IS SF A LITERATE OR IDEAS ART-FORM?

Good writing and SF seem to be poor bedfellows

University trained literates tend to regard most Science Fiction as a failure in literacy terms compared to general fiction classic literature.

They tend to forget that there are as many, if not more, failures or less successful novels in the general fiction arena than with SF. Compare readers of both markets and the SF fan will remember as many insignificant authors as the grand masters that appealed to them.

What other genre has a significant linked global fan following that discusses not only the stories but the realities behind them? The academics are then left in a quandary as to why their favourite genre - you have to love SF to stay with it after all - is regarded as second-rate, analyse and blame the writing as a whole for being inferior.

This conclusion is drawn by applying the same literary laws as they would for comparison to general classical fiction. It must be pretty upsetting that their remarks doesn't affect either the authors or readers of the SF genre no matter the condemnation they bestow upon it.

The fact that many SF books now hit the best-seller market is seen more as an indictment of mass-appeal than quality writing. Most of this can be attributed to both sides being bloody-minded over each others opinions and ignoring each other. This has been going on since the 50s with Damon Knight, who can't resist indicating how clever he is in his own story post-scripts, started taking other SF authors to task for their poor (sic) literary standards during the time of the pulps.

It must be equally frustrating that SF's role in today's literature has grown rather than shrunken from such insights. Writing style is and always have been a matter of taste. Some authors can be extremely dry in one novel and explosively good in another. Oft times, authors can't do one without the other indicating that it is the growth and development of style that we're paying to read. It probably also reflects a story proposal that a publisher takes an interest in and the author has to go back and write it.

A writer has to be capable of making a good presentation of his or her ideas with a minimum as well as a maximum number of words. Story length should not be regarded as the means to judge quality.

Good writing itself can best be described as being able to put across ideas that are meaningful to the reader without confusion as to their meaning. Critical merit can only be subjective to the individual and not universal. Should SF be regarded as a totally literary medium or as a means to express ideas within a story? Beyond being able to tell a story reasonably well in prose, are they expecting too much that every author has to write a masterpiece each time?

No one has ever done that in general fiction continually either. There is poor writing and poor writing. It doesn't really take much literary skill to write a story in any genre providing there is a basic understanding of grammatical ground rules. What any author brings to the subject is a unique experience and knowledge as much as story-telling ability.

With Science Fiction, it is a combination of experience and imaginative flair for areas that are still in an order of speculation. Writing is one of the few skills that can only get better from practice and learning from previous mistakes. A good story can still be let down by poor writing but will still be read if the idea is mind-spanning enough to catch the imagination.

Even after all these years, E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman or Skylark series captures a proportion of SF readers out to read the earliest multi-book space opera series. It's an unfortunate problem with many early SF stories that making them understandable to that people's era, they were written with the period's sensibilities in mind.

Back then, I doubt if any author wrote for posterity. The same thing applies to much of today's SF stories as well. How the generation of 20 years into the future looking at our current day material will reflect if it survives the passage of time. This 'period blending' only seems out of date because it can be an uneven balance of the SF elements.

Charles Dickens today looks like a historical writer although he was only really writing about his generation's problems. Many of the earlier SF authors got around this period problem by being non-specific. Mention something like a Hi-Fi, like Norman Spinrad did in his 1966 novel, The Solarians, in a futuristic setting immediately dates a story. The same would apply to CDs in a couple decades. SF looks better for using non-ageist labels. It's only things like sexual prudishness that tends to make them stand out.

There is also a case for going over-board in the opposite direction with too many sexual taboos being broken as both Robert Heinlein and Philip Jóse Farmer have illustrated. We then question whether or not our own state of sexual liberty to what is deemed acceptable (sic) good taste. A good SF story exceeds any literary merit or time period sensibilities if the idea, not the foibles, catches the imagination.

