TRP and the Science Fiction Connection

[BICKMAN MARTIN]

Ok, a few more cents worth on SF and TRP.

It seems to me that one of the things most s-f does is to problematize 
the nature and texture and structure of what we usually think of as 
"reality."  S-f does this with varying degrees of awareness and literary 
school, but even a "hard" s-fer like Asimov who is supposed to have the 
sensitivies of a hippo accomplishes something like this in the very act 
of having us read through a book like _The End of Eternity_.  This vision 
has reached an almost Borgesian self-consciousness in writers like Dick 
and LeGuin, who are not surprisingly the s-f writers most written about 
by academic critics.  Let me lay a few quotes on ya.  Here's from an 
article in _Rolling Stone_, from I think about 12 years ago:

Philip K. Dick has described his novels as books that "try to pierce the 
veil of what is only apparently real to find out what is _really_ real.  
He is very good at creating believable realities that then start coming 
unstuck. . . .It's all marvelous, terrifying fun, especially if you've 
ever suspected that the world is an unreal construct, built soley to keep 
you from knowing who you really are.  Which it is, of course.  Paranoia 
is true perception.  Phil Dick is on the side of the crazy people, which 
makes him, indeed, a writer for our times.

For specifics, try comparing the structure of LOT 49 with Dick's "Faith 
of Our Fathers" in Harlan Ellison's first DANGEROUS VISIONS anthology.

And here's Le Guin in an interview deconstruction the separation between 
fantasy and reality.

LeGuin:  What is reality?  It's our fantastic means of perceiving.  Where 
do you draw the line between the real world and fantasy?

Interviewer:
I do think that fantasy or other-worldly symbols are necessary in the 
real world.  Do you think that science-fiction--

Le Guin:  There's no difference between them.  And that's nowhere near 
radical enough.  What's real?  And What's fantasy?  And what isn't a 
symbol? . . If you want to drag science fiction in by the tail, this is 
something like Philip Dick. . .They're trying to make us aware of this 
and try to avoid this kind of simplistic dichotomy between the real world 
and the fantasy world. . . to make us realize that reality is no where so 
simple as we thought it was.



I think Pynchon shares with many s-f writers what we used to call "a 
sense of wonder"  --"sensawunda" for short, in all senses of the term.

Marty Bickman