GR as SF

[Craig Clark]

Paul Ribofunk DiFilippo writes:

> In my wide-open, exceedingly slack view of SF, GR fully qualifies
> as a member of that elastic set.  But even in such a relatively
> rigid view as Isaac Asimov's, it probably would.  He was the fellow
> who first identified three large branches of SF:  "Why not?";
> "What if?"; and "If this goes on...".  GR plainly falls into
> the latter category, showing us exactly what perilous road
> we have set our twentieth century feet on.

A coupla years ago I started work on an essay on the definition of Sf, which, 
since it mentions _GR_, probably does have a kind of a place on this 
group... Here goes:

 One of the most popular parlour games among those who take Science Fiction seriously 
enough is to try to define the damn thing. Frequent definitions have been generated, by a 
wide range of writers and critics, from Isaac Asimov’s suggestion that “Science Fiction is 
that branch of literature which deals with human responses to changes in the level of science 
and technology” (Editorial in _Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine_, March-April 
1978, p 6) through to the somewhat more cynical suggestion by John W. Campbell that 
“Science Fiction stories are whatever Science Fiction editors buy.” (_Ibid._)

Most definitions resemble the Asimov one: but the problem with this definition is that it can 
embrace non-SF works such as Thomas Pynchon’s _Gravity’s Rainbow_ (probably the 
finest novel to deal with human responses to technological change) or Don De Lillo’s 
_White Noise_. Neither novel is Science Fiction. Similar definitions - that Science Fiction is 
that branch of literature which deals with the future, or which is set in space are obviously 
too exclusive. (In my adolescence, I was frustrated by the absence in Afrikaans - the only 
other language which I speak - of a suitable term for Science Fiction. Formal dictionaries 
could offer only “ruimte-verhaal” [“space-story”] or “toekoms-verhaal” [“future-story”]. 
Finally I discovered the clumsy “wetenskap-fiksie”, which is quite literally “Science 
Fiction”. The failure of Afrikaans to offer, in translation, an adequate definitive term for 
Science Fiction first focussed my attention on the problems of definition.) 

On the other hand one feels wary of definitions which are too inclusive - such as Campbell’s, 
or Norman Spinrad’s claim that Science Fiction is “...anything published as Science Fiction,” 
(Introduction to _The New Tomorrows_, p 11), although it does point to the most salient 
feature of the debate: the range of what is published as Science Fiction is extremely broad, 
and even more so the range of what is *read* as Science Fiction. A workable definition of 
Science Fiction must be able to speak meaningfully about both E.E. “Doc” Smith’s _The 
Skylark of Space_and George Orwell’s _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, because the odds are, I 
believe, overwhelmingly in favour of Science Fiction readers labelling both as Science 
Fiction and reading both with equal fervour. [At the time of initial composition of this 
definition (circa 1990) I believed this to be true. I am now no longer certain. I suspect that 
today, a workable definition of Science Fiction based on what people are reading would be 
“Any work of fiction with the trademark of a role-playing game or a TV series printed on 
the cover”...]

This problem is, I believe, unique to Science Fiction. By definition, there must exist a 
certain amount of common ground between two Westerns, inasmuch as the _genre_ is 
obliged by definition to be set in a given historical and geographical _milieu_. If a novel 
does not deal with espionage professionals spying upon one another, it is not a spy novel: 
the diversity of their talents aside, Ian Fleming and John le Carré‚ must have that much in 
common. Similarly, _Murder on the Orient Express_ does have something in common with 
Chandler’s _The Big Sleep_: in both novels, a person sets out to detect the party guilty of a 
murder. But what does _Lord Valentine’s Castle_ share with _Dying Inside_, apart from the 
name of Robert Silverberg (and the publisher’s label of Science Fiction) on the cover ? Or 
for that matter, what common ground exists between _The Three Stigmata of Palmer 
Eldritch_ and _Dune_?

The trouble with the definitions of Science Fiction just cited is that they attempt to address 
the question exclusively from the perspective of content. They ignore the fact that the 
unifying principle of Science Fiction is not content - which is exceptionally varied - but 
form. For my money a more useful definition to be offered is that of Brian Aldiss and David 
Wingrove in _Trillion Year Spree_, which addresses the questions of both content and of 
form. “Science Fiction is the search for a definition of humankind and our status in the 
universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is 
characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode.” (_Trillion Year Spree_, p 25. 
This is not the definition as quoted: I have substituted neuter terms for gender-specific 
terms.)

As Aldiss and Wingrove are keen to point out, the pretensions of the former portion of the 
definition are more than balanced out by the absurdities of the latter: for while our status in 
the Universe may well be a serious matter, the Gothic is most certainly not a serious form. 
Where I suspect that Aldiss and Wingrove might be in error is that their definition might let 
slip through some works which fulfill the condition, but which are not Science Fiction. Both 
_Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ attempt the content-based aspect of the definition 
using the formal aspect. 

One gets closer to the truth using the Marxist critic Darko Suvin’s suggestion that Science 
Fiction is fiction characterised by the _novum_: the concept which is “...radically or at least 
significantly different from the empirical...[world]...of ‘mimetic' or ‘naturalist' fiction”, but 
which does not violate what might be called the “cognitive norms” of the reader’s and 
author’s epochs. (_Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a 
Literary Genre_, p viii.) Even so, Suvin’s definition might embrace both the works of De 
Lillo and Pynchon cited above. 

Clearly one has to start elsewhere. I would like to propose that the form of Science Fiction 
is not something as narrowly specific as the Gothic, but a much older and wider fictional 
tradition, that of Fantasy. Fantasy is that form of fiction (literary, cinematic or theatrical) 
which depicts events located in a fictional world that differs *substantially* and 
*deliberately* from what Kathryn Hume labels the “consensus reality” of the author and the 
author’s culture (_Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to reality in Western Literature_, p xi.). 

There are a number of elements of this definition which need emphasising. Firstly, the 
differences are *substantial*. Jane Austen’s _Emma_ is not Fantasy, even though the events 
of the novel never occurred: nothing in the novel is outside of the bounds of possibility of 
the real world as Austen and/or her contemporary audience understood it to be. Next, the 
differences are *intentional*. Jackie Collins’s _Rock Star_ is not Fantasy, although the 
novel’s depiction of how the world of Rock’n’Roll operates differs considerably from 
reality. In this case, the dissimilarity derives from Collins’s inadequacies as a novelist, not 
from any attempt on her behalf to create a world profoundly different from the real world. 
Third, the author must be aware of the difference between the world of the text and the real 
world which he/she inhabits. If one accepts the hypothesis that Joseph Smith believed _The 
Book of Mormon_ to be divinely inspired, then it cannot be classed as Fantasy (no matter 
how fantastic it appears to be to other eyes). Finally, the text must violate the terms of the 
“real world” believed in by the author’s culture. _The Book of Genesis_ is also not Fantasy: 
the culture within which it was created believed in Divine Creationism. The same would be 
true of a novel written by a Christian Fundamentalist, one of whose premises was that 
Evolution is a hoax perpetuated by Satan- worshipping biologists. Within the culture of 
Christian Fundamentalism, this represents an unquestioned assumption about the “real 
world”. Obviously a novel written by a non-Fundamentalist in which it was discovered that 
the fossil record is a hoax would be Fantasy (it might also be great fun to read).

Nothing is said in the definition of how the Fantasy world differs from the “real world”. 
This depends upon the different modes of Fantasy. We might note the existence of some 
examples of these modes. Allegorical Fantasy - an extremely old form - would symbolise 
aspects of reality through such strategies as personification or the substitution of one 
element for another. Not only _Pilgrim’s Progress_ but also the _Fables_ of Aesop will find 
a place here. Animal Fantasy would confer anthropomorphic traits onto animals which do 
not possess them in the real world - as in _Watership Down_ or _Duncton Wood_. Satirical 
Fantasy would exaggerate and render grotesque and comic aspects of folly in the real world 
- see _Gulliver’s Travels_ or _The Rape of the Lock_. Magical Realism is a form of 
Fantasy, as is the Metafiction of Italo Calvino - and the Horror of Stephen King. Inevitably, 
there are cross-pollinations between different modes of Fantasy: _Animal Farm_ is both an 
Animal Fantasy and a Satirical Fantasy. It may even be necessary to create a special 
category for those works which employ a wide range of fantastic techniques or which have 
no one governing principle, save only the sheer pleasure of creating a fictional world which 
departs utterly from our own: Fantastic Fantasy, best characterised by the works of Lewis 
Carroll. The permutations are endless.

