Smuggler’s Ponderings: History, Fandom and Masters of Science Fiction

Bookgazing

What confuses me (the most – a lot of the argument around this confuses me) is the idea that historical analysis and linked text analysis is the only ‘deep’ way to perform literary analysis. To me it’s just one way – texts have always been analysed in a variety of ways and many of those ways take the text in isolation but bring factors other than past literary history in to provide context. Academic feminist analysis, for example, does not always have an element of literary history in every critique although some academic feminist criticism does. It’s really a matter of what your starting point is, what you want to analyse and whether it’s most appropriate to point to the literary historical context or a wider historical context or some other kind of context to draw out what you want to talk about.

To say looking at texts in light of texts that have gone before them is the only way to go just baffles me. And to say that without this historical context critics lack something well… it’s just one layer and every critic is partial in some way. They have to be because their brains are not super computers/they tend to be because of their backgrounds and specialisations.

Anyway I had a lot of thoughts about this. I wish I had time to write about it.

Niall

I think bookgazing has it right: it’s all contextual. No book or writer is essential for every SF reader, everywhere, everytime. Many books and writers are essential for specific SF contexts, questions or discussions.

So Heinlein is an essential figure in the history of American genre science fiction. He won too many awards, was too widely read, influenced too many writers, and has been railed against by too many others, to be anything else. I haven’t read much of his work myself, and I don’t care for much of what I have read, but saying he’s not essential, in that context, would be rewriting history as well.

But at this point, being a fan of SF is a much broader church than just being a fan of American genre science fiction. So to answer some of your rhetorical questions: of course one can criticise “new” without having read “old”; if someone tries to say that a review (or any opinion of a contemporary work) is invalid because the reviewer hasn’t read X, that’s rubbish. There are many histories of SF to be a part of, many angles of attack.

(Although if someone asks, “but have you read X?” I’d say that’s the start of a conversation, rather than silencing.)

As for being a “better” or “worse” reviewer — assuming “reviewer” means someone who aspires to offer useful informed opinions for the benefit of others, rather than someone just jotting down their reactions to a book — well, “better” and “worse” should also be contextual terms, for me. I think they depend on the work under review, the audience reading the review, and the purpose of the review.

For example: for people who read contemporary YA, and want to know what YA to read next, you’re a better reviewer of YA than I am, because you’ve read vastly more of it. You are more able to identify originality, point out zeitgeisty themes, and so forth — more able to provide context. When Pure came out, for instance, there was a quite obvious divide in my friends group. Those of us who only read the occasional YA thought it was great, because we loved the imagery and language; those of us who read much more YA thought it was weak, because they found the plot familiar to the point of being distractingly predictable. (Of course I see from Googling your review that you quite liked it! Still, the general point stands, I think.)

That’s not to say that I think my opinions on contemporary YA are worthless. And for other YA dabblers they might be useful. But for people who read a lot of YA, and want a steer on whether to read a YA or not, I think my opinions are less likely to be useful than your opinions. I don’t have to be engaging in historical analysis of YA for this to be true.

So for some reviews, for some audiences, for some purposes: yes, I think in principle you will do a better job if you can bring some knowledge of the Heinleinian tradition to bear. Of course the same goes for the cyberpunk tradition, the dystopian tradition, the feminist SF tradition, the afrofuturist tradition, the New Wave tradition, the scientific romance tradition, for various non-US/UK traditions, and so on, and so on. All of those histories are “essential”, and none of them are. And within the broad church of being “an SF fan” you can engage or not with whichever you choose.

I’m torn because on the one hand I don’t want anyone to feel their opinions are invalid, whatever their reading background — I feel that anxiety quite enough myself. But on the other hand, I take reviews seriously, I want reviewers to take their job seriously, and I feel like actually not enough SF reviews include history or context of any kind. As someone who picked up a lot of SF historical knowledge — for numerous traditions — through reading reviews, I’m sad that sort of criticism feels harder to find now.

Perhaps what I’m saying is that most of the time I don’t care what context you’re bringing to a work, but I want you to talk about it!

Andrea K

I guess my primary response is “what do we mean by essential”? What is the cost of not having read those essential books?

If a book comes out this year, that happens to be a Heinlein pastiche, will I fail to enjoy it if I haven’t read Heinlein? Or if I’ve only read the juveniles, and skipped most of the “yay, sex” books? I’m still likely to enjoy a kid trying hard and loving science story.

The one impact of knowing the history of the genre I _do_ see has been in the last couple of years where I see x book or y book held up as amazing or incredibly original, and then come across a handful of posts where people say: “It’s not a bad book, but I don’t get all the squee – it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before.”

There _is_ a divide of reading history that changes the experience of books. I will never feel the same way about Harry Potter as people who first encountered the genre through those books. I enjoyed them, but I had read Diana Wynne Jones, and The Books of Magic, and, oh, a lot of other books before them, so my experience of them is simply different.

But then, I don’t think that’s a big deal. No-one can possibly read all the books of any genre. Everyone will start at different points, be drawn to different books, love them or hate them, talk about them, avoid them, do wonderful snarky gif posts, or devote thousands of hours to fan art and cosplay.

Possibly the best fan letter I ever received was from someone who started reading science fiction because of my Touchstone Trilogy. She went on from me to Anne McCaffrey. I am that person’s Heinlein.

Can’t be many things cooler than that.

Karen Mahoney

Amazing essay, Ana! (This is why I tell you that you have a gift for non-fiction. THIS essay. So there. ;))

I don’t have answers either, but I just wanted to echo (and follow on from) Natalia’s comment: I, too, have been reading SFF my entire life. And yet I have never read a single book by Heinlein, Clarke or Asimov. I don’t wear that as a badge of honour or anything – just stating it as a fact. The first thing that made me a sci-fi fan was Star Wars. Went to see it when I was 5, when it first came out, and that was my Gateway. Fantasy gateway: the Dragonlance books several years later. When I first started reading ‘actual’ SF, it was Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, etc. that I gravitated toward. I had no interest, even then, in the books by the Grand Masters of SF. Maybe I had an intuition that they just wouldn’t be for me, I don’t know.

Years later, do I think I SHOULD have read them in order to have an opinion on SFF or on fandom, or whatever? Of course not! I have gravitated more toward fantasy the older I become, but I still think I’m absolutely allowed to read a new science fiction novel by a new author and have a valid opinion, and a place in the discussion around these things.

I remember very well when Tricia Sullivan won the Arthur C. Clarke award for her third novel (in 1999), and there was genuine shock in some publications. GASP! She’s a woman. GASP! She’s only 30. GASP! It’s only her third novel. GASP! She’s published no short fiction. GASP! She hasn’t read all the Grand Masters. That confirmed to me, somehow, that I am both inside and outside fandom – but I don’t care because I know what I love and I’ll talk about it anytime I want to.

Kaz

green_knight

I grew up in Germany, although I read in English fairly early on – whatever books I could find. Which meant a lot of classics and genre mystery. My entry to SF was Jules Verne; for a while I read Perry Rhodan (hardly any English-speaking SF reader knows the series, it’s huge in Germany), and then I started with CJ Cherryh and moved forward from there.

‘The golden Age’ is such a narrow band of so few authors; it canonises a handful of writers and ignores oh-so-many. Will you have a better understanding of SF if you have read Heinlein but never read Kafka? Or [insert author of choice]? If ‘understanding SF’ were as easy as reading Heinlein, more people would, and would be able to talk intelligently about it. Evidently, that’s not the key.

