| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Date | 2006 |
| Pages | 159 |
| Series | The New Critical Idiom |
| Tags | science fiction, nonfiction |
SF is difficult to define. Roberts offers a few perspectives.
SF is a genre that rationalizes its differences in a physical (or, one might say, scientific) way:
But it is part of the logic of SF, and not of other forms of fiction, that these changes be made plausible within the structure of the text. This means that the premise of an SF novel requires material, physical rationalisation, rather than a supernatural or arbitrary one.
Roberts introduces Darko Suvin's idea of the novum:
This is precisely what Suvin asserts: âSF is distinguished by the narrative dominance or hegemony of a fictional ânovumâ ... validated by cognitive logicâ (Suvin 1979: 63). By this he means that the implications of the ânovumâ dominate, or create a âhegemonyâ (a term from Marxist theory to describe the maintenance of power by indirect and pervasive means rather than by direct force) throughout the text. âCognitive Logicâ becomes for Suvin a crucial formal convention of SF.
Roberts also describes Robert Scholes's definition of SF from his book Structural Fabulation, though his description doesn't do much service to it.
Finally, Roberts offers a definition from Damien Broderick, summarizing:
Broderickâs insight that we recognise SF in part because it deploys certain âiconsâ that are consensually taken as âSFâ. Many of these devices, as Broderick mentions, derive from a corpus of accepted ânovaâ: starships, time-machines, robots and the like. Each of these connects with a particular âestrangedâ version of our reality.
There is a common theme:
What these various definitions of SF have in common, then, is a sense of SF as in some central way about the encounter with difference. This encounter is articulated through a ânovumâ, a conceptual, or more usually material, embodiment of alterity, the point at which the SF text distils the difference between its imagined world and the world which we all inhabit. For Scott McCracken, âat the root of all science fiction lies the fantasy of alien encounterâ. He adds that âthe meeting of self with other is perhaps the most fearful, most exciting and most erotic encounter of allâ (McCracken 1998: 102). This serves as the basis of many criticsâ affection for the genre, the fact that SF provides a means, in a popular and accessible fictional form, for exploring alterity. Specific SF nova are more than just gimmicks, and much more than clichĂ©s; they provide a symbolic grammar for articulating the perspectives of normally marginalised discourses of race, of gender, of non-conformism and alternative ideologies. We might think of this as the progressive or radical potential of science fiction.
Roberts concluces with a case study of Dune.
A familiar history, touching on proto-sf from the classical period and a few scattered thoughout history, before settling on the usual starting point of Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, and proceeding through Verne and Wells.
Once into the modern period, Roberts discusses SF as embodied in the pulps, the Golden Age of SF, and the New Wave.
Roberts concludes with a case study of Star Wars with a focus on intertextuality.
Discusses the Alien films as associating the alien with women.
This chapter has some interesting things to say, but in short SF does address issues of race, and insofar as race is a fundamental kind of difference with which society is concerned, it is implicit in SF narratives in general, in much the same way as the issue of gender.
Case study: Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy
Roberts writes that the Klingons in TOS "connote 'orientalism', particularly a caricature of the Japanese" (Roberts, 2006, p. 103), but according to John Colicos, who played Kor in "Errand of Mercy", the makeup was intended to remind the viewer of Genghis Khan (Gross & Altman, 1995, p. 40).
Roberts asserts: "The spaceship is almost always humanised; it may be sentient itself […] or, at the very least, imbued with a certain character and individuality, like Millennium Falcon in Star Wars." Isn't that going quite too far? I don't think there's anyone who would agree that the MF is in any way humanised, and 'it has a certain character' is too weak an argument for that proposition.
Roberts makes the point, not very well, that spaceships can be characters or otherwise fill roles beyond mere props.
Roberts discusses robots, which may function as a metaphor for race, or for sex or some other division of people, or may act as a commentary of something more basic: what it means to be alive, to have purpose, etc.
Roberts then enters into an extended discussion of Star Trek's Borg, which I think is not entirely well-advised at this point. He argues that the Borg represent a truly alien culture, with values really incompatible with human ones, not in the sense of being opposed to ours, but rather existing separate from ours. Sure, but this has little to do with robots, cyborgs, or even technology, so it's not well-placed at this point in the book.
Case study: Neuromancer.
More about what sf is, how it works, etc., primarily concerned with metaphor.
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Adam Roberts | Author |
| Routledge | Publisher |
| 1: Defining science fiction | 1 |
| Some formalist definitions of SF | 3 |
| Three definitions | 7 |
| Difference | 16 |
| Stucturalist approaches | 20 |
| Prediction and nostalgia | 24 |
| Case study: Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) | 28 |
| 2: The history of SF | 37 |
| The long history of science fiction | 38 |
| The gothic history of SF | 42 |
| The Gernsbackian history of SF | 50 |
| The golden age: Asimov | 56 |
| SF in the 1960s and 1970s | 60 |
| New wave | 61 |
| Case study: Star Wars (1977) and intertextuality | 66 |
| 3: SF and gender | 71 |
| Feminist science fiction | 71 |
| Women and aliens | 78 |
| Case study: Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) | 84 |
| 4: SF and race | 94 |
| Representing race | 96 |
| Race and Star Trek | 102 |
| Alien abduction | 105 |
| Case study: Butler's xenogenesis | 106 |
| 5: SF and technology | 110 |
| Spaceships | 112 |
| Robots | 116 |
| Cyberspace | 123 |
| Case study: William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) | 125 |
| 6: Conclusion | 134 |
| Metaphor | 135 |
| Metaphor and the literal | 139 |
| Ricoeur | 143 |
| Religion | 146 |
| Bibliography | 149 |
| Index | 156 |
| Relation | Sources |
|---|---|
| Discusses |
|