collision detection: Why sci-fi is the last great literature of ideas: My latest <em>Wired</em> magazine column

January 22, 2008

Why sci-fi is the last great literature of ideas: My latest Wired magazine column

In the current issue of Wired magazine is my latest column -- and this one's about why I love speculative fiction: Because it's the last remaining literature of big ideas! Check it out on the Wired site for free, and an archived copy is below.

Note to fanboys/fangirls/fanthings: I know I'm using the phrase "science fiction" imprecisely here. Technically, I'm talking about all forms of speculative writing -- science fiction, fantasy, realist utopian/dystopian writing, science-fantasy, etc. But since most Wired readers probably aren't familiar with these distinctions, nor with the term "speculative fiction" as a genus that contains many species, I used "science fiction" in its place ... even though this usage is imprecise and basically inaccurate. (BTW, the graphic above is a crop of the nifty illustration accompanying the piece, by Rodrigo Corral.)

And away we go ...

Take the Red Book Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing by Clive Thompson
Recently I read a novella that posed a really deep question: What would happen if physical property could be duplicated like an MP3 file? What if a poor society could prosper simply by making pirated copies of cars, clothes, or drugs that cure fatal illnesses?

The answer Cory Doctorow offers in his novella After the Siege is that you'd get a brutal war. The wealthy countries that invented the original objects would freak out, demand royalties from the developing ones, and, when they didn't get them, invade. Told from the perspective of a young girl trying to survive in a poor country being bombed by well-off adversaries, After the Siege is an absolute delight, by turns horrifying, witty, and touching.

Technically, After the Siege is a work of science fiction. But as with so many sci-fi stories, it works on two levels, exploring real-world issues like the plight of African countries that can't afford AIDS drugs. The upshot is that Doctorow's fiction got me thinking -- on a Lockean level -- about the nature of international law, justice, and property.

Which brings me to my point. If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best -- and perhaps only -- place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.
From where I sit, traditional "literary fiction" has dropped the ball. I studied literature in college, and throughout my twenties I voraciously read contemporary fiction. Then, eight or nine years ago, I found myself getting -- well -- bored.

Why? I think it's because I was reading novel after novel about the real world. And there are, at the risk of sounding superweird, only so many ways to describe reality. After I'd read my 189th novel about someone living in a city, working in a basically realistic job and having a realistic relationship and a realistically fraught family, I was like, "OK. Cool. I see how today's world works." I also started to feel like I'd been reading the same book over and over again.

Here's my overly reductive, incredibly nerdy way of thinking about the novel: Consider it a simulation, kind of like The Sims. If you run a realistic simulation enough times -- writing tens of thousands of novels about contemporary life -- eventually you're going to explore almost every outcome. So what do you do then?

You change the physics in the sim. Alter reality -- and see what new results you get. Which is precisely what sci-fi does. Its authors rewrite one or two basic rules about society and then examine how humanity responds -- so we can learn more about ourselves. How would love change if we lived to be 500? If you could travel back in time and revise decisions, would you? What if you could confront, talk to, or kill God?

Teenagers love to ponder such massive, brain-shaking concepts, which is precisely why they devour novels like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, the Narnia series, the Harry Potter books, and Ender's Game. They know that big-idea novels are more likely to have an embossed foil dragon on the cover than a Booker Prize badge.

Adults and serious intellectuals used to love ruminating over this stuff, too. Thought experiments formed the foundation of Western philosophy -- from Socrates to Thomas Hobbes to Simone de Beauvoir.

So, then, why does sci-fi, the inheritor of this intellectual tradition, get short shrift among serious adult readers? Probably because the genre tolerates execrable prose stylists. Plus, many of sci-fi's most famous authors -- like Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick -- have positively deranged notions about the inner lives of women.

But the worm is turning. For whatever reasons -- maybe the reality fatigue I've felt -- a lot of literary writers are trying their hand at speculative fiction. Philip Roth used a "counterfactual" history -- what if Nazi sympathizers in the US won the 1940 election? -- to explore anti-Semitism in The Plot Against America. Cormac McCarthy muses on the nature of morality in the Hobbesian anarchy of his novel The Road. Then there's the genre-bending likes of Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Susanna Clarke, and Margaret Atwood (whom I like to think of as a sci-fi novelist trapped inside a literary author).

Those aren't writers whose books are adorned with embossed dragons. But that doesn't mean they don't owe that dragon a large debt.

Posted by Clive Thompson at January 22, 2008 10:29 PM

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Comments

Darko Survin and Fred Jameson have both dealt with Sci Fi as a genre that maps the conflicts of society as a whole.

Notions of identification with a hero sort of go by-the-by (as do concerns about stylistic refinement -- after all, where is Sci Fi's Flaubert?).

I was amazed to see these high-falutin' ideas at work in a little pen-and-paper RPG called Shock.

