Depth, Height, and Mass of SF
Posted on 30 July 2010
How to read (and critique) a book, especially a science fiction book:
A tale is a magic trick, a glamor, a mesmeric spell, a craft of illusion. The reader of a storybook attempts to deceive himself into believing the dreams in the book are real, so that, in the case of mainstream books, he may visit other lives vicariously, and, in the case of science fiction, other worlds.
The writer’s task is to assist the deception insofar as possible by means of two sleights of hand.
The first sleight of hand is called verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is to make the drama, setting, props, and persons to come alive in the reader’s imagination by means of a pretense of reality or realism.
In mainstream novels, the verisimilitude is done by an appeal to the realistic details the reader knows or pretends to accept as conventions from real life—including such basic conventions as the idea that nothing happens for no reason. In science fiction novels, the verisimilitude is done by an appeal to scientific principles or inventions or extrapolations either that are known to the reader and known to be possible, such as rocketry, or that the reader will accept as a convention despite its impossibility, such as faster-than-light drive or time travel. In high fantasy, the reader accepts the convention of the world as it was before the industrial and scientific revolutions of the Middle Ages (yes, that scientific revolution is older than you were taught in school that it was), that it is peopled with spooks and haunted with dangerous twilit elfin glamour, and that the horns we hear echoing dimly over the untrod and hollow hills do not sound for us.
The introduction of unconventional, unrealistic, or reasonless elements can be accomplished, if at all, only by some craft that does not jar the reader out of the verisimilitude. This is an important point, often overlooked: verisimilitude does not mean realistic. It means unrealism that creates the illusion of reality. Verisimilitude means believable.
The worst thing a write can do is add some element to his story merely because the real-life events on which the story is based actually happened that way. Real life is not realistic. Real life is filled with strange and baffling coincidences. Real life is startling and defeats all expectations and accounts. In real life, the wicked prosper and the good are punished. In other words, real life is not believable. If you must introduce a realistic element in a story, by which I mean an unlikely and impossible coincidence, then introduce it at the beginning, or make up some believable excuse to shoehorn it into your tale in a fashion the readers will accept: such as a gypsy curse.
Keep in mind that the conventions of verisimilitude depend on the genre. In a comedy, no one is startled or baffled if the most absurd coincidences happen, provided only that the absurdity is funny. Horror likewise: the readers will very generously allow for the most unlikely events, even supernatural events, provided only that they are scary.
The second sleight is drama, by making the story mean something more than a mere recitation of events. The story has to have a theme and a conclusion and other bits of craftsmanship real-life stories rarely have, but which human beings, because we are not merely robots or beasts who walk on two legs, intuitively know should be and must be in a story.
A story that was full of verisimilitude but lacked drama would be like a history book or newspaper account.
The tale of the life of Alexander the Great is full of action and huge events, but it ends with him dying of crapulence after a drinking party. The tale of Julian the Apostate and his magnificent if foolish and doomed attempt to return the Roman Empire to the vile practices of paganism ends with the young Philosopher-Emperor falling before a Persian lance in combat, during an engagement where he simply failed to don his armor.
These two stories have (to my knowledge) only infrequently been dramatized because they are dramatically incomplete: even then dramatists were compelled by their muses to add meaning to the meaningless if real events. Gore Vidal’s version of Julian is assassinated by an evil if stupid Christian, who cuts the armor straps of the brilliant Julian. Alexander the Great dies by poison, concocted by his generals who feared his overweening pride brought on by the Oriental corruption his victories, and his conceit that he was a god.
Compare these tales to the Passing of Arthur, an event so rich with mythic and mystical significance, so fraught with tragedy and grandeur, that everyone from Tennyson to TH White to John Steinbeck to Roger Zelazny to Marion Zimmer Bradley has quested to capture the Matter of Britain. The great advantage Arthur enjoys over Alexander is that we know nothing of him—not even whether he really existed.
Verisimilitude makes the dragons of the reason close their lidless eyes and slumber. The reason is lulled to sleep by the accuracy of the detail. Even when fantastical events happen, if the reactions and actions of the persons involved seem realistic (“Yes, indeed, this is exactly how I would act if I met a vampire samurai or a UFO crewed by unicorns!”) then the spell lingers and the story can continue.