Hardly surprising, considering that SF is an ideas genre. The words are the means to convey the image into the brain. If you spent time dwelling on the merits of each word and how they make interesting literary sentence structure, the magic is lost. Literates lose the point when they analyse stories, especially SF, from that point of view.

Literary analysis, in the academic sense, does a disservice to the SF story. It can't be treated quite so empirically like general fiction. That doesn't mean to say that we can't tell the difference between a good or badly written story. All genres bear this particular cross. It's when the ideas don't work that an SF book becomes dissatisfying.

When SF stories are discussed amongst fans, they don't spend time on the literacy of the author but on his ideas. Do the ideas work? Are they inconsistent? Is there some area they haven't exploited correctly? Have they got it wrong?! It's idea analysis that grips the most. I remember reading about a piece that Larry Niven received, and I think mentioned in All The Myriad Ways, from a scientist who bothered to do the maths for Ringworld for its size and mass to see how possible it was based on the information Niven used.

Not everyone is going to want to write, let alone do anything original, but many do see it as a springboard for their own particular sort of interest. It's probably why a large section of the SF community got obsessed with Star Trek or, more lately, The X-Files or Babylon 5 because a common spark was reached that hooked into their imaginations.

TV can be stronger for mutual interest because it reaches a wider-range of audience and equips them all with the same visuals. Books depend on the reader's imagination or something sparked by a spectacular cover. The more imaginative ideas orientated tend to want to do their own exploration and create their own realities and is the probable source for new SF writers. SF is essentially an ideas forum put into the format of palatable stories.

Trying to explain a pet theory without any practical science backing it up will never find a home. Put into a story where it can be demonstrated allows many other people to ponder on the possibility in a reasonably safe way. It explains why so many scientists become fiction writers as it gives vent to their more wild theories without attack.

Even non-scientist SF writers find this a good way to look at the social implications of some ideas. With enough authors doing this, some of the more wildest fantasies can hit on something that is closer to the truth than anyone can ever anticipate. Larry Niven's A Gift From Earth springs to mind regarding the current discussions on cloning at present, despite the fact that it was written some 20 odd years ago.

It can also miss by an equally large margin, as with there being Martians on Mars, but who said SF had to mirror the future? All it needs to do is examine a problem and provide multiple answers. Many of these same Martian stories would still work if the planet was given a different name, indicating the label is wrong not the story quality.

That's not to say that this is all that SF is about. Many stories deal with how the characters cope with new technology, ideas or problems. This brings things to a recognisable level for any reader than what many deem as technobabble. Traditionally, written SF usually brings the explanation in layman's terms so the layman reader can work it out from the story content than some imagined device that will instantly solve the problem.

It is the solutions to unusual problems that make SF unique. It is also a clear indication that SF is not just space-based adventures but covers much of what is loosely called 'off-beat'. Its greatest strengths come from change and relationships because it can do it on a bigger scale than conventional stories.

As SF is an ideas genre, 'Where do the ideas come from?' If anyone has a good answer to that one, will they e-mail HT. For my own part, primary ideas come from asking myself a question and coming up with as many answers that are applicable. The fun comes from deciding which ones will actually work! Other times, it's just a matter of developing an original thought and see where it goes.

Most of the secondary ideas come from things around from filling the gaps. Idea development can be left for a future article and after reaction from the readership, meaning you people reading this. Most people have the ability to generate ideas, it's only when it can be added to a writing skill that it can be passed onto a larger number of people. It's a fair bet that everyone will have their own way of creation.

Most of you will be afraid of analysising too deeply how you do it, fearful that it might damage the process. It is also because it is so hard to pin down, that literates can't analyse ideas and storycraft empirically in the same breath. All anyone can go by is the end result, not the route it was created. If they don't get one without the other, the literates feel the story is a waste. Presenting the ideas in a readable form distinguishes the good and bad writers.

It's more a question of understanding and using storycraft to make the best use of the idea. The fluidity of the writer is probably more important than extensive use of the English language. Any story that requires looking up unusual and not often used words is hardly doing a service to the reader as it interrupts a story's flow.