Joel

“Fandom” slants towards hard, classical SF, written mostly by white men. There’s historical reasons for that, and there’s some good stuff there (yes, I’ve read plenty of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Niven). To make an analogy, it’s like eating only classic American food. Yes, it can be done very well, but it’s limiting not to explore other cuisines. Fantasy, YA, middle-grade; works with more feminist/LGBT slants — there’s lots good stuff there too, and I’m exploring more of it, partially thanks to this blog. Basically, the problem with “fandom” is that it’s tough to change, to be more inclusive, for any organization. Even one which is nominally open-minded and creative.

Jo Rhett

You quoted her first two sentences without the remainder of the context. Toni paraphrased what was being said, then she called it ridiculous.

I agree with most of your points, but you’re failing just like the “big media” organizations you blame when you grab two short sentences and ignore every word around them. Toni was making the exact same points you were about the lack of a single coherent view of fandom.

Kate & Zena

I guess the real question is “Is there such thing as a true fan?” or “What constitutes as science-fiction?” I’m not a big fan of genres just for the fact so many books overlap so many genres. It starts to get very confusing when you start labeling everything. I purposely don’t have my bookshelf divided by genre or age group (oh wait, that’s a genre!) for that reason. It goes by author’s last name, first name. The only thing separated is my encyclopedias, reference material (because of the lack of author names) and picture books as they tend to be too big for the regular shelves and need to be on the bottom or on top. No genres on my bookshelf because I don’t believe in them and because I believe that to be a fan of any genre, you have to be a fan of books first!

Ros Jackson

Excellent article, Ana. It seems strange that one of the best-read bloggers in our genre is asking “am I outside fandom?” It implies there’s something wrong with the question, and there is.

I think we’ve got to get beyond the stage of having “essential” reading lists, and recognize them as nothing more than sales tools, or maybe a bit of fun (fun which affects authors’ careers, however). There’s no way anyone can read all of the prominent authors in a genre (starting when? in which country? which subgenre? etc, etc), but moreover it isn’t desirable. To quote Haruki Murakami, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

steve davidson

I agree that this is a very thought-provoking article. Particularly for me, coming as I do from a background in “da classics” and also as one who as advocated the continued engagement with the “history” of the genre.
For the record and to alleviate anxiety: no, I don’t think that one must be immersed in the classics to be able to be an effective reviewer; it’s quite possible to review a work without referencing it’s potential connections/influences from the past. (And – context – one year of publishing these days is roughly the equivalent of a decade’s worth of output from the past, so there is plenty of contemporary history to reference in a review if one wants to go that way.)
I am bothered though by the selective recollection that sometimes crops up: when the “classics” are dismissed as being largely the product of white cishets’ works being lauded by white cishets, (I like that abbreviation) it overlooks Shelley’s contribution. More recently, it also overlooks the participation in those selections of author/editors like Judith Merrill and Kate Wilhelm.
“History” is not what actually happened; it’s the events that happened that we choose to highlight, presented and interpreted within the current context.
While the history that has been presented previously may be largely dominated by white cishets and has been contextualized for a white cishet audience, dismissing it entirely (for whatever reason) will deny us the opportunity of discovery. We’d not know that one of the earliest SF club’s meetings were hosted at the home of a person of color, or that the letter columns in the early magazines were filled with letters from female fans (I will admit that commentary on their letters did often take the form of surprise that a woman was interested in math and physics and astronomy – but it was positively couched); we’d not remember that The Skylark of Space – the first genuine space opera – was co-authored by a woman. Or that one of the early contributors to the first SF magazine was a woman.
We’d overlook early efforts at expanding the cultural reach of the genre expressed through works like the Soviet Science Fiction anthology, or the translation and publication of Lundwall’s “Science Fiction: What’s It All About.
Through foreign language contributors to Amazing, I’m learning all kinds of history about the origins and early days of SF in places like Bolivia. That history exists, even if it is overlooked here. We can still access it and make it relevant to today (and judging by the reception of such, I’d say that most people these days are receptive to learning about it).
It’s also instructive to remember that SF, like history, is a continuum. Those writing now are largely authors whose foundational experience of SF literature are “the classics”. Octavia Butler, as one example cited previously: “According to the Norton Anthology of African American Literature she was “drawn early to [science fiction] magazines such as Amazing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy and soon began reading all the science fiction classics.” (Wikipedia). She herself is considered to have influenced many ‘next gen’ authors. Octavia used her knowledge of those classics and her own reactions and reception of them to begin a new variation on their themes. (She read them and was influenced by them, but she did not have to and did not buy into the mainstream culture they represented in her own works. I do not believe that she would have been as effective an author of SF without that knowledge of the classics.)
So to sum up: I think one can effectively review without a vast and deep knowledge of the classics. But I also think that reading them and studying their history can be instructive, can reveal hitherto unknown information and best of all, reading them does not automatically induct you into a club you’d probably rather not be a member of. Instead, it may give you tools that will help address those things that need changing.

KMont

If we all had to subscribe to someone else’s opinions of how to be the best this or that, we’d probably never get anywhere. Instead we’d be too worried whether we were stuck up their butts enough or not. I’ve tried to read Heinlein, it didn’t work for me at that time. I will try again. When I’m ready. Not before. I did watch Stormship Troopers, and wrote, I feel, a pretty funny post on how it just tickles the stew out of me. And got man-splained why that was stinky poop and I needed to actually read Heinlein. Dudes who must man-splain, shut it. I can find the flashlight on my own. So can pretty much everyone else. Someone might actually have some good advice for us, and sure, we can learn from that if it’s actually useful (and not condescending bull), but look, we are all who we are who we are who we are. I haven’t ever felt like I needed to jump into Heinlein after posting that movie-love-fest blog post. I agree reading some of things could potentially help readers and reviewers have more insight down the line, but yeah, come on. We can’t all read everything and anyone claiming you must do this or must do that hasn’t done it all either. I’ve never understood the propensity for these fandoms or groups of any kind, whoever they are, needing to tell others how things should be or horror of horrors, you can’t join their club. People – what made you think we aren’t already in it? I am a sci-fi, fantasy-reading person and I say I am.

Ana, this post rocks. You rock.

G

Disclaimer: I’m no fan of Heinlein and have read, to date, exactly five of his books. Of those five, I’ve moderately enjoyed two (Stranger in a Strange Land, Orphans of the Sky), found one interesting but overrated (Moon is a Harsh Mistress), and severely disliked the final two–one for being essentially fascistic (Starship Troopers) and the other for being essentially racist (Farnham’s Freehold).

I do not think I would be greatly enriched as an individual by the act of reading more Heinlein. Nor do I think it would alter the validity (or lack thereof) of any reviews I write of non-Heinlein books.

That said, I do see value in reading someone like Heinlein. After all, whether we attempt to follow in his footsteps or find his influence on the genre “toxic,” as Jonathan McCalmont recently put it, he has undeniably had that influence. Though I find a lot of what he wrote objectionable, I think the act of reading objectionable material can be instructive–especially when, like it or not, that objectionable material has shaped SF and discourses on SF to a significant degree.

I’d never look down on someone who skips Heinlein, and I’d laugh at someone who tried to tell me that I need to read more Heinlein before commenting on anything other than the Heinlein books I’ve declined to read. But I can see value for someone like me in reading more Heinlein, even if the chances of me doing that are fairly slim.

Estara Swanberg

*sigh* among the many spelling mistakes in my post,there’s a really misleading one: online genre fans = online genre friends

guthrie

Maybe part of the problem with Heinlein is that he’s not such a good writer as people like to think he was. Thus maybe he meant Farnhams freehold not to be racist, but he just didn’t manage to write it well. Same with Starship troopers, at some point you have to stop and say the fault is not with the readers misunderstanding it, but with the author for writing badly.

Another example being Frank Herbert, I’ve read pretty much all the fiction he ever wrote and would count myself a fan, but some of it is badly written and not worth reading and some of the novels are good, but have silly bits or places which would have been made better by being critted before publishing. You have to be honest about your favourite authors writings, not just put them on a pedestal.

