ARTICLE ABSTRACTS
Samuel R. Delany
Reflections on Historical Models in Modern English
Language Science Fiction
Abstract.-- Historically, British and American "literature" and SF
developed in very different sociological and institutional frameworks. As a result, the
protocols of reading for each, the relationship between writer and editor/publisher, and
the success/income curves of writers in the two fields are very different as well. This
article questions the non-specific use of terms like "New Wave" SF and other
historical models in SF criticism which have socio-political agendas. In response to Peter
Fitting's analysis (in SFS #17), the author proposes an alternative model based on
attitudes toward science and history and on on the specificity of the reader-writer-
publisher dynamic present in 20th century English-language SF.
Jörg Hienger
Entertainment and Challenge in Science Fiction
Abstract.-- Good science fiction is both entertaining and a challenge to the
mind; it is not only escapist and diverting but also intellectually stimulating. This
article investigates how SF functions simultaneously as a vehicle for emotional
exhilaration and as challenging thought experiment.
Gérard Klein
A Petition by Agents of the Dominant Culture For the Dismissal
of Science Fiction
Abstract.-- For almost a half century, authorized representatives of the
dominant culture have repressed science fiction, using three specific tactics: ignorance,
containment, and what might be called petition for dismissal. SF is the expression of a
unique subculture, having orginated and developed in a relatively tight-knit social group
which spans the middle and lower-middle classes and is completely distinct from the ruling
class, particularly in view of its special relationship with science and technology. It is
SF's originality and vitality that these agents of the dominant culture find intolerable;
in similar fashion, revolutionary and avant-garde intellectuals criticize SF's lack of
desire for political power within the existing social hierarchies. This article examines
those mechanisms used for the repression of SF: e.g., marginalizing it with labels of
"popular literature" or "paraliterature," classifying "good"
SF as "true" literature (the strategy of divide and conquer), and using other
means of pressuring the SF subculture to become assimilated into the priorities and
institutions of the ruling class.
Carlo Pagetti
The First Men in the Moon: H.G. Wells and the
Fictional Strategy of his "Scientific Romances"
Abstract.-- In the "scientific romances" of H.G. Wells, the myth of
scientific progress must not be examined within a contextual void but, rather, in terms of
the author's role in the debate on the nature and functions of the novel which raged in
England around the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. At at time when the
concept of narrative communication was being deeply modified, Wells created a novel form
worthy of comparison with the psychological experimentalism of James or Conrad, the
adaptation of naturalistic modes realized by Gissing or Bennett, the still-influential
mid-Victorian tradition, and the Stevensonian renewal of romance. This article analyzes
the hermeneutic structure and role of the narrator in Wells's The First Men in the
Moon as a turning point in Wells's literary and ideological evolution.
Alessandro Portelli
The Three Laws of Robotics: Laws of the Text, Laws of
Production, Laws of Society
Abstract. --Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" was a response to an
anti-science tradition which treats science as a violation of nature and a dangerous act
of human pride (the "Frankenstein complex"). The goal of the Asimov's
"Three Laws" is to clearly show that robots, and machines in general, are merely
man-made constructs and can be fully controlled. But these "Three Laws" also
have implications in terms of the rhetoric used in Asimov's texts and the social ideology
expressed therein.
Joe Sanders
Science Fiction and Detective Fiction: The Case of John
D. MacDonald
Abstract.-- John D. MacDonald was a writer who was just as home in science
fiction as he was in writing mysteries. Between the late 1940s and early '50s, MacDonald
built a reputation as a talented SF writer, but he then abandoned the genre around 1953
and subsequently wrote only detective fiction. This article seeks to explain why MacDonald
abrupt abandonment of SF: i.e., how and why the suspense format gave him a more
comfortable way to work out his concerns. And it also seeks to analyze more fully, using
MacDonald's case as an example, the implicit mechanisms of both SF and mystery fiction as
two very different forms of "escape literature."
Elisabeth Vonarburg and Norbert
Spehner
Science Fiction in Québec: A Survey
Abstract.-- The aim of this article is to present a preliminary survey
of SF published in Québec. It proposes to take a census of the existing texts, to suggest
a few possible directions for further research and some matters for reflection, and to
provide a bibliographical foundation for the more extensive study that has yet to be
undertaken.
[A response by Jean-Marc Gouanvic, and a reply
by Robert M. Philmus, appear in SFS 22 (November 1980).]
Patricia Warrick
The Encounter of Taoism and Fascism in Philip K. Dick's The
Man in the High Castle
Abstract. Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle can be
read simply as a political novel about the horrors of Nazism. But doing so would ignore
the extraordinarily complex web of philosophical meaning embedded in the text. The central
tension of the narrative is the encounter between fascism and Taoism. Each of the four
major characters dramatizes this encounter: each faces a moment when he must choose his
way through the chaos of political and economic violence, fraud, change, and intrigue in a
technological near-future. Such a reading reveals The Man in the High Castle as
Dick's most finely wrought novel, one where all the parts, intricately interlocked, are
essential to create the fictional world mirroring reality as Dick envisions it.
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