| Brian Baker, “Evolution, Literary History and Science Fiction”, |
[Sep. 14th, 2008|04:35 pm] |
in Literature and Science, edited by Sharon Ruston, Essays and Studies 2008, The English Association, 2008.
Admission: I really don’t understand the first half of this article, which is in a book containing a whole bunch of articles I don’t really understand. Some of this is because there are frequent references to Barthes, Derrida etc, who in and of themselves I grasp, but whose relevance I cannot comprehend here, and also because “Literature and Science” is beginning to emerge as a separate genre of academic study with its own vocabulary and I have not been keeping up. I intend to correct this, but not immediately.
In a collection that’s mostly on canon works however, this stood out, so I paid more attention to it. Baker has published some articles on sf in the journals and could be expected to have a decent grasp on his material. I ended up rather unconvinced.
If I’ve got this right, Baker sets out to challenge Franco Morretti’s notions/metaphors of evolution in literary ideas in Graphs, Maps and Trees a book I happen to like. I’m not so bothered about the challenge in itself, although Baker seems to get a bit confused at times as to whether he thinks Morretti is talking literaly or metaphorically, and also as to whether he is challenging the concept or the metaphor. I’m bothered about the way Baker chooses Morretti’s decision not to talk about sf (because he doesn’t know enough about it), suggests this is both a weakness in the book (personally, I think it is a strength) and then argues that sf disproves Morretti’s contention that genres “evolve” leaving behind their legacy material.
My argument with Baker is not what he believes. I just think he a) uses the wrong place to start, and b) doesn’t read his own evidence and c) seems to be ignorant about the content of the genre.
He starts off dubious that there are evolutionary lines in sf, and then discovers, when he pieces together the history of sf that there are. Gosh, you don’t say? He starts off creating a list from the Encyclopedia and then uses Adam Roberts Science Fiction (2000) to construct his list of the types of sf which have emerged at different times [ I should add here that while he uses Luckhurst and Suvin, he doesn’t seem to have fallen across the one really chronological history of the field, by James.]
His list is as follows (I’ve shortened some of the bits in bracket, p. 146)
1. Utopia/Dystopia (More, 1516)
2. ‘Philosophical’ or Satire (Swift, 1726)
3. Scientist Story (Frankenstein, 1818; Edisonate, 1880s)
4. The End of the World (Shelley.s Last Man, 1826)
5. Interplanetary Travel Story (Verne, 1860s)
6. First encounter with alien life (mid-eighteenth century)
7. Novum story based on new tech (Verne, 1860s)
8. Future War (Chesney, 1871)
9. Time Travel (Wells, Time Machine, 1895)
10. Sword-and-sorcery (Burroughs, 1920s) – Huh? What’s this one doing here?
11. Robot story (Karel Capek, 1920)
12. Old fashioned space opera (Smith, 1927)
13. Alternative History (L. Sprague de Camp, 1941) er, I don’t think so. Try Leinster, 1934)
14. Post nuclear mutation story (post WWII)
15. ESP narrative (1940s and 1950s) --still going strong into the 1970s
16. Magic realism (19602-1970s) – Huh? What’s this one doing here?
17. Virtual reality story (1980s)
18. Cyberpunk (Gibson, 1982).
He then writes: ‘Evolutionary’ lines are not often clear, however. What can be concluded is that sub-generic ‘extinction’ is, for SF, rare; of the above list, only the Edisonade or Gernsback-style ‘Scientist story’…and the ‘Invasion’ story … can be said to have come to a definite end, and traces of the latter can still be found in the ‘Future War’ variant. (146-147)
Before I discuss the above, I want to point out that he then starts talking about the British Scientific Romance which would lead to the New Wave, but as it isn’t in the list above, it confuses the issue (and his paper).
Critique:
1. If we take the list as it stands, then Baker is wrong about the rarity of extinction of sub-genre. Of that list I would say that “first encounter” stories (whether of planet or species) are pretty much dead as a dodo. All the modern encounter stories I can think of take place quite some time after the first encounter; the novum or invention story is long gone, in the sense that it isn’t the invention that causes the sensawunda, but rather it is consequences, again, often several [hundred] years after the event and frankly, it is a poor modern author who deploys only one invention; the robot story—deader, than deader than dead, except on screen where it gets staler by the day; ESP—if someone can give me a date for the last one, great, but all I can think of is McCaffrey’s ever more excruciating Pegasus series, and Bradley’s Darkover, both 1980s, maybe early 1990s, I’ve lost track (ESP in Bujold’s Ethan of Ethos is genetically engineered, sporadic and painful). Virtual reality remains with us, but I can’t think of anything for adults recently which could be considered a “virtual reality story”.
a. One way to understand all of this is that any new idea in sf starts off with stories about that idea, then fits it into a world where it is one element of the facilitating device, and eventually relegates it to the background.
2. If we look at the list, the list is a bit odd: invention stories and Edisonades are surely much the same form (with some boyish invention thrown in). What on earth are sword-and-sorcery and magic realism doing there? Why have virtual reality and cyberpunk been separated. There are some odd things missing: political ideas have been sub-genres in sf—feminist, post-holocaust, dys/utopia was really big in the 1980s and now is very hard to find, but has contributed to the context of many more recent novels (see 1a). This is why he is able to write “Perhaps the most striking is the slowing of generic diversification: only five identified ‘new’ sbubgeneric modes since World War Two, and only two in the last twenty-five years’. (147) Lots of ideas about what makes people tick, from hormones, to glands, to psychology etc have come, made good story, disappeared to the background and then just disappeared. Another form that also comes to mind is the heterotopia, which may be a development of the u/dystopia, but that surely supports the evolutionary argument. I’m sure you could add stacks more.
So, my conclusion is that while Baker may or may not be correct in his critique of Morretti, his evidence is flawed, and his reading of his own evidence is even worse.
If anyone would like a copy of the article, or would like to read the book, just let me know. |
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