Good Stuff

[Fung Koo]

Personally, I've always had the feeling that the genre classifications in literature develop concurrently with the post-Darwinian classification insanity. There didn't seem to be any urgency to the need to classify until Darwin. Then pair that with the industrialization of Europe where you get "specialization" (a fancier term for class), and then all the insanity of other forms classification with the manifesto movements, and nationalism. And radio: Instantaneous long-distance culture transmission.

I've also always thought that Literary Theory is the arts' equivalent to the scientific disciplines. They develop at about the same time, and are organized to create the "Universal Bridges" Kat talks about as "objective" frameworks to assess, categorize, etc. The "Scientification of Literature," if you will.

Of course, there's lots more going on than the push of developing modern science. Literacy is a huge one. Hygiene, thus healthier and larger populations, thus more readers and more writers, is another. And then, of course, radio blows everything up. Newspapers, books, magazines, suddenly transmitted through the air.

All of these factors, and so many more... and the only way humanity can make sense of large amounts of information is to dissect it, separate it into smaller bits, organize it based on stereotypical qualities.

What's interesting about this to me is whether or not the authors aspired to conform to the classifications before, say, 1840-1900 -- in other words, did any author ever try to write inside a genre? The earliest example I can think of is Arthur Conan Doyle. No one else (outside of poets) stuck so rigorously to a format.

So your point, Dawn, about unclear borders for role models and precursors, has a lot of weight. There's really only 2 or 3 precursors to Doyle... DeQuincey's "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts," and Poe's "Purloined Letter." Neither is "Detective Fiction" proper, but Doyle clearly based Sherlock Holmes on Dupin, and set up his plots similarly to "On Murder." And Wilkie Collins actually puts DeQuincey right into "The Moonstone."

Personally, I think the earliest work you can source as proper SF (as distinct from the pre-fantasy pseudo-mythological type) is More's "Utopia." But calling it SF is meaningless, since its the root of so many later things, and has no tradition from which to label it. But blend the utopia/dystopia idea with the Detective Fiction model? That accounts for pretty much the entire body of early 1920s-1950s Modern SF.

 

[mylinar]

In 1657 Cyrano de Bergerac wrote 'A Voyage to the Moon' which had many, if not all of the major elements of Science Fiction. I have always considered this the birth of the genre. I really do not consider this work of the psuedo-fantasy type because many of its concepts were extensions of existing technologies. Fireworks become rocket propulsion, muskets become the firearms of the Moon Men and so forth.

This has been an interesting, though almost exhausting to read topic, but I do not see that it can ever have anything like a conclusion. It has been an excellent example of logical discourse and how to write persuasive essays and to write them well.

 

[Fung Koo]

I think you mean "The Other World" comedies (Empires of the Moon/Empires of the Sun). "Voyage to the Moon" is a Melies brothers film from 1902, based on Wells and Verne (that was no doubt influenced by Bergerac).

Either way, Bergerac is definitely one of the great examples of proto-SF. Interesting to note, then, that "The Other World" comedies were censored by the powers that be. Also interesting is that these stories came out immediately following the Copernicus/Galileo period in the late 16th century. The powers that beed, the gatekeepers of commercial v. literary, in this instance, would appear to be the RC Church! Scared and Secular

Now here's a query... Nautical Navigation was based on Astronomy and Astrology. Astrology was as much science as fantasy back in the day -- the two were so intertwined its nearly impossible to tease them apart. 17th Century lit in particular is riddled with tales of strange creatures and strange lands (hence "Gulliver's Travels" later on). Given the extent that these Nautical Tales are infused with Astrological/Astronomical references, are adventure tales, are based on science and exploration, contain "alien" creatures, and have a tendency to display utopian/dystopian idealism, can this body of lit also be considered proto-SFF?

If so, there may be an enormous amount of historical text related to the censorship of these tales that might go to further the argument that the denigration of SFF, and the conflation of SFF with commercial/secular lit, was effected by the Sacred in direct relation to the religious institutions continual loss of power over western society. High-brow "sensibilities" about "Literature" then are perhaps just old quasi-religious proscriptive hangups.

Hmm... I sense a thesis coming on...

 

[KatG]

Oh, we never come to a conclusion. You can't, you see, as you can never have that universal bridge. Literature is the Mad Hatter's tea party.

Yes, Fung, I'd say some of the adventure stories would be considered SF. I don't consider it proto-SF because I don't think the definition of SF should be limited to the formation of the category market in the 20th century. For me, Frankenstein is SF, etc.

