Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions

by Duncan, Hal

  So we cringe at her question. It’s not Sci-Fi, we wince. It’s Science Fiction. Or, It’s science fiction. Take your pick. What we’re trying to articulate in the first response is simply that the fiction in question doesn’t fit the conventional template(s) she imagines, that her image of our Genre is wrong. What we’re trying to articulate in the second is a bolder claim, that the fiction of this aesthetic idiom doesn’t fit any conventional template(s) she might imagine, her image wrong because ours is not a Genre at all. As much a disingenuous denial of plain fact as a sincere proclamation of upstart agenda (and vice versa), it’s a quixotic task, this defensive correction, doomed to failure, the distinction as impenetrable to her as it is imperceptible in the two statements spoken aloud.

  It’s not Sci-Fi, we say, asserting a genre in stark opposition to Genre, its very antithesis, with all the indefinable diversity that entails, an equal to Literature, if not better, because it’s not constrained by the dictates of Realism.

  It’s not Sci-Fi, we say, meaning our fiction rocks as wild and complex as Sonic Youth, must not be boxed in with a cutesy little monicker. And off we strop down to the SF Café, where everyone’s calling it skiffy.

  So maybe this is a good place to deal with quirks of illogic.

  The Mundane and the Absurd

  As we’ve set out what Lake terms a private narrative, the alethic modality of “could have happened” appears, at first sight, to remain unchallenged. The events recounted, the images and phrases, are entirely mundane in two ways: they are entirely possible within the laws of nature and in terms of known science; and they are of such small scope that the pretence of them is not a clash with the reader’s knowledge of recorded facts—c.f. the limitations of our knowledge of the private life of some youth named Holden Caulfield. The term mundane is not meant to imply boring here, simply that the events are “of or pertaining to our world; common, ordinary, everyday, domestic,” and that the limitation of our knowledge in terms of scope means the fiction does not contradict our awareness of how things work.

  Or so it seems, at first sight.

  If we’re tempted toward a shallow division here that conflates the mundane with the mimetic and yet situates the strange wholly in those incredible narratives we call fantastic (thereby implying chimeric and marvellous), there are narratives that complicate matters with events that are not so much impossible as simply preposterous, so vastly implausible as to beggar belief. They may not breach the workings of reality the same way as the quirks of SF and fantasy, but if we understand the laws of nature we are dealing with as something less formal than the laws of physics, then we can include that point where the laws of human behaviour are cast as part of that “natural order.” What are we to make of narratives, I mean, that breach the strictures of logic not in terms of inherent contradiction but in terms of a reasonable flow of action?

  In comic narrative, we find behaviours and reactions exaggerated to a point where the suspension-of-disbelief is strained to breaking point. If it is stretching a point to say that an actual alethic modality of “could not have happened” is introduced in the sort of sentence that an elicits an amazed “you can’t be serious,” we can nonetheless say that a new alethic modality has been introduced: would not have happened. A breach of known science or the laws of nature is a relatively straightforward thing; when it comes to the strictures of logic however…well, there are inherent contradictions, but there are also absurdities.

  The picaresque and the humorous anecdote play with our credulity in this manner, asking us to suspend disbelief in the ludicrous. Often as not an anecdote, perhaps true, perhaps told as true but with a twinkle in the eye, gains its power from the sheer tension between the absurdity of the assertion and the claim of actuality, in a clash of modalities—where this “could not have happened (surely?)” but it “could have happened (really!)” and in fact it “did happen (honestly!)”

  …and it was only when I got through Customs and out of the airport, when I went to roll a cigarette, I put my hand in my tobacco pouch and found the hash!

  No way, man. You’re shitting me.

  I shit you not.

  If our alethic quirk comes in four flavours according to whether it breaches known history, known science, the laws of nature or the strictures of logic, as we look at the latter, at the absurd in contrast with the mundane, what we mean by strange fiction bleeds out far beyond any waffling blather of science versus magic.

