Gary Farber weighs in on the “what is science fiction” issue by reminding us that Damon Knight didn’t intend to set himself up as an authority figure (i.e. the person who identified science fiction by pointing at it), but rather believed that the pointing had to be a community effort.
Which is actually quite relevant because it really doesn’t matter how often the Margaret Atwoods of this world point at their work and say, “that’s not science fiction” if most of the rest of the world is convinced that it is.
We point louder than she does, and more accurately.
This is all we know, and all we need to know.
Most of the world was once convinced that the earth was flat, too.
I’m not particularly interested in genre distinctions, and I’m utterly weary of this ‘it’s SF, no it’s not SF’ wrangling, but has somebody actually bothered to ask Atwood, for example, why she feels as she does? And if so, has she explained at some length? I’d be grateful for a link, if possible.
Thanks muchly for the link, Cheryl! but
If we’re addressing the “what is science fiction†issue, I’d like to again emphatically point to Samuel R. Delany on how genres can’t be “defined.”
Punctuation of Chip’s words not mine; I merely quoted the transcript of the Event Horizon, a long defunct website, interview, and didn’t presume to repunctuate it, and correct all the spelling errors, sorely though I wanted to, and would still like to, to aid in clarity.
But that struck me as nervy when I first quoted it in 2000 on Usenet. I’m tempted to do it now, though, while I’m pointing out these quotes to a new generation, since it’s a bit of an awkward read as originally presented.
Key sentence: “What can not be defined are genres.”
Arguing about genre definitions is a parlor game. But read Chip, not me; slightly longer sample:
Words in brackets are my corrections for clarity.
And mind that those quotes from Chip are from sometime in the Nineties, or even Eighties, as requoted by me in 2000.
Crap, “[all it’s] should be “[all its].” Sheesh.
Lee:
Whether or not the world is flat is scientifically provable. Whether something is “science fiction” or not is entirely a matter of opinion.
I did get a chance to talk to Atwood when I was in Toronto back in 2003. I didn’t have very long, so I asked her about The Handmaid’s Tale, which seemed fairly harmless. Much to my surprise she told me that it wasn’t a “feminist” novel because it depicted a world in which men still rule. From that I concluded that talking definitions with Atwood is probably not a fruitful thing to do.
Actually it isn’t fruitful with most people, but I linked to Gary’s post mainly because it made a salient point about someone who is frequently misquoted in this respect.
Hm, Cheryl, maybe Atwood doesn’t like categorisation?
At the time, most people thought that a flat earth was provable too, I imagine. I’m simply wary of claiming majority opinion as justification for assigning something to a particular category. But then, I prefer not to assign categories at all, when it comes to literature … though if forced to, I’d probably admit certain markers. Delany’s point about purpose is particularly astute.
Lee:
Actually I think she’s a bit obsessive about categorization – drawing very small boxes and insisting than things say inside them. A bit fannish actually.
“At the time, most people thought that a flat earth was provable too, I imagine.”
Myth of the Flat Earth.
Cheryl,
Yes, that might well be true of Atwood. All of this just illustrates why I feel knowing too much about a writer is obstructive to the reading process. Essentially, I prefer to concentrate on the books themselves – a minority view, I know!
Gary,
thanks for the link. I wasn’t aware the extent to which the educated in the Middle Ages knew of a spherical earth, though of course the educated were in the minority, weren’t they? In any case, perhaps I’ve chosen a poor example. My point is rather to suggest not relying entirely on consensus alone.
I’ve been talking about the Knight definition a few times, and when I do I always emphasize that it’s ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. The point is that it’s not an arbitrary individual, but a consensus judgment. It’s a massive cop-out, but it’s also the only sensible definition pan ossible. Of course, with individual works, then the individual critic judges whether they think it fits in with the consensus – but it’s then up to everyone else to determine whether that judgment is correct. The marginal cases are those where the consensus is split (e.g. Perdido Street Station and Pattern Recognition).
What’s interesting is that I’ve been doing some work on Film Studies of late, and reading about genre in film. And you know what – they can’t define genre either. In the end, the best definition they Film Studies people have for, say, a western, is that it’s what everyone points to when they say ‘western’.
Lee:
I think it was a poor example, and it was poor because it was the wrong type of question.
A question such as “is the Earth flat?” can be tested empirically. If some people still chose to disagree after the test has been made, well we can dismiss them as wrong.
Other sorts of questions cannot be proven easily. For example, consider the question, “Is slavery morally justifiable?” That’s one for philosophers to argue over. The answer that the “wise” have given has changed over time, and hope I would stick to the answer “no” even if most of the world disagreed with me.