Kaethe

It’s not a religion, scifi fandom. There is no word handed down from on high. Wisskopf was clearly trying to separate the people she considers appropriate fans from those other people. In her mind, anyone who doesn’t read and love Heinlein is a fake fan. That makes her an asshat. Seriously, who calls for unity by insulting the majority?

If one wants to make a case for reading Heinlein one had damn well better offer some inherent or relative value other than “because I said so.” No one is ever swayed by that sort of a review.

Daniel

Over at slhuang.com I commented on a post along similar lines (the post wondered who gets to decide what books and authors are classics, and why Heinlein appears on those lists much more often than, for example, Octavia Butler):
http://www.slhuang.com/blog/2014/03/12/who-chooses-sf-classics-who-chooses-our-required-reading/#comment-3148

If you’d allow me, I’d like to repost my comment here:

It’s clear that it’s a matter of historical perspective. Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein were writing their most influential works in the 50s. In some cases even in the 40s. They, along with some others, took a genre that at their time was nothing but a few pulp magazines among hundreds, and were instrumental in shaping it into something recognizable today. Their influence in that process was huge. Afterwards, other writers built on the conventions they had set or rebelled against them. They defined what is possible in this genre, and again those who followed built on that or tried to find different ways, but always against that reference.

Butler published her more influential works in the 80s. She is a truly excellent writer, literarily more skilled than the great writers of the Golden Age, who “just” had an incredible imagination and were excellent storytellers, but not great literary figures. More people should read Butler, and she certainly deserves to appear in more lists than just in “writers of color”. However, you can understand the history and evolution of SF without Butler. You can’t without Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein. Something similar can be said, much earlier, of H. G. Wells.

That’s why they are classics among the classics. It doesn’t mean that SF finishes with them, or that you need to read them to be a fan, or that you need to like them, or think they are good writers or follow the paths they traced. To be alive and remain relevant, a genre needs change. It’s been done before (see the New Wave in the 60s and 70s, or cyberpunk in the 80s), and will be done again, for as long as the genre remains relevant. There’s room for everyone. But to understand the history of SF and how we got here… you can’t really do that without the great writers of the Golden Age.

That’s why they are classics.

(To put a not-male example in a different genre: think about detective fiction and Agatha Christie.)

Marie

I wouldn’t worry about being outside of fandom all that much, even up to the 90’s fans were rather proud of being outsiders. There weren’t enough fans to bring anything out of the borders of society and profit, unlike today’s big money. Reading about the firestorms done by snail mail and mimeograph shows there’s little change aside from the potential for things to produce viral explosions. Just because the X number of grand masters were all white men, as they were the only ones to get published, doesn’t negate their ideas as sometimes radical today. Heinlein wrote when idea was king and character less, so context is important. Like when Trek-OS is cheesy and overdone by today’s standards, we should compare it to Lost in Space and My Favorite Martian as context.

Today’s writers are standing on the shoulders of the cyber authors of the 90s for cultural context, the New Wave of the 60s for character and theme and the ideas of rocket ships, time machines, and elves of the earlier generations. Like reading Silas Marner or Three Musketeers today, it’s not fair to judge too much out of context of the culture or changes in writing techniques.

Some classics will go and come back again as tastes change. The real classics are ones that speak to multiple generations despite some oddities. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers had very different meaning and feel than the action movie, and I think was a terrible adaptation of a story about a civil war and adulthood. Not too many SFF and fantasy have been around long enough to be a classic that speaks to people who weren’t surrounded by the correct culture. Many classics are named that because they hit the right note for the right age of a cadre of fans. Whether they speak to future generations who aren’t nostalgic is an open question. Number of the Beast is one of Heinlein’s better later works and his juveniles read better than Stranger in a Strange Land when you read them 30+ years later.
An affectionate and mostly correct in mood/depiction of fandom in two eras is in the two mysteries Bimbos of the Death Sun, and Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb.