Fantastic Metropolis

It’s important to realize that, in the middle of these somewhat mutable poles, is the large bulk of science fiction produced over the last 75 years: adventure, escapist fiction. Some stories might veer towards one pole or another, but “fun fiction” is the silent majority of the field.

Can there be an aesthetics of fun? And when does escapism become a burdening weight in of itself? I would argue, first, that adventure fiction can be written for good or bane (as with any set of tropes). None of the hallmark qualities of a good story as such are necessarily obviated by the use of certain genre tropes and pacing styles. The proof is always in the pudding. More importantly, though, is the way that escapist fiction—and the sensibilities of a community that seeks to advance this form of writing above all others—co-opts other types of fun. (We can all call it “readerly pleasure” if that would make the whole discussion feel more adult.) That is, work that is viewed as “difficult”—work created that requires sustained, multiple, and even confusing reading strategies—is considered willfully and needlessly incommunicative, even though it might bring more readerly pleasure to the table over the long run. Rather than being taken on its own terms, these works are thought to be writ with a code of obscurity, where (as discussed above) idiosyncratic stylistic choices are seen to be “problematic.” This attempt to deem the parameters of which readerly pleasures ought to be allowed is the equivalent of moving to a single currency, so as to achieve greater market efficiency.

Now, this attempt at monoculture might seem sensible at first glance. Except for the fact that fiction, though it might at times dwell in a market, is not the market itself. It is not a commodity, though it is often commodified. The writers who will endure will always resist the marketing of the mind, and cannot help but subvert this assumption—simply because it is an assumption, and assumptions have already left the field a certain amount of disrepair.

The relationship a “difficult” writer might try to forge with a reader might appear bewildering at first glance. But it is a relationship. The attempt to paint it as a mere exercise in obscuration (with the implied lack, however subtle, of the movement towards the “cold fact of tomorrow”) is missing the boat. Science fiction is a mode of writing that often, but not always, intersects with genre expectations, and in fact existed before the creation of a genre. In the last 5 years or so there has been more of a deliberate (if not organized) attempt to foster motion away from these very expectations.

With this in mind, there is a place for “classically” SF’nal SF. But it can only be a part of the panoply, one more tool for a writer’s toolbox, one that carries the awareness of other possibilities. As an analogy, one couldn’t imagine the 20th century, much less modern painting, without the radical disjunctions of Picasso and his cohorts. Yet such experimentation was never a given. It took fierce vision and courage not to listen to naysayers, not only in the service of new paintings, but to create new relationships between viewer and artist. And yet, when he had gone to the image’s brink with radical cubism, Picasso was capable of creating work of “classical” beauty, works of representational human figures, and so on. But all of his paintings thereon were imbedded with those earlier edges. Just as a poet should be free to write a free-verse poem one day and a sonnet the next, depending on subconscious circumstances, mood, and imagistic pursuits, so too should a science fiction writer feel free to use any form conceivable, traditional or no. The hope should be that in using traditional forms, like Picasso, the writer has been to the edge first. Or uses classically trained values as a starting point, not the endpoint.