by Duncan, Hal
None of these techniques make the chimerae any more rational as futurology—which is why proponents of Hard SF scorn them—but they do facilitate rationalisation, offering the get-out clauses, cyclic arguments and cover stories by which we construct and sustain an artificial sense of contingency, of a potential alternative nomology. They persuade us into a further spin on alethic modality, from “could not have happened now” to “could have happened if…” where what follows that “if” may amount to a wholesale revision of the rules of reality, validated more by self-delusion than speculation. So the quirk is dewarped, not wholly, but enough to gloss the boulomaic modality of the marvellous, the sense that the events presented “should have happened,” with an illusion that they “could have happened.” No torture of Sehnsucht here, the bolstering of plausibility may be a means to that end indeed: a deep immersion in fantasia.
For some, at least. The disparities between how far different readers are ready to rationalise the impossible, the differing effectiveness of different mechanisms for different readers, the multiple points of contention over where and how the nomological alterations become so wild as to be “just plain silly,” where and how the sense of plausibility collapses—these go a long way to explaining the disagreements between readers as to what does and what doesn’t constitute an SF narrative.
For some, the idiomatic elsewhen is just dull cliché, the Paradigm Shift Caveat is a cheat, and only reason will work to sell the impossible. The chimera is anathema, and even the unreality of the counterfactual or hypothetical quirk requires something more than hand-waving, some argumentative counter-force to balance it. The “if” immediately produces a “but”—but how? In the comic or tragic narrative, to answer that question would dissipate the tension which these narratives seek to build, as is most obvious where the narrative forms blend, as in the tragicomedy of Catch-22, or the mundane and strange surreality of If…, as in any such works which unsettle even as they entertain. But these readers are not interested in that tension created from the clash of modalities. They want explanations, explication. Which is fair enough.
Any turf war claim that the essence of SF lies in offering this is dubious to say the least, though. More than anything I’d hazard it’s the idiomatic nature of the fantasias that has most import on the bulk of the audience, that we buy into the hokum as a game, because it is tropic, because it is generic, because this is Genre Fiction. With all that this entails.
The Form = Formulation Syllogism
Insofar as the excision of meaning from the nominal label SF is a refusal of strictures, it’s an expedient gambit, but it also disacknowledges any distinction between genre as aesthetic idiom—“strange fiction as a mode comparable to poetry, tragedy or comedy”—and Genre as conventional template and/or marketing category, collapsing them all together into this empty symbol. It’s little wonder then that others who look at that vacuity see only a signpost to the market where it’s sold, see only the outer decor of the SF Café and its environs, the ghetto of Genre. In accepting that SF’s nature is that of a discrete sub-domain of Genre, in allowing SF to be treated as Genre, we invite a logical extrapolation from the common understanding of how marketing categories function, how Genres work, the syllogistic a priori reasoning by which SF is rejected as sub-literate scribbling. This Form=Formulation Syllogism, the argument that damns us, runs thus:
1) Genre labels signal that a work conforms to a set of aesthetic criteria prescribed as Genre conventions;
2) these conventions are designed for producing works of a certain stereotypical Genre form;
3) due to their commercial imperatives and counter-literary value-systems, Genre forms have inherent flaws;
4) therefore: works conforming to those conventions will have those flaws;
5) therefore: works published with Genre labels will have those flaws.
It should be clear to any SF reader that this is a gross misrepresentation, but judging by some of the talk you hear down in the SF Café, I’m not sure it is. So let’s spell it out point by point. This is the essence of the distinction between aesthetic idiom, conventional template and marketing category:
1. Genre labels signal that a work conforms to a set of aesthetic criteria prescribed as Genre conventions.
No, there are works which get a Genre label without conforming to the conventions. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is hardly a “let’s pretend” adventure nor a “what if” thought-experiment. It has little of Gernsback’s “charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision” in it, not in the sense of futurology and fantasia. It is not Campbellian Science Fiction by a long shot. And this is not to say that it merely stretches the conventions by applying the Paradigm Shift Caveat to blur the border with fantasy, or by directing its speculation towards the soft sciences. Where it breaks with tradition in utilising religious conceits—transmigration, visions in the irrational revelatory rather than rational predictive sense, etc.—it establishes a new set of aesthetic criteria by integrating those conceits into what is other-wise a work of contemporary realism.
The publication and reading of this work as SF simply expands the zone of indefinition, asserts that however we conceive of this Genre we must now allow for the incorporation of this type of novel. The Genre label signals only this then: that something about the work has been deemed sufficient justification for any adjustments to aesthetic criteria required to accommodate it under that label. Personally, I take this work as proof that sufficient justification may entail no more than a smidgeon of strangeness and an author established within the field. (As far as the nominal label of Fantasy is concerned, it finds a parallel in Graham Joyce’s The Limits of Enchantment.)
