jimb@ISM780B.UUCP (10/02/85)
Following is a letter to the editor at *Harper's* in response to Luc Sante's
review of the science fiction field. Thanks to Tim Ryan for first posting
excerpts on the net, Bill Ingogly whose responses got me really going, and to
dht at druri who posted most of the entire article. Since the probability of
*Harper's* printing the letter is 1/x as x becomes exceedingly large, the net
readership is probably the widest audience the letter will have. For any
pragmatic nit-pickers out there, I did measure the letter's length and it is
roughly comparable to the longest letters published in *Harper's* letters
column.
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Dear Sir:
Luc Sante's dissection of science fiction [Harper's, October] is a
most astounding collection of ill-supported assertions and dubious
interpretations concerning the nature, meaning, current position, and
direction of the field.
Mr. Sante faults science fiction for its hubris of intention,
allegedly nothing less than to depict the future. Certainly while *one* of
the central themes of science ficion is an examination of *possible* futures,
the intentions of science fiction are none other than the classical intents
of any literature, to entertain and to instruct. Moreover, science fiction's
speculations can offer one of the few known antidotes for future shock,
prodding readers into confrontng complex interactions of technology, society,
and the individual before they come to pass.
Science fiction *is* based on speculation, not only "what if," but
also "if only" and "if this goes on." Sante dismisses such speculation for
its own sake, contrasting it to allegory and satire's aim to provoke action.
What better action than causing readers to think, to examine, to reconsider
outlooks, all by using the literature of science fiction to illuminate
previously unregarded dimensions?
In a year when well-financed corporate-sponsored research into
artificial machine intelligence reaches new heights (even as natural human
stupidity seems to delve new depths), stories exploring the moral and ethical
tensions between humans and machines seem to be not at all full of the
"staggering irrelevance" that Sante finds.
Mr. Sante states that science fiction "by relying on a tradition of
mediocrity, has effectively sealed itself off from literature, and,
incidentally, from real concerns." Elsewhere, the reader is told that
"science fiction's great horizons have shrunk" and that "human concerns
appear shrunken and pathetic." A survey of critically acclaimed science
fiction works would seem to contradict these assertions.
The vivid, jarring near-futre dystopia of William F. Gibson's
NEUROMANCER and the eery, chilling all-too-possibly-real story of genetic
engineering in Greg Bear's BLOOD MUSIC, as two recent examples, are stories
about people caught in situations that are all too possible, full of the
"relevance" that Sante finds lacing, and not at all the cotton candy of
wish-fulfillment he finds dominant within the field.
There is a wide range of writing ability and esthetic sensitivity in
science fiction, as there is in mainstream literature. It was science
fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, now recently deceased, who, addressing the
quality of writing in science fiction, coined the epigram known in the
science fiction community known as Stugeon's Law: "95 percent of everything
is crud."
Yes, science fiction has its dull, plodding explainers of science;
its tedious propagaters of relentless space operas; its producers of novelty
for sheer novelty's sake. But just as mainstream literature has its
Nabokov's, Gass', Fowles', and Pynchon's to act as counterweight to the
droves of writers producing dissipated, self-reflexive, and maundering tomes
of fiction and meta-fiction, so the science fiction field has the lyrical
rhythms of Roger Zelazny; physicist Greg Benford writing out of the Southern
tradition of Faulkner; the rich, deeply textured work of Gene Wolfe.
Furthermore, many science ficion works which do not aim at high literary
ambition nonetheless thoughtfully entertain, providing stores about people,
ideas, situations. In this regard, science fiction at the least does not
suffer in comparison with current mainstream literature.
Finally, Mr. Sante makes gross errors concerning the history and
current condition of science fiction. With the exception of one major editor
and a handful of writers, science fiction was never deeply influenced by
Dianetics as Mr. Sante claims. And the assertion that "The cultlike ferocity
of science fiction fandom [author's note: that's us, folks] serves only to
cultivate what is most sickly and stunted about the genre," is pure nonsense.
The largest science fiction convention ever held, the World Science Fiction
Convention in Anaheim, Calif., in 1984, drew approximately 10,000 fans. As
any editor in the field will attest, the hard core of science fiction fans is
impossibly small to support publishing runs of any length at all; the vigor
and vitality of the science fiction market is dependent upon the millions of
readers who have a casual yet persistent loyalty to the field.
Sincerely,
James A. Brunet
{Gosh, maybe I shouldn't have pulled my punches. I shoulda told 'em what I
REALLY felt.}
-- from the ice-cold fury of Jim Brunet
decvax!cca!ima!jimb
ucbvax!ucla-cs!ism780!jimb
ihnp4!vortex!ism780!jimbjimb@ISM780B.UUCP (10/02/85)
Sorry that I didn't proof the letter before it went on the net. The original, keyed on my PC at home, did not have the abundant typos of this posting. J.A.B.
brust@hyper.UUCP (Steven Brust) (10/14/85)
I was quite nervous when I saw what you were doing. But, hey, you pulled it off. Good letter. Kudos. --SKZB
jimb@ISM780B.UUCP (10/17/85)
>I was quite nervous when I saw what you were doing. >But, hey, you pulled it off. Good letter. Kudos. > > --SKZB Pulled *what* off? I may not be aware of what I did. (It's not all that an unusual a position for me.) If you would, send me a note via E-mail, preferably by UUCP (addresses listed below.) If you're on ARPA (sigh), you can probably get to me via the following: jimb @ CCA-UNIX.ARPA/IMA (End of parenthetical comments.) -- Jim Brunet decvax!cca!ima!jimb ucbvax!ucla-cs!ism780!jimb ihnp4!vortex!ism780!jimb