Before you write the paper on censorship of early SF stories, you might want to check out a speech Greg Bear gave related to his newest novel, talking about Wells and Verne. I think I've got the link somewhere; I'll look. Anyway, he was talking about how Wells and Verne were embraced by upper class literary circles and many of them tried their hand at SF stories at that time, as part of the movement of romanticism (which I guess is how SFF ended up in that category in academia.) Essentially, SF was just seen as another type of literature -- celebrated, not censored. Until after World War I, and the economic crises following it, which then turned off these people from writing stories about the future, dystopia, and science, which was seen as bringing horrible ills -- bombs, mustard gas, etc., leading more to the social commentary novels of the 20's and 30's as the main focus.

SF was essentially left to the other publishing market, then -- the paperbacks, magazines and comics sold in the drugstores. It was there that the category market developed, phasing into a full book market in the 1950's, after World War II, not coincidentally. It's really there that the majority of the prejudices come from -- the format, not the form, along with the selling venue and the type of publishers. This sort of publishing prejudice continues today. People disavow it, because hey, who cares which house publishes a book? But indirectly, they often care very much, and they care very much where in the bookstore it's sold, etc.

SFF has in fact gotten a boost of respectability just from publishers taking the plunge from expanded revenues and paying co-op advertising to put titles in the front of the bookstore. Just by having more SFF titles, in hardcover, up front with the other top fiction sellers has increased SFF's profile as substantial fiction. Whether that means that the SFF section of the bookstore will ever be seen as respectable, I don't know, but it's kind of interesting.

 

[Fung Koo]

That do indeed sound interesting.

I know we've debated this point before, you and I, but the high-brow friendly SF is usually utopian/dystopian fiction. And there is a significant difference between genre SF and utopia/dystopia lit. Utopia/Dystopia is more closely aligned with the satirists/critics/poli scis/social commentators -- which is extremely friendly to the academic/snob/high-brow/literary-aficionado sect -- whereas genre SF is more closely (m)aligned with Fantasy (kid's stuff, really ). Utopia/Dystopia can easily adopt either form, and so acts as master category or sub-thread, depending on how you want to look at it.

I could rummage around in the forums to find the expanded argument and repost the link, but that smacks of effort...

And we're now going into semantics and pedantics... As usual

So to get back to the original point... I maintain that the literary/commercial divide not only important, but necessary to our understanding of the human world.

 

[Randy M.]

Couldn't get this finished and sent yesterday, couldn't get it sent this morning -- has sffworld had some technical issues? -- so here goes again ...

Good points about the history of the novel and the literary pecking order.

Originally Posted by Randy M.
...academia as delineator of what is and isn't literary only gained real influence over the mass of readers in the '50s and '60s, say about the time that most of our recognized literary writers were starting to come out of the universities....

And, that's when the TV entered the market...

That's part of the equation, yes. TV hit the general circulation magazines hard and pretty much eradicated the pulps -- much of early TV drama was pulp-like, and still is. Those writers moved on to other things like novels and writing TV shows (also writing for comics, like Edmund Hamilton and Alfred Bester). (Oddly, sf went through one of its boom periods in the late '40s, early '50s as TV came in. This was spurred by new magazines like Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and probably moreso, as Kat pointed out, by the sudden appearance of a book market.)

But in the literary world as a whole, another vital part was played by the GI Bill. The generation of WWII vets were going to college in numbers beyond that of any previous generation, and that included writers. The literary generation previous -- Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and so on -- was largely self-taught, those who started college not graduating. They read widely and deeply, and learned their craft from what they read of the classics and from scrutinizing the work of their peers. The generation of writers appearing after WWII like, say, John Barth, learned through the university, many of them stayed at the university in one capacity or another, and saw the university as the center and source of information, knowledge, and forward-thinking. This encouraged so-called post-modernism, with it's emphasis on an intellectual reading experience replete with irony and not as concerned with emotional connection.

SF wasn't really affected by this at first. It took until the early 1960s before a wave of college educated writers like Malzberg, Disch, Delany and Le Guin began to make an impact. Let me qualify that: There were college grads writing sf in the 1950s, but the majority held degrees in the hard sciences. In the 1960s there was an influx of writers with degrees outside the hard sciences.

There's an evolutionary history here that I don't think can be glossed. I've said it elsewhere, but we need to remember a few things when we talk about Academic and literature -- most importantly, "commoner language" (ie - secular) literature wasn't introduced into universities for viable study until the middle/late 1800's.
And we also have to remember that when English-language "literature" was first introduced as viable for academic study barely 150 years ago, the novel was considered the absolute lowest of the low.

Bingo. Until the late 19th century, only classical literature was taught. Somewhere after the turn of the 20th century, a few more modern writers began to sneak in, probably the most current writer included would have been someone like Henry James. This is what the Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald generation rebelled against, and it was that generation that, slowly working their way up the academic ladders, pulled contemporary work into the English courses.

