| Home
pages:
The Greatest Literature of All Time
See also: |
|
|
|
What Counts as SF? Fuzzy definitions Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein didn't like hard and fast definitions—he preferred something he called "family resemblances". This is the idea that when we use words to refer to things, we are really grouping things together by rough similarities that appeal to us in various contexts. For example, we use the word "family" all the time, but just try to define exactly what a family is—who the members of a family are. You'll find that every possible definition leaves out some people you would consider family in some context and may include others you wouldn't include in other situations. Family members are defined by blood relations? That criteria leaves out the spouse, in-laws or adopted children. By legal status? This ignores siblings adopted into different families and many a close family friend, even a pet, considered part of the family. Emotional connections? That excludes the family member you don't care for, and mistakenly includes the person you love but do not consider family. All of these criteria come into our ideas of family but none of them are necessary and sufficient on their own. Whether I agree with Wittgenstein's notion generally, it sure applies to categories of literature—and especially to the SF genre. Let's start with some standard definitions of "science fiction": • According to British essayist William Wilson, credited with coining the phrase in 1851, it is fiction
That's so pretty, we wish it were true. But much of what we call science fiction today does not reveal "truths of Science". And many a pleasing story could be written to reveal such truths without being called science fiction. • Nonetheless, this view of science fiction as edifying literature caught on after American pulp-magazine editor Hugo Gernsback revived the term in 1929. He discarded his own term, "scientifiction", as being too awkward, and promoted science fiction as
A noble dream, which still persists as a strain in SF but does not include the entire field, as many stories of what we call science fiction are rather pessimistic about science or about the future of humankind. Wilson's and Gernsback's "definitions" of science fiction appear to be prescriptions for what they think it should be, rather than descriptions of what it is. • The harder-nosed John W. Campbell, prominent writer and editor during science fiction's "Golden Age" of the late 1930s to early 1950s, saw science fiction as running parallel to science fact:
This may be considered the definition of what became known as "hard science fiction", especially in the United States. Much science fiction still follows this pattern. But we've also had an equal amount of creative, artistic and even fanciful science fiction that does not follow the scientific method so rigorously. British and European work has especially deviated wildly from this prescription, and even much American SF since the 1960s would be unrecognizable as such to Campbell. • Other definitions have retained a different connection with science: science fiction has been declared the literature that has responded to an increasingly scientific and technological society—dealing with our hopes and fears for ourselves in this kind of society. Problem with this: A lot of modern literature does this without being known as science fiction—perhaps most modern literature does this. And a lot of what we do call science fiction uses science or technology—space ships, time machines, drugs, etc.—essentially as plot devices without having much to say about how these toys are affecting our psyches in this society. • So maybe science fiction is about the future then? Usually a technologically advanced future? This is the description of the field you hear all the time—science fiction as prophecy. You hear this all the time despite the fact that many science fiction plots take place in the past or present, or in parts of the universe with no time relation to ourselves whatsoever. The proportion of science fiction that seriously purports to predict our future, or to warn us against a possible future if we don't change our ways, is actually quite limited. • All right, then maybe it's not just about future times but about other situations in space and time, in other dimensions, in other realities. The term "speculative fiction" was popular as an alternative to "science fiction" for awhile (partly because it allowed us to keep the SF acronym, I suspect). And yes, most SF does speculate—much of it does present what-if scenarios. What if we keep building bigger bombs? What if aliens were to land here? What if we could go back in time and save Lincoln from assassination? What if the world's temperature dropped ten degrees? But almost all literature, not just science fiction, is speculative. It's hard to imagine any novel that does not involve something imagined by the author—whether it's an odd bit of human behaviour, a juicy murder, an unexpected love affair, a fantastic struggle of dragons and sorcerers. • One of the most sophisticated and useful definitions comes from a former Yugoslavian, and now Canadian, poet and professor. Darko Suvin wrote at least three books trying to pin down the field, at one point declaring,
Sounds difficult. But really Suvin is putting forward a variation on the what-if definition. In every science fiction story there is one modification to current reality (his "novum") upon which the story hinges. But, most importantly, it is followed through with logical consistency—it has to become part of our store of knowledge about things. This definition is more practical than most because having an innovation to current reality at the centre of the story separates SF from general literature and, at the other end of the SF spectrum, the cognitive validation separates it from wildly fantastic stories. However, once again we find that when it is strictly applied this definition would exclude some of the more imaginative literature that much of the world considers science fiction. Some science fiction writers—the names Brian Aldiss, Harlan Ellison, and J.G. Ballard come to mind—don't necessarily care whether their plots hold together cognitively, as long as they work viscerally. That is, they want their readers to go with the flow, however credible the scientific or logical underpinnings are. • The winner: I could go on and on with definitions of SF and their failings. But I prefer to settle for the view that science fiction is... [drum roll]
This is not as wimpy as it may at first seem. It's really an acceptance of the family resemblances approach. It's saying that we amorphously group together literature that has bits of all the above definitions into one family, but the members of this family don't necessarily meet all the criteria, and a few other individuals that meet one or two of the criteria still aren't considered members. When we look for a novel in a book store, we usually have a pretty good idea whether we should be looking in the Science Fiction section. True, we can think of several genre-busting books that would be hard to place, because they could fall into several categories. Lord of the Rings? Nineteen Eighty-Four? Utopia? Dracula? The Handmaid's Tale? And over time, the borders of the categories may shift. But for most books at any given time, we can walk directly to the correct section. We have a general idea of what science fiction is—derived from all the references to "science fiction" we've ever heard in our lives. We have a sort of consensus about what's science fiction and what isn't. And that consensus, which I've learned to identify through my own life experience, is what I'm calling science fiction here. So there. Of course, the consensus is not complete. The definition is still fuzzy, so the next section deals with some of the more contentious border disputes. |
||
 |
© Copyright 2005 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
|
|
