Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions

by Duncan, Hal

  First, there’s the idea of the Vellum itself, a 3D time-space where the “forward and back” of future and past aren’t the only direction to travel in. There are temporally alternative realities (i.e. sharing the same basic physics but with different histories) treated as “parallel” worlds off to this “side” or that. There are also metaphysically alterior realities (i.e. worlds working with different physics entirely) treated as “higher” or “deeper” strata. Time has three dimensions, frontal, lateral and residual. Though it’s not explicit in the books, I’ve always imagined the last dimension to be that through which the laws of nature evolve, from the sort of crude, chaotic cosmological principles found in myth to the intricate order of forces described in physics.

  In this systematising approach to the multiverse idea, the fact that characters are able to move between realities doesn’t make it, for me, any less science fiction than Zelazny’s Roadmarks. But I do present one of the “folds” of the Vellum—shock, horror—as a realm of what, to all intents and purposes, are dwarves and elves and orcs, fairies and all that Fantasy malarky. In Ian McDonald’s King of Morning, Queen of Day a similar approach is applied to the idea of Faerie, positing it as a distinct reality that can and does sometimes intersect our own.

  Second, there’s the idea of the Cant, the magic of a language which can be spoken to reprogram this multiverse and which therefore endows the user with the ability to perform metaphysical causations, manipulations of reality. Riffing off the idea that the most basic principle in the universe is information, that maybe all we’re made of, when it comes down to it, is data, this is a wild speculation that makes the whole kit and caboodle as malleable as a Phildickian consensus reality…but that’s kind of the point. If it was science fiction for Dick to warp reality itself with drugs in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, then it’s science fiction for me to do it with words. Hell, the magic here even works within the strictures of thermodynamics; it requires energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere.

  So in Vellum and Ink you basically have a whole underlying schema in which elves and magic are treated as speculation rather than fabrication. If you want to argue that this schema isn’t plausible I’ll just shrug and say, yeah, so what? FTL isn’t plausible. Jaunting isn’t plausible. Time travel isn’t plausible. They require cosmological rather than technological paradigm shifts. They don’t just breach known science, they breach the laws of nature. And if the Paradigm Shift Caveat works to excuse your fabrications as speculations, then it works to excuse mine, on the exact same basis that the history of science is one of apparent impossibilities being shown to be actually quite possible. Either we apply that caveat objectively or we ditch it entirely in favour of the hard-nosed rigour that says FTL, ESP, time travel, jaunting, anything which plays so fast and loose with the laws of physics, is all just spurious fabrication. The only alternative is a shamelessly subjective application of the Paradigm Shift Caveat—or rather a refusal to accept the validity of its application—on the basis of personal incredulity.

  If that personal incredulity kicks in when you see a dragon on the cover, that’s fair enough. But don’t come crying to me when the Hard SF geeks or the Realist snootcockers write you off as a spinner of spurious fabrications because their personal incredulity kicks in at the sight of your FTL spaceship. And really, if you’re putting the mask of a novum on a chimera, you’d do well not to fool yourself with it, not to trumpet your supposed plausibility too loudly. If you’re arguing that your chimera is just as possible as a novum because you’ve convinced yourself that it’s possible it might become possible, combining the Paradigm Shift Caveat with the Contingency Slip Fallacy, you’re far more of a fantasist than those with no illusions about their chimera being a complete breach of the laws of nature.

  A case might be made that the quirks must be made arguable by a speculative approach, that fantasy does not do so and rather becomes science fiction when it makes its magics arguable (as cosmology rather than futurology), and that my speculative approach to the chimerae in Vellum and Ink does render them works of science fiction rather than fantasy. Cool, I’d say. I can live with an open definition of science fiction that encompasses the grand conceits of The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination and Roadmarks, happy to see myself as working within that tradition. But the fact it’s in question…well, this brings us back to the turf war politics underpinning the term Science Fantasy, where it is, in part, exactly this Paradigm Shift Caveat that led to the use of the term for works like Dune.

