The Nebula Awards

I know it when I read it

Guest Blog by Sheila Finch on October 28 2008

Numerous people far more knowledgeable than I have taken a crack at defining science fiction without pinning the subject down to everybody’s satisfaction. Norman Spinrad seemed to throw his hands up in despair, claiming, “Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.” This is rather like the Supreme Court judge who claimed to know porno when he saw it. Lately I’ve been reading a number of books that weren’t published as science fiction yet seem to me to slide across the border when the critics weren’t looking. But what makes the difference?

Let’s begin with the two main starting points of sf. The first is, “If this goes on...” and the second, “What if...?” The answer to these questions gives us a genre story. (Obviously, a mainstream story that introduces – say – a dysfunctional family and their misadventures is answering the first question. But in sf, we intend that “this” be more than just personal circumstance, that it be more culturally or globally significant, and that it have to do with science or technology.) And add to these starting points, Theodore Sturgeon‘s admonition to writers to speculate just a bit further: “Ask the next question.”

I find most non-genre works that venture into the sf field fail to do that, adopting sf tropes but not willing to go much further. The prime example of this is John Updike’s Roger’s Version, which begins with a wonderful “what if” scenario: A computer scientist hits upon the idea of setting up a program to finally prove the existence of God one way or another. But alas, instead of following this idea to its probably sensational end, Updike wimps out and Roger gives up his search before it gets there. I really don’t think an audience of sf readers would have allowed him to get away with that.

In similar fashion, Cormac McCarthy’s recent bestseller The Road takes on the “if this goes on” premise. McCarthy gives us a truly futuristic feel of landscape after the collapse of civilization, and a harrowing story of a man and his son trying to survive, but it’s all scenery and no new revelation. McCarthy fails to ask Sturgeon’s next question: Okay, the world is ruined, but then what?  What I’m talking about here are the sf reader’s expectations, the belief that the story should offer something more than just plot and scenery and good characterization. Science fiction has trained us to expect the working out of an original idea to its possible conclusion.

Then I picked up Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. I’d read Ishiguro’s earlier work such as The Remains of the Day, and I’d heard that he’d strayed into science fiction recently, but I’d forgotten that possibility. Consequently, I came to the novel with no preconceived ideas. This is a first-person narrative from a character named “Kathy H.” Nobody has last names in this book, which at first annoyed me as a possible affectation on the author’s part, but later added to the ominous tone that develops. Kathy tells us that she is something called a “carer,” never defined but gradually coming into focus as the book progresses. Her time as a carer is about to run out, and there’s something sinister about that because she’s still young and good at her job. It becomes increasingly obvious to the reader that the reason Kathy spends no time agonizing over her situation is that she finds it absolutely normal. As the parameters of her world and her expected role in it emerge, the central story becomes horrifyingly clear. Yet while the reader is shuddering, Kathy takes her fate for granted. And that is the scariest part of the novel – and the most science fictional. Ishiguro has given us a prime example of “if this goes on” – taking an idea that today is just a gleam in a medical researcher’s eye and following it to its chilling conclusion.

Ishiguro brings us into his story right in the middle of things without a roadmap. The best science fiction has been doing this for a very long time and is often initially difficult to read. Think of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for a notable example. Readers unused to the conventions of sf often complain about this. But stopping for explanation would destroy the illusion of being there, wouldn’t it? Ursula Le Guin described this kind of expository lump in fiction this way: The captain of the starship turns to his crew, in the middle of a huge battle, and says, “As you know, men, this starship runs on the X method.....” No such lumps in Ishiguro’s wonderful novel! Too bad it’s too late to recommend it for a Nebula.

So, what’s the answer to the question we started with? What actually distinguishes science fiction from mainstream borrowing its tropes? Not just stories set in the future, or even stories using future technology. It’s the exploration – comic or tragic – of the way the lives of ordinary people would be changed, by technology or societal upheaval, from what we consider the norm today that makes an sf story. Sam Goldwyn is reputed to have told aspiring screenwriters, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union,” but as sf readers, we seem to have no problem with “message” in our fiction; in fact we often demand it. (A young man I know who had just read The Road said, “Yeah, it was well done. But what was the point?”) Damon Knight once said the definition of fiction is “something changes for someone.” We want a book to ask the next question about that change, going beyond the sensational to probabilities that we must ponder.

Science fiction isn’t just literature published as science fiction. It doesn’t really matter who publishes it, or what label gets put on it. Science fiction is a special form of Einstein’s gedanken experimenten.  As readers, we are asked to consider the most important question of all before it’s too late: Do we really want this to happen?

The author of eight novels, more than thirty short stories, dozens of poems and articles about science fiction, SHEILA FINCH has received several awards, including the Nebula Award, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel in the Field, and the San Diego Book Award for Young Adult fiction. She has given workshops at
writers’ conferences all over Southern California and recently retired from twenty-eight years of teaching creative writing and science fiction at El Camino College, California.  She lives in Long Beach, California, with a cat and two retired racing greyhounds.
To learn more about Sheila, see her website or read her blog.

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