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The Reference Library

Don Sakers

When I was a mere slip of a lad in my first year of college, I naturally signed up for the one and only class in science fiction and fantasy. I liked the professor so much that I took the next class she offered, and the next, and so on . . . which is how I wound up with a minor in English literature to go with my major in math (thank you, Sue Abromaitis).

In one of the early classes, probably Eighteenth Century Novels, our first assignment was Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. I plunged into it expecting a dull, turgid classic; instead, I found tiny people, giants, alien races and societies, and an aerial city populated by advanced scientists and held aloft by antigravity.

I raced off to the professor’s office, determined that she was alone, and said, “I just finished Gulliver’s Travels. Does the rest of the class know that we’re reading science fiction?”

She smiled and held a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell them, otherwise they’ll decide they have to hate it.”

The point of this whole dreary story is to illustrate the uneasy tension that exists between the universe of Science Fiction and the world of Literature.

When the Earth was young and there was no such thing as genre, what passed for SF was just another part of Literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh was the first post-apocalyptic story on record, and Daedalus the first scientist-hero. Lucian of Samosata wrote space opera in the second century, Dante meticulously built worlds according to the best medieval science, Shakespeare penned the preliminary screenplay for Forbidden Planet, and Cyrano de Bergerac talked about sending rockets into space in the 1600s . . . all well before Dean Swift sent Gulliver off on his adventures. Mary Shelley’s speculations about the uses of electricity paved the way for the careers of Great-Grandpappys Verne and Wells. And every one of those authors is undeniably a part of Literature, published in respectable Penguin Classics editions available at the nearest college bookstore.

Then Grandaddy Hugo came along and gave Science Fiction its own separate playground, and Father-of-Us-All John Campbell refined it into a thriving genre. And so it happened that Science Fiction waved goodbye to Literature, and the two went their separate ways.

Ever since then, stuffy old Literature has turned up its nose at its younger sibling . . . while upstart Science Fiction, for its part, has often delighted in tweaking the nose of its big brother. But underneath, each has always envied the other, if only a little bit.

Every once in a while, Literature takes a hold of the conventions of Science Fiction, and produces a minor masterpiece. Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 are well-known examples. In later years, ultra-Literary authors such as Margaret Atwood, Caleb Carr, P. D. James, Doris Lessing, and even John Updike tried their hands at SF-type books, with varied degrees of success. Recently, even Philip Roth ventured into SF territory, with an alternate history novel called The Plot Against America. (Although poor Mr. Roth, in a poignant author’s note, begs his reader’s indulgence for this queer notion of a story in which history went off in a different direction—a notion that he seems to think he invented himself. As Professor Abromaitis might say, don’t tell him that Murray Leinster was there seventy years before.)

To be sure, when Literature plays with Science Fiction’s toys, it doesn’t dig too deeply into the toy box. You’re not likely to see Barbara Kingsolver exploring post-Singularity AIs, Ann Tyler writing the definitive First Contact novel, or Iain Pears writing of murder on a generation ship.

No, what’s popular in Literature these days is a touch of environmentalism (like T. C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth) or good old dystopian futures. In fact, since Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was published in 2006, Literary dystopias (also known as “post-apocalyptics”) have been all the rage.

If you want to get a sense of what Literature has been up to lately, here are two recent dystopian novels that even hardcore SF readers can find worthwhile.

The Pesthouse,
by Jim Crace,

Vintage
$13.95 (Paperback),
272 pp.
ISBN:
9780307278951
Genre:
Dystopian Futures

The medieval post-apocalyptic America of The Pesthouse will be familiar to anyone familiar with SF of the 1960s and 1970s. Technology has regressed to the level of subsistence farming, transportation is by foot or horseback, and the sword and bow-and-arrow are the height of weaponry. No one remembers the exact nature of the long-ago catastrophe that left the world so changed.

When disaster destroys his village, farmboy Franklin heads off for the East, where rumor tells of ships bound for Europe, the land of milk and honey. Along the way, Franklin hooks up with Margaret, who is recovering from “the flux,” a feared disease that has left her shunned and outcast.

On their journey, Franklin and Margaret fall in love and acquire a child. There are adventures: slave-traders kidnap Franklin, and Margaret spends some time with the obligatory anti-technology religious sect. Eventually they come to the East Coast to find disappointment . . . but also hope.

