SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?

[Mark Kohut]

Susan Sontag, a great reader (but no one is perfect), argued, at least in conversation with a young visual artist inspired
by Pynchon's work that "Gravity's Rainbow" was "just' science fiction. 

----- Original Message -----
From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 6:43 AM
Subject: SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?


Without serious doubt there are SciFi elements in Pynchon's work. Already in "V" there's the androidity moment not only re V herself, but also - see chapter 3. IV - in the case of Bongo-Shaftsbury who is called  an "electro-mechanical doll" which he demonstrates immediately: "Bongo-Shaftsbury smiled. And  pushed back the sleeve of his coat to remove a cufflink. He rolled up the shirt cuff and thrust the naked underside of his arm at the girl. Shiny and black, sewn into the flesh, was a miniature electric switch. (...) Thin silver wires ran from its terminals up the arm, disappearing under the sleeve. 'You see, Mildred. These wires run into my brain. When the switch is closed like this I act the way I do now. When is is thrown the other---'." In Pynchon's later novels we have, for example, the Godzilla footprint, the hollow earth stuff and several refs to extraterrestrial aliens. But what interests me today is the question you read in the subject line.
 Some days ago I finished "The Novels of Philip K. Dick"  [1984] by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the last chapter Robinson discusses the distinction of realism & SciFi and puts forth the thesis that this distinction is not a strict one anymore. His example - in the translation it's pp. 261-262 -  is Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow". Well, I wish he would have gone a little more into the details instead of giving the reader his summation. But since it's like this, I'll just pass on Robinson's points and am going to add a comment on the 'alternate history novel' argument. The SciFi elements Robinson sees in "Gravity' Rainbow" are the following: a) Speculation on the basis of technological progress; b) Radical breaks in the text which lead into phantastickal passages; c) A view on world-history based on conspiracy-theories, which - according to Robinson - transforms the text into an alternate history novel. The textual proof Robinson gives for that thesis is the
 V2 with Gottfried (btw, Gottfried is also 'God got fried', no?!) inside that gets launched on GR's final pages. Well, first of all, there actually was a Nazi space rocket with a boy inside, launched in order to fly to the moon in the spring of 1945. (When this more recent research result entered the media some years ago I posted some details plus a newspaper source here under the title 'Rainbow Files: Fly me to the moon'). Like other scientific projects - yes, the one on nuclear technology too ... - the people into space travel tested the shit out of their stuff during the last months of WWII before all the research facilities fell into the enemy's hand. The boy in the rocket didn't reach the moon and died. Yes, Robinson couldn't know about this detail of history in the early 1980s. But in the case of Pynchon, who also seems to have had access to other details of the history of WWII air technology not available for the general public at the time,  I'm
 not so sure. Which brings me back to the question whether "Gravity's Rainbow" does really contain SciFi elements. Personally I think that Robinson's first two points (see 'a' and 'b') are basically correct but not sufficient to actually speak of Pynchon bringing "several Science Fiction agreements" into use. You may differ on this (anyone?). And the third argument (see 'c'), apart from the fact that Pynchon did not really invent the boy in the Nazi rocket, is not a solid one, imo. A real alternate history novel needs a virtually real counter-history! Like Napoleon having successfully conquered the world (see Louis Geoffroy: Napoléon et la conquête du monde), or like the Southerners having won the Civil War (Ward Moore: Bring the Jubilee), or like Lenin not having been let through to Russia by train and thus having started the communist world-revolution in Switzerland which then leads to a completely different run of history in the 20. and 21. century
 (Christian Kracht: Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten), or like the axis-powers having won WWII (Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle). Nothing of that kind in "Gravity's Rainbow". There is no plausible alternate history in the book. It's just a special point of view. Weissmann/Blicero is - more or less - Wernher von Braun. He came into the USA with the 'Operation Paperclip' which is not Pynchon's invention but took place for real. Pynchon used this as a real-world-metonymy to deal efficiently with totalitarian tendencies inside  US-society during the times of the Nixon administration. But an alternate history? How that?! Weissmann and Gottfried hide on some Idaho potato-field for a quarter of a century and then fire the rocket to Los Angeles? Or, as the text seems to suggest, the rocket got launched already in 1945 and then flies around the earth for twenty-five years before it descends? Come on! This superficial meaning is just
 there to sew the novel's parts 3 and 4 together; it's not a serious suggestion of an alternate history. And I actually think that "Gravity's Rainbow" is - next only, in this regard, to "The Crying of Lot 49" - not as SciFiesque as "V" or the later books after the break. Please do disagree!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaLLxPtmyPI

"Schlüssel auf SCHIESSEN," orders Blicero.