When, in story, something happens to jar the dragon awake, the skepticism of the reader rears up, he realizes that the dream is false, and that the events described could not have happened and cannot be taken seriously, and the spell is broken. This can happen for a number of reasons, but the basic reason is that if the reader sees the strings making the marionette dance, he stops being able and willing to believe the dancer is real.
The reason why readers feel not only disappointed, but betrayed, when a story is bad, is because a bad story snaps reader suddenly out of a pleasant dream. The fairy gold turns into yellow autumn leaves in his hands, the wine turns back into water. Readers feel betrayed because they feel cheated of something implicitly promised to them: all stories promise magic the same way all doors promise egress and escape.
The way you read a book, if you want to enjoy it and to understand what the writer is trying to put across, is to become infatuated with the story as quickly and deeply as possible. Once you are infatuated, as if with a schoolyard crush, the flaws of the book become easy to overlook, and you no longer see the strings on the marionette. The way not to read a book is to not fall under its spell, to notice the artificialities and craftsmanship and tricks used to produce the effect, and to watch the magician’s other hand, not the one he is holding up, to see when the coin comes out of his sleeve.
Unfortunately, falling under a spell is like falling asleep or falling in love. It is not something you can really do deliberately. We mortals cannot invite Cupid to strike; even hoping he will come sometimes drives him away. The most a mortal can do is put himself in the right state of mind.
The right state of mind for science fiction is, of course, the state of mind of a twelve year old. That is when you are old enough to grasp the basic conventions of the scientific world view, and young enough that even infatuation with every new idea is a first infatuation.
Science fiction by its nature (despite some brave attempts to break into a more literary mould) is not primarily literary, not primarily concerned with the depth of the characterization or the technical niceties of the story-telling craft.
Before my literarily-inclined science fiction friends raise their voices in polite disagreement, or howls of outrage, let me forestall them with a simple thought experiment. Take your top three favorite science fiction stories. Strip out all the science fictional elements, and recast the same characters and events in a modern and mundane setting. Is the story still as gripping? If so, it is a literary story. For example, WEST SIDE STORY is a modern retelling of ROMEO AND JULIET. For that matter ROMEO + JULIET is a modern retelling of ROMEO AND JULIET.
The first thing you will notice is that good science fiction stories cannot have their science fiction element stripped out because those elements are central to the tale.
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein if recast as a story about an orphan raised by, say, Hopi Indians or hairy Ainu, returning to civilization to criticize monotheism and monogamy, starting a new cult and being stoned to death by Christians would be particularly flat and uninteresting, precisely because if Michael Valentine Smith is not from an ancient and superior and non-human civilization of Mars, and does not actually have Way Cool mind powers, then Smith is not the proper foil to launch a criticism of Western civilization. He is just a barbarian who does not grasp the advantage or point of Western institutions. Without Way Cool mind power, he is not a real Messiah, and ergo his messianic martyrdom lacks any dramatic point: he is merely a charlatan who angered a mob that had a right to be angry.
Likewise FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov if recast as the decline and fall of the Roman Empire but without the Seldon Plan of Psychohistory has no story.
Likewise, if DUNE by Frank Herbert were recast as the tale of Byzantine intrigue in the modern world, perhaps among Oil Sheiks or Chinese Nomenklatura, would be a story of murder and revenge, nothing more.
Indeed, those stories that could be retold with no loss of story-telling power with their science fiction elements stripped out are precisely the ones science fiction readers mock as being derivative: Robinson Crusoe on Mars or the Count of Montechristo in Space or King Arthur A.D. 3000 may be perfectly cromulent flicks, paperbacks and comic books, but they are not the one that win Hugo and Nebula awards, pleasing neither the readership nor the critics.
Twelve year olds usually do not have tastes discriminating (or jaded) enough to notice or care about literary quality. To them, SWORD OF SHANNARA is the same as LORD OF THE RINGS; and STAR WARS is as good as KRULL. This is not because of some defect in the brains of twelve year olds. It is because the capacity for infatuation and wonder is greatest when the mind is uncluttered by memories of previous disappointments. Your first crush is your deepest.
If not on literary merits, then, on what merits ought we read and critique science fiction?
