TP and Nabakov doing SF that isn't

[Paul Mackin]

On 6/23/2012 5:56 AM, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> Some days ago I mentioned Adam Roberts treatment of TP and asked how people felt about categorizing TP as SF. Someone (sorry, I don't remember who) mentioned that at the time it looked like SF that was being done in the so-called New Wave period (Female Man, Crash, etc).
>
> I'll throw in on that now. Without explaining my view in great depth let me say that what TP has done strikes me as a way to write SF without it looking very SF. I don't equate SF with robots and gizmos (as someone said), but for many people robots and spaceships are a big part of SF. In TP the rocket stands in for the spaceship as the automaton stands in for the robot (i'm sure someone must have made this point before, but you'll forgive my ignorance). THis is a thought in the back of my mind when I read TP.
>
> The other night while trying to read myself to sleep I picked up my collection of Nabakov short stories (Penguin "Collected Stories") and started one that I had somehow missed the first time through. At the end of the collection is a piece called "Lance". (Please forgive me if this well known to you good folk or has been posted before in some way.) On the second page I read the following (a long quote but worth it if you don't know it):
>
> I not only debar a too definite planet from any role in my
> story-- from the role every dot and full stop should play in my
> story (which I see as a  kind  of  celestial  chart)--  1  also
> refuse  to  have anything to do with those technical prophecies
> that scientists are reported to make to reporters. Not  for  me
> is  the  rocket  racket.  Not  for me are the artificial little
> satellites that the earth is promised; landing  starstrips  for
> spaceships  ("spacers")--  one,  two,  three,  four,  and  then
> thousands of strong castles  in  the  air  each  complete  with
> cookhouse  and  keep, set up by terrestrial nations in a frenzy
> of  competitive  confusion,  phony  gravitation,  and  savagely
> flapping flags. Another  thing  I  have  not  the slightest use for is the
> special-equipment business--  the  airtight  suit,  the  oxygen
> apparatus--  suchlike  contraptions. Like old Mr. Boke, of whom
> we shall hear in a minute, I am eminently qualified to  dismiss
> these  practical  matters  (which  anyway  are  doomed  to seem
> absurdly impractical to future spaceshipmen, such as old Boke's
> only son), since the emotions that gadgets provoke in me  range
> from  dull  distrust  to  morbid  trepidation. Only by a heroic
> effort can I make myself  unscrew  a  bulb  that  has  died  an
> inexplicable death and screw in another, which will light up in
> my face with the hideous instancy of a dragon's egg hatching in
> one's bare hand. Finally,  I  utterly  spurn  and  reject so-called science
> fiction. I have looked into it, and found it as boring  as  the
> mystery-story  magazines-- the same sort of dismally pedestrian
> writing with oodles of  dialogue  and  loads  of  commutational
> humor. The clichиs are, of course, disguised; essentially, they
> are  the  same  throughout all cheap reading matter, whether it
> spans the universe or the living  room.  They  are  like  those
> "assorted"  cookies  that differ from one another only in shape
> and shade, whereby their shrewd makers ensnare  the  salivating
> consumer  in  a  mad  Pavlovian  world where, at no extra cost,
> variations in simple  visual  values  influence  and  gradually
> replace flavor, which thus goes the way of talent and truth,
>
> Now how many things can you find that make you think of TP? More importanly it was published in 1958 (while VN was still teaching at Cornell) in "Nabakov's Dozen", when TP starts writing. Might this have been part of the fertile ground that allowed the seed to take root and grow? Whaddya tink?
>
> curious mc
>
So young TP decides, I'll include in my masterpiece all the stuff my old 
teacher hates (agony of influence) and make him like it.

But there will be plenty there for anti Nabokovs as well, because I will 
be so deucedly clever that a profitably significant portion of my 
readers will think GR IS science fiction and as far as they are 
concerned they won't be wrong.

And GR will also be for readers of Scientific American--folks who try to 
follow Real Science, or even remember a few college courses, will find 
much to recognize in the book--a sort of content Nabokov would normally 
have as little interest as  in as gadgetry but will see the art Pynchon 
has imbued therein.

And there will be something for God lovers. Spirituality seekers--a 
tough sell to Vladimir but the Pyncher can swing it.

And music aficionados--classical and jazz--will find stuff of technical 
interest.

And political types . . . .

All things to all  people--all who read  above grade level.

What do you want it to be?

In other words, whether it's genre or literature, is a matter of 
audience reception.

P