SF is full of throwaway geniuses. 

Hyperion

I'm almost through with Dan Simmon's Hyperion, and its already left a very bad taste in my mouth. It doesn't help that I had last read almost as much of the book nearly 4 years back, and stopped.

This is SF trying very hard. SF should try hard in other ways, not like this. Not by reeking of literary pretentiousness by quoting Yeats and Keats and Lord knows how many other canonical poets.

Okay, I admit that parts of the book are striking. And it makes me want to revisit Keats and Yeats and Chaucer. But the rest doesn't hold up. Even if the conclusion manages to thrill me, it'll be a while before I start on the sequel.

Strange. The way the novel began had me wishing it would be a lot better than this.

I've never trusted the Hugo. Come to think of it, if you want to read quality SF, go check out Gibson's list here http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/66294/index2.html or M Harrison's somewhat eccentric list here http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/some-interesting-science-fiction/. Read widely and avoid restricting yourself to books which have won awards. Check out the likes of Van Vogt and some early Philip K Dick. More often than not, SF is at its best and most literary when its not trying to be 'literary'.

Genius and SF Part 2

This might be a strange post, but bear with me and I shall see you through to the light.

I have been reading a very wide assortment of novels of late; most of them are science fiction, and I've been diving high and low and catching up with the history of the genre, but such a spree has also been interspersed with Literature with a capital L. Call it a postgraduate's late realization that there are several classics he has taken for granted, or just a way to prepare for the (possibly) upcoming Subject GRE. Call it what you will; but its been firing my brain cells with a few ideas I'm certain better men than me have dealt with in far greater detail and with far greater joy.

Let's take two science fiction authors and put them side by side: Dan Simmons and Philip K Dick. If you look at Hyperion, its possibly the epitome of the science fiction pastiche. Simmons is so thoroughly read in the genre that he is the literary chameleon par excellence in genre fiction. As a critic at Tor.com has rightly pointed out, it has Blish, Heinlein, Le Guin...all the possible flavours you could want in a self conscious tribute to SF. But its far more than a self conscious tribute: its also a whole new story in itself. Like Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, it dabbles generously in the history of the genre (though perhaps, not as obliquely as Wolfe, whose reference to Campbell's Twilight I realized much much later, probably on my third read through of his magnum opus), and yet is very much its own creature. This, in spite of it being also a nod to Chaucer; Wolfe, as we all know, is obviously indebted to Proust for his style.

I have read elsewhere that if science fiction is to be ever considered literary, then a book like Wolfe's is probably the way to go. Only grand themes, it seems, such as memory, sin and redemption, are deemed worthy of literary respectability. Hyperion, in that respect, revels far too much in Simmon's element, a gratuitous flair for singling out the potentially horrific in any given scenario, to be deemed grand. Or is it?

I have mentioned a particular quote of Darko Suvin's before in this blog that I agree with wholeheartedly: we get the science fiction we deserve. I will risk being idiosyncratic and subjective and say here that whenever someone asks me to cite examples of science fiction as Literature, the first three books that have always come to mind have been The Left Hand of Darkness, Solaris and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Not Wolfe. Not Fifth Head of Cerberus, not The Book of the New Sun, and not at all because some call the latter Fantasy and not SF. I am of the opinion that SF is very much a sub-branch of Fantasy, but one rooted, necessarily so, in the present. Like all great literature.

Which brings us to the aforementioned three. What do the three have in common? Le Guin's style comes closest to what might some call 'literary': a certain high handed prose, an inclination towards the poetic, and a measured grace that certainly brought about a major upheaval of priorities in SF. But its literature not because of those criteria alone: it has the capability, at times, to suddenly break out of the web a novel has to weave around itself, and get at something visceral. Like the last line, when Genly Ai's asked by a young Gethenian about other planets. That single line still sends chills down my spine, like the world of Gethen would if I were to visit it. The sudden bits and pieces of Gethenian myth intermittently spread throughout the novel adds a certain immediacy approaching the unbridled, chaotic intimacy and intricacy of Life itself.

The Left Hand of Darkness is as much about gender as it is about storytelling, and its grandiloquent sureness of style is rooted in that very pleasure of storytelling. It might be a polemic, like The Dispossessed, but its also other things. It is very much genre, but it uses its trappings in an invisible enough manner so as not to impede the general reader. However, someone well versed in SF is welcome to find the many nods to genre the novel graciously allows.

Solaris is anti-science fiction, but you can never call it that and get away with it. It undermines all of early SF's claims, and questions the efficacy of an empirical world view in the first place. But again, like in Le Guin's novel, it also seems to tear away at its artifice, and breathe every now and then and become a new creature entirely. Such as, again, that last portion in the novel, where Kelvin attempts to communicate with the Ocean by raising his hand, and the ocean responds by encircling his hand in a bubble. That is sublimity in the face of doubt, and it is something not restricted to Science Fiction alone, although it might seem that way to people suddenly coming across Lem's book after a thousand other reads steeped in SF conventions.

