The Sociology of Science Fiction
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THE SOCIOLOGYOF SCIENCE FICTION Brian M. Stableford Submitted for the degree of D. Phil. to the University of York, Department of Sociology in September 1978 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Variable print quality CONTENTS(continued) PAGE 246.. NOTESAND REFERENCES................................... ? ý% BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................... ACKNOWDGI {Lfrs I am particularly indebted to Andy Tudor, who supervised this research project. I am also indebted to various people who read early drafts of parts of the work and made helpful suggestions of one kind or another, particularly Anne Akeroyd, Bill Russell, Leonard Rivett, Peter Nicholls, Tony Sudbery and Patrick Parrinder. 3 DECLARATION While research for this project wan being carried out (between 1972 and 1978) the interests and attitudes generated by it affected virtually everything that I wrote. Although nothing in the preaent work is duplicated elsewhere ideas have overflowed from it into the following books and articles: Scientific Imagination in Literature (forthcoming) The Roxby Press Encyclopaedia of science Fiction (forthcoming from Doubleday in the U. S. A. and Granada in the U. K.; my contribution amounts to some 133,000 words distributed over approximately 300 entries. ) "The Marriage of Science and Fiction" in The Octopus Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction (forthcoming) "SF: A Sociological Perspective" Fantastic March 1974 "SF: The Nature of the Medium" Amazing August 1974 "The Social Role of Science Fiction" Algol Summer 1975 "The Robot in Science Fiction" Vector 66 Jul (August 1973 "Machines and Inventions" Vector 67-68 Spring 1974 "opening Hinds" Vector 76-77 August/September 1976 "Edgar Fawcett" Vector 78 November/December 1976 "Icaromenippus, or the Future of Science Fiction" Vector 81 May/June 1977 "The Needs and Demands of the Science Fiction Reader" Vector 83 September/October 1977 (paper read at the First World Science Fiction Writers' Conference in Dublin, September 1976) "William Wilson's Prospectus for Science Fiction: 1851" Foundation 10 June 1976 "Insoluble Problems: Barry Malzberg's Career in Science Fiction" 1ý Foundation 11-12 March 1977 "The Science Fiction of James Blieh" Foundation 13 May 1978 'Science Fiction and the Image of the Future" Foundation 14 September 1978 "The Metamorphosis of Robert Silverberg" SF Monthly vol. 3 no. 3 (1976) t'The Significance of Science Fiction" Spectrum 148 (1977) "The Threatening Future: The Fall of Utopia" Western Mail July 10th 1978 "The Threatening Future: Portents in the Slav" Western Mail July 11th 1978 5 ABSTRACT This thesis is an exercise in the sociology of literature. Rather than treating literature as a product it considers it as a medium of communication. The attempt to investigate literature an a medium of communication begins by identifying three broad categories of communicative function: directive, maintenance and restorative. The investigation of science fiction begins with a history of the publishing category established in the 1920s under that name, paying particular attention to editorial manifestos. There follows a consideration of reader expectations based on a study of letters to various magazines, attempts to define science fiction, and statements made by apologists for the genre. There follows then an analysis of themes and trends in science fiction, paying particular attention to machines, alien beings, images of future society and superhumane. The various trends are then discussed in the context of the various commun- icative functions in order to expose the directive potential of the genre, the kind of world-view which it tends to maintain in its readers, and the particular pressures relevant to its characteristic patterns of restorative fantasy. 6 INTRODUCTION This in an exercise in the sociology of literature. It in an attempt to identify and analyse the connections between a literary species and its social context. It proceeds through four stages. It asks first what kind of connections we might reasonably look for and how we might find and interpret them. Secondly, it presents a commentary on the history of the species. Thirdly, it presents an analysis of the way that certain key notions have changed in their common treatment during that history. Finally, it presents an account of the connections which can be established, at least tentatively, between the species and its context. Sociologists of literature have previously been most interested in fictions which they have assumed to be mimetic, or in some way reflective of social reality. They have tended to study works which seem to be "about" the real world, and they have directed their efforts toward examining the author's presumed attempt to "describe" and "interpret" his social environment, assuming that we may obtain access by this means to the author's consciousness of his social environment. It is certainly