#46 = Volume 15, Part 3 = November 1988
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BOOKS IN REVIEW
Where's the Theory?
Frank Sadler. The
Unified Ring: Narrative Art and the Science-Fiction Novel.
["Studies in Speculative Fiction," No. 11.] Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press,
1984. 117pp. $37.95.
I wanted to like this book a great deal more than I was able to. Since studying the
narrative techniques of SF strikes me as a worthwhile undertaking, it was very
disappointing to discover that Sadler's book doesn't live up to the promise of his title.
He argues that novelists, like all members of a culture, are influenced by their age's
conception of the nature of the universe, and that such conceptions necessarily shape
their art, not only in content but in form. Thus when the conception of the universe
undergoes a dramatic change-- as it did in the 20th century under the impact of modern
mathematical physics, especially the theories of relativity, probability, and
uncertainty--one would expect a change in artistic techniques to reflect this changed
understanding of reality. This observation, as Sadler admits, suggests:
that the value of the novelist's art lies directly in his keeping abreast of
the newer theories of reality. And, perhaps, there are other values of art, and other
theories in which this type of argument would be foreign. Nevertheless, it would seem safe
to assume...that one standard or criterion that may be used to judge the credibility of
any fictional system is the degree to which its narrative devices (techniques) are
appropriate or inappropriate to the world view, both implicit and explicit, which exists
in the novel. (p. 11)
In order to demonstrate this point, Sadler proposes to examine three "recent"
SF novels (at least recent in 1974 when he completed this doctoral dissertation) in light
of contemporary mathematical physics: relativity in Samuel R. Delany's The Einstein
Intersection (1967); probability theory in Brian Aldiss's Report on Probability A
(1968); and time in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). In fact, the
two chapters on Aldiss and Vonnegut are effective close readings of those texts (though
not of great theoretical interest), and would make quite satisfactory journal articles,
but I can see no excuse whatever for publishing this book in its entirety, especially not
in 1984. Sadler's general thesis--that prevailing world-view affects works of art--seems
comparatively trivial; and his prose is pedestrian, his tone defensive, and the entire
project seriously dated.
And therein, I suspect, lies the key to most of the problems with this text: that it
essentially reprints a ten-year-old dissertation. If we picture the author as a graduate
student in English literature in the early 1970s, trying to persuade his doctoral
committee that one could, indeed, write a genuinely scholarly study of a scorned genre
like SF, then the defensiveness of his tone makes some sense. This context also would
explain his otherwise incomprehensibly respectful bows in the direction of "organic
form" as the key criterion for evaluating literary structure, and his attempts to
update the term by including in it the new perceptions of nature found in mathematical
physics.
Further, it could explain Sadler's choice of texts, in particular his inclusion of The
Einstein Intersection. Delany's novel is clearly of high literary merit and, equally
clearly, is concerned with the difference between the Einsteinian and the Gödelian
universe, but more on a thematic than on a structural level. Sadler works strenuously to
persuade us otherwise, but the very effort betrays him: he has to work too hard to make
the novel fit his model. First, he devotes the bulk of the chapter to discussions of
relativity and the connections between physics and fiction rather than to Delany's novel;
next, he defines "form" in a notably metaphorical and unhelpful way (adopting
Charles Olson's definition: "FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT").
Finally, his argument rests on two features of the text: that Delany intersperses his
novel with passages from the journal he kept while he was writing it, and that Spider in a
set-piece explains to Lobey the significance of the differences between Einstein and
Gödel.
It seems likely to me that Delany's novel does reflect the world created by modern
physics, but Sadler's argument does not persuade me that this reflection is on the level
of structure, or that--even if he were right--this fact tells us anything very important
about The Einstein Intersection. If I had been reading for myself rather than for
review, I would have stopped with this chapter, and would thus have missed the far more
sensible and productive discussions of Aldiss and Vonnegut, where the scientific models
really do operate on a structural level and where Sadler's analysis contributes to our
understanding of the novels.