Saying that, the brain is awfully good at understanding many unusual words by inference within a sentence. Without such aid, books like Frank Herbert's Dune saga and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange would give us all headaches. Where SF is concerned and its usage of 'alien' words, this can become essential but not compulsory. Writing itself is a craft rather than an art form.

A basic understanding of grammar and line construction allows the writing of a story. This doesn't necessarily make it a good story but everyone has to start somewhere. Making the story seductive enough to encase the reader's imagination could be regarded as the writer's flair or practiced skill. A lot of the time, it's just a matter of calling up images that, hopefully, most readers can relate to.

The success of a story beyond the people it was intended for is more a strength of its compelling imagery. If the author is also 'literate', then such skills can be amplified to a better degree but it's not necessarily essential. All three elements combined together can happen in any genre. Read Edgar Pangborn's A Mirror For Observers and tell me that it is not the work of someone who could be at home in any genre (which indeed Pangborn was, having written general fiction as well).

Strictly speaking, it would only require a few adjustments to change the plot into general fiction by making the Martians spies from another country than aliens. SF stories, other than recent scientific developments or discoveries that weren't anticipated making some possibly obsolete, exist in a quasi-time that prevents them ageing.

As such, their life-time extends beyond those in the general fiction genres where usually only the 'best'(sic) survives to the next generation. SF's pulp history is more a problem of finding it's own acceptance before moving up to hard or paperback editions. This is no worse than Dickens, whose novels were originally serialised in a newspaper. None of the critics think this was wrong.

When it comes to fiction, snobbery about roots is mostly ill-chosen. It isn't where it was printed is so important but what it has to say. Likewise, all writers come up from lesser beginnings before getting themselves recognised. It's more the shame that critics overlook this. If you're going to make a living as a writer, then you're willing to work for any publisher who is willing to print your work as you climb the steps to higher financial comeback.

In the early days, SF's demand for ideas orientated stories as quickly as possible was likely to attract writers with in-built ideas generators in their heads than those who would be thought to be based totally on literary skills. In SF, you became quickly unstuck if that was all you had going for you and went on to do something more lucrative.

To be money writing, an author has to show ability to write readable copy quickly and well. This is essentially the philosophy of the hack but doesn't mean the writer has to write like one. An SF author must be aware of being intelligent with the story because the genre's readership will expect something more imaginative than general fiction. In general, hacks move from genre to genre, depending on the flavour of the month.

Saying that, a prolific writer can also be mistaken for being a hack, suggesting the term itself is less than precise. The aforementioned Dickens would certainly come under this classification. Undoubtedly, SF has had its fair share of hacks, but writers who stayed with SF tended to start off with the interest before they began writing stories.

Not much different from today's SF fandom writers who progress to professionalism really. In the 30s depression period, this enabled the existence of many SF magazines. Saying that, they also had many very sensible editors sending writers away with the order to re-write or try again when they felt the material needed a bit of tweaking.

If the recent rejection slips I've had are anything to go by, this aspect of editing seems to be missing these days. If there is a need for better literacy in today's SF writers then it must be achieved early in their development. Without knowing where the story is going wrong, all a writer will do is pass it along the chain of magazines - both professional or amateur - until someone accepts it. If everyone rejects, the process is started all over again with the determined writer wanting to see print but making the same mistakes.

Worse, the new author might just give up feeling he or she will never make the grade. Some determined souls become editors themselves solely to repeat the failure rate on others. Developing the craft is therefore a much slower process. Even if today's editors say they don't have the time, a simple tick-off list of problem errors is far better than a simple reject letter that helps no one improve.

Rejection has to come from more than gut feeling or not being a particular editor's favourite type of material. Story editing, so far, for Hologram Tales has indicated that the new authors coming up aren't developing their ideas or storycraft as much as they could. The first thing any developing new writer does is to attempt to copy something they've seen previously and wish to emulate. This 'copying' makes no distinction between good or bad writers.

