in this country. Therefore, Amazing Stories deserves your attention and interest.

  There is the usual fiction magazine, the love story and the sex-appeal type of magazine, the adventure type, and so on, but a magazine of “Scientifiction” is a pioneer in its field in America.

  By “scientifiction” I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision. For many years stories of this nature were published in the sister magazines of Amazing Stories—Science and Invention and Radio News.

  But with the ever increasing demands on us for this sort of story, and more of it, there was only one thing to do—publish a magazine in which the scientific fiction type of story will hold forth exclusively. Toward that end we have laid elaborate plans, sparing neither time nor money.

  Edgar Allan Poe may well be called the father of “scientifiction.” It was he who really originated the romance, cleverly weaving into and around the story, a scientific thread. Jules Verne, with his amazing romances, also cleverly interwoven with a scientific thread, came next. A little later came H. G. Wells, whose scientifiction stories, like those of his forerunners, have become famous and immortal.

  It must be remembered that we live in an entirely new world. Two hundred years ago, stories of this kind were not possible. Science, through its various branches of mechanics, electricity, astronomy, etc., enters so intimately into all our lives today, and we are so much immersed in this science, that we have become rather prone to take new inventions and discoveries for granted. Our entire mode of living has changed with the present progress, and it is little wonder, therefore, that many fantastic situations—impossible 100 years ago—are brought about today. It is in these situations that the new romancers find their great inspiration.

  Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are also always instructive. They supply knowledge that we might not otherwise obtain—and they supply it in a very palatable form. For the best of these modern writers of scientifiction have the knack of imparting knowledge, and even inspiration, without once making us aware that we are being taught.

  And not only that! Poe, Verne, Wells, Bellamy, and many others have proved themselves real prophets. Prophesies made in many of their most amazing stories are being realized—and have been realized. Take the fantastic submarine of Jules Verne’s most famous story, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for instance. He predicted the present day submarine almost down to the last bolt! New inventions pictured for us in the scientifiction of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow. Many great science stories destined to be of an historical interest are still to be written, and Amazing Stories magazine will be the medium through which such stories will come to you. Posterity will point to them as having blazed a new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but in progress as well.

  We who are publishing Amazing Stories realize the great responsibility of this undertaking, and will spare no energy in presenting to you, each month, the very best of this sort of literature there is to offer.

  Exclusive arrangements have already been made with the copyright holders of the entire voluminous works of all of Jules Verne’s immortal stories. Many of these stories are not known to the general American public yet. For the first time they will be within easy reach of every reader through Amazing Stories. A number of German, French and English stories of this kind by the best writers in their respective countries have already been contracted for, and we hope very shortly to be able to enlarge the magazine and in that way present always more material to our readers.

  How good this magazine will be in the future is up to you. Read Amazing Stories—get your friends to read it and then write us what you think of it. We will welcome constructive criticism—for only in this way will we know how to satisfy you.

  2

  Preface to The Scientific Romances

  H. G. Wells

  Mr. Knopf has asked me to write a preface to this collection of my fantastic stories. They are put in chronological order, but let me say here right at the beginning of the book, that for anyone who does not as yet know anything of my work it will probably be more agr
eeable to begin with The Invisible Man or The War of the Worlds. The Time Machine is a little bit stiff about the fourth dimension and The Island of Dr. Moreau rather painful.

  These tales have been compared with the work of Jules Verne and there was a disposition on the part of literary journalists at one time to call me the English Jules Verne. As a matter of fact there is no literary resemblance whatever between the anticipatory inventions of the great Frenchman and these fantasies. His work dealt almost always with actual possibilities of invention and discovery, and he made some remarkable forecasts. The interest he invoked was a practical one; he wrote and believed and told that this or that thing could be done, which was not at that time done. He helped his reader to imagine it done and to realise what fun, excitement or mischief would ensue. Many of his inventions have “come true.” But these stories of mine collected here do not pretend to deal with possible things; they are exercises of the imagination in a quite different field. They belong to a class of writing which includes the Golden Ass of Apuleius, the True Histories of Lucian, Peter Schlemil and the story of Frankenstein. It includes too some admirable inventions by Mr. David Garnett, Lady into Fox for instance. They are all fantasies; they do not aim to project a serious possibility; they aim indeed only at the same amount of conviction as one gets in a good gripping dream. They have to hold the reader to the end by art and illusion and not by proof and argument, and the moment he closes the cover and reflects he wakes up to their impossibility.

  In all this type of story the living interest lies in their non-fantastic elements and not in the invention itself. They are appeals for human sympathy quite as much as any “sympathetic” novel, and the fantastic element, the strange property or the strange world, is used only to throw up and intensify our natural reactions of wonder, fear or perplexity. The invention is nothing in itself and when this kind of thing is attempted by clumsy writers who do not understand this elementary principle nothing could be conceived more silly and extravagant. Anyone can invent human beings inside out or worlds like dumbbells or a gravitation that repels. The thing that makes such imaginations interesting is their translation into commonplace terms and a rigid exclusion of other marvels from the story. Then it becomes human. “How would you feel and what might not happen to you,” is the typical question, if for instance pigs could fly and one came rocketing over a hedge at you. How would you feel and what might not happen to you if suddenly you were changed into an ass and couldn’t tell anyone about it? Or if you became invisible? But no one would think twice about the answer if hedges and houses also began to fly, or if people changed into lions, tigers, cats and dogs left and right, or if everyone could vanish anyhow. Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen.