From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Life's too short. Was: 1930s Science Fiction
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:09:52 GMT

In article <1992Aug24.151850.4157@ms.uky.edu> fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:
>Tom Maddox writes:

>I've tried for almost 12 seconds to come up with a broader umbrella for
>science fiction than man's relationship to science and can't. Please
>enlighten me. 

Which only displays to great advantage your own appalling ignorance of
science fiction.

Perhaps the best descriptions for *this* discussion (not necessarily the best
definitions of SF, mind you, but useful because they're more relevant to your 
question than, say, Damon Knight's "SF is what I'm pointing at when I say 'SF'")
would be Brian Aldiss's:
	
	Science fiction is that genre of literature, typically cast in
	a Gothic or post-Gothic mould, which seeks a definition of Man
	which can stand in our modern (i.e., post-technological) world.

and Theodore Sturgeon's:

	A science fiction story is a story about a human problem with 
	a human solution which would not take place without its scientific or
	technological content.

[Both of those definitions are quoted from memory, btw, and I will not be held 
responsible for their word-to-word accuracy.  Aldiss's is from his BILLION YEAR
SPREE: THE TRUE HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION -- later revised and expanded as
TRILLION YEAR SPREE, with David Wingrove -- while Sturgeon's is from a talk
given at a SF convention.]

These are both much broader umbrellas (and overlap heavily) than "man's 
relationship with science," and, it might be added, much more descriptive of 
what SF actually does than that oversimplistic definition -- which, I might add,
is a perfect example of a classic problem in defining SF, since it very clearly 
would include Sinclair Lewis' ARROWSMITH as an "SF" story while excluding many 
of SF's classics (e.g., STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, DUNE, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, 
none of which can by critical methods short of Procrustean be made to be about 
"man's relationship with science").

>Take a work like "Blade Runner"  -- not a book, but from comments I've
>read, it influenced Tom Maddox's friend William Gibson to write _Neuromancer_

Seems extremely unlikely from the dates of each.  Possible, but *extremely*
unlikely.

And even unlikelier if you consider the dates of some of Gibson's stories set
in the same _milieu_ as NEUROMANCER -- and that _milieu_ is the primary point
of similarity between it and BLADE RUNNER.

Arguing from rumor ("from comments I've read") is rarely better than arguing
from complete ignorance.


>Well, how does it advance the art beyond _Frankenstein_? 

That would require a thesis-type essay to answer anything like adequately.  A
short answer would be to say that it doesn't go "beyond" FRANKENSTEIN because
it isn't about the same things as FRANKENSTEIN.  FRANKENSTEIN is a purely
Romantic novel, dealing as it does with the problem of a protagonist (the
Creature) who is literally without a God, being built as he is by the internal
narrator.  The books key moment is the Creature's speech to Victor:  "You are
my creator, but I am your master.  Obey!"

The question of God and Godlessness does not arise in NEUROMANCER except 
incidentally.  While one of its primary themes is the relation between humans
and intelligent beings (the AIs Neuromancer and Wintermute) of human creation,
the relationship is much more complex than creator/created and master/servant.
Indeed, the question of ownership of an AI is rather thoroughly deconstructed
by the book's ending.  (Partial list of questions implicitly or explicitly 
raised:  Does owning the hardware an AI resides in give you ownership of the
AI and the products of its work?  Can the AI own itself?  Can it be owned at 
all?  By the metaphoric process of literature, can you own any sentient being?
Their body?  Their "soul?"  Etc., etc.)


>What themes
>does it treat that aren't present in _Frankenstein_? 

I've already answered that in part, but:

Because a theme has been "present" in a previous work, you seem to be implying,
any other work which treats of that theme must be derivative and minor.  Well,
that lets us throw out nearly everything after Homer and the Bible. . .  You've
just simplified Lit. classes *immensely*, thank you. . .


>the serious works of science fiction they've all seemed to 
>reflect the same concerns. 

Oddly enough, serious works of fiction all seem to reflect the same concerns:

Love.  Death.  War.  Peace.  A human's relationship to other humans, to the 
universe, to God, to him/her self.  What it is to be human.  The goods and
ills of society.  Etc.

Oddly enough, these themes are repeated throughout Western literature.  Even
more oddly, they are repeated throughout the literature of SF.

SF, by its creation of artificial and extrapolated environments, allows the
writer to examine these questions in isolation or odd circumstances.  An
excellent example of this is the complete life work of Theodore Sturgeon --
barring his earliest short stories and the commercial knock-offs of movies he
did for Hollywood, to put bread on the table -- which examine love in all its
infinite variety more closely and sensitively than any writer since William
Shakespeare -- and with more variation than Shakespeare, whose ideas of love
does not to have extended to serious and sympathetic examinations of 
homosexuality ("The World Well Lost"), incest ("If All Men Were Brothers, Would 
You Let One Marry Your Sister?"), sadomasochism (more stories than you can
shake a reasonably-sized stick at, Horatio), and syzygy; nonsexual love in as
many varieties and variations; and things too odd to have names (e.g., "Bright
Segment," possibly the most horrifying love story ever written).

Or -- to take more obvious examples -- the "significant distortion" (which is
Samuel R. Delany's term) of reality allows the writer to present satire in a
form purer than anything since GULLIVER, itself one of SF's acknowledged 
"influences" and predecessors.  For example, Pohl and Kornbluth's THE SPACE
MERCHANTS, possibly the best novel on advertising and the effects of advertising
on individuals and society ever written.  (Written, it might be added, long
before FROM THOSE WONDERFUL FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU PEARL HARBOR.)  Or James
Tiptree, Jr.'s perfect statement on what it is to be a woman in a male-dominated
society, "The Women Men Don't See."  (Note that neither of these is a tract.
Both are stories, first and foremost, which present their themes in the proper
manner, as and only as they impact the characters.)


>Is that drawing an artificial line to defend my position? 

Yes, but not, I think, maliciously; it's probably the most common 
misapprehension held about SF by otherwise educated persons.


>I don't think so, but if the working definition of  science 
>fiction is simply any work which uses science and technology for significant 
>props, then I will also concede the field to Maddox. Of course, that lets 
>in the Sharp catalog to science fiction, too. 

Well, I think the definitions above pretty well exclude the Sharp catalog --
which, after all, fails under any reasonable definition of science _fiction_.
SF is fiction, and needs to be read as fiction.  However, SF is not the
modern mimetic novel, and to read it as such is as much an injustice and a 
disservice as to read an epic poem, a medieval romance, or one of the works of 
Samuel Beckett as a mimetic novel.  Each has its own conventions of reading, 
which must be learned, and which can only be learned by applied effort.

Reading SF well is as much work as reading any other form of literature well.
Like the mimetic novel, it comes in a range from the merely popular, to the
elitist, to the rare classic work which is popular in the best sense and also
appeals to the heart and intellect rather than the gonads and stomach.


>. . .why not substitute for the seminar room, the local
>bar on Friday afternoon. Insults sound better there and are usually
>wittier. I know. I've been insulted there too. 

But you have to remember, the folks at the local bar have the advantage of your 
physical appearance to inspire them in insult.  Here we have only your words; 
and while your insistence on judging an entire genre of fiction about which you 
freely admit vast ignorance is indeed remniscent of Falstaff's second blessing,
it is not the same as having a flesh-and-blood person to make fun of.

Best wishes.


		The Pavlov dog and the Schroedinger cat
		Side by side in my forebrain sat
		With Shakespeare's monkey's crowding in behind. . .
		. . . it's all in your mind.
			-- Visual Purple

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,rec.arts.sf.misc