There is nothing wrong with SF's conventions, of course, even its more commercial ones. It all depends on how you use them. Do Androids...? is a magnificent example. But the SF trappings give way, yet again, to that sudden moment that puts the entire novel and its themes in perspective. I'm referring to one particular scene, where one of the androids snips away at a spider's legs, one by one, and Isidore watches on in terror. This is Dick perhaps at his most exposed, or at the very least, one of the several such passages one may find in his novels. For instance, the quote China Mieville uses at the beginning of Perdido Street Station, taken from We Can Build You:

I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.

These three works of genius are all flawed. Much like Shakespeare, whose plays are riddled with monologues which do nothing for the plot, but strain and break away from its causality. But it does so perhaps unconsciously: I don't think you can plan those lines, or set them out in plot beforehand to, as it were, dry.

Hyperion and The Book of the New Sun possesses magnificent writing, but when it strains against genre, it does so consciously. They hark back to a time that is not theirs to begin with. Again, that's not whats at fault. What is missing is that unconscious negation of artifice. Its all too perfectly etched. The style is too suggestive of grandeur to ever get at the inconsistencies or disillusions life is all about. Even when they talk about such things, they do so within a framework of a style that is out to prove SF's worth. SF does not need proving in that way. SF does a few things explicitly that canonical literature takes for granted. But in being explicit, it also has to cater to its own strengths. Writers mistake this for an opportunity to stay within genre while incorporating styles pioneered by mainstream writers (if I may call it that). But I think that takes away quite substantially from the sudden leaps of imagination, that sudden sentence that SF is perhaps uniquely capable of; that instance when a single line takes you out of your Self, and leaves you grappling at truths which fade away like a dream, albeit slower, till that next re-read.

Ricochet

Mother of God. I'm so glad I stuck with Schismatrix, because, quite frankly, the scope of this novel is nothing short of astonishing. And shockingly so. And I finally understand why Sterling writes the way he does. If he were to pepper this with characterization, and flesh every little aspect and idea out, he would have had had to contend with writing several volumes, at the very least.

This is probably one of the very few instances where I will admit defeat, and say that characterization must sometimes accede to the fervency of the Idea, or, as in Sterling's case, an embarrassment of Ideas. But that's not to say though that the writing is poor. On the contrary, while it in no way resembles the dirty beauty of Gibson's prose in that other wildly influential cyberpunk novel, its much, much more than competent: there are passages here which loudly proclaim that science fiction, even at its most pessimistic, or politically aware, can find it in itself to reach out towards the sublime, and the wondrous.

Magnificent.

The Player of Games

The Player of Games was a nice introduction to Banks's Culture, a symbiotic society consisting of humans and benevolent A.I who see to it that no one goes hungry, or suffers. Its an Utopia, albeit one with a taskforce called Special Circumstances, which scour the universe to help convert entire civilizations to their cause, failing to do which they opt for brute force, something that is antithetical to what Culture stands for.

The parts of the book I enjoyed most dealt with the anomalies and contradictions that plague any Utopia, or Utopian ideal. It was also great fun to read about the banter of drones, their conversations with humans, and their shrewd nature.

As far as the games are concerned, the reader is never really made privy to the actual rules, or how the protagonist, Gurgeh, plays. I think here The Player of Games could have gone on to describe the nature of the games being played a bit more. Sadly, it doesn't, so much of the book is spent describing the emotions and the intellect driving the moves in the game, but not so much the game itself.

But all things considered, Banks could clearly write. And I'm sure Le Guin was a huge inspiration for this novel.

The worlds of science fiction stay with you long after you've left them. Even books like Schismatrix, abandoned, albeit reluctantly, and quite obviously needing quite a lot of effort to read from someone not very well read in cyberpunk, makes me happy inside just thinking about it. 

Up Next

Super-Cannes by J G Ballard
Player of Games by Iain M Banks

Stay tuned.

The Wasp Factory

As promised, I finished The Wasp Factory today, that too in one sitting. A book like this is meant to be finished this way, I feel, for all its bits and pieces - obscured and hazy at first - start making sense gradually, and its a wonderful feeling to have your faith in an author rewarded with a denouement that is not only satisfactory, but also sheds new light on what 'mainstream' fiction is capable of, once seen from the perspective of science/speculative fiction.

The Wasp Factory is not science fiction, but a reader acclimatized to the genre will find the going smoother. For one, the book begins by immersing the reader in the mind of our protagonist - 16 year old Francis - who is clearly not 'normal' in the way we usually understand the word. Francis speaks of The Factory, and Sacrifice Poles, and chances are that a reader who has no experience with neologisms - something that SF revels in - will find it difficult to, as it were, trust the author with such sudden introductions to concepts without any context to back them.

The protagonist has led a particularly violent childhood, in more ways than one. To see through the eyes of such a person is, of course, nothing new in Literature. And yet, the book does not pose an interpretive challenge in the vein of Burgess's Clockwork Orange, but it does share another similar difficulty with that book - that of, on the one hand, being made privy to (what might seem) gratuitous acts of cruelty and torture and of being able to stomach them, and, on the other, asking that oft-fatal question: why should I care?