I submit that a literary book is judged by three criteria:
First, it’s depth. How well does it reward rereading?
A shallow book gives you everything there is to get out of it on the first reading; a deep book upon rereading reveals new aspects of itself or of its subject or theme rewarding to contemplate.
This is not different for science fiction. Gene Wolfe is an example of an author who rewards rereading (some would say too much so, because the first reading remains maddeningly mute and enigmatic). The difference, if at all, is that a science fiction book should upon rereading give you more of what you come to science fiction for, namely, the Copernican sense of wonder at discovering what you thought was the center of the universe is actually somewhere else, the awe or terror of the immensity of the universe, the romance of scientific progress which challenges or overcomes that immensity, or the cautionary fear that the progress of science leads to dystopia, etc. While it might seem that this sense of wonder would quickly pale, I will ask my reader merely how many times he saw STAR WARS when it first came out, and how deeply it touched something in your youth, and leave the question otherwise unanswered.
Second, it’s height. What high topics or great thoughts or idea does it reach?
Here is one area where literary works fall laughably short of science fiction, even of pulp science fiction. I can pick up an issue of THRILLING AIR WONDER STORIES at random and have a better chance of discovering some meditation or mention or new idea relating to the nature of man, destiny, deity, fate, fortune, liberty, tyranny, heroism, villainy, cosmos, chaos, the nature of war and peace, the causes of love and hate, our place in the universe and the meaning of life than you will ever find in the novels allegedly adored by the literati. Such novels tend to a grotesque overabundance of realism, by which I mean an unrealistic emphasis on depravity and dipsomania, adultery and despair, and such novels tend to be uniform in their philosophy, political theory, and outlook on life. This uniformity means that the writer need not bother, and the reader does not seek, and penetrating questions into any of the great ideas.
I will not say that science fiction deals with these high ideas in anything other than a playful and sophomoric way — you will not get an insightful disquisition on the nature of destiny and free will in Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION nor Frank Herbert’s DUNE, nor anything but a comic-bookish rant on the nature of God or Love in Heinlein’s STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND—but at least science fiction stories lend themselves to addressing these high ideas.
Literary works of the modern cast discourage such contemplation: one must read literature older than one hundred years, works of Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, and Homer, to get literary works dealing with the high things of life. I note wryly that these ancient authors routinely put mythical and mystical elements in their books, ghosts and fairy kings, angels, gods and monsters, which these days are rarely found off the reservation of science fiction.
A high idea is a philosophical idea, one that looks at the general picture, the abstract foundation.
Third, it’s mass. A great book is one that inspires or challenges others, both those who imitate and those who suborn or subvert. This criterion is the same for literary as for science fictional books. A massive book is one whose passage disturbs the orbits of lesser bodies. Even those who have never read, for example, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, cannot be unaware of its massive influence on the books they have read.
Have you read “An Experiment in Criticism” by C. S. Lewis? It concerns itself with the quality you have called “depth.” In it, Lewis proposes that none of the usual criteria for literary value really work and, in their stead, proposes the value of a book really depends on how readily it attracts re-reading.
“Have you read “An Experiment in Criticism” by C. S. Lewis?”
Yes, indeed I have. In fact, the idea behind my essay here comes from that essay, namely, looking at the story from the point of view of the effect on the reader rather than the intent of the writer.
Verisimilitude can be tricky because when something throws you out, it throws you out. My younger sister can’t stand the fencing in The Adventures of Robin Hood and my older one can’t stand the get-ups. I said that online once, and someone else objected indignantly in that case, they ought to object to this, that, and the other thing.
“Ought” has nothing to do with it. It does, or it doesn’t, suspend disbelief.
I think much modern conflict over SF/genre aesthetic evaluation may come from a clash between one of the two sleights you describe and one of the three measures you describe.
More controversially and bluntly, I posit: Too many modern readers find *any* attempt to examine “high ideas” to be essentially “unrealistic”. As you note, they define plot, characters and themes as “realistic”, and therefore (willing-to-be-accepted-as-) convincing, precisely in reverse proportion to their philosophical scope.
