Science Fiction – Page 56 – Auxiliary Memory

The Greatest Science Fiction Novels of the 20th Century

I have already worked out a way to define the Classics of Science Fiction by collecting lists from science fiction fans and critics, but this morning I got to wondering which science fiction books, if any, are recognized as classics by people who normally do not read science fiction. Over the years I’ve encountered a lot of lists recommending the best novels to read, and occasionally a science fiction novel gets thrown in.

One of the most famous lists, and maybe the most authoritative in recent years, is the Modern Library List of 100 Best Novels. On their list they had Brave New World (#3), 1984 (#13), Slaughterhouse-Five (#18), and A Clockwork Orange (#65). These are very famous books, but I don’t consider them true science fiction, at least not in the genre sense. They may use SF settings and techniques, but Huxley, Orwell, Vonnegut and Burgess were not SF writers. By the way, ignore the list on the right column that does contain many genre SF novels. That comes from imprecise fan voting and not from scholars and experts.

Recently, the Library of America published it’s first volume to contain genre science fiction, Four Novels of the 1960s by Philip K. Dick. LOA is even more selective than Modern Library, so should we consider The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik the stand out SF genre novels of the 20th century? I think we need some corroboration first.

Another list to counter the Modern Library list is the Radcliffe Publishing Course’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. 1984 (#9), Brave New World (#16), Slaughterhouse-Five (#29), A Clockwork Orange (#49), Cat’s Cradle (#66), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (#72), and The War of the Worlds (#85) show up. Notice the overlap of the first four titles, but also notice the addition of four titles in the back half of the list. Still none of these novels are what we’d consider genre classics? No Dune or Ender’s Game. And the H. G. Wells books was from the 19th century.

The 150 Best English Language Novels of the 20th Century compiled from several lists at the Friendswood Library finally seems to get us somewhere. On this list we do find some familiar genre titles – Fahrenheit 451 (#28), Stranger in a Strange Land (#31), 2001 (#66), and Dune (#86). It’s nice to see a few of our favorites listed among all the standard literary work that get mentioned so often and taught in schools. But we’re still not seeing any overlap. There just doesn’t seem to be any consensus, unless it’s the same four mentioned for the Modern Library list.

Time offered The Best English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present. Their editors throw in Snowcrash, Neuromancer, and Ubik. This is the first validation of the Library of America choosing PKD. It also overlaps with 1984, A Clockwork Orange and Slaughterhouse-Five, and leaves off Brave New World. Overall this list adds many newer literary favorites and dumps some of the standard heavyweights like Ulysses. Still there is no consistent sign of a genre favorite in the minds of the world at large.

If we really broaden the search and include books like 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die we can catch a number of genre classics: Cryptonomicon, Neuromancer, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Chocky, The Drowned World, Stranger in a Strange Land, Solaris, Foundation, and I, Robot. Still, it’s as if the mundane world is willing to throw us a bone and include a few token SF titles. We’re still not seeing a stand out genre novel. Science fiction appears to be something fleeting in the peripheral vision of the literary world.

If you look at Top 100 Sci-Fi Books and my Classics of Science Fiction by Rank, you’ll see a lot of common overlap. Both of these lists were compiled by taking many lists and cross-tabbing them. I would guess by looking at all the lists that maybe Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land are the two titles that the general reader may know about, but I have met plenty a bookworms in my life that I have had to educate about these titles. I would say Ender’s Game is the the most popular title that my non-science fiction reading friends have discovered.

Most people think of Star Wars and Star Trek when you ask them to define science fiction. The world of science fiction literature is really a sub-culture that few people know about. However, if I had to introduce the world at large to SF, I would recommend these titles as the most popular SF books to try:

Dune
Stranger in a Strange Land
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Bladerunner)
Ender’s Game
Neuromancer

However, from reading and studying books that talk about the best books to read, I can easily imagine that these titles will be forgotten in about another fifty years. I think in the end, say in 2108, if you ask a bookworm about science fiction of the 20th century, they will list off: 1984, Brave New World and Slaughterhouse-Five. I tend to think A Clockwork Orange will lose favor because its too hard to read. In the end science fiction will be represented by books that were never from the sub-culture of science fiction writers.
On the other hand Dune, Ender’s Game and Stranger in a Stranger Land may hang in there. Books go in and out of favor by the public. Stephen King may turn out to be the Charles Dickens of the 20th Century. Stranger in a Strange Land might be its Gulliver’s Travels and Ender’s Game its Alice in Wonderland.

