dht@druri.UUCP (Davis Tucker) (05/28/85)
THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY
PART III: Self-Censorship And The Science Fiction Establishment
by Davis Tucker
______________________________________________________________________________
I recently had the weird pleasure of reading a book by K. W. Jeter, "Dr.
Adder". Not to make any assumptions, but I doubt you've heard of him. This
book is deeply disturbing, dealing in a morass of human degradation, genital
mutilation, castration fears, religion, hopelessness, sexual attraction
for amputees, insanity, paranoia, and many other horrible things that humanity
has buried in its collective subconscious. It's also very apparent that this
is a very good science fiction novel. It has depth and breadth of character-
ization, great imagination, a wonderful sense of extrapolation, no puns,
a well-conceived plot, and an interesting narrative point of view. It's a
little reminiscent of "The Stars My Destination" in its scope and grittiness
and unwillingness to temper its anger or sugar-coat its themes. Its main
character is an amoral, indecisive young man who happens to have had a famous
father. Its title character, in some ways the hero of the book, is a doctor
who tailors prostitute's bodies into horrible but lucrative mutations or
mutilations. I like to think of myself as very open-minded, but novels like
this one make me see how shallow that perception of myself is. This novel
challenges the reader's ability to accept a scenario that is in all ways
horrible and hopeless, with no exit. The reader is bludgeoned at almost
every page with some new perversion, some new plot twist, some new means
of making the human condition even more alien and unsettling. Despite all
of this, it is doubtful that any reader of "Dr. Adder" will come away from
it without enrichment, without appreciation, and without the opinion that
this is a very good novel. It is that apparent - the talent of this author
shows very clearly. Yet this novel took 12 years to reach publication.
Science fiction fans like to think of the genre as being on the cutting
edge of writing, of being experimental, of being fresh and new and un-
inhibited. Nothing could be further from the truth. Gabriel Garcia
Marquez' "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" would never have been published
by a science fiction house - the editors would have said "too weird",
"no spaceships", "how did the girl get up into the sky - with anti-
gravity devices?", "no dirt-eating, sorry", "why did you start out with
the end of the story?", and other such nonsense. If anything, the
science fiction establishment, fans, and writers are pretty hidebound
and more conservative in their approach to something new than their
mainstream counterparts. For all the lip service paid to nourishing new
talent, there's precious little crumbs being spread around, and most
of those are to new authors who resemble old ones, who rehash the same
old themes in the same old manner, as previously stated. But let's
leave sleeping dogs lie.
It's certainly not any overt censorship that's being perpetrated on us,
such as the movie industry put over itself in the 30's and 40's, or the
censorship that banned Henry Miller, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and a
host of other European writers in the first half of the 20th Century on
our shores. And that's what makes it so difficult to eradicate, or even
find. It's the editor who suggests to a new author, "Well, everything's
fine except this one passage where the woman assumes the shape of a man
and goes home and rapes her mother... they won't take that in ANALOG,
and we can't take it here." It's the reader who tells all his friends not
to read so-and-so's latest work because it's not *really* science fiction.
It's the Nebula Awards, the Hugos, it's in every science fiction publishing
department and magazine office. It's in every reader.
Everyone has an idea of what that elusive ghost "science fiction" is,
and even if sometimes he or she is a little fuzzy about what it is,
there's certainly no doubt about what it isn't. And that mindset, which
all of us have to one degree or another as regards science fiction
(me, I don't care what anybody says, I'm not reading any "Little Fuzzy"
novels), is at the root of this self-censorship. It is all-pervasive
in such a tiny community. From readers who stop reading the "Gor"
novels because of their obnoxious sexism, to editors who refuse to
publish a novel they know is outstanding because it doesn't fit into
one neat category or another, to authors who continue to churn out
predictable material because they know it will sell, it binds us all
together in very tight chains of the mind. And it begins from that
hidebound definition of "science fiction". There are a multitude of
reasons to never read a "Gor" novel, and sexism is one of the minor
ones.
I'm not going to go over the old ground of Hugo Gernsback and his
"scientifiction", of the other pulps that contributed to defining
in unfortunately negative terms what "science fiction" is. Suffice
to say that prior to these idea magnates, the popular readership
of the world and the U.S. did not consider H. G. Wells or Jules Verne
or various others to be writing "science fiction" of any distinguishable
sort. And let's not delude ourselves - the fiction in the pulps was
always aimed at primarily juvenile audiences, and continued in that vein
for quite awhile (until today? hmmmm...). But due to these factors of
history, we have forged a sort of collective definition which has forced
many of us to resort to self-censorship to retain our definition. This
is not about sex or foul language, necessarily - though try to think
of the last short story you read in any of the science fiction magazines
where a character said something more nasty than "shit" or "goddamn" (and
I'll lay you 2-1 odds that character wasn't a woman). Or try to think
of a story in one of those magazines which dealt with the subject of
sexuality, as opposed to having sex in it. Science fiction, which so
many of us have thought of as being imaginative and radical, has turned
out to be provincial, dull, and conservative (even when being radical -
re: "Starship Troopers", "Farnham's Freehold", etc. by Robert Heinlein).
It's like the slave who chains himself to the wall every night. That's
okay, we all can read what we want to read, but let's not indulge in
hypocrisies of freedom as we put on our chains. I don't know anyone
who reads "bodice rippers", or "surging sagas" (historical romance
novels aimed at the female market) who claims that they have any importance
whatsoever beyond being a good read. There's no hypocrisy in enjoying
trash for being trash. But there certainly is in claiming literary worth
for "Battlefield Earth" or "Dragonriders Of Pern" or "The Number Of The
Beast".