I make no distinction of myself in this, although I stopped doing it in my early teens. It takes a lot more work to pull out stories and ideas in your own voice but the effort is worthwhile in the long run. This is also usually the part that I see the most so far. Continuous writing over a long period does improve the literacy and craft, but only as long as the writer uses each piece as a learning exercise and prepared to look over the work with a critical eye later to spot errors.

This has also got to be combined with the need to be satisfied with completing within a time limit or deadline or the story will be worked to death. The real breakthrough is when the neo-author adds his or her own unique twist to something that piques their interest. As with any genre, the more books that are read, the more the aspiring writer can distinguish between what is good and bad writing, not to mention the expression of ideas when compared to other people's work.

This also enables your critical eye to apply the same technique to your own work for spotting obvious mistakes. What you spot will probably be a combination of writing 'quality' and ideas. As an SF reader, it is more likely that the first thing that will be evaluated will be the effective idea usage.

SF requires a certain amount of intellectual understanding of what is being discussed. Working out literacy levels might place you in the same position as a critic but I doubt it. I tend to find that just reading tends to bring up the literacy level by 'rubbing off' irrespective of the storycraft quality.

If you're reading someone who has an obvious 'weaker' or 'poorer' quality technique to yourself, then you either learn from their mistakes to improve your own work or be smug that you're much better. If you're reading someone who has an obvious 'better' or 'superior' quality technique, then you pull up your socks and learn from the technique. Either way works whether there's any conscious effort behind it or not without involving any copying.

The fact that the same books can be read at different times of life and seen differently suggests that it isn't the literary levels that changes but our own perceptions of the material and life. Whenever a book is read, regardless of any literary quality, it adds to our development.

How would we tell the difference between 'good' and 'bad' literature unless there were proportions of each? Only good books would be a utopian ideal. Only bad books would be a version of hell. It's only critics who are the most verbal about which category they belong to, and their personal perspective is often far more jaded than the average reader. Books survive because they are popular with the general populace not the critics.

If a reader doesn't like a book, it makes the effort of reading a second story by the same author unlikely. Let's look at some of my personal experiences over the years and see if you readers can express similar reservations. It might not be with these books or authors but you may have similar feelings. I had to make immense effort to try Heinlein again after finding his Podkayne of Mars boring but, years later, found most of his other books much more intensive and interesting (although a recent read of his Assignment In Eternity practically had me believing otherwise with its rushed ending).

Heinlein's viewpoint might be radical but it certainly makes you think. Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine had a similar effect but unfortunately his The Silver Locusts (aka The Martian Chronicles) confirmed the belief that he wasn't an SF writer in my opinion. This was largely from his attitude to how science interferes with a small town mentality.

No disrespect to Bradbury, but bearing in mind authors, like Clifford Simak, with a similar background managed to extend and use this limitation better, he really falls short. I was always impressed by Piers Anthony's Macroscope and feared the quality would be ruined by reading his other books. I finally plucked up courage last year and read Mute and was disappointed by its lack of vision. It was average really. Undoubtedly, I'm going to be told to try other books by these authors, but please take this as an indication of personal taste and preference that affects us all to some degree. We can all be turned off by an author's work by, what we regard as, a 'bad' performance.

I doubt if any author sets out to write a bad, good or classic story either. They just want to get their ideas in a palatable way on paper that other people can read within a certain deadline. It will be the individual reader's personal taste that dictates whether it's a success or not.

Literacy is from practice with some background sorting out the essential writing flaws we all adopt. If a book is considered 'bad' is this a reflection of the publisher/editor who selected it or a critic's differing opinion to its quality? Books critics tastes are supposed to be beyond the run-of-the-mill but aren't always appreciated by anybody else.