And therein lies the beauty of this novel. The protagonist is as candid, and in a way, somewhat demure regarding his actions, so as to remind one of Holden Caulfield. Indeed, he shares the first part of his surname with the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. In the telling of his crimes, he is never repentant (till, perhaps, the final chapter), and thoroughly rational, and even sensitive in his dealings with his only friend, the dwarf Jamie. It is this attitude that Banks gets at very effectively, and might even allow for something approaching 'empathy' from the reader.

The Wasp Factory is ultimately science fictional in the same way that Kafka's The Trial might be deemed science fictional, or even, Camus's The Stranger. While this latter example might be hard for some readers to take seriously, in the context of SF, I'd argue its not very far fetched an analogy at all. Science Fiction, or at least the SF that matters, is often more an attitude, and less a stereotypical genre. And in its attitude, The Wasp Factory is perhaps as rewarding as any work of fiction that is explicitly speculative.

Solaris

Upon reading Solaris, I got an inkling of what might have irked Lem so much about American Science Fiction in general. The entire novel is as inward looking as SF has ever gotten. Its depiction of an alien life form has never been adequately challenged, except for perhaps Mieville's Embassytown. But while Mieville's book is riddled with passages of mind numbing dullness, punctuated by a sudden brilliant exploration of semiotics and semantics here and there, Lem's approach feels a lot more coherent. The info dumps are all there, but they never feel separate from the story at hand. This is probably due to the fact that most of the characters in this novel are scientists. But Lem doesn't use it as an excuse for stunted dialogue. The whole novel is in some ways a repudiation of science fiction, for what Lem seems to be trying to say is the futility of science in the first place in trying to make sense of the universe, or, for that matter, any non-human lifeform. Human beings can never really look beyond themselves. This is science fiction at its most thoughtful, and Lem is honestly up there with Le Guin and Dick as one of the greatest humanist SF writers of the 20th century.

We get the science fiction we deserve, said Darko Suvin in an interview.

Goodbye

Rest in peace, Mr. Banks. Your presence in the literary world will be sorely missed.

I will begin reading The Wasp Factory tonight, in your memory. I have been meaning to read it for a long time. Its ironic that I should want to start reading it today, of all days.

Genius and SF

I believe the critic Paul Kincaid had an article somewhere titled 'What do we do when we read science fiction?' While I have never gotten around to getting hold of that particular essay, I was surprised to find that someone had bothered to ask a question I'd been asking myself for quite some time now. It might strike some to be an obvious question, and not very different from asking 'what is it that we do when we read?', but its really not all that simple: we involve a whole new set of mental faculties when we engage with a science fiction novel. While it is not absolutely necessary that a science fiction novel should defamiliarize a reader, often the best SF is that which makes the reader work hard to piece together the imagined setting of the story.

I believe this is exactly what the New Wave was up to. Thus we have a J G Ballard, and a Stepan Chapman, and a M John Harrison, not to mention China Mieville.

What personally strikes me rather interesting is that none of the writers I mentioned, excepting perhaps Harrison, are my absolute favourites. I certainly admire their writing, and am in awe of some of their work, but they always manage to not quite make it when it comes to writing a novel. With Ballard, the invented milieus hijack characterization, while with Mieville, dialogue is extremely artificial. Chapman I have only read one novel of, Troika. While Troika certainly made me uncomfortable in a way that only the most original speculative fiction can, again, it didn't hold together as a novel.

But the imaginative capabilities of Ballard, Harrison and Mieville are of a decidedly different variety altogether. All of them are curiously obsessed with entropy, with disease and diseased landscapes, lending these ugly milieus a kind of breathtaking beauty that a reader, in hindsight, would be a little shocked by. How did this author manage to sell me onto a locale that I wouldn't want to live in myself?

Perhaps, at the end of the day, that, above everything, even so called 'perfection', is the sign of true genius.

Cyberpunk

What is it about cyberpunk that's so interesting? I think part of the appeal lies in the fact that it offers a return to storytelling in the old fashioned sense of the term. You could even call it science fiction that, in spite of all the pessimism and bleakness, is almost Shakespearean in its treatment of plot, and its emphasis on revenge. To me, cyberpunk was born when science fiction realized two fundamental things: a) if it were to claim to be grown up fiction, it had to feature morally grey characters who were also bad-ass and b) it needed an armature of old fashioned plot. Neuromancer being the prime case-in-point in this regard. Schismatrix is intriguing. The writing, while nothing brilliant, is also not pedestrian. It has that aspect about it that can instantly label a sort of writing as science fiction: that of rendering human beings larger than life by reflecting them against Earth shattering phenomena, or serious galaxy wide political intrigue. On the flip-side, science fiction is also quite capable of doing just the opposite, that is, making man look like he's nothing in the face of events and an universe largely out of his control, in spite of technology trying to help him out. Cyberpunk leans largely towards this latter aspect, and for its time, meant a bold new step for SF everywhere. Nowadays, its been absorbed into SF seamlessly: nothing is cyberpunk anymore, while everything is, if you consider how everyone takes cybernetics for granted when writing their science fiction.