You referenced HG Wells -- his most popular work was radio theatre.

But he was also accepted as literature, read and praised by Henry James (among other luminaries) before they had a falling out.


Randy M.

 

[Fung Koo]

I always screw up this statistic on dates, but it's one of my faves:

As of 1911, it was possible for an individual to read every published work in the English language, including the translated Greco-Roman classics, in a single lifetime. By 1930, it would take 7 lifetimes, and today the number of lifetimes would incalculable.

 

[KatG]

That do indeed sound interesting.

I know we've debated this point before, you and I, but the high-brow friendly SF is usually utopian/dystopian fiction. And there is a significant difference between genre SF and utopia/dystopia lit. Utopia/Dystopia is more closely aligned with the satirists/critics/poli scis/social commentators -- which is extremely friendly to the academic/snob/high-brow/literary-aficionado sect -- whereas genre SF is more closely (m)aligned with Fantasy (kid's stuff, really ). Utopia/Dystopia can easily adopt either form, and so acts as master category or sub-thread, depending on how you want to look at it.

I could rummage around in the forums to find the expanded argument and repost the link, but that smacks of effort...

And we're now going into semantics and pedantics... As usual

So to get back to the original point... I maintain that the literary/commercial divide not only important, but necessary to our understanding of the human world.

We don't disagree entirely. I agree that utopia/dystopia SF tends to get the nod, in all its forms, because it's seen as social commentary, and therefore as more dramatic weight, and because the New Wave authors were obsessed with it and they were the ones who got taken up in the 1960's and 1970's as a literary movement using SFF. But we do disagree on terminology, mainly that you have a very narrow definition of what "genre" SF is, and one that is based on publishers' category scheduling decisions more than you like to admit.

The range of category utopia/dystopia SF is not any different from the range of non-category utopia/dystopia SF, in either prose styles or subject matter. But here again, we get the prejudices against publishers -- Del Rey versus Knopf. This type of categorizing has been gradually discarded over the last forty years -- again often due to the efforts of academics and college students. So yes, utopia/dystopia can be seen as some sort of uber-bridge sub-field, but only in the sense that it has overcome prejudices, or become a useful excuse for dropping them, not that picking such subject matter has some unique literary merit.

The category offerings are seen as overall having more violent action -- though quite often they don't. And this again has been a chief factor because it's seen as an obstacle to be overcome to literary worth -- a notion that would have been scoffed at in the early part of the 20th century, but became a common view right around when the two arms of fiction publishing started to merge in the second half. Cyberpunk SF, which mixed violent action of revolution thrillers with utopia/dystopia social commentary, for instance, was scorned in many sectors at first in the 1980's. But it has in the last twenty years become a favorite of academic courses, because the notion that the violent action/suspense disqualifies it was junked by many groups of people.

Non-utopia/dystopia SF, especially in the category market, is also filled with social commentary, but it tends to get dismissed of this possibility by many with the spaceships, laser guns, elves and swords argument, which usually is an I didn't actually read it argument. Juvenile fantasy was an early breakthrough in literary regard, partly because it was in the children's category -- most of which is considered literature -- rather than the adult paperback market.

For this and other reasons, I find the use of juvenile and mature to be inaccurate and not very useful terms when referring to different prose styles and structures of SFF fiction. If you want to say that juvenile applies to different styles and language usages, fine, but you'll have a very hard time coming up with a definition of what that consists of that people will agree on. A substantial amount of "pulp" fiction was and is literary. It's just a particular style. And I don't go along with the idea that if I pick from Column A, I'm a literary genius and if I pick from Column B, I'm a commercial, juvenile hack. That's trying to classify styles instead of examining them, for me. That's not exactly what you are saying, but it is how many people are going to interpret it.

I also think you have to look at that the definition that you use for commercial is not the one that people commonly use for it. So when you say that the literary/commercial divide is important, you're talking about something different than what most others are using the literary/commercial divide for, which is to separate titles into Column A and Column B on a fluid, inconsistent and non-agreed bunch of criteria that quite often has nothing to do with actual writing. Usually has nothing to do with actual writing, in fact. So there is going to be a disconnect between what you are trying to say and what most people are hearing, if you continue to use those terms. Sacred and secular might be a safer bet.

I found the Greg Bear stuff. It's a talk he gave in Seattle regarding the literary history behind his new novel End of Days. Part 3 is the part with the disillusionment of the upper class material, but it's worth listening to Parts 1 and 2 to get the context before that. It's a really interesting speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8jcFKm9vMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8jcFKm9vMc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k094Vc1gEuA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws9dahptadg

 

[KatG]

We have a mandate, people. Get cracking.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6612603.html

 

[Fung Koo]

Badass, politically savvy vampires?

I'm on it.