Insofar as there is any reason for this, I speculate that perhaps it is an aspect of modern-day sensory and advocacy overload. Too many people seem to think that cosmological or philosophical rumination inevitably presages, and at worst is only a retroactive rationalization for, proselytization of one kind or another, either overt or (worse) covert. “Life doesn’t have a moral,” they argue, “and you can’t simplify real people to a moral, so plots and characters which do and can aren’t ‘realistic’.”
I would also posit that it comes from our (relatively) advanced scientific level: we seek a world that is fully explainable by natural causes, like the universe is a giant machine. (This is also why, I think, there is a dearth of fantastic elements in modern fiction, aside from the general ignoring-basic-science that crops up all the time).
Anything that posits otherwise is clearly attempting to sell its metaphysical worldview. And since we can’t prove metaphysics (or religion &c), it is proselytization.
Except that fantasy as a distinct genre has exploded.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Witch World was marketed as SF.
R. Scott Bakker wrote an interesting essay (which I can’t find right now due to lack of time) positing precisely the opposite: that fantasy, as opposed to SF, had become so insanely popular precisely because most such stories affirmed a purpose and meaning to life that we, in our modern scientific life, have lost track of.
The thing is, most genre fantasy these days may proclaim purpose and meaning (via upholding or defending Good from threatening Evils, and admitting the reality of both), but those purposes seldom require any personal discipline or sacrifice from their main characters that a modern 21st-century reader would find unpalatable — death is often risked or threatened but seldom actually happens, at least to the heroes, and lesser sacrifices like temperance, chastity or humility are almost never demanded. So a metaphysical worldview isn’t in itself problematic; a metaphysical worldview that has real costs if the reader adopts it might.
Then again, much fantasy is about worlds other than our own, where different “rules” about life, death, morality, souls and afterlife can be entertained at a safe remove. SF is almost always about a world or a future we are nominally meant to believe could be our own, one day, so philosophical issues in that context hit a little closer to home.
Point well taken, though I was more jibing at non-genre literature than making a comment about fantasy. As Mr. Wright noted, fantastic elements used to be common in average literature, but have since been constrained to genre.
Many of my friends balk at genre, because they do not know how everything “works”, like they do mainstream literature. Jo Walton touched on this in an essay some time ago, how there seem to be two different views on literature: understand everything, or accept genre conventions.
But as noted, a lot of things that we now consider genre conventions of sci-fi/fantasy used to be more common in mainstream literature (gods, angels, and so on). I think this split has been exacerbated (though not necessarily caused) by the sciencification of our society.
So, getting back to your point, people associate genre with high philosophical ideas–but they also associate it with weird conventions of storytelling. Somewhere in there, the two got confused for one another, and so people avoid genre and high philosophical ideas in literature.
Though also as you noted, even genre is getting watered down, and the stakes don’t seem so high as they did in Lord of the Rings.
Hopefully that makes sense.
H G Wells said something similar: good science fiction requires the reader’s suspension of disbelief, and this is produced by versimilitude. May I add one complaint. Because I was trained in zoology, I have to suspend my disbelief a bit more often than most. This is because, although the average science fiction writers now know enough about basic science to make his story sound plausible, they are still ignorant of basic biological principles, and thus keep defying them. (For example, a bird or other flying creature large enough for a human to ride would be mechanically impossible.) I shall eventually produce a series of essays about it myself when I get around to making my own blog.
I don’t think they’re ignorant of the mass square law or biological constraints on giant birds; they just don’t care. Apply a little spackle of plausible talk to giant birds or FTL, and everybody’s happy.
Believe you me, we all go Gleep! at something. It just depends on what.
I still remember the dinner-table discussion of a book: my father didn’t like the way they never ran out of, or even worried about, amno; my sister didn’t like the way that Rennaissance women instantly adopted blue jeans a.k.a. shockingly immodest clothing; I didn’t like the way that Rennaissance characters merely had to hear of democracy and religious tolerance to decide they were the greatest thing since sliced bread.
If they were from medieval Italy, they’d not only heard of democracy, but they’d probably had three different kinds of it within the last month and lost some cousins or cows in its name.
I know, not always and everywhere — but you wouldn’t believe how many republics, oligarchies, communes, dictatorships, and other forms of government that Siena went through, just during St. Catherine of Siena’s lifetime. Undset’s biography was extreeeeeemely enlightening on this point.
