Archive for October, 2009
The excellent Oktoberfest run by Sci-Fi London is in full swing at the moment. And I'll be taking part in a panel tonight at the Greenwich Observatory about the subject of space travel - do we need it? And should we write about it?
My fellow panellists include the delightful Paul McAuley, who I met at the last Eastercon, Jaine Fenn and Paul Raven. For more details, click round about here.
I've been following a very interesting debate on the Guardian books blog ...Damian G. Walter writes well and wittily about the state of SF, and how the ideas and (dare I use this pretentious word? Yes I'm using it!) tropes of science fiction have entered the mainstream.
However, he also uses the phrase 'post sci-fi', which frankly I don't understand. (As a concept, it seems to me to be, forgive my bluntness, post-sensible.) And as the thread develops, there creeps in the idea that there is a fundamental difference between 'sci-fi' (which I pronounce to rhyme with 'hi-fi' - that's the gag isn't it? why spoil a good joke by calling it 'skiffy'?) and SF. Sci-fi, Damian explicitly says, is the term we should use for Xena: Warrior Princess as opposed to Gene Wolfe (which is 'proper' SF). In other words, dumb SF on TV and B-movies are 'sci-fi', as are 'bad' novels which inhabit an SF universe - the corny squids-in-space stuff. By contrast, SF is the term that serious people use to reference a serious genre of ideas.
Er - ahem? What's wrong with Squids in Space? What's wrong with Xena? (Though I would have called that fantasy not SF myself, but let's not quibble.) What's wrong with Barsoom? Dan Dare? Dumb action science fiction? Is The Matrix sci-fi or SF? Who gets to judge?
My answers to those questions would be: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Both - the words mean the same thing. No-one gets to judge - you can't define a genre by how much 'quality' it has. That way madness lies.
Science fiction is a great term to describe a genre based on extrapolation, imagination, and amazing stuff that isn't based on magic. Sometimes science fiction is profound and rich and complex (1984, Brave New World, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Peter Hamilton at his best, Ian McDonald's Brazyl, Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward, Silverberg, Sturgeon - you can write your own list), sometimes it's sensational action-packed pulp (A.E.Van Vogt, most of Heinlein, E.E. Doc Smith, much modern military SF and, ahem, everything I've written in the genre to date.)
But sometimes, of course, sensational 'pulp' can be of the highest quality - just as in the crime genre, where Chandler and Hammett wrote, literally, for the the pulp mags - and sometimes reading 'serious' SF is as boring as watching paint dry. But I can't see any merit at all in drawing a line in the sand dividing 'dumb' science fiction from 'clever' science fiction.
There is, I'm aware, a distinguished tradition (see here, under Definitions) in the world of SF of using 'sci-fi' in this, essentially, belittling sense. Even so, it annoys the hell out of me. For it seems me a losing tack for science fiction fans (always so stern in berating literary writers who use SF 'tropes' and yet deny they are writing SF) to then deny that any science fiction they don't like - the common, pulpy, B-movie stuff - isn't science fiction at all.
I'd argue that we in the SF community should allow words mean what they are generally understood to mean. Otherwise, sympathetic occasional readers who aren't experts in the genre are going to think we're a bunch of, well, obsessive nerds (if they don't already think so...)
I am, of course, rather touchy on this front, because I'm a great adherent of sensationalist pulp type science fiction in my own work. My aim in the books I've written so far is to write pulp with a dash of difference. Not 'crap', but 'pulp'. (I was delighted when one blogger called Red Claw a 'mashup of 1950s B Monster movie, space opera, and Douglas Adams.') And mixed in with the lurid pulp, there's some character stuff too, and maybe even some ideas that give you pause for thought. So am I writing SF, or am I 'merely' writing 'sci-fi'?
Damn it all: I write science fiction, abbreviate that how you like. But anyone who tries to relegate the 'pulp' element of science fiction to the servants' quarters does not get my vote. I do love certain examples of cerebral science fiction; but I firmly believe that lurid sensationalism, exhilarating adventure, and stupid stuff in SF is never to be sniffed at - it's in the DNA of the genre. And the vast spectrum of SF/sci-fi/science fiction content - from profound to silly, via every other point of the compass - is part of its appeal.
