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Learning from Science Fiction

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Learning from Science Fiction HARD READING Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 53 Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies Editor David Seed, University of Liverpool Editorial Board Mark Bould, University of the West of England Veronica Hollinger, Trent University Rob Latham, University of California Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck College, University of London Patrick Parrinder, University of Reading Andy Sawyer, University of Liverpool Recent titles in the series 30. Mike Ashley Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1950–1970 31. Joanna Russ The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews 32. Robert Philmus Visions and Revisions: (Re)constructing Science Fiction 33. Gene Wolfe (edited and introduced by Peter Wright) Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing/Writers on Wolfe 34. Mike Ashley Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1970–1980 35. Patricia Kerslake Science Fiction and Empire 36. Keith Williams H. G. Wells, Modernity and the Movies 37. Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon (eds.) Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction 38. John Wyndham (eds. David Ketterer and Andy Sawyer) Plan for Chaos 39. Sherryl Vint Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal 40. Paul Williams Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds 41. Sara Wasson and Emily Alder, Gothic Science Fiction 1980–2010 42. David Seed (ed.), Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears 43. Andrew M. Butler, Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s 44. Andrew Milner, Locating Science Fiction 45. Joshua Raulerson, Singularities 46. Stanislaw Lem: Selected Letters to Michael Kandel (edited, translated and with an introduction by Peter Swirski) 47. Sonja Fritzsche, The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film 48. Jack Fennel: Irish Science Fiction 49. Peter Swirski and Waclaw M. Osadnik: Lemography: Stanislaw Lem in the Eyes of the World 50. Gavin Parkinson (ed.), Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics 51. Peter Swirski, Stanislaw Lem: Philosopher of the Future 52. J. P. Telotte and Gerald Duchovnay, Science Fiction Double Feature: The Science Fiction Film as Cult Text HARD READING Learning from Science Fiction Tom SHIppEY LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS First published 2016 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2016 Tom Shippey The right of Tom Shippey to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78138-261-5 cased epdf ISBN 978-1-78138-439-8 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed and bound in Poland by BooksFactory.co.uk For Peter Weston True fan, true friend Contents Contents List of Figures ix Note on References x A Personal Preface xi What SF Is 1 Coming Out of the Science Fiction Closet 3 ‘Learning to Read Science Fiction’ 6 2 Rejecting Gesture Politics 24 ‘Literary Gatekeepers and the Fabril Tradition’ 26 3 Getting Away from the Facilior Lectio 47 ‘Semiotic Ghosts and Ghostlinesses in the Work of Bruce Sterling’ 50 SF and Change 4 Getting Serious with the Fans 67 ‘Science Fiction and the Idea of History’ 70 5 Getting to Grips with the Issue of Cultures … 85 ‘Cultural Engineering: A Theme in Science Fiction’ 89 6 … And Not Fudging the Issue! 103 ‘“People are Plastic”: Jack Vance and the Dilemma of Cultural Relativism’ 106 7 SF Authors Really Mean what they Say 121 ‘Alternate Historians: Newt, Kingers, Harry and Me’ 124 vii viii HARD READING 8 A Revealing Failure by the Critics 141 ‘Kingsley Amis’s Science Fiction and the Problems of Genre’ 144 9 A Glimpse of Structuralist Possibility 160 ‘The Golden Bough and the Incorporations of Magic in Science Fiction’ 162 10 Serious Issues, Serious Traumas, Emotional Depth 182 ‘The Magic Art and the Evolution of Words: Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea” Trilogy’ 185 SF and Politics 11 A First Encounter with Politics 207 ‘The Cold War in Science Fiction, 1940–1960’ 209 12 Language Corruption, and Rocking the Boat 229 ‘Variations on Newspeak: The Open Question of Nineteen Eighty-Four’ 233 13 Just Before the Disaster 255 ‘The Fall of America in Science Fiction’ 258 14 Why Politicians, and Producers, Should Read Science Fiction 274 ‘The Critique of America in Contemporary Science Fiction’ 277 15 Saying (When Necessary) the Lamentable Word 293 ‘Starship Troopers, Galactic Heroes, Mercenary Princes: The Military and its Discontents in Science Fiction’ 296 References 311 Index 321 Figures Figures 1 Desirability and possibility 82 2 The branches of magic according to the laws of thought which underlie them, from Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough 164 ix Note on References Note on References These pieces were written over a period of more than thirty years, in many different house-styles. I have tried to make them consistent, and have also aimed at not burdening the reader with pseudo-scholarship. There is rarely any point in giving page references for quotations from works of fiction which have been repeatedly republished and repaginated (except to show repetition, as at pages 238, 245–6, 253–4). Where I think it is useful I have indicated chapter or section numbers, so that quotes from works of fiction can be located. There is also little point in giving publication details of first editions which most readers never see. Accordingly, works of fiction do not appear in the ‘List of References’ at the end. The first time any work of fiction is mentioned in a piece, I give its author, title, and date of first publication. References to all magazine publications are given by year and month to the first, usually the American, edition: several magazines issued US/UK editions, dated a few months apart. (Note that Astounding Science Fiction changed its name to Analog: Science Fact/Science Fiction in August 1960: the abbreviation ASF refers to either title.) All authors’ names are furthermore indexed. References to critical works, however, are indicated in text by author, date and page, and keyed to the composite ‘List of References’ at the end. Footnotes are used for the most part only to add information or make a point which is (I hope) interesting, but to one side of the main argument. x A Personal Preface A Personal Preface Science fiction has been the most characteristic literary mode of the twentieth century. It has of course had forerunners and ‘anticipations’ (for which see Seed 1995). But whether one looks back to the early nineteenth century and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and after that the mostly British tradition of ‘scientific romances’ (see Stableford 1985), or the many moon-voyages and fantastic journeys of much earlier times, there was a sea change in the Wellsian 1890s, and an even greater one in the ‘pulp fiction’ era beginning in the 1920s. It came, obviously, as a natural reaction to the accelerating pace of scientific discovery, which affected people’s everyday lives on the technological level, with internal-combustion engines, powered flight and the whole apparatus of military matters right up to the atom and hydrogen bombs and the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) which could deliver them. Not very far in the background, on the intellectual level, were the impacts of Darwinism, social anthropology, challenges to faith and even (much underrated) Grimmian comparative philology. Many authors, even more readers, responded to these changes in every conceivable way. This development caught the literary world by surprise and was too often unwelcome. Later in this book I note some of the hostile reactions which have often been reported to me, but the one which sticks in my mind is the extraordinarily grudging blurb which Penguin Books used to put on the back of their editions of John Wyndham’s books in the 1950s and 1960s: they summarised his career, saying he wrote ‘stories of various kinds’ and ‘detective novels’. But then, the blurb proclaimed, ‘he decided to try a modified form of what is unhappily known as “science fiction”’. Only a ‘modified form’, and don’t let the term for it put you off, the Penguin editors defensively insisted. Later blurbs only noted that Penguin had sold half-a-million copies of Wyndham’s works, but the attitude remained and has not entirely vanished: see, for instance, Ursula Le Guin’s tart reaction, now, in 2015, to Kazuo Ishiguro’s nervousness xi xii HARD READING lest his novel The Buried Giant might be taken as ‘fantasy’ (and so not serious, not literary).1 It may be as a result of this estrangement between the literary- critical world and the new mass audience that Samuel Delany said, in his address on receiving the 1985 Pilgrim Award, that ‘we must learn to read science fiction as science fiction’. It is an enigmatic remark, though corroborated by others (see n. 11 on p. 34, p. 39), and one hopes that after thirty more years of ever-increasing critical attention, it is not as true as it once was. Yet there is a sense in which it contains an obvious truth, at least as regards literary critics. Most critics, even of science fiction and fantasy, learned their trade and acquired their critical techniques and vocabulary in colleges and graduate schools where the focus was on ‘the great classical texts’, to quote Professor Howard Felperin (see p. 28, below). Adapting such techniques to a new mode is not a self-evident process, and one often feels that new words are needed for new concepts.
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