SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?

[Tom Beshear]

Well, it was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novel given by the 
Science Fiction Writers of America. It didn't win (insufficiently sf? tho' 
more likely voters were literarily and politically too conservative). Within 
the broad set of sf, besides the alternate history is a subset called the 
secret history. Perhaps Gravity's Rainbow fits better in that area.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: "Kai Frederik Lorentzen" <lorentzen at hotmail.de>; "pynchon -l" 
<pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: <braden.andrews at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 8:09 AM
Subject: Re: SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?


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.