A word at this stage about the mode of Fantasy which is labelled “Fantasy” by publishers 
and booksellers: _The Lord of the Rings_, its predecessors, and endless imitators. Often 
dubbed “Epic”, “Heroic” or “Sword- and-Sorcery” Fantasy, none of these terms seems 
wholly satisfactory, for the same reason that “Space Fiction” or “Future Fiction” were so 
unsatisfactory for describing what has come to be called Science Fiction: too many works 
clearly located in this mode are not epic (le Guin’s _Threshold_), not heroic (Stephen 
Donaldson’s decidedly unheroic _Thomas Covenant_ series), or not about sorcery and 
swordplay (again, _Threshold_). I would like to propose the term “Magical Fantasy” to 
describe these texts: the worlds they describe allow Magic to function (Okay, all right. 
“Magic” refers to a means of operating in the world whereby simple causes have 
disproportionate effects as a result of some arcane knowledge and/or intervention of 
supernatural forces. For example: Character X waves his hand, and thereby changes a stone 
into a loaf of bread. It is the simple act of waving his hand which has had the 
disproportionate effect of creating bread, either because X is learned and can, in effect, 
“instruct” and “compel” matter to obey him (this is the case in le Guin’s _Earthsea_ 
sequence), or because the Great God Yggr favours X and transforms stone into bread (which 
is how magic works in Tolkien).

It may be of some consolation to those who decry the total absence of Science Fiction from 
the accepted canon of Good Literature to note that a number of works of Fantasy occupy 
important places in that canon. Even Shakespeare got in on the act: _The Tempest_, _A 
Midsummer Night’s Dream_, and possibly _Macbeth_ are fantasies. It is not the Witches or 
the Ghosts that get _Macbeth_ in as Fantasy, but Shakespeare’s deliberate reconstruction of 
history, playing down the faults of Banquo and playing up the faults of Macbeth, in actual 
fact a very good king. This was to earn the favour of King James I, descended from Banquo. 
A new genre - Flattering Fantasy? Indeed this is as it should be, for despite the insistence by 
the majority of literary critics since Aristotle that the principal standard by which the merits 
of a text are judged should be its degree of _mimesis_, Fantasy has and will always be as 
important to literature as Realism.

Not all forms of Fantasy are as old as the hills, however. Science Fiction is a relative 
newcomer. The definition of Science Fiction is that it is that form of Fantasy in which the 
difference between the fantastic world and the real world is rationalised by appealing to a 
scientific, quasi-scientific, or pseudo-scientific code. Again, there are severals point which 
need to be emphasised here. The first refers to codes, scientific, quasi- scientific or pseudo-
scientific. The magic word “science” must be properly understood in this context. By 
“science”, I mean any body of information which is arranged according to some kind of 
logic, for the purpose of making possible further discovery of knowledge by investigation. 
Science, in other words, begins when someone postulates a relationship between phenomena 
and then attempts to establish  
         (i)  whether or not this relationship is true, and   
         (ii) once this relationship is confirmed or disproven, whether this fact can tell us 
              something about other phenomena. 
I am not going to enter into a debate about whether or not this “scientific method” is a 
reliable instrument for exploring the universe, or on the limitations 
of  “science” as opposed to any other way of comprehending the universe. The fact is that in the 
Western world at least, all knowledge is now treated scientifically, that is by reference to a 
scientific “code”. It is the difference between explaining lightning as a bolt cast down to 
earth by a wrathful God, and explaining it as an equalising of electric potential between the 
earth and the clouds. The former may in fact be true, but it is hardly helpful to know this 
when one is in a darkened room. The latter makes possible the electric lightbulb.