  Of Sets and Subsets

  We talk a lot about science fiction as extrapolation, but in fact most science fiction does not extrapolate seriously. Instead it takes a willful, often whimsical, leap into a world spun out of the fantasy of the author.

  H. Bruce Franklin

  Down in the ghetto at the SF Café, even with Old Man Campbell in charge, the menu had expanded to include dishes that, as far as some were concerned, didn’t belong there at all. The SF Café, they said, is a burger joint, a place for burgers and nothing but burgers. Chiliburgers, cheeseburgers, chickenburgers, even goddamn chimpburgers are fine. But those chicken nuggets belong in some Science Fantasy Diner, not in our Science Fiction Café. Chicken nuggets are not halal Science Fiction. Chicken nuggets are not kosher Science Fiction. Chicken nuggets are impure and unclean. They pollute the menu, corrupt the genre. They carry with them the taint of fantasy.

  The territorial roots of this stance become obvious when we examine the common response amongst even those Science Fiction writers who use the Paradigm Shift Caveat freely to any assertion that science fiction is essentially a branch of fantasy.

  —No, it’s not, they say. No fucking way.

  Here’s the thing:

  The perennial argument over whether or not science fiction is a branch of fantasy as often as not comes down to an unrecognised and unarticulated disagreement over which of two models applies to the field. What we have, as a baseline, is a set of strange fictions using quirks of the impossible—breaching known science, known history, the laws of nature or the strictures of logic. These quirks are taken as conceits, the fanciful accepted for the sake of the story, propagated through it. That much is simple; beyond it, we can go one of two ways.

  If both science fiction and fantasy deal with quirks of the impossible, and science fiction is distinct from fantasy because it also requires a level of rationality in approach, a degree of theorising that renders the conceit an act of arguable speculation rather than inarguable fabrication, then unless fantasy also requires a secondary aspect which is either incompatible with this or at least different, then science fiction is a branch of fantasy. It is simply the subset of strange fictions which adds rationalisation to the mix, while that set of strange fictions is itself simply what we more commonly call fantasy. Only if fantasy has some specific feature rendering it a subset can the two be distinct branches in their own right.

  Either: we have a Parent-Child Model: the superset of fantasy with its subset of science fiction, where X = “rationalise its conceits”:

  Within fantasy as the set of strange fictions

  • science fiction is the subset of fantasy that does X

  Or: we have a Sibling-Sibling Model: the superset of strange fictions with two sibling subsets, Science Fiction and Fantasy:

  Within S as the set of strange fictions

  • Science Fiction is the subset of S that does X

  • Fantasy is the subset of S that does Y

  Note the overlap here with the split between upper-case and lower-case, between Genre and genre. This is not a coincidence. Personally, I’d be quite happy to go with the first model, slap the word fantasy down where I might write field of strange fictions and accept an openly-defined science fiction within it: a fantasy with an additional rationalised quality achieved by various strategies, none singularly essential and/or sufficient, but each providing grounds for a work to be subjectively judged as such. To articulate the territorial disp
ute(s) though, we need to accommodate the arguments of outright incompatibility, and those necessarily close the definitions of each mode to exclude the other.

  The argument that science fiction is a branch of fantasy is an assertion of the latter model in which there is no extra criterion, no Y, required to further define fantasy. Here fantasy is simply the field of fantastic fiction, fiction which uses quirks of the impossible, incredible conceits, which means it includes everything from the most generic sub-Tolkien product to the most respected literary tome. This is fantasy in its open definition, a mode of fiction that includes the work of Franz Kafka, Mikhail Bulgakov and Angela Carter, never mind Ray Bradbury, Mervyn Peake and Kelly Link. Here science fiction is just a subset of that field, one with an additional requirement of rationalisation. This is not at odds with the Campbellian closed definition of Science Fiction given above. Science Fiction is a subset of that science fiction.

