BOOKS IN REVIEW
Post-War
Developments in Science-Fiction Criticism: A (West) German View
Reimer Jehmlich. Science Fiction. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1980. ix + 170 pp. DM 37.50
Reimer Jehmlich's book is a concise but hardly a first or an all-encompassing attempt
at giving an overview of the intricate network of SF research, its most important
exponents, tendencies, and results. By and large his represents a historical survey of the
critical reception of SF since the Second World War. Science Fiction examines
heterogenous points of view in SF research, giving attention primarily to West German
publications--and hence presuming that SF is now regarded in West German academic circles
as a field of serious study. The author puts great emphasis on the exemplary relevance of
SF for and its critical reception in literary studies. At the same time, he argues that SF
must be dealt with in relation to "canonic" literature and that SF criticism can
evolve only through a connection with other literary research. Moreover, the author is
concerned with pointing out the failings and desiderata of SF research in its present
state; and he inclines towards proposing specific tasks for future research rather than
furnishing a redefinition of SF.
Jehmlich begins with a discussion of the problematics of delimiting and hence defining
the genre. He suggests that the well-sounding definitions such as Darko Suvin's (in
"On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre") or Stanislaw Lem's (in Fantastyka
y Futurologia) are esteemed too highly inasmuch as they account for only a fraction
of SF. But though believing that 99% of SF is excluded by those definitions, Jehmlich does
not supply much in the way of an alternative. Instead he focuses on the reasons for the
lack of a consensus on what SF is. This he attributes to the nature of the genre; to
disagreements about whether to take "quality," "average," or
"low" SF as the basis of definition; to the commercialization of the genre; to a
terminology which produces fragmentation (also along nationalistic lines; witness the
German terms that have been applied to SF: Science Fiction, Utopia, Zukunftsroman,
Wissenschaftliche Fantastik, etc.); and to the bibliographical problems that feed, as
well as feed upon, definitional confusion. Nevertheless, Jehmlich does not hesitate to
quote statistics about the publication of SF as if there were general agreement on what
counts as such.
Though inconsistent at times, Jehmlich's approach to this "controversial"
genre and its critical reception contributes to the discussion of how traditionalistic
influences in dealing with the unconventional and the interdisciplinary create obstacles
in the form of a fetishism of methods and "Fachegoismus" (i.e., individualistic
compartmentalizing). These last-mentioned tendencies become clear through Jehmlich's short
history of SF criticism, both fan and academic. According to him, the motive for
norm-creation lies in the perception that much SF criticism displays a lack of literary
standards and thus unwittingly tends to trivialize the genre and cut it off from
"mainstream" literature. So, too, he thinks that many critics make the error of
being ahistorical in their approach--that by concentrating on synchronic analyses, they
arrest any progress of critical understanding. He does see reasons for hope in such
developments as a greater attention to primary texts and an increasing consciousness of
the problematics of the genre and of the methodologies applicable to it. But he also sees
little in the way of the sort of exchange of information common among scientists: SF
analyses still tend to begin at ground zero, as if the critic were the first to be saying
something about the genre or a particular work belonging to it. He thus underlines once
more the need for transforming, if not revolutionizing, academic practices, the need for
critical production not totally determined by presently institutionalized habits of
thought.
Though he does make reference to "pioneer" contributions in the field,
Jehmlich mainly concerns himself with reviewing developments in post-World War Two SF
criticism, especially in West Germany. Above all he stresses the evolution of critical
methodologies as exhibited by German critics, who, in his terms, seem to be polarized
between "bourgeois" and Marxist perspectives, but who also appear to be
attaining more and more clarity in their theorizing and a heightening consciousness of the
problematical (here he cites Martin Schäer and Horst Schröder as examples). On the
other hand, Anglo-American research has, in Jehmlich's opinion, remained much more obscure
and unorganized despite its tendency to focus on specific themes and questions: generally
the analyses take a global approach and are methodologically conventional. (He does,
however, make SFS an exception to the rule that SF criticism in English is weak in its
theoretical underpinnings.)
Jehmlich limits his diachronic review to SF criticism available in German or English.
Indeed, he hardly refers to French or Italian research at all and barely acknowledges
Soviet and other East European publications--something which contradicts his stated
intention of systematically examining the critical history of the SF genre. None the less,
he pleads for international exchange, terminological clarification, and a clear typology
of heterogenous definitions. The research goal he sets for SF criticism involves an
internationally co-ordinated historico-critical Gesamtdarstellung (i.e.,
collective enterprise), whose aim would be to take SF out of its "ghetto" and
integrate it with "mainstream" literature. Warning of the dangers of critical
atomisation or stagnating dogmatism, he demands the kind of analysis oriented towards
"textual reality" and attempting to reveal--and go beyond--what properties of
content and form typify SF as they manifest themselves in the "deep structure"
of SF texts.