Well, they were in Germany.
Come to think of it, I think I got the time line wrong. I think, on reflection, it was the Reformation.
I.e. the era when religious tolerance was repudiated with the most vigor.
[...] C. Wright has an interesting post about how to properly criticize a book in its [...]
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Hmm. When you said “Count of Monte Cristo in Space” that made me think of Jack Vance’s Demon Prince books. And those books seem like a direct counter-example to your claim: “good science fiction stories cannot have their science fiction element stripped out because those elements are central to the tale”. In all honesty, in the Demon Prince books, like most of Vance’s tales of the Gaean Reach the space setting isn’t that crucial to the story. Or would you count Vance’s odd civilizations and cultures as “science fiction elements”?
Hmm. I think your counter example defeats my argument here. John Holbrook Vance is quite an accomplished writer of mysteries, and so he could, if he wished, tell the story of Kirth Gersen and his vendetta, set it in the modern world with none of the Vancean civilizations and their oddities, and I suspect the result would be as tense and satisfying as any of his other murder mysteries.
Vance’s odd cultures are a major “science fiction element” in his science fiction, but in this specific example, I think the story is strong enough that the loss of SF elements would be insignificant (I mean, the Count of Monte Christo in Space is still a ripping good yarn when told as the Count of Monte Christo in France).
I concede the point.
This review of Inception says some of the same things
about the replacement of reality by fantasy
of action by feeling
of plot by spectacle.
http://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=2049
I feel a bit under qualified to be commenting on this posting. Fantastic reading though, reminded me of Chesterton’s analysis of the detective story (he was the first to insist on fair play for the reader, that is, giving them all the information necessary to solve the mystery with the detective).
However, I do have a question for you, John, one I’ve been waiting for some time to ask you. I like science fiction, but most of my sci-fi consumption comes in the form of movies, tv shows, and comics books. I’ve very rarely sat down and read a science fiction novel, for the imple reason that I read very few novels at all. I usually read philosophy, theology, or history books (especially history). If you were to make a Canon of sort for sci-fi; teach a Mortimer Adler style “Great Books of Science Fiction” course, what books would they be? Where would one start reading science fiction, and where would one go after he started?
I feel a bit under qualified to be commenting on this thread, although I will say that reading this description of sci-fi rather reminded me of Chesterton writing about Mysteries. A cogent analysis of what makes something a sci-fi story, and fursther, what makes a sci-fi story a good one.
But I do have a question for you, John, one I’ve been wanting to ask for sometime. I like science rfiction, at least I think I do. But I very rarely (that is, almost never) read science fiction novels, for the simple reason that I very rarely read novels. Most of my sci-fi consumption comes from movies, tv shows, and comic books. When I read “real” books, they almost always tend to be philosophy, theology, or history. My question is, if one were to start reading science fiction, where would one start? And then where would one go? Could you make a “canon” of science fiction? Something akin to Mortimer Alder’s Great Books of the Western World, a “Great Books of Science Fiction”?
That is an excellent question. I am not qualified to answer, but I will give it some thought, and mayhap write a piece on this question this week or next.
You have been spammed.
So, how come my comments are not appearing but all of this spam is?
I have no idea. I go away for one weekend, and I get spammed.
Geez that’s a lot of spam.
Science fiction has a special problem avoiding bathos- ‘Ye Gods, annihilate all Space and Time, and make two lovers happy’. What to do in a science romance where the love plot or strong sub-plot is always linked to the time machine or starship drive?
But there’s an opportunity too.
This is a test post, because my posts have disappeared.
What in the world? My test post, which I did after my previous two comments, appeared after my test post. What’s up with that?
The comments are held for moderation. I was out of town for three days. I did not have a change to fish through the spam filter and pull out non-spam accidentally sent their until yesterday.
Understood. Sorry about the double post. I didn’t even see the notice about moderation until after my second post. Mea culpa
By way of contrast, I would be interested to read your views on a very different SF writer, Cordwainer Smith. Perhaps the subject for another posting?
My views on Cordwainer Smith range from puppy love to slavish fanboy devotion to professional admiration for his craftsmanship to wonder and awe at the breadth of his imagination. What is there to say?