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What I'm Writing
A Sideways View of F&SF and "The Literary Establishment"
Earlier today, Mathew Cheney [whom I've known on and off since he was in something like fifth grade, and since he's over 30, that might tell you that we've both been in this field for a while] wrote a piece in his Mumpsimus blog reacting to Jason Sanford's article in The New York Review of Science Fiction. To stir the pot a bit more, I'm going to say that I think, in a sense, they're both right in some fashions and totally missing the point in viewing the larger "literary" picture.

As I understand it, Jason makes the point that F&SF "don't get no respect" from the so-called literary establishment, and not only no respect, but not even any acknowledgment. Matt makes the point that in real terms, there's no such thing as a monolithic or even an oligopolistic literary establishment or an agreed-upon literary canon. Matt goes on to point out that, even if The New York Times attempted to impose such a canon, its reviews effectively amount to less than a thimble full of liquid in an ocean of ink.

Over the past almost fifteen years, I've lived in a slightly alien culture -- Utah -- where the prevailing faith dominates the local media, the local events, the laws, and even the scheduling of athletic events. Yet, Utah has a state constitution which prohibits strongly any religious interference in government on any level, and while the LDS Church occasionally makes pronouncements, essentially it doesn't have to interfere, because the cultural indoctrination is more than sufficient for its purposes.

In a similar sense, since its very beginning, science fiction has had to battle a similar cultural indoctrination, one that I've become aware of on a very personal level as a writer. Over the years, I've had a number of highly intelligent people attempt to read my books... and fail. One of them was my own father, who was not only a brilliant attorney, but an accomplished pianist and sometime composer. The only book of mine he actually understood and liked was The Green Progression, which was a very near-future political/legal/regulatory thriller. For all of his intelligence, his wanting to read and enjoy what I had written, his stylistic mastery of the English language, and his wide reading of historical and contemporary fiction, he had one problem -- he was so deeply grounded in the here-and-now that he could not accept worlds or futures based on anything that he did not know to be "real" and true.

In that sense, he was a member of that large group of people from which Sanford would claim the "literary establishment" arises, an establishment which Matt denies exists. The plain fact is that this group of people, many of them highly intelligent, does exist, but not as an organized group or conspiracy. No, most of them are not reviewers and literary critics, but some of them are. The problem isn't that of a "literary" establishment, but the fact that any culture is composed almost universally of individuals whose thought processes and preconceptions are tethered to the present reality in which they live. That present reality is the basis of their preconceptions. Some can speculate slightly beyond the here and now. An even smaller number is comfortable in reading farther beyond the "now." But... the farther one goes from the comfortable here and now, the fewer individuals there are who will make that leap, and even fewer who are comfortable with it. Even in the theoretically more open society of the United States, there are tens of millions of people who cannot conceive of, let alone accept, any sort of domestic arrangement besides a two-partner paternalistic, heterosexual union sanctioned by a religious body. There are possibly more than a hundred million who have no understanding of any theological system except those derived from European Christianity. Effectively, the vast majority of individuals from such backgrounds are self-alienated from science fiction and to a lesser degree from fantasy.

Fantasy gets around some of that barrier for many people by claiming, right from the outset, that nothing is real in fantasy and never can be... or that fantasy is based on folk-tales and the like and is merely cultural fancy. The fact that fantasy sells far more titles than does science fiction supports, I believe, my conjecture that alternative cultures, worlds, that postulate possible other realities are far too uncomfortable for most people. Even so, the current best-selling Harry Potter books, I recently read, annually total only some 10 million copies a year in English-speaking markets of some 400 million people.

There is no conspiracy or determined effort by a literary establishment to attack science fiction and/or fantasy, but individual attacks have occurred and will continue to occur. Because scholars, critics, critiquers, reviewers are all drawn from the literate population of a culture at large, the majority of whom are uncomfortable with alternatives and futures beyond the here and now, most of those scholars and reviewers will simply be unable and/or unwilling to comprehend alternatives beyond their comfort zone. Rather than admit such discomfort, they will ignore or denigrate that which they do not understand.

At times, this discomfort is so great that it blossoms into outright prejudice, where talented F&SF writers cannot teach at certain institutions or where critics blindly lambaste all fantasy and science fiction. This prejudice does not arise from a tight literary clique, as Sanford would apparently have one believe, but, contrary to what Matt has implied in his blog, from a large segment in society firmly and irrevocably socialized against science fiction and fantasy, and indeed against anything outside their "this-is-real-and-acceptable" mindset. Unfortunately, the majority of critics and reviewers tend to fall into this category, not because they are a literary clique or because they are "out to get" science fiction and fantasy, but because of a socialization they either cannot or will not transcend.