This game does not revolve around the creation of a min-maxed hero-- it's about identifying social conflicts and situating protagonists:

__________________________________________

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17481.0

[I]t's a matter of focus. Fantasy focuses on the hero, Science Fiction focuses on the society.

Now, obviously, they overlap. There's some discussion of the society in Middle Earth, and obviously there are individual characters in Science Fiction. But in Middle Earth, the society is in service to the characters and their cycles, and in SF, the characters are in service to their world's Issues.

Some comparisons
It's 2005. Aliens invade, destroying the world as we know it, capturing people and putting them in sacks to use for their own nefarious purposes.

It's 1205. Dragons raid, burning towns, villages, and cities alike, capturing virgins and putting them in caves for their own nefarious purposes.

Neither of these, so far, is Science Fiction or Fantasy. We don't have enough to go on. We don't have a piece of fiction, really, just a quickie outline of some events. So let's assume that it doesn't have to do with the color.

Does the fact that a space shuttle is mentioned in the Pern novels make it Science Fiction? Nope. It doesn't even address the topic. What makes the Pern novels fantasy is the concentration on the individuals over their society.

Does the existence of Luke and Vader's relationship make the Star Wars movies Fantasy? Yep! That's what it's all about.

So can you use Fantasy color in Shock:? Sure, if you're so comfortable with it that it passes as "everyday experience" for you. But keep in mind that the mechanics for the personhood of your hero are almost vestigial. You'll wind up talking about your own society more than your character.

Posted by: Cultureraven at January 24, 2008 2:46 PM

Darko Survin and Fred Jameson have talked about Sci-Fi as a genre for mapping social conflicts. Identification with the protagonist is not really the point, (neither is elevated style: Sci-Fi is still waiting for its Flaubert).

I was amazed when I saw these high-falutin' ideas make their way into a little pen-and-paper RPG called Shock. There, the focus is not on creating a min-maxed bad-ass. Here, you situate your protagonist at the junction of social conflicts.

__________________________________________________

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17481.0

[I]t's a matter of focus. Fantasy focuses on the hero, Science Fiction focuses on the society.

Some comparisons
It's 2005. Aliens invade, destroying the world as we know it, capturing people and putting them in sacks to use for their own nefarious purposes.

It's 1205. Dragons raid, burning towns, villages, and cities alike, capturing virgins and putting them in caves for their own nefarious purposes.

Does the existence of Luke and Vader's relationship make the Star Wars movies Fantasy? Yep! That's what it's all about.

Posted by: Cultureraven at January 24, 2008 3:00 PM

This article made it into today's WSJ's Informed Reader section. Nice job!

Posted by: Sam at January 25, 2008 11:43 AM

Woo hoo!

"Fantasy focuses on the hero, Science Fiction focuses on the society." Cultureraven, that distinction is really interesting ... never heard it phrased that way.

Posted by: Clive at January 29, 2008 10:53 AM

Hi, Clive. It's great to read an article that takes fiction seriously! Fiction is where philosophy becomes flesh.
I know what you mean about reading the same book over and over again. Yet I think that there are infinite ways to describe reality, (assuming we can agree that we are all experiencing the same reality!). The problem seems to be that only a small sliver of these infinite perceptions seem to be finding their way between the covers of a book. I'll blame publishers (seems safe) for choosing sure bets, which inevitably resemble books that have already sold well. Also, mainstream fiction has been getting more sophisticated in style, which squeezes those writers with more substantive ideas into smaller presses...and speculative fiction! Possible? So how do voracious readers like ourselves find "the good stuff"? What's your top ten novels of the decade? Thanks for an insightful article, Clive.

Posted by: Edythe at January 31, 2008 10:01 AM

I'm no literary critic, but in my view sci fi should challenge our taken for granted assumptions about what we are and encourage us to take a good long hard look at ourselves as a species.

Posted by: zuke at February 6, 2008 9:11 AM

While I agree that Heinlein had zero clue for most of his writing career about women (operating on the "brilliant and beautiful woman should be told "go make us sandwiches" during strategy conferences), he was right there on the role and value of science fiction.

Somewhere in his collection of odd bits and pieces called "Expanded Universe" Heinlein himself used the same sort of distinction between speculative fiction and "mainstream" fiction.

It's a powerful one. The best SF (I go back to the days when the afficionados said SF and scorned those who called it "sci fi"! Hell, I read Dune in serial form in F&FS Mag!)always operates first from the premise of "this is how it really *is" and then throws in one or two "but what if?" twists, then spends the rest of the time exploring that question.

Posted by: Pootersox at February 11, 2008 1:17 PM

'Your just jealous of my jetpack'...

Lol: look at the comments box: it has a spelling reference - their spelling flame wars must've been serious!

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009610.html

Posted by: julz_hk at February 25, 2008 7:33 PM