Science Fiction serves to recall the institutional and methodological
constraints that SF criticism has labored under more than it reveals possible new
directions. As an account of the "state of the art" of SF criticism, it is
nevertheless useful: at the least, it reminds the reader of SF's present critical status.
--Angela Habermann
Poul Anderson, Technocrat and Bard
Adolfo Morganti. Poul
Anderson, tecnocrate e bardo. Pescara: "L'Altro Regno,"
1981. 42pp. L. 3000
The first in a series of monographs sponsored by the publishing house "L'Altro
Regno" and devoted to exhibiting the wide range of Italian SF criticism is Adolfo
Morganti's concise study of Poul Anderson, which concentrates exclusively on the
well-known "heroic fantasies" by the prolific Scandinavian-American author.
Surveying various works, both in prose and in verse, Morganti dwells on the
"poetic" excellency of Anderson's writings, which in technique and inspiration
earn them a place alongside those of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Celtic-Germanic sagas of the
North European Middle Ages.
The mythical recreation of a fantastic universe where fairy queens and elves share the
spotlight with fearless explorers and incorruptible merchants is seen by Morganti as the
result of a dualistic Weltanschauung: Anderson, in his view, hovers midway
between an optimistic belief in the powers of technocracy and an overt disavowal of the
positivistic ineluctability of progress in favor of a "cyclic notion" of history
(p. 21) based upon a revaluation of "myths," "traditions," and
"rituals" as the primeval societal links uniting a community. Quoting mainly
from the Italian translations of The Queen of the Air and Darkness, The Broken Sword, and
No Truce with Kings, Morganti effectively points out the ideological implications
of their dualistic vision, which makes Anderson praise, on the one hand, the political
perdurability of medieval feudalism, while, on the other (e.g., in Three Hearts and
Three Lions), portraying the latest advances in modern science as well as the innate
goodness of parliamentary democracy (this through the character of the 20th-century
engineer Holger Carlson as "transferred" to the body of the legendary Danish
knight Oggeri).
Again, Morganti is keen on showing the basic contradiction which seems to be not only
at the root of Anderson's heroic fantasies but at the core of contemporary, mainly
American, SF as well: "In most SF, the
'scientific' essence reduces itself to an
extreme defense of the ideology which has generated present Western society, and the evils
of today are pretty much shrouded in a golden veil, enlarged to a cosmic level, and dished
out as the `norm' for humanity" (pp. 18-19; my translation). Anderson, by maintaining
throughout his works a dualistic tension between these two "commonplace" of
SF--i.e., the spiritual depth and poetic beauty of a magical and mythological past as
opposed to a heavily industrialized, technological, and militarized present--brilliantly
achieves that critical ambivalence between the "technocrat" and the
"bard" which, according to Morganti, constitutes the peculiar fascination of
this author.
With the analysis of two-recurring themes that underline such an interpretation-- woman
and warfare--Morganti concludes his intelligent and well-informed essay by suggesting
that, through Anderson, we are confronted with "a child of these unfortunate
times," torn between a faith in the rationale of science and a belief in the
"voice of millennia, the intuition of the archetype, the beauty of Symbol and
Myth" (pp. 38-39).
--Paola Galli Mastrodonato
Trial Reading
Nicholas D. Smith, ed. Philosophers Look at Science Fiction. Chicago:
Nelson-Hall 1982. 215pp. $20.95 cloth, $10.95 paper
About the time this book first appeared in the Fall of 1982, I read the philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (Notre Dame UP, 1981), which stresses the
teleological importance of narrative. That book brought home to me the point that the
stories we tell seem to hold significance for the student of ethics; and I was therefore
eager to read the essays which Nicholas Smith gathered from among academic philosophers
who had become interested in SF and who had presented their views at meetings of the
Science Fiction Research Association and elsewhere. Furthermore, as a branch of narrative
at the cutting edge of change, SF invites both interdisciplinary and innovative study,
which I believe ought to be stretched to its methodological limits.
In their nicely elaborated introduction to the book, Smith and Fred D. Miller, Jr. do
emphasize the methodological self-consciousness of this collection, though they seem to
assume too naive an audience. Nevertheless, much SF is philosophic and epistemologically
or methodologically driven. We want to know how we know. Similarly, philosophers
themselves experiment with method in order to triangulate the truth. This book stands out,
then, in two ways from the usual collection of academic essays on literary matters. It
does not read like a text printed from a literary journal, and it raises questions about
SF that literary scholars often ignore.
I must hasten to add that such forms and functions do not always produce happy results.
