| Monday
March 25, 2002
In the SFWA Bulletin Norman Spinrad , currently SFWA President, has
some remarks regarding the science fiction genre. Some members took him to
task for that. One said that Norman is mostly unhappy because the critics
don't take him seriously. I thought that had missed his point, and I
wrote:
Actually, he [Norman Spinrad] is treated with
considerable literary respect in France, as I have seen; more so than many
more "literary" figures are treated in the US. But that's
another matter. Except for Bradbury few among us get any respect outside
our own circle. I well remember Harlan Ellison, speaking over about 40 awards and
trophies he had won and which were piled on the table in front of him,
telling the world he was leaving the literary ghetto of science fiction. I
also recall Chris Priest resigning SFWA with an essay entitled "Out
of the Whale". I thought both performances odd, in that most of the
world never noticed and never would.
It is our doom to be popular and make a fair amount of money, but
"get no respect". That's the way it always has been. Oddly
enough in a few political polls Science Fiction Writers get more approval
than Congress and a lot more than lawyers, being up there with physicians;
and some science fiction works have sold quite well,
But we aren't literary writers. A few of us are and try to be, but most
of us are mere story tellers, and wishing we were great literary figures
is mere wishful thinking: we don't write that well, and given what we are
paid we aren't likely to unless we have the kind of talent that produces
Great Art quickly. Most of us have to pound out far too many word in too
short a time.
So we tell stories. Some tell better stories than others. Some sell
pretty well, although none of us come close to J K Rowlings, and suddenly
Tolkein is getting up there in numbers too. Deservedly in his case: if
this genre produced an epic that will be around a while, Lord Of The Rings
is likely to be it, and Tolkein was happy enough to be an honorary member
of SFWA and later to join and pay dues when he was eligible. (Stanislaw
Lem on the other hand resigned his honorary membership because we weren't
worthy of him; he read Heinlein's dictum about "what we are after is
Joe's Beer Money" and took it very seriously and decided we aren't
literary and never will be and wished a plague on us.)
(Actually the Lem Affair, over which Le Guin resigned, was even
stranger than I have made it, but it's another matter: my point is that
Lem made it very clear that he didn't consider SF to have any literary
merit at all, and never would it have.)
Many from time to time do that: they try to judge science fiction by
strict literary critical standards, and we always come up short. Of course
most real literary writers don't take many literary critics seriously
either although I suppose some do. I have been long away from the world of
"real literature" and in my last dip, when everyone was in the
throes of deconstruction, I discovered I was quite happy to have no truck
with these senseless people.
Incident: my editor once took me to Eileen's in NYC. It wasn't a
particularly pleasant bar (this was before I quit drinking). No one was
going to throw us out: Bob Gleason was a major editor for a major house
and not just a science fiction editor. But no one wanted to talk to us
either. Gleason said, I think loud enough for people in there to hear him,
"I thought it would be interesting since you outsell all these people
in here put together," and we left. Now I suspect he was exaggerating
for effect, and certainly none of the really major novelists of our day
were present at the time, but his point was the same one Niven made years
ago: for at least some of us, SF is a country club. We're assured a
sizable minimum of sales even if we're not often going to hit best seller
lists (but we can: I've been on that list 6 times now, and there are those
here who can laugh at my numbers). We're assured a reasonable respect from
our readership even if our name recognition isn't all that great.
I think Norman wants to change our image for the better and I think he
can't do it; but I don't think his motives are anything like as petty and
trivial as they have been made here.
After some dialogue I then added:
I think that fandom did in fact produce some of our problems: had
Sirens of Titan won the Hugo instead of the forgettable Campbell editorial
made into a novel -- They'd Rather Be Right I think was the title? --
Vonnegut would have accepted his Hugo and we might not have been cut off
from the literary world. This happened many long years ago, but Vonnegut
has been very influential in the literary world.
It probably didn't help that years later, Phil Farmer, having rather
graciously been given permission to write the novel Venus on the
Halfshell as by Killgore Trout, went on national TV and in an
unguarded moment said that he would have written it had Vonnegut not given
permission. Vonnegut took that as a slap in the face, renewing his
distaste for us as a literature.
Of such trivia has our history been made. The Lem incident probably
didn't help either.
The fact is that we have little "great literature" in the
works written by those in our ranks. We have some damned good story
telling, and we have been influential: I have a dozen testimonials from
scientists, some world class, saying that they first took a serious
interest in science from having read SF stories and essays, mine among
them (a few have been gracious enough to pretend that I was the guiding
influence, which is flattering but unlikely). Story tellers can be
influential, particularly among those of an impressionable age.
We are, I suspect, closer in kin to Dumas than to Victor Hugo; to Sir
Walter Scott and R L Stevenson than to Dickens. We have among us some who
aspire to be Dickens, but I never have. Scott and Stevenson are more than
enough inspiration for me (and even that reach exceeds my grasp, but at
least I don't flatter myself that I could reach further).
Whether it's helpful to think of ourselves as in the tradition of
Victor Hugo is another matter. I often think it's harmful to think that
way.
Mostly I tell stories, and I'm happy enough in this place, which
Ellison always calls a ghetto but which Niven, I think more accurately, labeled
a country club.
And that is more than enough pontification for the day.
I am now having a problem with finding this page on line. Sigh.
Thanks to Joel Rosenberg I found the problem. Currrent isn't the same
as current...
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