The sheer volume of material a critic reads is likely to jade them before their time and, dare I say it, not assess an average reader's taste. Universal acclamation only indicates that practically no one can criticise the story's merits because it's seen as an attack on a classic. This puts the masterpiece in a similar situation to books that are regarded as a 'bad' book. It isn't unusual for critics to gang up in praise or condemnation of a book than risk being seen as an isolationist in their taste.

This draws some interesting thoughts on personal opinion but explains why SF often gets short rift from the general critics. Critics who have a university background have a 'conformed' idea indoctrination ie they see things in a similar way with letters after their names only differentiating them from other critics. It reminds me of the Emperor's New Clothes parable.

They might quibble over minor points but essentially they'll say the same sort of thing because of such training. Anything else is thought heretical. A lot of writers see being a critic as being the easy option than do any 'serious' story writing themselves. Inexperienced, or worse attempted but failed, some critics invariably pass judgement on something they are unable to do well themselves and take delight in tearing apart. I mean, if they were any good at stories, they wouldn't be criticising. [Before anyone reminds me, I'm fully aware that there are some writers capable of straddling both sides of the fence with great competence but they really are in a minority and rare in the general media critics.]

To sum up jaded aspects of reading in one paragraph and say that's the end of the subject isn't covering all the options. If it appears that I'm loosing the thread in all of this, bear in mind there is a lot of ground to cover. (Looking at this now, I bet I'll change my mind again tomorrow and want to add something more.)

Why do some stories lose some of their qualities we attributed to them as we get older? Seeing new writers re-work the same plot without adding a different slant on them makes them predictable or plagiarist. To some extent, this can't always be blamed on the writer as there are a limited number of basic plots, although not applying new variations certainly is.

Considering how many romance readers are addicted to reading the same plot time after time, suggests either a failing in their taste or something peculiar to the SF genre and its readers.

Publishers, especially today, are often likely to want more of the same that will sell than go out on a limb with something radically different unless they really believe in and are willing to put their jobs on the line that it will sell. As SF is an ideas genre culture and the young are most inspired by ideas, we could be mistaking the loss of interest to the literacy values as an act of age.

Any SF reader who has seen the same things over and over may be seeking more. Rather than seek a change of genre for a while or pursuing different authors, they sometimes go on the offensive to appear socially acceptable. If a particular sort of story or author is no longer considered the 'most popular brand' then it is mercilessly attacked for being out of vogue.

It isn't the material that has changed but its social relevance. Although wide-ranging, SF themes tend to hold some relevance to each generation because they are not always frozen to one time period. I've read it said that many SF readers can be rather conservative in their tastes and this hasn't changed over the years.

For a time, I stuck with authors that I was familiar with and rarely experimented with anything else unless it received popular support or the write up appealed. A change of my financial status, not to mention having read most of the more popular SF realities, made me stretch my horizons and look at a lot of the 'lesser' authors and, a lot of the time, seek more because they were so interesting.

It's so easy to stay pigeon-holed. Is SF a safe genre? I hope not. It's there to make us think and stretch our minds. The range of material is sufficient to please the literates and ideas merchants alike. Closeting just isn't healthy. Logic says there has to be very 'literate' stories as well as 'average' written stories but to discriminate one against the other is hardly a fair comment on any genre. It is up to each individually to evaluate each story's worth than depend entirely on the views of the critics. Some critics put the 'failure' of SF down to a loss of its 'sense of wonder' to them that young readers still have.

This implies the older we get the more jaded or world-weary we become and the less we let ourselves lose in adolescent fantasies (sic). It also signifies that those who don't 'mature' to this point are stuck in some adolescent whirlpool and haven't reached this same high level.

Excuse me, am I missing something here? It looks to me that this 'maturity' is the problem. Are we talking the type of 'maturity' that is often described as 'children putting away their toys to become adults' or close-minded by turning away from a subject because it's not acceptable to like it?? There's a lot to be said for maintaining a childish delight in discovery of a new idea. If we lose that, then we certainly don't deserve to call ourselves SF fans.

