by Dave Freer

Antici…..

(Someone on one of the lists I belong to commented on the newest weasel word used in the Times Literary Supplement (it’s behind a paywall – so if you feel like spouting a lot of money for a literary supplement.)

…pation.

‘Anticipatory Fiction’. Heh. It sounds like an attempt by the literati to out-snob dear Margaret Atwood (Margaret Atwood told her Edinburgh Book Festival audience that she doesn’t write ‘sci-fi’ because her books don’t contain (all together now!) ‘talking squid’) –  – and Jeanette Winterson who told us all she hates it (but writes it, IMO, badly).

Desperate attempts to avoid being tarred with the ‘unclean’ brush of ‘Science Fiction’ abound:
“Speculative Fiction” – that one is popular in Australia. I was a bit puzzled as to why, until I found out that a local editor who holds Atwood in esteem (someone has to) likes it.  The infection spreads…
“Anticipatory Fiction”… the latest
“Space Fiction” a la Doris Lessing
“Future Fiction”
What’s left?
“Pretentiously-up-my-own-rear-not-very-good-fiction?”
Oh wait. That one has the disadvantage, as Atwood puts it “When I pick up the cornflakes box, I want there to be cornflakes inside of it.” or of being accurate about the content is. We can’t have that.

You have to wonder what is behind this. Science Fiction suffers from a ‘bad’ image stuck in about 1930 in the wider world in a large part due to ignorance, perpetuated by non-readers who think ‘Startrek’ expresses the entirety of ‘Science Fiction’.  A sort of narrowness that if you applied it to other genres has fascinating effects. Murder mysteries must be Agatha Christie. Literary Fiction must be Franz Kafka. Hmm. What to call all the other tosh then? Suggestions on a postcard to the Times Literary Supplement.  According to Atwood, Startrek is Science fiction, but she’s willing to allow a little more leeway (possibly to make up for the lack of talking squids in space in every episode. No, contrary to all first impressions Spock is not a squid, even if he does talk) According to her “Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn’t happen, but other planets.”  And Startrek cuts it (beam me up, Scotty, there is NO intelligent life here… and so does Twilight? “What is that sparkly vampire one? The Twilight series. Is it science fiction? Is Star Trek science fiction? Of course it is. It’s got spaceships, it’s got spacesuits. They’re both wonder tales in that none of this is likely to happen.”

So in one breath sf needs other planets (perhaps Venus and Mars astrologically speaking Twilight) and in the next wonder tales in that none of this is likely to happen. Hmm. Well in terms of science I think we can definitely say that Oryx and Crake is slightly less full of likely than Startrek (and no, I have not come to praise Startrek) which then begs the question about the ‘wonder’ in her work. I wonder if she realizes what she’s saying… I wonder, I do. But then “I’m a big fan of Blade Runner. Mister [Ray] Bradbury, indeed, is an early read of mine, and very important…” I wonder if she realises Blade Runner was based on a Philip K. Dick story?

But fun though it is, I came not to laugh at La Atwood and her fellow travellers but to ask serious questions about sf, what it is and why it has such problems becoming the reading poison of choice to most readers? In part this requires working out why those with pretensions of literature (sadly, there are new drug-resistant strains of this disease. When I was young you could still treat it with a wire brush and Dettol, applied directly to the eyes and hands until the wrist-stumps could no longer manage a quill) hate it so that any suggestion that their work might be it, is treated with such vitriol and rabid evasion (anticipatory, future, speculative, space evasions).  Science Fiction is a broad church. It’s hard to see how any of these evasively labeled works could be regarded as anything but that.

Part of it of course, is a self-perpetuating monster. Give a dog a bad name in 1930 and it will still–by some miracle of gerontology–still be biting in 2011. Of course Science Fiction has very good telomeres, because just about every other genre has had its penny horrible era, and somehow that is forgotten. And stinkers are something every genre gets a few of. Indeed, if you had to take a dispassionate ‘average’ in writing standard for most genres you’d conclude sf was doing better than most, much of the time.