  A Cup of Tea Without Tea

  A while back, in a TV program on Britain’s 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches, amongst other sketches shown were a couple of classics from Monty Python’s Flying Circus—the Yorkshiremen sketch and the Dead Parrot sketch. Linking between these was a clip of an interview with John Cleese in which he commented on the Dead Parrot sketch: that “you can’t believe they’re having this conversation”; and “that’s where the comic effect gets its power from.” “This could not be happening” is just a different tense of “This could not have happened.” “This would not be happening” is only the more honest articulation of the alethic modality in play, of the breach of the strictures of logic. Taking the Yorkshiremen sketch as an example, it’s not hard to see how the comic narrative exploits the absurd. In this case the structure is as basic as it could be, each absurdity (each quirk of illogic) largely attempting to outdo the last in its representation of hardship, raising the stakes to ridiculous extremes.

  1: Imagine us, sitting in the fanciest pub in England, drinking our Chateau de Chauclea wine.

  2: Right you are, thirty years ago we would have been lucky to have had a cup of tea.

  3: Cold tea.

  2: Yes, without sugar or milk.

  1: Or tea.

  And the first absurdity enters in the contradiction of a cup of tea without tea, a hard breach of logic: could not happened.

  2: In a cracked and filthy cup.

  3: We used to be so poor that we would drink tea out of a rolled-up newspaper.

  2: You were lucky to have a newspaper; we used to have to suck our tea out of a damp cloth.

  And yet the escalation out of the realms of possibility is mitigated. In the three lines above we flick back and forth through a breach of possibility: could; could not; could. But if it’s possible to suck tea out of a cloth, it’s utterly preposterous: would not. Still, we know exactly the sort of mundane reality the hyperbole is rendering, and there’s just enough of it under the absurdity to keep it from overwhelming our suspension-of-disbelief. So, that absurdity is ramped up slowly to grandiose claims.

  1: You were lucky to live in the bottom of a lake. There were a hundred fifty of us living in a shoe box in the middle of a road. We dreamed of living in a lake.

  3: You were lucky to live in a shoe box. We lived in a brown paper bag. All three hundred of us! Got up at six a.m., ate a crust of stale bread and worked in the mills for twelve hours. When we got home, Dad would beat us and put us to bed with no dinner.

  Living in a lake, a paper bag, a shoe box: would not, could not. And yet a “could have happened” alethic modality persists. The whole sketch is, after all, only a representation of a conversation, and that conversation is not itself impossible. We recognise all too well the type of conversation it is satirising, the one-upmanship of childhood miseries encapsulated in the “you were lucky” refrain. But it is increasingly absurd as it strains our suspension-of-disbelief, tromps roughshod over our credulity, that anyone would go so far beyond reason in their exaggerations. The impossibilities of the claims push this towards the nascent fantasy of fairy-tales and nursery rhymes. There’s a clear reference point here:

  There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

  She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.

  She gave them some broth without any bread.

  She whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

  In both cases, note, we’re presented with bad housing, huge families, malnutrition and child abuse. Cheery stuff. But they’re p
ushed out of the realm of possibility by the wild irrationalities. In the comic sketch, those irrationalities are heightened to the final apotheosis:

  1: Well, you were lucky! That was luxury. We used to get up in the morning at ten at night—which was half an hour before we went to bed—eat a hunk of dry poison, work twenty-nine hours a day at the mill and when we got home our parents would kill us and dance around our grave singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.”

  Not just physical impossibilities and preposterous action now but logical contradictions, a whole series of them—could not, could not, could not, could not—seamlessly woven into one elegant and eloquent articulation, rounded off with a “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.” And then all the tension built up in the apotheosis of absurdity is released with the bathos of a punch line that brings the reality satirised by that conversation crashing into the absurdity of its extremes:

  3: But you tell that to the kids today and they simply don’t believe you.