The "bad" news is that little we as writers can do will change adult minds already closed. The "good" news is that, in our society, we can still write and reach those who are open to re-socialization and an understanding that the universe is far wider and wondrous than those who will not can possibly imagine.

Comments:
Ah. That is pretty much what I was going to say to Matt. Except you said it rather better. Thank you!
 
Ursula K. Le Guin makes similar points in an essay "Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" She seems to think that the problem is due to the United States' puritan heritage, which placed such a high emphasis on practicality, and all but abhorred whimsy. She also seems to think, or did in the early-seventies, that the problem has a particularly masculine bent. Would you agree, or do you feel that the problem is less localized and more widely distributed through American culture? You also mention European Christianity-- do you feel that this particular subset has a a more difficult time with science fiction or fantasy?
 
I honestly don't think the "bent" is either uniquely masculine or American. I think all "true believers" in theologically based faiths tend, generally but not exclusively, to have greater difficulty in dealing with concepts outside their comfort zone. I concentrated on European Christianity because that's the theological mainstream in the United States, but one could make the same observations about Orthodox Greek Christianity or Islam.
 
"The "good" news is that, in our society, we can still write and reach those who are open to re-socialization..."

I think you could take this sentiment even further. There exists a group of people who are open to wonder and whimsy. They're called children. I think the SF community needs to make a better effort at introducing younger kids to science fiction. Not only will you then have a group of people comfortable with thinking in future terms, but you'll also create the next base of science fiction readers.

It's a win-win!

JP
www.sfsignal.com
 
Excellent and balanced response to Matt. I am linking to your blog on my blog at http://ahmedakhan.journalspace.com.

With respect to "individual attacks" on the F&SF genres, what really burns me up is when people turn up their noses at the genres without ever having read SF or fantasy. For some people, SF bashing is the "in" thing, I guess.

And I fully agree with JP's comment that the best thing the SF community can do is to catch 'em young.

Ahmed
 
Thank you all.

When I spoke of reaching those who were open, I certainly meant children, but I have found, if less frequently, those who are older who have never read F&SF who have come to enjoy and appreciate it.
 
Thank you for writing about the essay I wrote and Cheney’s response to it. I agree with your comment that there's more a sense of "cultural indoctrination" among the literary elite than any single monolithic literary establishment. I should add, though, that despite what Cheney said, the main focus of my essay wasn't on the literary establishment--although I think its important to acknowledge the debt owed to genre writers-- but instead on how literary fiction is now appropriating speculative fiction themes and tropes.

I've written about all this on my blog. You can read the post here.

Best,

Jason Sanford
 
A friend of mine who taught creative writing once told me that at the program where she taught, the instructors had an unwritten directive to Actively steer students away from genre.

Granted, this is only one MFA program, but I had attended the same program years before, before I began writing genre fiction myself, at a time when I held the same anti-genre prejudices. I saw genre writers openly derided in class, their work mercilessly picked apart and declared silly, whereas the instructors would attempt to help the writer of an equally bad story written as "serious" fiction.

In my own poor way I addressed the comparison between literature and genre in a pair of posts on my blog.

http://jeffcrook.blogspot.com/2007/01/100-years-of-reading.html

http://jeffcrook.blogspot.com/2007/01/100-years-of-groans.html
 
Ok, Mr. Modesitt. I take issue with your notion that someone who believes only in heterosexual marriage and in Christianity is self-alienated from Science Fiction. That's a ridiculous assumption, and has no basis in fact.
Want to know which authors are on my bookshelf? John C. Wright. Karl Schroeder. Tad Williams. Frank Herbert. John Scalzi. Jan Siegal. Yet I am also a heretosexual Christian, and damn near fundamentalist in my views? How is this possible, you ask? Perhaps ordinary people are more intelligent, and imaginative, than you give them credit for, and are able to separate their religious and philosophical views from their enjoyment of a good book.
 