The book contains 13 pieces plus the introduction to them in fewer than 200 average-size
pages of text. The essays themselves are for the most part cryptic, even blunt, analytic,
and to my ear almost innocently arrogant. Philosophers seem to know what they want to
accomplish and go at it directly, without some of the graces and circumlocutions of
historians or literary scholars. Monte Cook may represent the best example of this
cryptic, analytic approach. His two essays ("Tips for Time Travel" and "Who
Inhabits Riverworld?") set out to debunk what might be called images or groups of
images; and he does enlighten the reader about a lot of untenable notions in SF. But
sneaking in a familiar second-person manner of address that at best is self-possessed and
analytic, he at times sounds condescending. Cook's tone and rhetorical approach to the
literature is the dominant one of the book.
Fortunately, the method bends back on itself in "The Absurdity in Sartre's
Ontology: A Response by Ursula K. Le Guin," the essay in which Wayne Cornell observes
that "Le Guin would have us return to nature[,] ... to... the way things really are,
nameless but not absurd" (p. 151). Writers do reach for a presence that may not be
nameable. Philosophers, on the other hand, are driven by analysis that often seems to
reduce more than it enhances. The MacIntyre book that I mentioned above took the direction
of the ethical rather than the analytic philosopher; but here the only essays that touch
on ethics (in addition to Cogell's) seem to be two that also contain disturbing
arrhythmias found too commonly among these philosophers. Robert E. Myers chooses to
include some technical jargon that borders on the barbaric ("the
Operational-Behavioral/ Functional-Mechanical mode"); and Robert G. Pielke discusses
Heinlein in a manner that could benefit from what I would call "literary
positioning." Again, however, these are academic philosophers writing, not literary
scholars; and the methodological alienness is important.
My major caveat has to do with a matter implicit especially through the analytic essays
and stated explicitly by Smith in his short preface: the tendency to associate philosophy
itself with a John Campbell type of positivism. "Most science fiction," Smith
avers, ''assumes that the universe is orderly, that this order can be exposed and
exploited by rational endeavor.... These assumptions also lie behind much of
philosophy" (p. x). But what of the other speculative possibilities, and what of a
somewhat less solemn notion, that of play? The only relief from the narrow-vision
positivism of the reductive and analytic philosophers (notwithstanding the slight
seasoning of ethics) comes in the closing piece by Justin Leiber, "Fritz Leiber and
Eyes." This essay is playful, biographically informative, and definitely literary in
nature; and just as definitely, it is one of the few exceptions to the ruling presumptions
of Philosophers Look at Science Fiction.
How valid the philosophizing in the Smith collection is something for philosophers
themselves to decide. On the whole, the volume does strike me as having an
interdisciplinary and challenging newness; but I found it a trial in another sense of that
word as well. Which, however, is not to say that I would not like to see the method tried
again.
--Donald M. Hassler
Promiscuous Futurology
Chris Morgan. Future
Man. NY: Irvington, 1980. 208pp. S16.00
The author, who contributed a chapter on alien encounters to Robert Holdstock's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978), has produced a handy, though unsophisticated,
survey of some three score books about the future. Though most are recent, his sources
range back to H.G. Wells's Anticipations (1901) and J.B.S. Haldane's Possible
Worlds (1940) and stop short of Megatrends and Jonathan Schell. His favorite
futurists are Alvin Toffler and Herman Kahn. Morgan is an enthusiastic if undiscriminating
bibliophile whose gleanings include matter on evolution, androids and automation,
biofeedback, cloning, orbital colonies, dream studies, energy and the environment, ESP,
industrialization and the "Less Developed Countries," population and longevity,
telepathy, and so on.
Morgan seems to have read up on these things mainly from the point of view of an avid
SF fan. In the meandering course of his discussion, he alludes to dozens of works in the
genre, concentrating on those of Wells, Stapledon, Clarke, Heinlein, and Silverberg, while
mentioning many lesser writers. Indeed, the notorious inaccessibility of the future has
urged him to move freely among SF, social satire, and serious prediction in search of
interesting and imaginative notions.
Morgan makes no claim to original thinking or investigation, and his unpretentious
effort to gather so much in the way of miscellaneous predictions will be useful to many,
although some readers will tire quickly of his tendency to muse raptly at the typewriter.
A darting sample:
Telepathy would mean instant communication, perhaps over long distances. It could put
an end to all misunderstanding and loneliness. It might make crime and violence
identifiable at an early stage, enabling them to be controlled. Lack of privacy could be a
problem, depending on how easy it became to read the thoughts of others and whether any
barriers (mental or physical) could be erected to prevent this.
Not to worry, Chris. The barriers are firmly up.
--Richard Dwyer
Back to Home