Consider, though: ten years later, other more suitable texts have become
available--Joanna Russ's The Female Man, several of Delany's subsequent
experiments, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed,
Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, just to name some of the most obvious examples, all of
them with sufficient literary merit to justify their inclusion in such a study. Choosing
one of these other texts might have helped Sadler write a much more compelling analysis.
And yet, rather than taking advantage of the ten-year gap between the dissertation and its
publication to make such a crucial improvement, Sadler sticks with his original choice.
Moreover, as we compare the chapter on Delany with those on Aldiss and Vonnegut, a more
problematic aspect of Sadler's argument appears, one which goes to the heart of his
theoretical point. Occasionally he admits that most SF does not employ the narrative
techniques he describes; he himself points out that, while many SF writers address the
issues of contemporary science thematically, few of them indulge in formal experimentation
(not that this concession prevents Sadler from generalizing about "SF" in other
places as if most SF texts did use such narrative techniques).
This contradiction would be unimportant except that Sadler's model implies that not
just SF novels, but all modern--perhaps we should call them
"experimental" novels--to the extent that they are truly of their own time,
should demonstrate the same structural reflections of contemporary physics that he finds
in selected SF texts. He says that he is not making any "special claim for science
fiction" (p. 19). But if there is nothing "special" about SF in this
regard, then Sadler's claim to be contributing to SF theory is incoherent on its face.
I suspect that the reason Sadler's analyses of Aldiss and Vonnegut are so much more
satisfactory than of Delany is that Report on Probability A and Slaughterhouse-Five
are structurally much more like experimental novels than like most SF--far more so
than The Einstein Intersection. Sadler, despite his announced goal here, lacks a
critical vocabulary to talk about the narrative structures of SF, only he doesn't seem to
have recognized that fact. He is still trying to adapt the ordinary language of literary
criticism (and, in "organic form," an outdated language at that) to a
paraliterary genre, and it proves inadequate to the task.
I would, perhaps, be more tolerant of this muddle-headed addition to the lists of SF
criticism if Sadler had not prefaced it with a statement of breathtaking arrogance,
implicitly designed to justify publishing such a dated study. "In the ten years since
the preponderance of this book was first written," he observes, "little has
taken place to warrant optimism about the future of science-fiction criticism. What had
been published, for the most part, continues to be rather traditional in its examination
of the science-fiction novel." This is a statement with which many of us could
readily agree, despite its self-serving quality--and despite our wry recognition that the
pot is here calling the kettle black. However, he goes on to take the community of SF
critics to task for not incorporating recent developments in "semiotics and
deconstructionist theory" (not to mention for ignoring the work of Robert Scholes)
and to shake his head gravely, dubious of future reform. He then concludes with a fatuous
remark about the value of art, and trumps it by adding: "My method is somewhat
eclectic and personal. I offer no apologies for it. It is, in one sense, intellectual,
while in another, truly creative."
Alas, it is neither intellectual nor creative, and has nothing of value to say about
either narrative art or the SF novel as a form. It is hard to know who to be most
irritated with--Sadler for his arrogance, or UMI for publishing this volume.
--Kathleen L. Spencer Millsaps College
A Modern Dystopia
Leon Stover. The
Prophetic Soul: A Reading of H.G. Wells's Things to Come. Jefferson,
NC & London: McFarland & Co., 1987. 301pp. $39.95
Although Things to Come was H.G. Wells's most ambitious venture into
film-making, scholars and critics have never paid it more than superficial attention. At
the time of its original release (1936), it earned the dubious distinction of becoming (in
Michael Korda's words) "an instant box-office failure"; and with the passing of
the years film aficionados have generally written it off (along with Fritz Lang's Metropolis,
which Wells heartily detested) as a spectacular but ludicrous SF "dinosaur,"
or even worse, they have dismissed it as a movie whose sole significance was that it
provided the inspiration for Arthur Bliss's memorable score.