The nature of any story presents heroic protagonists and villainous antagonists. In recent years, the nature of both have been greyed sufficiently to enable the ethical motivation of the characters to be decided by the reader, although the final outcome is nearly similar. Stories, even of the SF genre, reflect current day life and its possibilities.

With SF and it's less than domesticated realities, the measure of heroism or villainy is measured on a far larger scale. The addition of super-powers or advanced technology that the hero is capable of using might be an adolescent dream but how many adults don't have such dreams as well? It can't be forgotten that SF is escapism for readers of any age.

If it's an attraction that draws readers in and then they search out other SF books, that might be more or less 'literate' depending on their taste. Oddly enough, the selection of stories that are released professionally is usually decided by a combination of marketing forces and publishers/editors who have been university trained than those brought up through the ranks.

Look at the number of multi-volume fantasy epics that are around. One can only guess at what motivates each and everyone as to what author is capable of bringing in readers to buy the books to cover the costs. Then again, consider the number of SF authors who have been paid vast advances to re-visit realities they created a couple decades ago and thought they finished with.

It should be possible to believe that conservative taste is alive and well in the SF genre's editors and publishers. With the number of TV and film tie-in SF novels clogging the SF shelves of the High Street bookshops, there is also a clear indication that there is too much betting on safe sales than fresh ideas. Marketing forces being what it is, there is bound to be some focus in this area at some point to address this imbalance but it will be a guessing game as to which authors will succeed.

I read an appraisal by a university professor stating he thought many SF ideas as flawed but not exactly saying how. Flawed in the way that it doesn't convey popular ideals or what is considered good material by university professors?

You don't see many of them creating best-selling novels, let alone in the SF genre. If all the ramifications of the idea could be fitted into a story, I'm sure most SF writers would be happy to indulge such whims. Often as not, they only use the parts that fit in with story requirement.

Equally, it could also be said that not all the consequences of an idea have been thought out to all their possibilities. I think all SF writers have been guilty of that. If all the eggs or ideas were planted in one story, there would hardly be any material left for another story along the same lines. Developing the ideas into a strong plot is never particularly easy.

It is primarily a development of questions and answers merged in with a digestible story. The depth of the 'understory' - an area of history for the reality - is likely to be marginalised if it is deemed too intrusive. To give too much depth too quickly might confuse a large proportion of the potential readership. It might also confuse the purchasing editor come to that. Without the editor's interest, no book comes out.

The point being here is that there are a number of factors involved in how depthy any writer goes with an SF story regardless of any literacy level is involved. It is rather too easy to balance the arguments between literacy levels and idea potential and not come down on either side. Logic dictates that there has to be a level of competency from both extremes in any completed story.

Good ideas can sell a poorly written story. Good literacy but poor ideas will only sell an SF pup once. Few will be caught out a second time with the same author. Poor literacy levels are always likely to improve as the writer gains confidence and develops self-assessment of his/her faults but will readers who tried their earlier work be there? That might not necessarily be a problem when newer readers can discover the latter works. A writer without an understanding or appreciation of SF will always be out of place within the genre.

The assessment of SF as a literacy genre will only come into its own when both words and ideas are appreciated equally. To some extent, I believe the literacy critics have largely failed to understand the genre by intellectualising one aspect. That is hardly a new statement. It's been repeated for decades. If anything is wrong, it is how the beliefs are handed down from teacher to student, who then become teachers themselves.

There are few radical enough to want to rock the establishment at the risk of their careers. Any genre around long enough is going to seep into the public consciousness, as indeed to some extent, SF has. Whether the literacy critics like it or not, SF's claims to be the genre of ideas should always maintain its greatest strengths.

That is, until publishers decide to go for the safe-option of regurgitated old plots and ideas and not take chances with anything new. Is SF a 'safe' genre?

That is a question for another time.

Geoff Willmetts

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