I have also distinguished between scientific, quasi-scientific and pseudo-scientific codes. 
The fact is very little so-called Science Fiction is the result of the application of a purely 
scientific code. Were this the case, we’d have no _Star Wars_, no _Dune_, no _Foundation_ 
series. As far as we know, the absolute velocity of a material object in the universe we 
inhabit is the speed of light. So instead, we get quasi-scientific - “it is possible to neutralise 
inertia/enter hyperspace”, i.e. we appeal to the possibility of science proving current 
scientific theory wrong or inadequate; or we get pseudo-scientific - the Universe is much the 
same as Einstein thought it was, but faster-than-light travel is still possible. The scientific 
code appeals to science as it exists, the quasi-scientific code suggests the inadequacy of 
existing science, and the pseudo-scientific code relies on magic but dresses it up in facts and 
figures and hardware and pretends that it is science.

There are several corollaries of all this. One is that the distinction between so-called “hard” 
(read “scientific”) and “soft” (read “unscientific”) Science Fiction is a meaningless artifact 
invented in the 1960s as a stick with which the Old Guard could beat the New Wave. 
Physics is neither more nor less “scientific” than Linguistics: indeed, from the vantage point 
of the present day, physics looks a little less “scientific” than Linguistics. At least the latter 
isn’t trying to reconcile irreconcilable evidence. The second is that the science of Science 
Fiction does not have to be explained. It is not necessary for Asimov to tell us just how we 
get from “here and now” to the Galactic Empire of the _Foundation_ sequence: it is 
sufficient to evoke the codes of Engineering, Physics, Astronomy and History. Wells’s Time 
Traveller gives us a little elementary four- dimensional physics at the opening of _The Time 
Machine_, but beyond invoking science as the means whereby he is able to narrate his 
novel, there is precious little “hard” science in the novel thereafter. The essential idea is to 
evoke a scientific code as an explanation of the difference between our world and the 
fictional one: the distinction is between the Golem (brought to life by magic) and 
Frankenstein’s monster (brought to life by science).

The third corollary is that Science Fiction is only possible in a culture where a scientific 
ideology is predominant; that is, where people appeal to science rather than to anything else 
to explain the universe. In this regard Aldiss and Wingrove present a convincing argument 
in _Trillion Year Spree_ for the emergence of Science Fiction in the early years of the 
Nineteenth century: prior to that, coherent scientific paradigms which sought to explain how 
the universe operated had not penetrated sufficiently into public awareness to make a 
scientific fiction in the fantastic mode possible. This is Mary Shelley’s great contribution to 
literature, and the quality that distinguishes _Frankenstein_ from the other Gothic novels of 
the era - and indeed from the whole Promethean tradition of the _hubris_ that comes from 
knowledge, within which Shelley also saw herself writing. Faustus’s magical incantations to 
summon Mephistopheles succeed: Victor Frankenstein’s magical incantations to create life, 
though based on the soundest of authorities - Paracelsus and suchlike - are a failure (except 
in the Kenneth Branagh film, of course: indicating less attention to Shelley’s text than 
Branagh claimed). Not until he follows the advice of one of his teachers, and abandons 
magic for science, does he succeed. Aldiss and Wingrove argue, quite convincingly, that 
Shelley understood, before almost everyone else, just what the dawning age of scientific 
experimentation meant: a rejection of the old, “pre-scientific” ways of understanding the 
universe, in favour of the new.

Of course, this corollary has its own corollary. It means that Science Fiction is the definitive 
literary response to our own era of Future Shock, to a world in which a single lifetime 
spanned both the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine at Kittyhawke and the 
first footprints made by human beings on the surface of the Sea of Tranquility. It means that 
Science Fiction is the literature of a globalised capitalist industrial society that has not only 
eliminated the age-old scourge of smallpox but could also eliminate all of us tomorrow just 
by pressing a few buttons.

(At this point, the essay tapered off and I went off and did something 
else. I still stand by that definition of SF, though. It seems to me 
that _GR_ though clearly in the Fantastic mode, cannot simply be 
encompassed by a label such as SF. Perhaps another Fantastic Fantasy? 
I'd like to hear what foax here have to say...)
Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"