Crace does a good job of portraying various aspects of this future, and the characters are compelling. Margaret and Franklin are worth spending time with. And in the end, if the whole thing is just a little over-familiar to SF readers, it’s still a rewarding journey.

Jamestown,
by Matthew Sharpe,

Mariner,
$14.00 (Paperback),
416 pp.
ISBN: 9781933368603
Genre:
Dystopian Futures

More Thomas M. Disch than Walter M. Miller, Jr., Jamestown is a delightfully quirky and anachronistic dystopia.

In this post-apocalytpic near future, Captain John Smith leads a band of settlers out of a poison-choked Manhattan in an armored bus. They head down ruined Interstate 95 in search of the promised land, Virginia. Once they arrive, there’s this woman named Pocahontas . . . but if you think you know where the story is going, guess again.

The best part of this fun novel is Sharpe’s invented language, which is easily fit to stand beside those in A Clockwork Orange and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. A mixture of Elizabethan and modern slang, with a good bit of Sharpe’s own weirdness thrown in, it’s refreshingly SF-like.

Fair warning: Sharpe’s future world is a violent and vulgar place, definitely not for the easily offended. If that’s not to your taste, give this one a miss.

So there are some examples of what Literature has been up to lately. But let’s not forget that for every bit as long as Literature’s been messing around in Science Fiction’s playground, SF has been sneaking into the house and putting its feet up on Literature’s furniture.

There have always been the Brits. In England, the split between Literature and SF was never as serious as in the States. John Wyndham, Brian Aldiss, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard . . . all were more-or-less accepted as at least literary-with-a-small-l. Even among the Campbell stable there was Arthur C. Clarke—I am far from the only one to have noticed that some passages in Sir Arthur’s work are sheer poetry.

The whole New Wave Movement of the 1960s, a British import to begin with, was largely an attempt to move SF closer to the Literature side of the yard (and further away from the disreputable neighbors like Westerns and other pulp fiction).

But still, even pulpy American SF had its Literary lights . . . and still has them today. True, some of the usual names have lately been having out-of-genre experiences: Ursula K. LeGuin in ancient Italy (Lavinia); Norman Spinrad exploring the halls of Montezuma (Mexica); and Samuel R. Delany experimenting in alternative autobiography (Dark Reflections). But that still leaves a few SF writers to proudly carry the banner into Literary territory.

We’ll Always Have Paris,
by Ray Bradbury,

William Morrow,
$24.95,
224 pp.(Hardcover)
ISBN 9780061719776
Genres:
Short Story Collections, Literary SF

Ray Bradbury can hold his head up high in any Literary circles . . . indeed, in any circles. We’ll Always Have Paris is a collection of previously unpublished Bradbury stories. That alone should be enough to convince you to rush out and snag a copy. But perhaps you’re unconvinced.

Let me make a confession here: I didn’t always like Bradbury. In my salad days, even before Professor Abromaitis and Jonathan Swift, I didn’t consider Bradbury to be a real science fiction writer. He wasn’t rigorous about his science. Just look at The Martian Chronicles (especially when compared to Red Planet or The Sands of Mars): you just know that Bradbury never calculated the intensity of solar radiation on Mars, or the heat of fusion of ice in the thin Martian atmosphere—heck, he had people walking around on Mars without breathing gear. Fantasy, yes; horror, even—but not science fiction.

It wasn’t until much later, when I’d been exposed to a lot more different types of fiction and a lot more experience of life, that I came to realize that Bradbury was his own thing, independent of narrow genre definitions. And I came to understand that if Bradbury were willing to allow Science Fiction to claim him as part of the family, then Science Fiction would be smart to accept the honor. Especially in an era in which Certain Writers made it a rite of passage to loudly and conspicuously reject Science Fiction.

So I’m not going to tell you that some of the stories in We’ll Always Have Paris are mainstream, others are fantasy, still others science fiction, and one is a poem. I’m not even going to tell you that one story, “Fly Away Home,” is a Martian Chronicle. No, I’m just going to tell you that they are all Bradbury, and that should be enough. There are 22 tales in this volume, so if you read one a day and take weekends off, you can stretch it out for a whole month. Except you won’t, nobody could. So it will be over all that much sooner, and you’ll be out of brand-new Bradbury, and you’ll have only yourself to blame.

Needless to say, this book would also be a nice present for anyone who likes good stories, SF or not.