  It is a cliché that at once inhabits the “could have happened” alethic modality (being precisely what is said by these type of people in the real world) and a “could not have happened” / “would not have happened” alethic modality (because the absurd idea of anyone not disbelieving such absurdity is absurdity recursed to a perfect loop of unreason).

  It plays all manner of havoc upon the narrative, this flavour of alethic quirk that comes in soft or hard, would not or could not happen, in the irrationality of drinking tea out of a rolled-up newspaper or the logical impossibility of getting up before one goes to bed, the quirk born as we step through and between the sentences to find the mundane sliced and spliced back together in unreason, in a nonsensical stitch: the sutura.

  If you’ve spent any time in the SF Café you should be all too familiar with such absurdity, and I don’t mean because it’s impossible to escape the geeks trying to flog the Dead Parrot Sketch to death.

  Because It’s There

  “SF’s no good!” they bellow till we’re deaf.

  “But this looks good…” “Well, then, it’s not SF!”

  Kingsley Amis

  It was a merry day in the SF Café, sometime around the middle of the last century, when the newspaper reporter and the moviemaker arrived, both having heard about this crazy joint so full of stories…so full of Story. There were kids running around with little toy rocket ships, teenagers talking astronomy in the booths, adults speaking Esperanto at each other ’cause it was the language of the future. There were atheists and admen. There was futurology and fantasia. You know this because you were there—

  —are there now, standing beside the reporter and the moviemaker, on the pavement outside, looking at a big bold sign above the door that once read The Science Fiction Café. Not any more. Some of those letters have been taken down now, you note, stuck up in the window to spell out: cenection. Whatever the fuck that means.

  —See, it’s ’cause we’re all connected, says a grinning numpty at the door. Connection, cenection. You see? Isn’t that cute? Isn’t that clever?

  The moviemaker thinks it’s awesome. The reporter’s eyes are alight. You…you nod and smile, nod and smile, and step aside as a writer slopes out the door, shaking his head in sorrow, muttering darkly that a pun on hi-fi sounds godawful now, never mind in fifty-something years. For a second, you think maybe you could tell him wifi will be all cool and stuff by then…but you suspect that’ll be small consolation as you look up at the sign, where the remaining letters now spell out the new name of the haunt: The Sci Fi Café. And maybe a little part of you dies inside.

  That discomfort has deep roots. The trivialising diminutive is abhorred not just as a token of the outsider’s disregard for actual literary achievements, but as an emblem of uncritical devotion, of the disregard for quality, of the indiscriminate appetite for any old shite with a spaceship, the urge to buy every book in a series long since degenerated into drivel, every book by a certain author, any book about X, Y or Z, regardless of quality. It conjures the overgrown adolescents who continue consuming formulaic drivel most fourteen year olds would scoff at. It conjures the hacks ready to supply the demands of that juvenile market, not for a little escapism, but for a wholesale retreat from adulthood.

  Which is to say, it reminds us that the SF Café is, even when we get past the gaudy window display, a schlock market, serving up brain-out, sponge-in, sit-back-and-enjoy-it, eyeball-kicks, and if we go there today to drink craft beers and discuss pataphysics with peers, well, the TV over the counter is still tuned to Alphas, Babylon 5, Carnivàle, Dark Skies, Enterprise, Farscape, Grimm, Heroes, Invasion, Jericho, Lost, Millennium, Night Stalker, The Outer Limits, Planet of the Apes, Quantum Leap, Red Dwarf, Supernatural, Teen Wolf, UFO, V, War of the Worlds, The X-Files, you name it, zzzzzzzzzz… Sometimes we have the TV on because the series is good. Sometimes we have it on simply because it’s there.

  We insist that this stuff we call science fiction is not Sci-Fi. For some in the ghetto of Genre this is axiomatic, a secret truth known only to the genre kids, that there is proper science fiction and there’s that Sci-Fi shit. That crud Sturgeon shrugged off is not the real deal, we tell ourselves, just the factory-line commercial product, extruded according to a formula, shat out in a turd of a movie or a TV show, a media tie-in or an Nth generation copy of a hack-job of a rip-off of an insult to the word novel. But that high-profile, low-quality dreck gives the genre its bad rep because that’s what we, the fans, God bless us, have saddled ourselves with in lapping up every hokey, cheesy, clichéd pukeball of a B-movie with a spaceship in it, spewed out by the Ed Woods of the world. It is our desire for “more of the same” that transforms genre into Genre.

