ARTICLE ABSTRACTS
Soren Baggesen
Utopian and Dystopian Pessimism: Le Guin's The Word
for World is Forest and Tiptree's "We Who Stole the Dream"
Abstract.-- SF is basically a utopian mode of story-telling;
but against a background of growing unease in Western culture generally about science and
technology, it has taken the pronounced pessimistic turn evident in Le Guin's The Word
for World is Forest and Tiptree's "We Who Stole the Dream. " Yet as these
stand in relation to one another as statement and counter-statement, they together point
up the need to distinguish different kinds of pessimism. One set of applicable terms is
that in effect suggested by Ernst Bloch when he opposes an "already decided" to
a "not yet decided" pessimism. The former, which might also be named dystopian
pessimism, characterizes Tiptree's story as it contrasts with the "not yet
decided," or utopian, pessimism of Le Guin's in respect to their representation of
evil, figured in "The Dream" as a metaphysical necessity, but in The Word
as a historical universal. This difference, in turn, clarifies the meaning of the Blochian
terms which serve to identify it.
Fredric Jameson
Science Fiction as a Spatial Genre: Generic
Discontinuities and the Problem of Figuration in Vonda Mclntyre's The Exile Waiting
Abstract.--The practice of "paraphrase" (largely stigmatized in high
literary criticism) continues to have certain useful functions in the area of SF, by
enabling systematic comparisons between its plots and those of other genres or media.
Thus, certain affinities between Vonda Mclntyre's novel The Exile Waiting and the
plots of daytime television (or the "soaps") seem evident. The experiment has
negative value in the way in which it underscores the specificity and the structural
significance of figuration in SF. An analysis of certain of these figures in the Mclntyre
novel leads to the speculative conclusion that their element (and perhaps that of SF
generally) is space; and that therefore SF is perhaps to be considered as a preeminently
spatial genre, if not indeed the spatial genre par excellence.
Stanislaw Lem
On Stapledon's Star Maker
Abstract.--Stapledon's Star Maker is a monumental work of cosmogonic
SF, at once defining the boundaries of SF and attempting a modern theodicy. It attempts to
depict the "universal history of the cosmos" through the mental journey of the
narrator, from the discovery of other life-forms in a panpsychozoic universe, all the way
to a glimpse of the universe's creator, the Star Maker. Despite the unprecedented
expansiveness of Stapledon's vision, the book is a great failure--for the author depicts a
universe founded on an ambiguous ontology. Either the Star Maker created the universe
freely, or it acted as a medium according to rules higher than Star Maker itself. In the
former case, Star Maker's behavior toward its creatures reveals that it is governed by
aesthetic-ludic criteria and not by an ethical interest in their happiness. In the latter
case, it remains a mystery why the cosmos developed the way it did. Stapledon's theodicy
breaks apart on a profound contradiction: that the glory of Star Maker's act of creation
is somehow related to the willingness of its creatures to resign themselves to their own
deaths, their inevitable destruction. Despite Stapledon's wish to create a fantastic
explanatory myth, why the universe had to evolve in the Sisyphusian, indirect ways in Star
Maker remains unexplained.
Florian F. Marzin
Science Fiction and Censorship in West Germany: A
Literary Genre on the Index
Abstract.--Since February of 1982, the Bundesprufstelle, or BPS--a relic of
Wilhelmian Germany--has once again become active. Mandated to "protect" German
youth from bad moral influences, it seized upon Spinrad's The Iron Dream as one
of the first literary victims to appear on its Index, and then on the same author's The
Men in the Jungle. More ominous still has been the BPS's proscription of virtually
the entire "Gor" series. The effect of all this has not simply been to make
Spinrad and John Norman personae non gratae as far as their translation and
publication in Germany goes; it has also meant that West German publishing houses have
become extremely leery about contracting for any work that the BPS might consider
controversial or offensive on "moral" (including certain political)
grounds--meant, in practical terms, that many (SF) texts have either been denied
publication or been bowdlerized beyond recognition.
Patrick D. Murphy
Dialogics and Didacticism: John
Brunner's Narrative Blending
Abstract.--Brunner has faced and largely solved a dilemma confounding many SF
authors: he has balanced the contradictory demands of entertainment and enlightenment by
producing "dialogical," "polyphonic" novels (in Bakhtin's sense of
those terms). The four Brunner novels that best exemplify this dialogical structure are Stand
on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The
Shockwave Rider.
Rendering Stand polyphonic is its multiplicity of viewpoints as expressed
through numerous narrative voices, the author's only one among them. Brunner dialogizes it
further through "double-voicing," which involves a subversive meaning that
either complements or contradicts the one heard on the surface. Orbit employs
many of the same structural techniques, but has a more overtly identifiable authorial
mouthpiece, and this gives greater weight to its authorial point of view than Stand's
has.
Sheep works somewhat differently. As it offers a polyphony of conflicting and
insufficient answers to the problem of ecological devastation, it models reality in two
opposed ways: in the main narrative, as an orderly and chronological process; but in its
jumpcut sections, as the random simultaneity of events. Sheep also enters into
dialogue with Stand and Orbit with regard to the role of a prophetic,
"coyote" figure in leading social change.
Shockwave demonstrates the least sophistication of plot structure and the most
limited use of polyphony. Dealing with a protagonist who suffers from future shock, it
displays that consciousness through shifting viewpoints internal to this single character.
Brunner's more recent work does not repeat the achievements of structural complexity
and polyphonic sophistication of Stand, Orbit, and Sheep. He
has, however, produced new dialogical structures, as in the case of The Crucible of
Time and The Tides of Time. Even so, it seems likely that we have not seen
the last of the dialogic and the polyphonic in Brunner, given their efficaciousness in
melding entertainment and enlightenment into an aesthetic whole.
Charles Nicol
Nabokov and Science Fiction: "Lance"
Abstract.--On the surface, Vladimir Nabokov's attitude towards SF appears
self-contradictory: he frequently disparaged the genre, but admired H. G. Wells and other
SF authors; moreover, a number of his own works appear to be SF. "Lance" is
typical: although including a harsh criticism of SF, this story of the first landing on
Mars is itself demonstrably SF. However, it is also a retelling of a medieval romance and
a description of mountain-climbing. The inspiration for the story appears to be Nabokov's
son's actual mountaineering, which Nabokov regarded with admiration and fear. The
conclusion which all of this points to is that Nabokov rejected SF as a genre but accepted
it as a mode of seeing, a method of ostranenie (estrangement).
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