Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  Science fiction is a literature which takes advantage of this creative chance. It is the one literature that takes into account the fact that we live in an age technologically quite different than that of our grandparents and postulates possible differences that might change humanity in the future--including changes in consciousness. In Distress: A Novel,19 Greg Egan envisions a change in consciousness which might emerge were we to actually understand physical reality in its totality via a Theory of Everything, and his characters, and thus the reader, experiences this change—a good example of the power of literature.

  Like Modern and Postmodern literature, science fiction often requires a trained mind to fully appreciate its nuances. Because of this, the field has isolated itself from the masses. However, it holds the most promise as a literature for those who truly want to think about what is happening in the totality of the world, not just in the arenas of words and emotions. Science fiction speculates about possible futures and examines such futures from a philosophical point of view. It is an acquired taste, but so are any of the sciences, mathematics, Modernism, Postmodernism, Shakespeare, and poetry.

  This brings me to the final part of this paper, which is concerned with healing the breach between the two cultures.

  Samuel Delany has defined science fiction as (to paraphrase),“That which I say is science fiction when I point to it.” In other words, it has a chameleonlike ability to use any literary form or to experiment with new ones; it can be as subtle and intense as Woolf, as delicate as Proust, as overt as Dickens. Those in the field try in vain to define science fiction. Attempts to create new marketing labels rise and fall. Various works could be labeled, if the term science fiction had never existed, as postmodern, experimental, apocalyptic, horror, high literature, fantasy, hard-boiled crime, romance, speculative, interstitial, nonlinear. This messiness seems evidence of its vitality. Often, science or some change due to technical fields is foregrounded, but it is not unusual to find science fiction in which the science or technology is a deeply submerged given, and the work is instead entirely character-driven. When we can download a work into our brain and experience it in visual, musical, verbal, literary, pattern, or other modes, when it can be parsed, rearranged, and reveal new interactions, we will indeed be experiencing reality in an entirely new fashion. This interaction is probably not as far in the future, as one might think. The enabling technologies are rapidly coming to birth, often as processes to help the disabled or as research delving into the roots of the process of sensorial assimilation, and will eventually mature into marketable products.

  The direction of science and the direction of science fiction are at a shared, unique juncture--which has not always been true. It is a juncture which mainstream literature, for the most part, ignores. For instance, science fiction and biological reality converged in a particularly terrifying way during the anthrax scare, which awakened us to our own vulnerabilities--vulnerabilities which we cannot avoid, because they lie at the root of our biological being. But these same vulnerabilities have the potential to expand our lives in ways that we can now only imagine. We are entering the century in which we will explore not just matter, as we did in the twentieth century, but life itself.

  Despite its reputation, science fiction is no more predictive of the future than reading tealeaves. Instead, it is a lottery of possibilities, a crystal garden that begins with reality and then goes on, like all literatures, to build on the submerged texts upon which it stands. Science fiction in America started in the pulps, and its target audience, it is often said, was twelve-year-old boys. It has gone through many stages of growth since then, and perhaps is on the verge of another one.

  Instead of being predictive or prescriptive, science fiction's greatest strength is that it is a revelatory literature, a way of thinking which takes into account the real world, and its real possibilities. It focuses on technological developments--which are the offspring of science--that have given us the wonders of the present day, negative and positive, that really do make a difference in our lives. It is an intellectually adventurous and, at it's best, edgy literature which foregrounds the astonishing, powerful actions of the human mind and the human imagination.

  Science itself is neutral. It is just information. It has no moral content. In a manner analogous to the way we slant and manipulate events in the real world for fictional use, we use the information we discover to develop technologies. Our whole way of life is based on those relatively few people who were interested enough in nature to expand the knowledge that feeds technology. We humans are the only creatures who can actually and use what we know in order to radically change our environment – and ourselves. That is where sociological concerns arise.