2. These conventions are designed for producing works of a certain stereotypical Genre form.
No, for every reader there’s a personal set of characteristics they see as sufficient justification to label a work SF. When that reader is also a writer, they may well set out to write a work that reads as SF to them, treating those characteristics as a set of aesthetic criteria. While some of these criteria are commercially standardised so that stereotypical Genre forms can be produced to order, many are not. For some, criteria are no more than…the 2D outline of a work’s base, with its greater structure entirely freeform. For others yet, characteristics are not criteria at all; they do little more than describe the general contours of the broad terrain on which the work is to be formed, a kernel of dynamics inherent in a mode.
Compare, in poetry: the conventions of the stereotypical Limerick as a Genre, fun but formulaic; the strictures of the sonnet as a genre, based on a shape of fourteen lines and a volta but on any subject, in any tone; and the wildly notional characteristics of the poem, any work within that vast domain. Similarly, in SF, we have: the conventions of the stereotypical Cyberpunk story, as it stood a decade or so ago; the much looser range of strictures back when the genre of cyberpunk was exemplified by the Mirrorshades anthology; and the wildly notional characteristics of any SF that doesn’t fit such a template.
Delany’s Dhalgren is not a product of conventions designed for producing works of a certain stereotypical Post-Apocalypse SF form. The ruined cityscape and social collapse of Bellona that lead us to label it post-apocalyptic fiction are at most the contours of its foundation and arguably no more than the gradient of the territory it inhabits, a kernel of dynamics inherent in the strange.
3) due to their commercial imperatives and counter-literary value-systems, Genre forms have inherent flaws;
This means precisely nothing if the rackspace label maps to an aesthetic idiom rather than a conventional template. If a lack of thematic depth is inherent in the form of the Limerick, this is irrelevant as a critique of poetry. If a lack of thematic depth is inherent in the form of the stereotypical Cyberpunk, story this is irrelevant as a critique of SF. So the formulation of Genres under a rackspace label leads to works produced to fit standardised aesthetic criteria of e.g. character typ
e, plot-structure, worldscape development and futurological novelty. So commercial imperatives may pressure for a neglect of non-required features such as depth of character and theme, may even embody a counter-literary value-system, preferencing crudely botched prose that “doesn’t get in the way of the plot” over “style” that foregrounds its own craftedness. Applying only to the Genres contained within the genre’s broad terrain, this is exactly as irrelevant as a critique of SF as a critique of poetry based on the flaws of the Limerick.
4) therefore: works conforming to those conventions will have those flaws;
Again this now means exactly nothing. Works fitting the aesthetic criteria that define the sonnet as a genre need only fourteen lines and a volte. Formulation of a stereotypical Shakespearean Love Sonnet might lead to flaws of neglect (e.g. a lack of originality) and counter-literary value-systems (e.g. saccharine romantic sentiments), but the genre of the sonnet is distinguishable from this Genre precisely by its opposition to formulation, its literary imperatives to exceed minimum requirements, to build a multi-dimensional structure upon that outlined base. Formulation of a stereotypical Cyberpunk within SF may lead to flaws of neglect or counter-literary value-systems, but SF is distinguishable as a genre precisely by its opposition to formulation.
There are many Genres within SF, and many exhibit the sort of flaws that go with formulation: concerns with plot and worldscape built from futurology and fantasia overshadow concerns with character and theme; complexity and subtlety is deprecated as “pretension.” An assertion that SF necessarily has these flaws because it is a Genre are like an assertion that poetry necessarily has the flaws of the stereotypical Shakespearean Love Sonnet, articulating only the ignorance and presumption of the speaker.
5) therefore: works published with Genre labels will have those flaws.
The application of an ignorant and presumptuous judgement on the basis of rackspace label is not only false and misrepresentative; it’s superficial, quite literally judging a book by its cover (the image, the imprint, the copy and blurbs, the label on the back), reducing a work to the brand image. Countless works within the genre of SF disprove that judgement by counter-example, works by writers such as Aldiss, Ballard, Bradbury, Bester, Butler, Cherryh, Clarke, Delany, Disch, Dick, Ellison, Farmer, Gibson, Harrison, Heinlein, Hopkinson, Jakubowski, Keyes, Le Guin, Lem, Moorcock, Niven, Norton, Orwell, Priest, Russ, Ryman, Spinrad, Sladek, Tiptree, Vinge, Willis, Zelazny.
Not that we really need to list these; the Form=Formulation Syllogism is demonstrably flawed on every count, failing to differentiate genres from Genres, assuming a universal process of formulation when the reality is the familial development we find as aesthetic criteria are simply adjusted to accommodate The Transmigration of Timothy Archer or whatever work is married into the clan, taking this nominal label as its name.
Transcending the Genre
Sadly, in our own conflations and confusions we invite these misperceptions by accepting the framework of logic in which genre means an aesthetic territory of formulation (as in genre fiction) rather than an aesthetic idiom (as in the genre of a fiction). This ghetto of Genre we ally ourselves with is defined precisely as the region where marketing categories and conventional forms collude to insist on formulation, in contrast to non-genre where they do not. Genre fiction versus non-genre fiction? All fiction is in a genre, even if that genre is only the novel or the short story.