Then there are questions such as, “What is fashionable in London this winter?” You could consult all sorts of experts on fashion as to what they think people ought to be wearing, but you may get a much more sensible result by simply asking what people are wearing.
What I’m suggesting (and Knight may agree) is that, “What is science fiction?” is a question of that third type. All sorts of people may have their own opinions, but those opinions will at best be of limited application, almost certainly be hotly contested, and at worst will simply be strong-minded people like Atwood insisting that they are right and all rest of the world is out of step. But you can get some sort of objective result by asking, “What are the people who live in the community of Science Fiction reading?”
Hi Cheryl,
Perhaps I should explain that my flat-world comment was meant more or less tongue-in-cheek.
That said, you make some good points about the type of questions we ask. I *am* rather cautious about what can be tested empirically, because this obviously tends to change over time, and perhaps more important, presupposes a less than objective philosophical underpinning (epistemological questions).
I wonder if by asking ‘What are the people who live in the community of Science Fiction reading?’, you’re not simply pushing back the question. I’m not quite happy to define something in terms of itself. In practical terms, it might be useful, but it’s not the same sort of thing as asking what people in London are wearing. There, with some work, you can get a fairly objective set of statistics because no self-definition is involved (though some categorisation too, I suppose): you can tally all sorts of things like skirts/trousers, colours, pleats, whatever (it becomes sticky when you start using criteria like social class, gender etc). But how do you determine who belongs to the SF community?
Lee:
Yes, all of that is entirely true. But Knight’s approach may still be the best approach we have.
“What’s interesting is that I’ve been doing some work on Film Studies of late, and reading about genre in film. And you know what – they can’t define genre either. In the end, the best definition they Film Studies people have for, say, a western, is that it’s what everyone points to when they say ‘western’.”
Over here, you’ll find Scott Eric Kaufman discussing that “that there is a problem with talking about the ‘historical novel’ as a self-evident genre.”
I keep going back to Chip: there’s not a problem defining any one genre: there’s a generic problem in attempting to “define” any genre, period.
People who see only one genre or see it from the inside, looking out, tend not to realize the problem is with the concept of “genre,” rather than something that can be fixed with a New, Improved, Better Worded, definition.
Delany:
Of course, he was wrong abut the idea that in other genres no one asks it today (then, or now), but none of us gets everything right.
“What I’m suggesting (and Knight may agree)”
He’s dead now, so not up to much agreeing or disagreeing, really, save through his writings and influence.
Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922–April 15, 2002) .
“In practical terms, it might be useful, but it’s not the same sort of thing as asking what people in London are wearing. There, with some work, you can get a fairly objective set of statistics because no self-definition is involved (though some categorisation too, I suppose): you can tally all sorts of things like skirts/trousers, colours, pleats, whatever (it becomes sticky when you start using criteria like social class, gender etc).”
Again, in Chip’s terms, there’s no problem describing what you see in a genre; that’s entirely different from from trying to define a genre, which is to try to provide “rules” and borders, and rule in what’s within the border, and rule out what’s outside the borderline.
That’s just a game. Or an imposing of a single dictorial fixed vision. There is no consensus on fixed and non-porous borders. There’s only Argument.
And the next room down the hallway is, as we all know, Abuse.
Cheryl, I’ve been mulling over Knight’s approach and see another problem with it. If we take as our criterion what people in the SF community are reading, obviously we mean what they are reading that they identify as SF (since most of us read a whole range of stuff, and for lots of different purposes and satisfactions). This, again, leaves us with the question of which markers they’re using to identify their SF selections – and why they feel the need to do so (Delany?). What is it about Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, for example, or Ishiguro’s Never let Me Go which compels SF readers to claim these novels as their own? Very quickly we’re back to certain core characteristics. What do you think?
Lee:
I don’t care. It isn’t relevant. And in any case I’m sure that any sample of individuals will produce a multitude of different answers. Your argument is a bit like saying that we can’t allow a book to win Best Novel in the Hugos unless we can identify the criteria by which the voters decided it was “Best”. This is a statistical exercise, nothing more.
“Very quickly we’re back to certain core characteristics.”
Which different people see differently, and make somewhat different choices as to which “core characteristics” they’re interested in: thus, enthusiasts of “hard science fiction,” but not D&Dish fantasy, or who prefer space opera, or who prefer more focus on character, or who prefer finely-wrought text, or who prefer world-building, or prefer, socially-oriented, or — the point is that people can have wider or narrower tastes, but everyone’s tastes and interest, and thus what they find “important” about their preferred “definition” of science fiction will differ somewhat from most other sf readers.
Definitions have always abounded.
Incidentally, in 1960, enough writers and influential sf folk thought that science fiction was dead as to win Earl Kemp a Hugo for compiling Who Killed Science Fiction?.