  The argument that science fiction is not a branch of fantasy is an assertion of the former model in which there is an additional quality, a Y, by which the definition of fantasy is closed to that of Fantasy. Here all fantasy is Fantasy, fiction which uses specific conceits in a specific way and is inherently limited by those specifics, a Genre of fantasia which excludes the sophisticated writers mentioned above (classed as mainstream, magical realism, slipstream, SF or fantastic fiction by some other name), or within which those writers are at best marginal (fantasy considered as impure Fantasy). Here Science Fiction is incompatible with that genre because the specifics of Y are irreconcilable with the rationalism required in Science Fiction’s X.

  Indeed, for many proponents of this model, it seems that X is not defined positively, as the rationalisation of conceits, so much as it’s defined negatively, as the avoidance of Y. That’s to say, for some, it’s the eschewal of the Y that makes a work of strange fiction Fantasy that is required to make it a work of Science Fiction.

  The Taint of Fantasy

  The exclusion of those literary (for want of a better term) fantasists is significant, revealing the specifics of the commercial Genre as the Y that Fantasy requires in order to be Fantasy—what Gibson refers to as the elves, orcs or magic swords. All too often it signifies a blinkered view of the actual works published under the rackspace label, reveals the same sort of prejudices that are applied to science fiction by those who do not read it but will nevertheless blithely dismiss it as robots, aliens and spaceships. And insofar as these are emblematic of tropes exhausted to cliché (elves, orcs) and power-wank (magic swords), if we detect in this closure of definition (to crude stereotype) a definition-by-negation of Science Fiction, it’s hard not to see a neat rhetorical trick taking place: Science Fiction is being defined as that which does not use such tawdry cliché, does not pander with such power-wank.

  The marginalisation of the literary fantasists as impure Fantasy is even more telling, a tacit admission that Fantasy can and does open up into fantasy, that these (clichéd, pandering) features are not a requisite Y, that these writers’ works can still be classed as fantasy regardless of the complete absence of elves, orcs or magic swords. Those features are not what defines a work of fantasy even if they are what defines Fantasy. Rather across the zone of strange fictions, the more a work evidences these (clichéd, pandering) features, the more it becomes correct, proper, to deem it Fantasy. Again it’s hard not to see a rather self-serving gambit here, a way of defining Science Fiction as more properly Science Fiction—i.e. less properly Fantasy—as it eschews cliché and pandering.

  When a Science Fiction writer or reader characterises fantasy as Fantasy, represents it “in its purest form” by those specifics—the elves, orcs or magic swords—it’s a good way to valorise their favoured form relative to the other, and to absolve it of demonstrable cliché and pandering by casting this as a degree of Fantasy in any work evidencing it. In the closure of definition, the gains are also being won at the expense of the other genre and its more sophisticated writers: a territorial politics is being reinforced in which fantasy is centred on Fantasy, in which the more a writer seeks to establish the freedom to eschew cliché and pandering within the genre, the more they are marginalised as improper Fantasy, disempowered in their struggle against commercial pressures toward formulation.

  With this in mind, a pointed question emerges: Why is the term Science Fantasy attached to works like Herbert’s Dune or McCaffrey’s Pern novels, but not attached to works like Zelazny’s Roadmarks or Silverberg’s The Book of Skulls where it is all but impossible to discern any element of futurology whatsoever to the conceit? The latter two works are utilising conceits that require cosmological rather than technological paradigm shifts. But while Zelazny and Silverberg are exempted by the Paradigm Shift Caveat, Herbert and McCaffrey are not? Is it perhaps that to do so binds the term fantasy to emblematic (clichéd, pandering) tropes of Genre (prophecies and dragons)? That equivalently fantastic (incredible, marvellous, chimeric) tropes (magic roads and secrets-of-immortality) in their novelty then serve to evidence science fiction as unbound from its own Genre specificity (robots, aliens and spaceships)?

