Science Fiction Studies

#19 = Volume 6, Part 3 = November 1979

ARTICLE ABSTRACTS

Ina Rae Hark

Unity in the Composite Novel: Triadic Patterning in Asimov's The Gods Themselves

Abstract..--Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves has a singular history. The novel is composed of three parts, each bearing as its title one third of the line from Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans which Mike Bronowski quotes at the end of the first section: "Against stupidity/the gods themselves/contend in vain [?]"

Yet despite their interrelationship in the plot, the three sections do not fit together comfortably to form a unified whole. The first two sections complement each other, despite the hard science emphasis of the one and the New Wave trappings of the other, since the same events are detailed first from the point of view of Earthmen and then of para-men. On the other hand, with "The Gods Themselves" omitted, sections one and three would form an intelligible narrative.

Admitting that the novel lacks unity in this respect, one should then consider whether, given its structure, unity should be expected, and if so, whether there are other levels upon which that unity might be found. This endeavor leads first to consideration of a somewhat wider question, the prevalence in SF of longer narratives, constructed like The Gods Themselves from a number of smaller ones: the composite novel. Although this form occurs outside of speculative fiction, and although, conversely, SF includes many novels that are not composite, the proportion of composite novels in the genre is rather high. Several reasons, both practical and philosophical, account for this phenomenon. For those writers who achieved prominence during and immediately after the "Golden Age," novel-length publication in the predominantly hardcover market was simply not a possibility. They confined themselves to short stories, or at least highly episodic narratives, for the SF magazines. When book-length publication later became a reality, the first move for many writers was to collect several short stories, perhaps with minor changes, to form a more or less coherent narrative.

Long form publication is now quite accessible to SF writers, but their affinity for the short story form and the fragmented narrative has not disappeared. In some ways the exigencies of early SF publishing only complemented some basic tendencies of the genre. The composite structure creates a hybrid that well serves this preoccupation of SF with expanding spatial and temporal horizons.

 

George Locke

An English Science-Fiction Magazine, 1919

Abstract..--The special 1919 issue of a British periodical, Pears Christmas Annual, is offered as the world's first English-language magazine devoted to SF, twenty-seven years before the founding of Amazing Stories by Hugo Gernsback. It consisted of 6 works of fiction, a speculative essay, cartoons, and illustrations in color by some of the leading artists of the day--and all dealing with the world of the future 50 years hence in the year 1969. The story-tellers were G.K. Chesterton, A.A. Milne, F. Britten Austin, Mary Cholmondeley, Dion Clayton Calthorp and Twells Brex, and W.L. George contributed the essay. In these imaginative conjectures of the future, hard science remained largely in the background; most concentrated on social speculations. But as an early specimen in the history of the SF genre, this previously unknown British magazine is noteworthy and warrants the attention of all SF historians.

 

Lowry Pei

Poor Singletons: Definitions of Humanity in the Stories of James Tiptree, Jr

Abstract..--The purpose of this essay is to examine the effort to define humanity which shows up in many of Tiptree's short stories, and especially in her "Your Haploid Heart" (1969), "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (1976), and "The Screwfly Solution" (1977). For Tiptree, humanity is duality, sexuality, and incompleteness--eternally divided, paradoxically double, seeking community and love and killing it in the moment it is found. Are these cautionary tales, or is their goal to show that the human race is irremediably split by the barrier between male and female? Are these stories simply the extreme statement of what we should avoid, or is their purpose to prove that mankind is ruled by drives, that reproduction and sexuality are a scourge, a fatal affliction that few if any escape, that sexuality and violence are inextricably linked, that civilization and annihilation are next-door neighbors and the whole world would be better off if we weren't there? In the end, Tiptree's fiction is as dual as the view of humanity it represents. There is something in Tiptree of Dr. Ain who, in "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" (1969), saves the world from the ravages of man by engineering a disease guaranteed to kill off the human race. Yet there is also much in her of Aaron Kaye who, in "A Momentary Taste of Being" (1975), resists the pull of beautiful annihilation in order to remain stubbornly human to the end, caring for the dying even though they do not notice. We have yet to discover whether Tiptree's work will finally abandon the Earth and the bodily life upon it, or whether, from the sky of Tiptree's fiction, something will come to redefine this life. Perhaps these stories, like the real-life believers in the cargo cults, are carving airstrips in the jungle for planes that will never come.

 

Martin Schifer

The Rise and Fall of Antiutopia

Abstract..--Of all the forms of what the Russians call "scientific fantasy," the antiutopia (or, more neutrally, dystopia) is the most problematic in its relation to utopian horizons. By tracing the literary and ideological antecedents of the form--and by examining, in particular, the strong influence of European Gothic romance on the works of Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell--I hope to show that the antiutopia was, at least originally, a continuation of utopianism, even though its intrinsic ambiguity may have rendered it ineffective as such.

 

Andrzej Zgorzelski

Is Science Fiction a Genre of Fantastic Literature?

Abstract..--What is urgently needed in the study of SF and related genres is some theoretical basis that would make possible the analytical and functional use of such terms as "genre," "the fantastic," and "science fiction." Nobody can be really satisfied with the existing situation, where some authors affirm that SF and science fantasy are "part of fantasy" (Aldiss, Panshin) while others suggest that at least the majority of SF is "realistic" and in direct opposition to "fantasy" (Heinlein). Nor is there any common agreement as to the range of SF. For instance, many critics think that utopia is a kind of sub-genre of SF (Suvin), whereas others suggest that the opposite is true. Even in the most ambitious academic reports and monographs the very concept of genre--surely the most fundamental notion in any systemic approach to literary history--is used in the most diverse ways. It is understood either as a theoretical construct, an essentially stable and extremely limited set of features common to a group of texts (Suvin, Todorov), as a historical phenomenon and a dynamic system of features evolving in its variants (Scholes), or--quite simply--as a class of works defined more or less arbitrarily according to occasional needs of the observer (Rabkin).

It is precisely this variety of views that appears responsible for the diversity of controversial conclusions concerning the determinants of SF and related genres. This essay offers a tentative theoretical outline for an analytical and functional definition of terms such as "genre," "the fantastic," and "science fiction." It will strive to view such texts in the systemic perspectives of both their internal construction and their function within the text-reader historical relationship. It is important to the view the constructional principles and the modes of narration of such texts in the context of literary history so as to bridge the gap between the theoretical and historical approaches to such fictional forms.

 

moonbut.gif (4466 bytes) Back to Home