The Best of Gene Wolfe,
by Gene Wolfe,

Tor,
$29.95,
544 pp. (Hardcover)
ISBN 9780765321350
Genres:
Short Story Collections, Literary SF

Gene Wolfe is another one of those writers who stretches the boundaries of SF. Fantasy? Satire? Horror? Absurdity? A single Gene Wolfe story can be all of these, and SF as well, and at the same time it can be something else entirely.

There is no denying that Wolfe is an Important writer: all you have to do is look at the awards, the reviews, the literary analyses, the esteem in which he is held around the world. Less known, perhaps, than Bradbury (but who isn’t?), he nonetheless commands as much respect from the world of Literature as he does in the SF field.

The Best of Gene Wolfe is subtitled “A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction,” and that just about sums it up. Now, one could quibble that this isn’t “the best” of Gene Wolfe, for “the best” certainly includes some of his longer works as well—but it’s certainly the best of Gene Wolfe that will fit in 544 pages.

If you’re a Gene Wolfe fan, then you don’t need to hear any more from me. But what if you’re not?

If you’ve never read Gene Wolfe, I understand. There are 31 stories in this volume, and not one of them was published in Analog. Wolfe grew out of the Damon Knight/Milford tradition, and it’s entirely possible that you’ve never been exposed to his work.

If you think you don’t like Gene Wolfe’s work . . . again, I understand. Anyone can pick up a Bradbury story and instantly be drawn into it. LeGuin and Delany take a little bit more work, but not much. And some readers jump right into Wolfe as easy as stepping on an escalator. But a lot of others find that his work requires some effort. (A lot, of course, depends on the particular story.) Now, most everyone finds that his work rewards the effort . . . but sometimes you have to be in the right mood to tackle a Gene Wolfe tale. And if you’ve run into his stuff while you weren’t in the mood, you could easily get turned off.

If you’ve never read Wolfe before, or if you’re doubtful, go to the library and try some of the stories in this book. “Petting Zoo” and “Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?” are fairly accessible, and “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” is a classic. “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” is longer, but quite rewarding. By the time you’ve finished those, you’ll know whether you are a Gene Wolfe fan or not.

And if you are, you’ll have the whole rest of the book to look forward to. You can return that library copy and buy one of your own.

Let’s see . . . by this time I’ve scandalized some of my purebred SF friends by recommending some Real Literature; I’ve left some of my hardcore Literary friends feeling faint by recommending some honest-to-Ghu Science Fiction; and I’ve annoyed both groups by suggesting that they are sometimes two sides of the same coin. Now let’s see if I can go ahead and alienate everyone by recommending, as a fine example of both Science Fiction and Literature, a (gasp!) comic book. And not only that, but a comic book that’s been made into a movie.

Watchmen,
by Alan Moore
and Dave Gibbons

DC Comics,
$19.99,
416 pp.
ISBN 9780930289232
Genres:
Superhero, Graphic Novels

Science Fiction? Really?

All right, not in the modern Analog sense, not any more than Bradbury. But in the wider, Astounding Stories sense, yes. There’s technology, both mechanical and biological. There’s physics. There’s a trip to Mars. There’s psi. There’s a consistent alternate history, and an underlying logic to all the events in the story. And there’s sense of wonder to spare.

Literature? Really?

Yes. Alan Moore is a literary writer. The story involves grand themes of human existence, and small personal themes of individual human characters. There is symbolism, both subtle and overt. Not only is there poetry to the words, but there is poetry in the art as well.

As with most great books, a summary of the plot is inadequate. Watchmen is set in an alternate version of the 1980s, a world in which superheroes exist and play their part among the forces that shape the world. In the 1960s the premier superhero group in the world came under the influence of the United States government. Some heroes were sent to Vietnam to win the war and enforce American hegemony; others retired at government insistence . . . and some became outlaws. Now two decades have passed, and someone is killing the heroes. From here, the story goes into the nature of power and control, the meaning of heroism and hero-worship, and (of course) various plots to control and/or destroy the world.

Watchmen is not easy to read. The story is dense, and it’s very violent. Some of the characters are unpleasant, others are delightful. There’s a lot of psychological depth, and in the end there is no easy answer to the many questions the book poses. If you still think comics are for children, this one will convince you otherwise . . . I wouldn’t let even the most well-adjusted child near this book.

Still, Watchmen is a classic, and it deserves your attention.

Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.

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