This week: We're taking a step back from academic genres to look at something a bit more universal, science-fiction. Then we've got a new section to try out plus all the usual footnotes. Let's get into it.
Hugo Gernsback never liked the term "science-fiction" even though he coined it. Rather, he thought the stories he bought for his fledgling magazine, Amazing Stories, should be called "scientifiction." Stories in this new genre would be "75 percent literature interwoven with 25 percent science."1 Of course, even with this ideal in mind, defining what actually was and what wasn't science-fiction would become a persistent dog whistle that sparks arguments to this very day. Which is why, perhaps inevitably, Gernsback's final magazine was named Science-Fiction Plus, the plus being the only way to get every shade of science-fiction under one umbrella.
Even though Gernsback coined the term (in 1929), the genre existed for nearly a century prior, arising alongside the explosions of technological progress and forward-thinking of the industrial revolution. Writers at the time began crafting "scientific romances," many of which we still read today: Frankenstein, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the Time Machine, to name but a few. In fact, it was these latter works by Verned and Wells that inspired Gernsback to form a magazine dedicated to this blend of science and story in the first place.
But, of course, nothing is ever quite so cut and dried. Because Shelley and Verne and Wells drew inspiration from older tales, many of which contained elements that would later become staples of science-fiction. Ideas like time travel, instantaneous transportation to other worlds, and interactions with beings wholly different from our human selves can be traced back to the earliest works of human storytelling. But distinguishing fantasy from science-fiction in broad strokes was never a problem.
The problem is in just how much science, and accurate science at that, do you need for your story to be science-fiction? Answering this question caused science-fiction, as a genre, to splinter almost as soon as it was formed. In magazines like Astounding Science Fiction, engineers-turned-writers like Heinlein and Asimov published stories that used real physics to extrapolate the future, while pulp magazines like Weird Tales gave a forum to horror writers like H.P. Lovecraft.
These days, there are almost too many sub-genres of science-fiction to count, ranging from explorations of cutting edge science and technology2 to an ongoing resurrection of scientific romances,3 stories that copy the tone and feel of those early 19th century stories. In between is just about everything you can imagine, from steampunk to cyberpunk to solarpunk to....well, the list goes on.
In truth, given that genre is a set of agreed-upon tropes, I don't think science-fiction exists anymore. It's been subsumed by its many subgenres such that any new work is never just science-fiction. Instead, it's a near-future, post-apocalyptic, spy novel where magic is done with computers and math.4 It's great! But, science-fiction? Or how about novels that take place in the present day, in the real world, except for one tiny little thing around which the plot hinges? Think of just about anything by Murakami, Garcia Marquez, or Rushdie - science fiction5? Maybe.
But, in an effort to sum up and provide at least one rubric on which to prop up the entire genre, I'll say that science-fiction is looking to see not just what else is out there, but to see why it's there. It's looking at the present and figuring out where we go from here. It's looking at new technology and imagining how it is going to change everything. It's looking in the mirror and wondering about the person looking back at you. It is, in the immortal words of Phillip K. Dick:
...not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' – it's 'My God; what if' – in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.
What We've Learned
And now for something completely different: back when I started Learned in 2017, I wanted someplace where I could document the different things I was learning, or trying to learn. I wanted a place where I could discuss a wide range of topics, where and why I was curious about them, and the tools I could use to learn about them. Somewhere along the way, most of that fell by the wayside in favor of linguistics and word nerdery and I miss it. So, I'm bringing it back. For a while anyway.
This week, I learned a little bit more about the Rats of NIMH. Starting in the 1940s, a researcher named Dr. John Bumpass Calhoun built several experiments creating variations on utopias and dystopias for generations of lab rats. These experiments and resulting papers lead to a visit to the lab by a writer named Robert C. O’Brien who would use the experience to create Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH.
A decade after the novel was published, animator Don Bluth, who would later create An American Tail and The Land Before Time among other tearjerkers, created The Secret of NIMH and scarred me for life. The knowledge that it was all based on real rat colonies is...jarring to say the least.
Stay Curious,
J
I'm quoting Wikipedia's quotation. They attribute it to The Road to Science-Fiction: From Wells to Heinlein by James Gunn. (Not the same James Gunn as the film director; I looked it up because I was curious, too.)
I've recommended it before, but my most recent favorite of this genre, and one I think about a lot, is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. That's an affiliate link, so if you buy the book, Amazon sends a few cents my way.
I tend to put a lot of Bradbury's "science-fiction" stories into this resurrected genre. I mean, The Martian Chronicles is not quite in the style of Verne or Wells, but Bradbury knew full well that there were no canals and no Martians on Mars and yet he wrote beautiful, moving tales of both. And even though called it is called science-fiction, Bradbury was a broken-hearted romantic and the world was better for it.
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross. They're Bond vs. Cthulu, basically.
Magical Realism, which is fantasy only because the unreal element is rarely if ever, explained. Which, come to think of it, might make for an interesting divide between science-fiction and fantasy, although books like Iain M. Banks's Culture novels refute that by having all kinds of technology that is never explained...