  While we are still exploring the issues of time and space, we are now able to also explore life itself; perhaps even consciousness. Until now, we have been the same old humans with a lot of new toys. Our physical bodies have remained relatively unaltered while we converse with people on the other side of the world, or hurtle through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles an hour. We have had much success in dealing with infectious diseases. Lifesaving procedures such as bypass surgery are almost commonplace.

  We still remain the biggest mystery in the world. We are comprised of millions of programs, systems of evolutionary successes intimately linked to one another in a network which we are just beginning to understand.

  And understanding will bring manipulation, and manipulation will bring improvement. Or at least, change. That is, whose idea of improvement will we use? Richard B. Hoover, of NASA's Marshall space flight center said, "A lot of paradigms about what life can and cannot do are coming apart now."20 What might the new paradigms be? Science fiction explores them.

  Our emotional malleability at a young age allows us to mimic the cultural milieu into which we are born perfectly. We absorb language, which is a social program in and of itself, effortlessly. Newborn infants react to tone of voice and eye contact. We are programmed to be a part of the community. We are exquisitely imprintable. We absorb our own culture much as we absorb food, and make it a part of our physical substance, our neural wiring, our filtering process. This human malleability is the source of much joy, and a lot of sorrow as well. There has been discourse for thousands of years about what the nature of a perfect human society might be. One society's criminal is another society's hero.

  But the marvel of it all is that all of this, every last raveling, is biological.

  We are entering a period of time when we will be able to cure cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and inherited disorders. The present debate over stem cell research is just the tip of the iceberg. We will soon have the opportunity to consider, as a society, just who we want ourselves to be. Presently, altering one's appearance through plastic surgery or even hair colorings or piercing falls into the category of vain frivolity. But when such alterations are deeper, more finely controlled, and more easily accomplished, how will we feel then? Let’s say that it is possible to choose one's mood, one's very personality, with more precision. Who is doing the choosing? What is identity? Theological and philosophical questions have become scientifically accessible.

  What is information going to mean to us in the future—or for that matter, what does it mean to us in the present? Hypertexts, both literary and informational, give us the ability to browse information in a nonlinear way; a way, perhaps, akin to the way a toddler takes in information and begins to make links—except that we do this with a (more-or-less) mature brain. Thus, the intellectual and emotional experience of making new connections can deeply reward that part of the human that thrives on such tasks, can reawaken the exploratory excitement of intellectual growth, and deepen emotional response and epiphany. Brooks Landon’s review, in Science Fiction Studies #61 (http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/review_essays/land61.htm), of Gareth Branwyn’s and Peter Sugarman’s Cyberpunk: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future, 21 with its many references to seminal hypertext works, is an excellent place to begin explor
ing hypertext fiction.

  As an example, Queen City Jazz22, my first novel, was conceived in 1990 as a hypertext novel before such technologies were available to the public. The jazz, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, American visual art, comics, and novels referenced therein are presently referenced only by words. Thus, the full extent of their evocation is limited to those who, at one time, actually experienced the referenced work. In addition, it was a nonlinear work forced into the constraints of linearity by the limits, at that time, of the publishing process. I laid out many of the chapters around me in a circle, and decided on the sequence that seemed to make the most narrative sense, but it was only one interpretation among many possibilities. Transforming QCJ into a hypertext work (ignoring the massive cost of obtaining the rights to do so) would enhance the experience of this novel immeasurably. The uses of technology as regards perception are unlimited. Artistic paradigms might change completely when they begin to infiltrate the public in more intimate, more biologically entwined, ways.

  This vision of science fiction as the next modality of human growth, the ultimate realization of the Twentieth Century’s movement through Surrealism, Modernism, and Postmodernism, all of which were linked to science and to changes in how and what we were able to perceive – the flattening of time through the telegraph, for instance – may be poised to completely change the face of literature and the intensity of the literary experience. This is only one small facet of the newnesses we will soon be able to experience, out of an unlimited range of newnesses both within ourselves and in our environment. In the coming era, as we gain ways to manipulate our very biology, human character might well and truly change, and are arts will reflect, and perhaps participate in, these changes.