Another aspect is the naked terror that ‘Science’ inspires in the eyes of many. Ooh-make-head-hurt-nasty. Might (shudder) have maths. Eeek! The monster only appears bigger and nastier as one gets deeper into the arts establishment. Perhaps it is the fault of vile bathroom graffiti of Science students at College. Writing ‘Arts degrees’ above the roll next to the porcelain convenience was cruel. Seriously, I have heard a number of people say that the Science (and the ‘strange’ as a result) in SF puts them off, that, once they get past that and into the characters and story, they love it. Part of this, of course, is youthful conditioning, as young readers seem to have no trouble with either fantasy or sf if they’re exposed to it. The world is full of new and exciting things they don’t yet fully understand anyway, so what’s one more? Of course, in most cases, (Atwood and Winterson too) the ‘science’ is mostly handwavium. Writers like Robert L. Forward, Charles Sheffield and Isaac Asimov with a real science background are rare even in sf. But in ignorance, flashing lights and dials probably pass for science, just science passes for magic, if the level of ignorance is high enough.

And then there is the ‘Cousin Worseoff’ syndrome (If you haven’t read ‘The Perishers’, you had a deprived childhood and don’t know about Cousin Worseoff, or the eyeballs in the sky. I’m sorry. Blame society or your parents or something. That’s traditional. Or go and find them. That’s clever). Everyone feels better if they have a Cousin Worseoff to look down on and sneer at a bit. The literary genre has a real need, of course. In fisheries science we had a useful measure of success called ‘catch per unit effort’- CPUE.  Despite the attention, College time, prizes, money and fuss given to ‘literary fiction’ (effort)  it has dismal sales or ‘catch’ (according to various figures the genre comes about last on the sales hierarchy). Its CPUE compared to almost anything else–including sf–is appalling.  Alas, poor Literary Fiction. Rather like the white hetero male, the only meritless victim on its PC list  left to use as a Worseoff, is sf. Even Romance is Iffy as women dominate it, and it is not PC to pick on women.  This only works of course if course if Cousin Worseoff admits he’s worse off. Which, by the frantic kissing up our publishing establishment does, we do. Bizarre really.

The thing that does come over from much of the we hate sf-squids-in-space, besides resentment, fear and envy, is a large degree of snobbery. This works for me. If the Champagne Socialists are looking down on us because we are not as good as them… we have to be doing something right in sf. Maybe it is because sf appeals to an audience that is everything they are not.

And therein lies our potential and our strength. Sf is and always has been a small genre (with about 5% of the readership) that punched far above its weight (with 20% of the purchases at its peak). We do not, and will not, get the immense backing the Liberal Arts graduates (who largely run NY’s acquisitions and literary establishment these institutions have spawned) give to ‘literary’ work. No matter how we kiss up. No matter how we give our awards to the ‘right’ authors.  At best these darlings will be smiled on, and repay their new masters by sneering appropriately at our genre and the readers that gave them breath. Nothing is ever ever going to get sf into the fold.

Besides, we’d fools to go there. Only a fool takes his fight to the enemy’s stronghold and fights the enemy with the enemy’s weapons of choice  and enemy’s tactics. For most of us (my friend Sarah Hoyt an exception, who can fight with their weapons as much as ours) we’re abandoning our drone predators to go hand to hand with the linguistic jezail they’ve used since they were breeched.  That’s just stupid. We actually own the high ground (at least that which we have not abandoned to try and cosy up to the crowd down in the swamp). We have better weapons (the world of science which has exciting stuff in it) and better tactics (a positive outlook on the future). Sure, we should learn what we can from them, but not feed the trolls. We need to take pride in what we have, and put ‘modern literary fiction’ where it belongs — as a genre (something they detest being told it is), and not a very popular or successful one. No, it isn’t “great literature” — a thing defined by standing the test of time, firstly because that is not limited to any genre, and secondly because the sheer narrowness of ‘modern literary fiction’ confines it, and makes unlikely to produce much that will stand that test. We need to accept that we’re NOT a snobbish genre. If we have to take to e-books and abandon Legacy publishing to do it then we must do this.  We write to entertain, we write for the vast mass of people who would enjoy our books, not consider them some kind of improving purgatory.  And finally, we need to catch them young.  SF needs to get back into MG and YA.

I write sf. I’m proud of it.