true that some authors have consciously adopted as their task the description and interpretation of their own social world, but it is equally certainly not universally true. Literary works which lie outside the range of this assumption tend to be more difficult to deal with, requiring extra hypotheses about what the author is doing and why he is doing it. Very little literature actually reflects the social world passively and straightforwardly. All literature is selective in 7 the elements of the social world which it reproduces and to which it lends most emphasis. Even when literature can be said to hold up a mirror to the contemporary world it is a distorting mirror, and one that may distort in a number of different ways. This poses problems for the sociologist who wishes to use literature an a source of data regarding the social environments of the past and present, but it also provides the questions which first engage the attention of the sociologist who wants to explain how literature comes to be the kind of thing it is and how it comes to take the k.indiof forms it does. In the second kind of inquiry the distortions are more interesting than the straightforward reflections and it is this kind of inquiry which is pursued herein. It is for thin reason that I have selected an a literary species for examination the publishing category known as "science fiction'': a kind of fiction which is by definition not mimetic. This in not to say that we might not discover in science fiction something of the various authors' consciousness of their social reality, but merely to say that this in not all we can or should be interested in. In representing this work as an exercise in the sociology of literature I do not wish to imply any value-judgement as to the "literary merit" of the works to be studies. Leo Strauss has asked: "Would we not laugh out of court a man who claimed to have written a sociology of art but who had actually written a sociology of trash? "' I do not think that it is a necessary part of the sociologist's task to make distinctions of this kind. My purpose is to attempt to understand why this particular literary species exists and why it has the characteristic preoccupations that it does, not to praise it as "trash". "art" or vilify it as In my view, the purpose of the in to sociologist of literature explain why people write and read the things they do, not to prescribe what they ought to write or what 8 they ought to read. There seems to be no logical basis for the claim that the one entails the other. Science fiction offers useful research material for an analytical exercise of this kind for several reasons. Firstly, it is a genre which in relatively easily identifiable. There is a considerable number of writers who specialise in its production, and a considerable number of readers who epecialice (to a high degree) in its consumption. Science fiction, an a publishers' category is clearly labelled, and its writers are usually aware that they are writing material which in to be no labelled. Secondly, it in a genre of fairly recent provenance. The label itself has been in existence for little more than fifty Years, and with a few exceptions the fiction which shares the preoccupations of labelled science fiction (and which is sometimes "co-opted" by the genre) has all been written within the last century. During the Sfty-year period of its existence as a labelled genre science fiction has undergone considerable change, in terms of the media which contain it, in terms of its economic fortunes, and in terms of the stereotypes and conventions manifest in the stories. These changes present something of a challenge to the sociologist who wants to ask questions about the reasons why some genres thrive at certain times and the relation- ships between social change and changes in the content of literature. In addition to these general features there are certain aspects of the genre's particular pretensions which are sociologically interesting. There are numerous "definitions" of science fiction the and "manifestos" for genre which represent science fiction as a hypothetical fiction bound by the limits of presumed possibility. Science fiction specifically renounces the claim that it shows but the interesting society as it is, makes claim that ii shows -9 society an it might be, or as it might become. Because of thin special claim we may be able to discover in science fiction an awareness not of social reality but of expectations of social change, and the hopes or fears which are corollary to those expectations. This might not only illdminate some of the connections between the content of science fiction and its social context but may also provide data which are interesting in themselves. fffýfffffffffffýfff" 0 10 Chapter Ono. APPROACHESTO THE SOCIOLOGYOF LITUATURC 1. Literature an ii product "It in the task of the sociologist of literature to relate the experience of the writer's imaginary charactorn and situations to the historical climate from which they derive.