  Science fiction points the way in which the two cultures of science and literature, which represent a schizophrenic split in humanity’s use of information, might merge, and create new possibilities in the nature of consciousness itself.

  ***

  1 Everman, Welch. “The Paper World: Science Fiction in the Postmodern Era.” Postmodern Fiction, Larry McCaffrey, Editor. New York: Dial Press, 1969. 41.

  2 Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures.

  3 Snow, C.P. Ibid, Page 4

  4 Watson, Peter. The Modern Mind. New York: HarperCollins, 2001

  5 Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate—The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking Press, 2002. 409.

  6 Woolf, Virginia. “Character in Fiction,” The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three, 1919-1924. Andrew McNeillie Editor. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovice 1988. 421.

  7 Pinker, Ibid. 409.

  8 Stevenson, Randall. Modernist Fiction—An Introduction. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992. 9.

  9 James, William. Writings 1902-1910: The Varieties of Religious Experience/Pragmatism/A Pluralistic Universe/The Meaning of Truth/Some Problems of Philosophy/Essays. New York: Library of America, 1998. 860.

  10Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypotheses: The Scientific Search for the Soul.

  11 Calvino, Italo. The Uses of Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1986. 19.

  12 Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Random House, Vintage International, 1986. 37.

  13 Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, 1953. 26.

  14 Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. 31.

  15 Chamberlain, Lori. “Magicking the Real: Paradoxes of Postmodern Writing.” Postmodern Fiction, Larry McCaffrey, Editor. 5. Ronald Sukenick, “The Death of the Novel and Other Stories. New York: Dial Press, 1969. 41.

  16 Calvino, Italo. The Uses of Literature. 26.

  17 Cortazar, Julio. Hopscotch. New York: Random House, 1966.

  18Snow. Ibid. 16.

  19 Egan, Greg. Distress, A Novel. United Kingdom: Gollancz, 1995.

  20 Travis, J. Science News, Vol. 155, #24 (June 12, 1999). “Prehistoric Bacteria Revived From Sea Salt.”

  21 Gareth Branwyn, Peter Sugarman, et al. Beyond Cyberpunk: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future. The Computer Lab, Rt. 4, Box 54C, Louisa, VA 23093. 23

  22 Goonan, Kathleen. Queen City Jazz. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1994.

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

  A Descent into the Maelström, by Edgar Allan Poe

  "A Descent into the Maelström" is an 1841 short story by Edgar Allan Poe. In the tale, a man recounts how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool. It has been grouped with Poe's tales of ratiocination and also labeled an early form of science fiction. (Some philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes used the word ratiocination as a synonym for "reasoning").

  Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb in Lofoten, Norway. The story is told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old—"You suppose me a very old man," he says, "but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves." The narrator, convinced by the power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of the "old" man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago.

  Driven by "the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens", their ship was caught in the vortex. One brother was pulled into the waves; the other was driven mad by the horror of the spectacle, and drowned as the ship was pulled under. At first the narrator only saw hideous terror in the spectacle. In a moment of revelation, he saw that the Maelström is a beautiful and awesome creation. Observing how objects around him were pulled into it, he deduced that "the larger the bodies, the more rapid their descent" and that spherical-shaped objects were pulled in the fastest. Unlike his brother, he abandoned ship and held on to a cylindrical barrel until he was saved several hours later. The old man tells the story to the narrator without any hope that the narrator will believe it.

  The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of HIS works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.

  Joseph Glanville

  WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

  "Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened to mortal man—or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"

  The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me,
and dared not even glance upward at the sky—while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

  "You must get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye."

  "We are now," he continued, in that particularizing manner which distinguished him—"we are now close upon the Norwegian coast—in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude—in the great province of Nordland—and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher—hold on to the grass if you feel giddy—so—and look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea."

  I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.