  The term Sci-Fi signifies an uncritical ardour we seek to distance ourselves from in our quest for acceptance, in a desire to be taken seriously. We can hardly deny the actuality of the puerile, formulaic tosh that gets sold as Science Fiction; so we abject it as Sci-Fi and distinguish the proper science fiction out from it on the basis of quality. It is a different abjection to that carried out on Fantasy (at once more direct in its targeting of Genre rather than a scapegoat symbol, and more deluded in its denial of our own desires), but it is still an abjection, a recoiling in repulsion from that which is essentially a part of ourselves. Here’s the logic of that abjection:

  If it’s sci-fi, it must be bad. If it’s good, it can’t be sci-fi.

  Sound familiar?

  Dogfight at the SF Café

  “It’s not ‘Sci-Fi,’” we bellow, “Sci-Fi’s duff!”

  “But this looks good…” “SF! The proper stuff!”

  Hal Duncan

  The name does suck. It surely does. But I don’t buy it as a label for the Enemy Within; that whole ruction’s just another discourse of abjection like that between Science Fiction and Fantasy, a wedge of displaced angst driven deep into the definitional integrity of the field. A fantastic genre that is neither fantasy nor generic? In this diverse field once bound by a loose affiliation of reader tastes under a catch-all term of science fiction, these definitions by negation found our ideas of what does or does not constitute the family in little more than personal whim, in exclusions based on individual preference and value judgements.

  If it’s good, it must be X. If it’s bad, it must be Y. For whatever values of X and Y you care to insert.

  Old Man Campbell’s rules were never set in stone and we recognise this nowadays in marking out the Science Fiction which has solid futurology at its core as Hard SF. We recognise it when we brand as Science Fiction that mass of stuff sold in the same magazines, under the same imprints, on the same bookshelves, which never really gave a flying fuck about futurology, simply used whatever quirks it hit upon, novum or chimera, to its own ends, whether the aim was to tickle the cerebral cortex or the sense-of-wonder gland.

  Or we deny it, scratch Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and John Carter out of the picture, pretend that Gernsback didn’t talk of “charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and pro
phetic vision,” pretend that Astounding didn’t share its crib with Doc Savage and The Shadow, pretend that Star Wars isn’t more like E.E. “Doc” Smith than Primer is. There’s plenty of pulpy powerhousing that barely glances off science in its search for scenery and props, conventions or conceits, symbols to be exploited by a writer more concerned with telling a ripping yarn and/or exploring the human condition than with science per se. It’s still—

  —no, fuck it, it isn’t science fiction, not any more.

  The fractious factions in the SF Café tore that whole notion apart a ways back. The latent conflict between the aesthetics of the logical and of the sublime, that old Rationalist/Romanticist dichotomy, became overt in the abjection of Fantasy. A second battle-line was drawn against Sci-Fi, a battle-line that is, in essence, a recapitulation of the Literature/Genre turf war. And the SF Café became a rumble zone of rival gangs, each marginalising themselves by staking out their own special territories defined by overlapping and orthogonal agendas—futurological, fantastic, literary, commercial.

  It’s a wild show, sitting at the counter, scoping the killzone of crossfire between these forces. It’s a spectacle all right, watching that many-headed mongrel warhound mode of pulp modernism trying to rip its own throats out ’cause it smelled the scent of its own piss and didn’t recognise it. Roll up. Roll up. It’s bloodsport night, at the SF Café, Cerberus versus Cerberus—the new evolved Mark Three hellhound too, with an extra head or two as biomods. Bugger of it is, I can’t decide whether I’ve got a dog in this fight or in all of them.