Two Ways of Describing the Elephant: Science Fiction and the Mystery (2010)

f "1 k i? INTERNATIONAL I^rime c^Mystery MADISON DAVIS TWO WAYS OF DESCRIBING THE ELEPHANT: SCIENCE FICTION AND THE MYSTERY Comparing the most memo rable science fictionwith thebest crimewriting leads me to the conclusion that the for mer distinguishes itself primarily through ideas, while the latter ele vates itself through character. This isnot to say thatscience fictiondoes not produce powerful characters or that crime writing is bereft of sig nificant ideas, but there does seem tobe a tendency forscience fictionto delve more actively intophilosophi cal questions while the mystery depends more on emotion and char acter. The worldview in crime writ ing isusually not fluid,and thechar acters strugglewithin itsconstraints. We all remember how Sam Spade struggleswith themoral and philo sophical dilemma he finds himself in at the end of TheMaltese Falcon. He's no Kant and ultimately follows his gut?the very thing that'sgotten him into this difficult situation. In the more traditionalpuzzle mystery, the game itself may be an intellec tual exercise, but thepurpose isnot usually toquestion theoverall para digm. The epistemology is relatively fixed. Science-fiction enthusiasts at this point shouldn't puff out their chestswith a feeling of superiority, saying, "Exactly! We are intellec tual and they are not." I imply no superiority of one genre over the other. Intellect leads to as many errors as empathy. The very thing that science-fiction enthusiasts value iswhat subjects them to ridicule by unsympathetic comedians as geeky cultists, obsessed with the imagi nary and out of touchwith reality. Similarly, mystery enthusiasts can seem like trivial-minded escapists to someone impressedwith thepro fundity of Frank Herbert's Dune. The world is a great elephant, and we are blind to its whole. Ifchallenged ina parlor game to listwell-known fictional detectives, I suspect most people would have little difficulty: Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, Miss Marple, Philip Marlowe, and so on. Listing major characters from science fiction, how ever, is a bit more stressful. There's Frankenstein. Is that science fiction? A preponderance of video charac ters would appear: Captain Kirk,Dr. Who, Luke Skywalker. I imagine a lot of finger snapping: who is that guy in Invasion of theBody Snatchers? Ifwe disqualify video characters, the challenge is even more difficult. What is vivid about science-fiction films is spectacle, such as theMar tians' machines coming over the horizon inWar of theWorlds. But then, what really makes Wells's novel stick is that amazing end ing inwhich Earth is not saved by mankind but by the bacteria that causes putrefaction and forwhich theMartians have no resistance. This message about human arrogance comes out of one of the most sur prising reversals to end any novel. Whatzizname, who narrates all this to us, is no more interesting than the cellulose he isprinted on, and he doesn't reallymatter. The brilliance ofWells's ending is so idea-based that itdoesn't play well on the big screen. The power of science fiction is usually diminished when it is trans lated to film,despite thepopularity aboveA scene fromthe 1982 film Blade Runner, based on the novelDo Androids Dream ofElectric Sheep? by PhilipK.Dick of such films. Science-fiction authors I have known say these adaptations turn their genre into "sci-fi," a more popular, but inferior,genre. What has made Wells's novel into two successful motion pictures is the special effects.The filmDune was a huge disappointment to fans of thenovel, who didn't read itfor the big worms. The films based upon the less complex ideas generated by television or original to film,like the Star Trek or Star Wars series, score May-June 2010 i9 Crime & Mystery much bigger at the box office. Star Wars is little more than SirWalter Scott in space. Star Trek aspired to profundity in its first feature film, but it came across as pretentious as William Shatner's emoting. The second film,TheWrath ofKhan, res cued the series by dropping thebig ideas and highlighting the scenery chewing of Ricardo Montalb?n. On the Tom Snyder Show in the 1970s, Harlan Ellison called StarTrek "cops and robbers in space," gobsmack ing the ebullient Snyder and greatly offending actorsWalter Koenig and DeForrest Kelley, who were...