When we talk of works as transcending the genre, position them as exceptional rather than exemplary, we tacitly accept: that the Genre label indicates some set of aesthetic criteria shared by Genre narratives, sought after by a certain target market; that the commercial impetus of those criteria constrain the form at a deeper level than the strictures of a sonnet, create a limitation of quality; that a narrative needs to circumvent those demands of form not by ignoring them (because then the narrative would cease to be Genre) but by some shift into a more elevated sphere of abstract action. We accept that the idiom we signify with the Genre label is a stereotypical Genre form that has to be transcended in this way.
If transcendence is our metaphor then truly SF is an incorporeal spectre, a ghost, slipped free of the flesh and bone forms long ago.
Of course, the fuzziness of the whole notion is expedient, allowing us to wave a hand towards the aesthetic idiom(s) we like, in the form of a shelf labelled SF, referring to this as genre, while simultaneously waving away the conventional templates we hate, happily referring to these as generic. When an outsider challenges us on this slapdash clumping of works, we might be able to articulate that SF as a rackspace label is bound to a set of aesthetic criteria too diverse to pin down with precision, diverse enough that they even allow for a literary SF with its definition lost somewhere among all the arguments. What we generally fail to articulate is that SF is not a Genre at all, but rather a mode of a myriad idioms and forms, a dynamic family of genres and Genres, the most ambitious and innovative craftsmanship wed to, and at war with, the most formulated and derivative crap.
Hey ho.
The ghost haunts the café, animates the lumbering golem of the field in its physical form. The name is sustained in our speech, the inchoate idea reiterated in every sibilant and fricative utterance of SF, because it offers a subtle strand of identity even in its indefinition; it is enough for us, as a community of fiction readers, writers, editors and critics to congregate around. In the spectral apparition and the material shape, there is enough rough semblance of Genre that these freaks might frighten the citizenry if they stepped out into the city at large; and both are bound to the SF Café by their shared history anyway, by their loyalty to a beloved heritage. And as long as the SF Café is sustainable as a commercial enterprise, as long as it keeps drawing in the punters with the promise of pulp thrills and spills, the promise of exciting entertainments, of Genre, the ghost and the golem have a home.
I feel the love, am loyal to that home myself—it’s been fucking good to me—but I think it’s worth being aware of the doublethinks we apply, as when we talk of transcending the genre. The relationship between genre and Genre is a weird balance of symbiosis and mutual parasitism, and it seems to me that our unadmitted recognition of that only leads to bitching about lack of respect on the one hand while, on the other, extolling works with a phrase that damns SF as derivative in its essence. The deal with the devil doesn’t seem…well, that big a deal. Commercial pressures toward formulation have a corrosive effect on literary quality, sure; but the market for the most conventional forms subsidises the most literate and ambitious aesthetic idioms—works that might well be unpublishable outside the ghetto, without the security of a dedicated audience. The literary imperatives of the whole aesthetic idiom degrade the efficiency of formulaic products with their narrowly-defined utilitarian function as entertainment; but the continual influx of originality counteracts the Law of Diminishing Returns in a set of Genres where “more of the same” can paradoxically mean more novelty.
The ghost and the golem could not survive without the SF Café, but without them the SF Café would quickly become an empty shell.
The Model and the Machine
Ghosts, golems—these metaphysical quirks of fantasy are incongruous in an exploration of SF surely. Ah, well, let’s just employ the Paradigm Shift Caveat here. Let’s hypothesise that the parapsychologists are right, that in the future our empirical observations of some truly strange phenomena force a radical revision of our physics. No ectoplasm here though, no spiritualist mumbo-jumbo of the soul as some aetheric substance. We’ll call it the Quantum Interconnectedness Principle then, say that reality is information and the universe a hologram, that every fragmentary particle of our cosmos contains an image of the whole implicate order, the urgrund.
In the SF Café every patron wears mayashades that reconstruct the urgrund from the fragment-forms immediately perceptible. In part a forensic analysis of reality, in part a data-mining of the urgrund, what is offered is, in essence, a heads-up display of
information we could not otherwise have access to. Gaze into the eyes of another patron and the mayashades scroll their thoughts across your vision. Gaze out of the window and the mayashades flash glimpses of the future on the streets outside—a joyrider ploughing his car into a bus-stop queue you might be standing in five minutes from now. That sort of information is useful, after all; if we had not (hypothetically) developed the technology to access and utilise it we might even (hypothetically) have evolved a natural capacity, some sort of Externalised Simulatory Processing of the world we have to live in, some sort of…ESP.
Phil Dick sits in a corner, his mayashades on the blink, showing him the SF Café as a tavern in AD 70, a secret community of Christians hiding from the Roman Empire; his mayashades are communicating an analysis of society in figurative form, the ghetto of Genre as the Black Iron Prison of the Gnostics. They flash words in Koiné Greek across his vision, a language he cannot know but which these wondrous gadgets can use freely in their access to that urgrund. They offer him a reinterpretation of the world in which he is not Phil the SF writer but Thomas the early Christian. This is not a transmigration of souls, but rather reincarnation as retro-incarnation, as a downloading of the data that defined a long-dead psyche, a simulation of another’s memories.