  As the definition of Fantasy is closed, as the word becomes, in Science Fantasy, a signifier of Genre tropes that make a work not science fiction, as it becomes a signifier of the generic, the distinction of science fiction and Science Fantasy becomes a strategy of scapegoating, a mechanism whereby deficits perceived in generic Science Fiction (like a sensationalist surrender to the sublime) are mapped to those of generic Fantasy, so that the latter can be represented as the cause of those deficits. It is not that Star Wars is a product of Science Fiction, a Genre with its own tendency to use its generic tropes (robots, aliens and spaceships) in generic plot-structures (Romantic adventure) going back to the pulp roots of this Genre of the marvellous (Flash Gordon). It is not that the clichéd pandering is a product of the process of formulation inherent in a Genre, commercial pressures to sate the market’s demand for “more of the same” inevitably leading to derivative copies. Rather this Science Fantasy is held to have (errantly or cynically) adopted the template of Fantasy, such that the presence of the generic in science fiction is blamed on the pernicious influence of fantasy. For the genre eugenicists of Science Fiction, fantasy must be essentialised into generic Fantasy to sustain the idea that it is the taint of that “pure” Fantasy’s essence which corrupts Science Fiction, creates the miscegenation of Science Fantasy. As if fantasia were not a fundamental feature.

  This is a process of abjection, the same process by which Genre is ghettoised as the territory of cheap sensationalism—abjection being the idea (articulated by Julia Kristeva) that we react intensely when confronted with substances that were once part of us but which no longer are. Blood, shit, piss, vomit, a severed limb or digit—these things remind us of our own nature, the stuff we ourselves are composed of, and we respond to that reminder with fascination and revulsion, refusing to engage with them, recoiling or driving them from us. Marginalised social groups—people of colour, gays, Roma, Jews—are abject. So, in the term Science Fantasy, fantasy becomes a signifier of that which is abject in relation to science fiction. Call it Y. Call it magic. Call it elves, orcs or magic swords. These specific tropes are actually indexes of all tropes, which are in turn indexes of commodification and formulation, indexes of Genre.

  A Limitation of Acceptable Incursion

  Is it possible to unmoor the Sibling-Sibling Model of Science Fiction and Fantasy from that mechanism of abjection? Can we describe a Fantasy distinct from Science Fiction, but avoid closing its definition to the specifics of a Genre in a way that implicitly renders it a scapegoat? Can we describe it in terms of a different Y? And if so, what is that Y?

  In many respects, for a contingent of writers and readers who make exactly that distinction, the simple answer is that Y equates to not-X, that it is simply the absence of rationalisation that, for them, distinguishes a work out as Fantasy rather than Science Fiction (both as openly defined as a closed definitio
n can be). In this model Science Fiction and Fantasy exist as concentric zones, the former nestled within the latter but excluding by definition that which exists outside its strictures, identifying it by negation. This almost, but not quite, collapses the model into a Parent-Child Model in which the science fiction subset can be imagined as a zone within fantasy, but in which that renders it by definition a type of fantasy, the subtle difference of the two models enough to engender endless argument, as those working with one model or another fail to articulate it clearly.

  This is why the Great Debate persists. The exteriority of fantasy means that there will always be those who see it as encompassing science fiction, containing it. The exclusivity of Science Fiction with regards to works that fall outside its definitional zone means that there will always be those who see Fantasy as essentially distinct. The impositions of closed definitions to both leads to further confusion in a field where, at the edges of that central zone of Science Fiction, these closed definitions fray, as the cosmological conceits and inargued arguabilities of science fiction blend with those of fantasy, the boundary blurred further by subjective application of the Paradigm Shift Caveat.

  Here we find Science Fantasy as a buffer-zone for Science Fiction, a limitation of acceptable incursion. Going hand in hand with the schisming of Science Fiction / Fantasy, the term Science Fantasy signifies an attempt to retrench, to restore integrity to the Genre by (re)defining it as exclusively rationalist, exiling that which transgresses its dictates. Anything which smacks of a surrender to sensationalism is abjected into this interzone, viewed as a hybridised combination, or as Fantasy masquerading as Science Fiction. Insofar as the aesthetic of the logical can and does operate as a counter-balance to the aesthetic of the sublime, the abjection becomes quite comprehensible as a suspicion of Romanticism, rooted in a fear that without the Rationalism there will be nothing to hold the sense-of-wonder in check, that passion will run amok without reason to restrain it, and that the genre will therefore revert to its pulp roots in the follies of heroes and Romantic adventures, devolve back into Genre.