At long last we have a serious reading of the film. The Prophetic Soul contains
Leon Stover's close analysis of Things to Come, a rich collection of stills from
the movie, and two appendixes providing previously unpublished items of extraordinary
interest: "Whither Mankind?" (1934), Wells's film treatment privately published
for circulation among the production staff of London Films, and the so-called release (or
cutting continuity) script prepared after the film's completion but containing some
material actually omitted from the released version. Neither of these appendix items
should be confused with the novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933), on which
the film is partly based, or with the book Things to Come, a film scenario in
literary form published by Wells in 1935.
I have only two objections to this otherwise admirable contribution to Wells
scholarship. Mr. Stover has a tendency to repeat (and sometimes paraphrase) himself. Some
judicious pruning could have shortened his commentary by about a third of its length
without any significant loss of content. He has also short-changed the aesthetic aspects
of the film in order to focus on its ideological significance. This will worry film
specialists; but Wells scholars will probably find Mr. Stover's revelations to be ample
compensation for that limitation.
The Prophetic Soul starts out by correcting some popular misconceptions about
the film. Stover dismisses the notion that "the film is nothing more than a crude
prophecy of space flight derived from Jules Verne" (p. xv). He reminds us of Wells's
memo to his film's production staff (originally published in the 1935 scenario): "As
a general rule you may take it that whatever Lange [sic] did in Metropolis is the
exact opposite of what is wanted here" (p. xv). More important, he points out that Things
to Come is not just another adaptation of a Wells novel or a director's (William
Cameron Menzies') transmutation of Wells's scenario. It was shot from an original
screenplay and was entirely Wells's in conception and realization. Except for the change
of title (from Wells's preferred "Whither Mankind?") and the omission of a few
brief scenes in the 2036 sequences, the film was in every respect what Wells intended it
to be. Raymond Massey, who played the film's two heroes, John and Oswald Cabal, observed
that "No writer for the screen ever had or ever will have such authority as H.G.
Wells possessed in the making of Things to Come" (p. xvii).
It is but a short step from Massey's "insider" observation to Stover's
impressive claim--are you ready for it?--that the film was nothing less than the
culmination of Wells's socio-political visions--a claim that he fully substantiates by
documenting its crucial place in the evolution of Wells's thought and by providing a
scene-by-scene reading of the film--an analytic process which may be aptly described as
"double exposure." Drawing heavily on his two appendixes and upon two published
works on which (according to Wells himself) the film was based--i.e., The Work, Wealth
and Happiness of Mankind (1931) and The Shape of Things to Come--Stover
exposes the film's underlying "political religion" and its sources, both of
which have escaped previous commentators; then he exposes the anti-humanist implications
of that ideology, which he dubs "Wellsism." A passage in "Whither
Mankind?" reveals that "Wellsism" was originally conceived in terms of a
drama of three contesting universal forces, represented in Hindu theology as Brahma the
Creator (whom Wells identified with the Poietic or scientific-creative mind), Siva the
Destroyer (identified with the Kinetic or administrative-managerial capacity), and Vishnu
the Possessor (identified with the "dull and base" masses). This conception is
never made explicit in the released film, but Stover summarizes it thus:
Like Plato's philosopher, John Cabal hand picks his teachers and soldiers, himself a
shining example to them of both rational wisdom [Brahma] and the courage to use force
[Siva]. He gathers into his Air Dictatorship those few exceptional men and women of the
Poietic and the Kinetic type that exist in the world, ruling it in his image over the
intellectually Dull and morally Base who comprise the rest of humanity [Vishnu]. This he
does for mankind's own good in spite of its fierce resistance. But in time all opposition
to his Puritan Tyranny ceases. Cabal brings Siva the Destroyer to the side of Brahma the
Creator for the permanent holding down of Vishnu the Possessor. In monopolizing all
instruments of force in the creative name of the Social Idea, he achieves a lasting
victory over those craven desires that animate the common man. (pp. 21-22)
A unique kind of socialist, Wells was distrustful and contemptuous of the common man
and his naive complacency (which he termed Everydayism). As Stover explains, the Utopia
Wells depicts in Things to Come shows his ideal to have been neither democratic
socialism nor Marxist-Leninist communism but statism in its most absolute form. Taking his
cue from Saint-Simon's vision of a ruling elite of industrialists, Wells envisages a world
revolution removing all power from the people and vesting it instead in a
scientific-managerial elite. In its perfected form--which is never shown in the film--the
Wellsian world state, under the totalitarian guidance of this elite class, would become a
completely unified social organism in which there would be no place for individualism.