Table of Contents

How Soon to Commander Data?

Of all the great ideas of science fiction our society seems to be working the fastest towards making stories about robots come true. How soon will it be before we have a Commander Data? We are still in the early stages of engineering a SF robot but yesterday I saw a film that made me think things are leaping ahead:

If you have been following the development of robots you will know this is a major advancement over what robot designers were doing just a few years ago. Before robots always looked like struggling machines. This video gives the feeling that the machine is part animal because it mimics dog like qualities. It’s just a hint, but enough of a hint that I felt sorry for the machine when they kicked it.

Another film that was sent to me yesterday also suggests that designers, this time an artist, are finding their way closer to natural designs for their mechanical creations.

And yet a third robotic story crossed my path yesterday, “Japan Experimenting with Artificial Intelligence as Part of Daily Life.” This is all without going to Google and doing research on the topic. I just remembered I also started reading a F&SF story last night “Five Thrillers” by Robert Reed that mentions robots. And I watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and if I think hard I could probably remember some more instances of the topic of robots coming into my life yesterday. My friends and I have been wishing for robots to be developed so we’ll have machines to help us when we get old.

Robots are happening. Start paying attention to how often you see them mentioned.

If you want to see more videos of robots jump on over to YouTube because they have loads of them. Japan seems hellbent on creating a trade show cutie. I hope they don’t put out all those bikini professionals we see marketing high tech goods out of a job.

Jim

What Motivates Science Fiction Fantasies?

Awhile back I wrote “What is Your Science Fiction Fantasy?” and I had a couple long and well thought out replies from my blogger friend Carl V of Stainless Steel Droppings that make me want to return to this subject. I’ve been a life-long science fiction fan, and my adolescence was filled with fantasies of two types. Like most guys that age, the majority of my waking thoughts back then were about sex, but between the constants T&A flicks playing in my brain I’d project fantasies about rockets and space travel. I loved science fiction books, movies, and television shows. I grew up thinking when I got older I’d have sex with lots of women and I’d be an astronaut.

As you might have guessed, things didn’t work out quite like I planned. We live in at least three worlds. The first is the unseen world of microbiology and its programming. The second is the actual reality where our bodies dwell. And third is the fantasy world of our minds where we constantly reshape reality. Most of the fantasies worlds we build are unconsciously inspired by the unseen biological world that lives inside us. We seldom examine its motivations.

I know why I had the teenage sex fantasies and where they came from. At the cellular level I am programmed to reproduce and the reptilian and mammalian parts of my brain did everything they could to keep me focused on the target of passing on my DNA. Every story about boy meets girl is our cells instructing us on how to make babies.

It’s rather hilarious, don’t you think, that the porn industry makes its billions by triggering the baby making response in males? Yeah brothers, the next time you have your hand on the joystick and you’re self-hypnotizing your mind with delicious sexual desires by drooling over images of female body parts just remember what 13.75 billion years of evolution is trying to trick you into doing.

Now ladies, don’t think y’alls lot in life is any more dignified. Guys may be slobbering monkeys playing with themselves, but women are the ones painting their faces, contorting their bodies to protrude in suggestive monkey appealing ways while acting like robotic slaves to appearance and competitive fashion. Not only that, but Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice can turn you into a swooning puddle of quivering romance. Sure in your eyes Colin is Mr. Right, but go reread the paragraph above and remember what Mr. Firth sees in his eyes.

Now you might not believe what I’m saying, but you can at least see the possible connection between the plots of most novels and biology. So where the hell did all those spaceship fantasies come from? Is there some deep urge to explore that exists in our genetic structure? Maybe my lower brain functions wanted me to be an astronaut after my neo-cortex told them that fly-boys got all the chicks. Porn and romance books make sense but what’s the logic of science fiction?

In my youth I justified my interest in trashy science fiction books by telling adults I was preparing for the future. As I got older I worried I was just reading SF to avoid growing up. When it was obvious my Heinlein training wasn’t going to pay off I felt that college years were meant for having fun before I was sentenced to the 9 to 5. Then I told myself that all those silly outer-space dreams were just as realistic as all those sex dreams were turning out to be. I wasn’t making babies or riding in rockets.

I ended up believing that fiction and fantasy was just entertaining diversions for when I had free moments from living and working. I concluded that art, fiction, stories, fantasies, were meaningless expressions of creativity.

Now that I’m older, I’m re-evaluating that. Could it be that our sense of wonder dreams are telling us something? Carl doesn’t like how I keep referring to entertainment as escapism:

Now I’m not naive enough to ignore the fact that there is some degree of escapism in watching films and reading. I don’t believe there is any way to ever get totally away from that. But I think there is a fine line between escapism and entertainment and I firmly believe that if you read something and it stays with you and you are thinking about it and mulling it over and it somehow inspires you, lifts your mood, etc. then it is making a positive contribution to your life. ‘Escapism’ as a term seems to bring up only images of negative stuff.

I tend to use escapism as a synonym for entertainment, so that’s getting me into trouble. I do this because I see entertainment as a vacation from work. But what if our entertainment desires represent a positive drive like sex? Out of all the zillions of species on planet Earth we’re the only ones with these Buck Rogers dreams. Sure, we could tie them to biology and say they are just our territorial genes on steroids. Is the human impulse to build skyscrapers really that different from ants building mounds? There seems to be no natural analog for the SF drive.

Carl’s science fiction fantasy is to be a hero like Hans Solo:

Also I love the whole hero thing. We all want to be heroes, as husbands, fathers, friends. I’m attracted to Han Solo because he represents what I think so many guys are and want to be…we are by nature somewhat independent and yet at heart we crave a few good, close, intimate friends and the love of a good woman who is our equal, not a damsel in distress. I look at my own personal life and I believe I have that. My wife is every bit the person I see in so many of the romantic movie and book roles I love.

This goes a long way to explain why entertainment fantasies are positive driving forces in our lives. My formative SF fantasies came from the Robert A. Heinlein’s young adult novels from the 1950s. Instead of wanting to be a Joseph Campbell hero like Carl, those books made me want to be an explorer or pioneer, and my fantasy was to grow up and join a team that colonized Mars. And long after it was obvious I was never going to live my fantasy I’ve wanted the same fantasy for the human race by supporting the space program.

The word “escapism” does seem negative, and in some contexts so does the word “fantasy.” We come home from a hard day at the rat race and read John Scalzi’s latest or put on a DVD of Aliens, or play Halo on the Xbox, and tune out this world. Is that a negative or a positive? We could be doing something more constructive – I’m sure our wives think so. Is the act of communing with our science fiction selves telling us something?

Most fiction involves stories about this world with slight variations. In fact, most stories are a variation of boy meets girl which is only an elaboration of the plain old sex fantasy. Other movies, like action pics are expressions of alpha male fantasies. Chick flicks show the inner motivations of females. Our entertainment reflects our biological programming. Again, I’m back asking where do these science fiction fantasies fit into biology?

Is this SF drive greater than our biology? Think about the big bang. It was a big explosion of energy that shoots out in all directions. After that for reasons hard to understand this energy reorganizes itself into matter that forms stars and planets. Visualize blowing up a building and then watching as the rubble reassembles into something new. That’s hard to imagine, isn’t it.

After the planets were formed by bits of rock clumping together we eventually get biology. Talk about an infinite army of monkeys typing away and to produce the works of Shakespeare. Is it any wonder that some religious people came up with the idea of intelligent design? Cosmologists are now explaining this odd drive to complexity by saying we live in a multiverse – an infinity of universes and we just happen to live in a universe that has accidentally acquired this organizing drive. They imagine most universes with big bangs that produce an entropy of particle haze.

Life represents replicating organisms. What is the purpose of all this reproduction? Humans have developed a rather peculiar side-effect: self-awareness. I think science fiction is aptly named. As science has expanded our awareness of the universe, science fiction has programmed us with motivation to explore it.

If you look at porn and forget why it excites you then you are in animal mode. If you watch Pride and Prejudice and forget why its pushing your buttons you are sleep walking. If the latest science fiction novel electrifies your sense of wonder and you don’t under stand why, you’re a robot without AI.

I return to Heinlein over and over again, and Carl knows the foundation of his psychic world is Star Wars, but do we know why this art we admire so much is pushing our buttons? Sex is the most powerful motivating force for humans behind survival, but we forget how it influences our art and culture. Has the academic world every psychoanalyzed the motivating power of science fiction? I do not have any answers. I am just now forming the question.

Jim

Ordinary Life and Science Fiction

I just finished reading Marsbound by Joe Haldeman as a serial in Analog SF. The book won’t be published until August but all parts of the serial can be found at Fictionwise.com. I got to study with Joe Haldeman and his wife Gay for a week in 2002 when I attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, so I feel bad for making criticisms of his new novel in the narrative below. I’m going to be critical but not in an ordinary review way – I’m going to use Marsbound as a jumping off point for talking about some general problems I have with science fiction. Overall I found Marsbound to be a fun novel and if you read Jason Sanford’s review he reports its his favorite SF novel from recent years.

Jason also has the same reaction I had reading Marsbound because we both felt it was modeled after Robert A. Heinlein juveniles – which in my book is very ambitious. Part of my criticism will be how this story doesn’t measure up, but that is unfair criticism too. Joe has to write his own novels and they shouldn’t be compared to Heinlein – even though I do. However, I think the qualities I want can’t be described as belonging to Heinlein, I just saw them first in his juvenile novels.

This essay isn’t a review. I’ll try to avoid specific spoilers, but I will mention plot elements because they will be examples of what I want to talk about in general. Normally I hate serials but the title Marsbound just grabbed me because I love books about colonizing Mars. Part of my disappointed deals with the fact that the story turned out to not be about colonizing Mars. Again, this is not the fault of Joe’s writing or the story. Instead of being Red Planet its more like Have Space Suit-Will Travel my all time favorite SF novel. That is both good and bad.

Let’s get down to business. I call this essay “Ordinary Life and Science Fiction” because SF seldom deals with ordinary life and people. Marsbound starts off being a story about a young woman of 19 who is traveling to Mars with her brother and parents. In the future this could be about ordinary life and the beginning was very promising to my hopes. Because Haldeman was pacing the story slow, dealing with the background of Mars exploration and explaining a space elevator I assumed Carmen Dula’s story would be a step by step narrative about what living on Mars might be like.

This excited me because I don’t think enough science fiction deals with the reality of space travel. Kids need to see what hard work it will be to conquer another world. And the first installment of this story appeared to be exactly what I wanted. Early on Carmen admits she’s a virgin and one interesting plot problem appears to be centered around romance in a limited colony. I thought this complication was excellent. Haldeman had done something interesting for a SF juvenile by having a female lead and dealing with sexuality and romance, topics Heinlein could not touch back in the 1950s.

Alas, Joe takes a sharp plot turn at the end of the first segment and Marsbound becomes a completely different story. Like Have Space Suit-Will Travel, the plot is structured like a multi-staged rocket. When the second stage kicks in Marsbound leaves the story I was hoping to read. Again like Have Space Suit-Will Travel it takes on good and bad aliens, and eventually deals with the fate of the Earth. All exciting stuff by traditional science fiction.

What I’d like to read is non-traditional science fiction novel. We’re now leaving Joe Haldeman’s territory. This is something I often do with films – fall in love with the beginning but I end up wanting to rewrite the ending myself. I must emphasize again this can’t be consider criticism of Marsbound.

From now on I’m speculating about a new book that could be considered inspired by Marsbound. Even one of my favorite Mars colony books, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson moves away from the details of day to day colonization and ordinary life. SF seems to hate the mundane life. Too often SF seems bored with any plot smaller than save the world.

When I started reading Marsbound I hoped it would be two things. First, a detail speculation about ordinary people colonizing Mars – much like stories about colonists in early America. Second I wanted it to be a true science fiction romance from a female’s POV. I wanted Jane Austen meets Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein never could have done Austen because he didn’t have a clue about women but he was great at telling stories to youngsters about how to survive and succeed.

If mankind is to ever explore space beyond low Earth orbit we’ve got to colonize the Moon and Mars. Such adventures will involve millions of mundane details not normally found in SF. People who colonize these worlds will be ordinary and romance will remain a big part of their lives. Because SF is addicted to epic plots it has trouble dealing with the minute problems people face daily.

Strangely enough Philip K. Dick attempted this in 1964 with The Martian Time-Slip when he dealt with a union on Mars and mental illness. I think part of PKD’s success is sticking close to the little people, the ordinary person rather than writing about heroes that save the world.

I believe classic science fiction inspired rocket engineers and early space exploration but I don’t think modern science fiction has that impact on young today. I’ve talked to a number of kids who have asked me when will space travel be like Star Wars or Star Trek. When I reply probably never they act like I just told them Santa Claus isn’t real. They whine that the space shuttle and NASA is boring.

Living on Mars will be a whole lot about farming and recycling – not very hip topics. Living on Mars and the Moon will be about living underground in confined spaces. Few people will get to hot rod on the surface. So what will it be like to be a teenager growing up in such a limited world? How does romance unfold when there will probably be very little privacy. Life will be hard and kids won’t be allowed to waste hours a day on television, computers and video games. Survival will depend on everyone pitching in. Success will not be measured by wealth but skills and hard work, not qualities often associated with modern teen.

This is all very different from the way kids grow up today. It should make for a great story, so why don’t we see SF books like this? Maybe writers feel it would be too dreary to sell. Maybe I should get off my ass and write it myself. What’s really required is using the conventions of normal literary story telling and meld them with the details of science and science fiction. In other words I’m asking for someone to write the great American novel set on Mars.

This is why The Road by Cormac McCarthy beats the common after-the-collapse SF novel. McCarthy deals with the little details. At Clarion they taught us that good fiction is the accumulation of significant details. That’s why the Heinlein juveniles were so good and why later Heinlein adult novels are so bad. Opinions and far out ideas are fine for blog writing, but fiction writing requires a focus on finer observations about ordinary living. It’s nothing for me to ask for such a novel, but it’s years of work for someone to write.

I’d love to read Great Expectations or Pride and Prejudice set on Mars but with all the Martian details known by a JPL engineer. Like I said before, if that’s something I want then maybe I should go write it myself. But that’s even more ambitious than modeling stories after Robert A. Heinlein.

Jim

Science Fiction Short Stories 2007

I love science fiction short stories so it’s a pleasure to discover BestScienceFictionStories.com. And yesterday Rusty posts his list of “The 10 Best Web Sites for Free Online Science Fiction Stories.” Even though the print magazines are losing subscribers short stories are finding new venues on the web. This site is slowly recognizing and reviewing quality short stories and helping their readers find where to read them. What an admirable undertaking. Now I just need to campaign to get all online publishers to create a “Send to Kindle” button.

Over at the new F&SF blog John Joseph Adams has an entry “Free Fiction Friday: Paolo Bacigalupi” that I hope becomes a regular feature of the blog. So far JJA has three authors listed at his Free Fiction section. This week he links to three free stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, one of F&SF’s contributors who is making a few online waves in the past few weeks with the release of his new collection. I have already reviewed one of the free stories in my entry “Science Fiction and Global Warming.”

Over at Black Gate Dave Truesdale provides his rather extensive list of 214 stories that he categorizes in various ways for “2007 SF & Fantasy Recommended Reading List.” Damn, I wished I had the time to do this kind of reading. Maybe Rusty at Best Science Fiction Stories can find links for many of these. John Joseph Adams extracts all the F&SF stories from the list which will help me find them in my back issues.

Over at Locus Magazine they have their Recommended Reading: 2007 list – scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see their short fiction favorites.

If you are concerned about the viability of the short fiction market you may want to read “The Rise of the Genre eZine: Will it ever find a profitable model?” over at Bloggasm by I assume Simon Owens. He focuses on online markets, but I wished he had interviewed the print publishers about their status and their plans for co-existing in the online world.

Jason Sanford does cover the health of the print mags in “2007 SF/F magazine circulation numbers.” It doesn’t look good. I was worried back in 1994 when I covered the numbers in “Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories,” when I thought those numbers spelled doom, but the magazines are still surviving even with a fraction of their 1994 subscribers. Please subscribe to a magazine! Support the world of SF short stories.

The best stories of 2007 will be published in print in several annual best of anthologies, but they will all have 2008 in their title. John Joseph Adams at his blog has the lineup for Rich Horton’s SF and Fantasy anthologies in Best of the Year 2008. Over at Asimov’s forum Gardner Dozois gives us a list of stories for his The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection for 2008. Kathryn Cramer offers a list of what will be in Year’s Best SF 13 edited by Carmer and David Hartwell.

If I had more time and energy I’d cross-tab all those best of 2007 stories to see which ones were cited the most. If anyone is doing that please let me know. I don’t read as much SF as I used to. To be honest I find non-fiction about science more exciting in the years since I turned fifty. But I still love to keep up with the SF short story field. Strangely enough, my Kindle is getting me to read more SF. It’s rather ironic that a science fictional looking device is getting me to read more SF, as well as reading online from a world wide network. If I could some how tell my 1965 self who discovered science fiction short stories in little pulp magazines about how his future self would be reading SF it would be very amusing.

Jim