Well, that's all for today, kids. Tune in next week as we take a new tack
on the seas of criticsm - "THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY, PART IV:
Fantasy, Or How To Hack A Hobbit And Build A Balrog In One Easy Lesson".
I'll leave you with an extended quote from Phillip K. Dick in his afterword
to K. W. Jeter's novel, "Dr. Adder".
"Here was not just a good novel; here was a great novel... Very simply,
it is a stunning novel and it destroys once and for all your conception
of the limitations of science fiction. This is, of course, why so many
years had to pass before it saw print...
"I don't wish to fall back on the easy statement that DR. ADDER was ahead
of its time. It wasn't. It was right on the nose. What was wrong was this:
the field of science fiction was *behind* the times. I have no doubt that
if DR. ADDER had been published in 1972 it would have been a blockbuster
of a commercial success, and what is more, its impact on the field would
have been enormous. The field has been growing weak. It has for years
become ossified. A stale timidity has crept over it. Endless novels about
sword fights and figures in cloaks who perform magic... have been cranked
out, published, sold, and the field of science fiction has been transmuted
into a joke field...
"History does judge you, publisher, author, and reader alike... I am writing
this Afterword for you the reader, not for K. W. Jeter. I am writing this to
tell you, Forget your timid preconceptions of what a science fiction novel
should be like. Forget the little people... and sword fights on imaginary
planets. This novel is about *our world* and so it is a dangerous novel...
Which is terrific. This is precisely what we need."oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) (05/29/85)
In article <1092@druri.UUCP> dht@druri.UUCP (Davis Tucker) writes: > >Everyone has an idea of what that elusive ghost "science fiction" is, >and even if sometimes he or she is a little fuzzy about what it is, >there's certainly no doubt about what it isn't. And that mindset, which >all of us have to one degree or another as regards science fiction >(me, I don't care what anybody says, I'm not reading any "Little Fuzzy" >novels), is at the root of this self-censorship. It is all-pervasive And when people criticize what they don't like, THEY are furthering the "self-censorship," right? You made some valid points in the first two parts of this essay, but this one is entirely self-contradictory. Because I read what I enjoy, and I don't read what I don't enjoy, I'm guilty of censorship? Nonsense. Better luck next time. -- - j "vo" p {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!oyster
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/31/85)
> > THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY > > PART III: Self-Censorship And The Science Fiction Establishment > > by Davis Tucker >______________________________________________________________________________ Our dear friend Davis Tucker has spent a lot of time (and a lot of wordage, at that) attempting a literary criticism of the Science Fiction Genre. After wading through Part III, it is time to make some comments of my own, mainly because I won't bother with part IV or any future parts that he may decide to post. [I refuse the make the comment that it was posted here because this was the only place he could publish it without having to pay someone, but from the quality of the criticism, I probably could. Ditto, of course, to what I say here, but at least I'm concious of that fact.] The comments that Davis made can be summed up into the following generalized arguments: o if reading it is fun, it isn't literature o sf is a genre o genre's are not literature o if it isn't literature, it isn't good o I don't like it, so it CAN'T be good Of all of his points, the last one is the only one that REALLY matters, of course. I won't try to refute him on a point by point basis. If you like SF, the refutations will be intuitively obvious; if you agree with him, nothing I can say will help. One specific comment, though, ought to be addressed. 'Dr. Jeter' is a book that is rather similar to 'The Tin Drum' by Gunter Grass. If there is any reason for the Grass book to be published quickly when the 'equivalent' book goes wanting, it is because Grass was an established author. It is difficult for a publisher to justify a book that doesn't have a demographic attraction, because that is what pays their bills. If you have a very good but unusual book (of which both qualify) then SOMETIMES the publisher will take a chance, but only if he has enough in the budget. In the case of an established author, you are less likely to have a complete bomb because there is a known audience that is likely to buy anything that the author publishes, so the risks are less. Hence, a good book like 'Dr. Jeter' has a lot of strikes against it in the publishing game, since there isn't a name recognition involved and since there isn't a known audience and since the publisher may have to eat the galleys for breakfast if he guesses wrong. Just for reference, it is a LOT easier to get new works published in the SF or Fantasy genre than anywhere else in publishing (excluding self-publishing). My father has been trying to get a book bought for a number of years, so far with no luck. The books are good, very publishable, but mainstream, and getting a first book published out there is almost impossible. He is starting to slant towards other genre's now, because that seems to be the only way in. From my discussions with authors, agents, and publishers, I feel that if he had been working in this genre he would have been published long ago. The publishers out there in the genre DO take chances, a lot more often than other areas of publishing. They do this because the readers support them by buying the new writers and supporting them in taking chances. As an example of what it is like in the rest of the world, there is a not-so-apocryphal story of a person who took the final shooting script of 'Casablanca', retyped it under the original name (Everybody Eats at Sams) and ships it off to 230 agents in the movie industry. Something like 60% returned it as not professional or appropriate for the industry. Something like 15 recognized it as Casablanca. it's tought anywhere in publishing, folks... As a side note, the people who publish the Gor books not only acknowledge that it is garbage, but have also pointed out that those books make enough money to help support a number of other books on their lists that would never have been contracted and published if it wasn't for their subsidies. They also pointed out that the Gor books outsell most of the rest of their publishing lists in the genre combined. to have some winners to support a loser -- :From the misfiring synapses of: Chuq Von Rospach {cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA This space for rent. Political, religious and racist quotes need not apply.