I've just finished Stieg Larsson's marvellous crime thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It's the third book in a trilogy, but with typical incompetence, I bought the second book - The Girl Who Played with Fire - before the first, and read it on holiday. So I have been reading them in the wrong order (and I also won't read the third book until it's out in paperback.)
It's a tribute to the quality of Larsson's storytelling that the books make sense this way round - book 2 scrupulously explains all that has happened before, so I had no trouble following it. And I found it rather satisfying to see events happening in Book 1 to which I knew the consequences.
And both novels are densely plotted, gripping, and rich in amazing characters, several of them extraordinary at a genetic level (though even so, this is a long way from being science fiction!) I'd say that all the praise heaped upon these books is deserved. They are, admittedly, written in heavily expositional prose - sometimes verging on guide-book prose - and there were times when it felt like being trapped in a lift with a garrulous history lecturer. But Larsson's a storyteller, not a stylist; and I was hugely impressed at the way he interweaves his different tales. In Dragon Tattoo, he pulls off the rare feat of bringing a murder story to a climax - and THEN re-embarking on the novel's original story, which is all about a crooked financier, and having a second climax that is even better than the first.
I always think that when you read a great novel, you end up loving the author. Stephen King, for instance, is present on every page of his best novels (when the 'King' voice is absent the books are sometimes, though not always, less good.) And it's impossible to read a Neil Gaiman without believing that you know and are best friends with this amiable, witty, soft-hearted, hard-headed richly imaginative guy.
In the same way, I felt I came to know and like Larsson. I could tell, from the way he writes, that he's a 'fact' person, an intense person, an obsessive person; but also that he has a big heart, and a love of life. He's very interested indeed in sex, and loves and understands women. And his political fervour and insight is utterly genuine (he had a career as a radical journalist before writing the three books of his Millennium trilogy.)
Do you get that feeling too? A sense that a writer whose work you love is at some level your friend? Someone you'd love to spend time with?
Tragically, that will never happen. Larsson died at the age of 50, of a stupidly capricious heart attack, just after delivering the manuscripts of his three novels.
I knew about Larsson's untimely death before I read the books, and thought it was very tragic. But now I've actually read the books - I have a feeling of actual grief. Of course, I never knew him; of course, he never knew me. But dammit, I miss him.
One of the best movies out at the moment - nay, one of the best movies I've seen for many a year! - is the new Pixar animation, Up. It's the story of an old man (voiced by Edward Asner) whose wife dies, and who needs a walker to get around, and who is sad and lonely, and who (for reasons I won't go into, for fear of spoiling it for you) is forced to go into an old people's home.
And it's hilarious! That is pure genius - to take such a dark story and find joy and life and colour in it. If you've seen the trailer, or indeed if you've spotted the image at the top of this blog, you'll know what the high concept is - balloons! - and it's an extraordinary premise that is executed with superb logic, and sublime consequences.
This is a film which has to be seen in 3D - it's a visual banquet, with images of jungle and waterfall and beautifully coloured creatures and, searing its way into the visual cortex, that darned house held aloft by balloons.
I loved Toy Story and Monsters Inc; I thought The Incredibles was genius; I thought Cars was one of the most subtle and evocative films of recent years. But with this new movie, head honcho John Lasseter and his crew have excelled even themselves.
It's written by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter, and directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson - hey those guys must be sick of the sight of each other - with some help on the story from Thomas McCarthy.
Because it's a kids film it's a wee bit embarrassing to go on your own but I did, and you should. Magic doesn't get any more magical than this.
Scientists have just discovered a massive ring around Saturn - which is 1.5 million miles thick. It's made of tenuous dust and is invisible to the naked eye. I saw a TV news item about it which showed what the ring would look like if it were visible - from Earth, it would be larger than the Moon.
I'm reminded of course of Larry Niven's classic Ringworld stories, about an amazing ring-shaped world, a variation on the concept of the Dyson Sphere. If humans could live on a ring orbiting the sun, the amount of land would be - if not infinite - then certainly lots.
And so, I wonder, is Saturn's eighth ring actually an artificial artefact? A home created by sentient beings able to live in space, which like to inhabit tiny particles of dust?
Is this, in short, Ringworld for dustmites....?
Well, maybe not, but it's a thought.