If you're saying that people who are rigidly locked into only one view of the world will have a hard time enjoying sf/f, sure. But if you're saying Christians or Muslims are automatically hostile to sf/f, I have to disagree strongly. I've spent most of my life around devoutly religious people of various Christian denominations, and a great many of them have been sf/f fans, often hardcore ones. And what about Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, Tim Powers, John C. Wright, Susan Palwick, Zenna Henderson, Cordwainer Smith, Anthony Boucher, J.R.R. Tolkien, Fred Saberhagen, Walter M. Miller, Jr., just to name a few sf/f writers who identified themselves as Christians?

I think sf/f fans are as prone to persecution complexes, triumphalism and arrogance as the religious people you seem to be criticizing.
 
People try to link to this post, but you have no permantent links on individual posts. I think it would be a good idea to turn that on.
 
(I'm a little late on this discussion, but I felt compelled to chime in).

I am a heterosexual male; I was raised with a blend of Catholicism and Baptism. I'm neither of those two now, and I don't live in a traditional marriage. My wife and I are poly, and I write about that experience sometimes in my work. The risk I am taking is this: I'm going to alienate a lot of readers who don't believe that that particular way of life is "natural", meaning that they are close-minded enough to put aside a book (regardless of the merit it might have, the story it might tell, or the moral it might present) because of a small "moral issue" they perceive in the author or the theme. This is the close-mindedness that I read into the post presented by Mr. Modesitt.

Not all Judeo-Christians or Muslims are close-minded. However, there are a large number of writers and readers within the F&SF community who are much more accepting of such non-traditional ways of life than their monotheistic brethren, that that they certainly make those who won't even touch genre fiction because of such ideas look very silly. That close-mindedness is what is self-alienating because it limits your perception of the world and makes you more prone to ignorance when it comes to such topics as F&SF might present in its writing.
 
Mr. Dryden,
I see what you're saying, I think. When you say "you" in your final sentence, are you addressing Christians?

I would have to reply that imagination, or perception and agreement are very different things. People can clearly *perceive* polyamory, neo-paganism, sentient pseudo-lichen or cannibalism, and then choose to become a Christian or a Muslim or a vegetarian. Disagreeing with something does not necessary imply ignorance of that thing.

For example, Gene Wolfe can write brilliantly and insightfully about ancient Greek deities or serial adulterers, and still decide to remain a devout Catholic and faithful husband.
 
My own mother falls into the category of self-alienated from sf/f. In fact, she claims to be unable to tolerate anything that "isn't real", this despite loads of evidence that what she thinks is real may not be.
Whether the problem is rooted in culture, religion, or a fundatmental lack of imagination, it is real. Mr. Modesitt presents an interesting argument, convincing enough to make one wonder how any people at all can escape their early indoctrination.
Certainly the solution is to catch them young, and Harry Potter is a good example of how to go about it.
 
PS: To the larger question of cultural resistance to SF/F, I'd have to say: get at them young (it worked in my case), don't be shrill about it (sf/f fans sometimes display a weird mix of arrogance and low-self-esteem about their field), and come at 'em from the side. Ease people into the field.

I think the real problem isn't with lack of imagination - how many people watch sf/f movies or TV? I think the crux of it is that not enough people *read,* and a large segment of those who do tend to look down their noses as sf/f as merely genre fiction. When I meet someone like that I slip 'em a piece of "literary" sf/f, like maybe The Left Hand of Darknes, A Canticle for Leibowitz, or Peace.
 
I don't believe that literary critics' dislike of SF is a matter of their indoctrination or lack of imaginative capacity. These critics are generally well-read and educated in a tradition of literature that has different expectations and norms than SF does. To some extent they can be compared to classical music lovers who disliked jazz because it was 'wrong' by the standards they had been taught. In jazz, for instance, personal expression and invention is considered more important than a classically perfect technique and clean sound; the individual moment of expression generally more important than the larger structure. For someone who confronts bebop or blues with the standards they've grown up with listening to Beethoven and Mozart, jazz will sound like second-rate music. In the same way, literary critics who grew up on Flaubert and Proust will find SF prose almost uniformly horrid and the action and excitement too cheap. Personally I think it's undeniable that SF prose is of a lower standard than 'literary' fiction, but that's largely because SF authors don't care to spend hours on each sentence in the way Flaubert did--for them the ideas are more important and more interesting. This is only a small example of the different standards, but there are many others as well. To convince the literary establishment that science fiction has real value, SF needs to teach them to read by its own standards and to see things through its own lens. As far as I can see, SF can only accomplish this if it produces a few real masterworks on the level of the great literary works of the past.
 
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