Quoting and commenting on Wells's ideal, Stover clarifies the picture:
The world citizen [of 2036 A.D.] is taught a scientific creed that calls for the
'merger of one's romantic individual life into the deathless life of the species'.... John
Cabal affirms this credo in the concluding part of his address [to the World Council],
thereby making merger immortality the official creed of the world socialist state.
Certainly it is Wells's credo. 'Socialism is to me,' he says,
'no more and no less than
the awakening of a collective consciousness in humanity.' This means, he goes on,
'I would
oppose the conception of the Whole to the self-seeking of the Individual.' The Individual
is to sink his ego into the immortal state-monster, and so 'live in the species and find
his happiness there,' rejoicing in 'the idea of a racial well-being embodied in an
organized state.' (pp. 68-69)
If Stover's reading is sound--and I can discern no significant flaws in his overall
interpretation-- then Wells's ultimate antidote for the racial degeneracy prophesied in The
Time Machine was to turn the planet into a kind of human anthill and then extend its
boundaries into outer space. The Martians in Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men demonstrate
that kind of collective consciousness as an evolutionary dead end. Stapledon
looked forward to the attainment of collective consciousness in the human race;
but he envisaged that super-faculty as a development that would co-exist with rather than negate the
individual spirit. How ironic--and how depressing--that Wells, who started out by
rediscovering the unique, should ultimately hold up for our admiration a
"Utopia" dedicated to the suppression of unique egos such as his own!
--Harry M. Geduld Indiana University
Orwell's Purposes
George Slusser, Colin Greenland, & Eric S. Rabkin,
eds. Storm Warnings: Science Fiction
Confronts the Future. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern
Illinois UP, 1987. 278pp. $29.95
To misunderstand or to misstate an author's intentions is surely not a rarity in
criticism, but in the case of George Orwell's 1984 it is especially significant
and warrants particular attention. This attention is afforded in several essays
anthologized in Storm Warnings. The collection, dealing with the status and
future of SF, addresses this problem of misunderstanding in several essays relating to 1984
and its author. A principle question raised by many of the earliest commentators on
1984 had to do, in fact, with its intention. Is it a warning, admonishing us to
mend our ways before the totalitarian bogeyman gets us, or is it a prophecy, foretelling
our inevitable fate? To examine the 1984-oriented essays in Storm Warnings is
to be struck by the importance and pervasiveness of this question.
In his essay "Coming Up on 1984" Frederik Pohl offers much salient
observation about Orwell's development from empathizer with his fellow unfortunates in the
world to activist seeking a political remedy for the inequities he saw about him. Pohl
finds 1984 to be Orwell's worst book, and in contrast to Down and Out in
Paris and London, with its fresh vivacity, his point is well taken. Down and Out,
the four early novels, and the first part of The Road to Wigan Pier do show
Orwell at his best, recording the real pains of real life as Bozo the Screever, John
Flory, Dorothy Hare, Gordon Comstock, George Bowling, and the Wigan coal miners lived it.
Homage to Catalonia also is a fine book, capturing much of life's agony,
exaltation and vitality, but it is more than that. Herein one sees Orwell's long-held
respect and sympathy for the common man move to a resolve to work to establish a political
base founded upon democratic socialism and to oppose the threat of Stalin's
totalitarianism, which he saw darken the skies of Spain in 1937. Orwell's earlier sympathy
for the deprived lower classes had grown into commitment to political action. The fate of
the attacks upon Stalinism embodied in Homage to Catalonia and later in Animal
Farm should have warned Orwell that his message, whether in realistic or oblique
form, would be misunderstood. Homage to Catalonia was remaindered, and Animal
Farm found a publisher only after some two dozen refusals. Typical of the insightful
rejections was T.S. Eliot's, who lauded the artistry of the book and saw that it would
make money, but also that it opposed the political temper of the moment. Animal Farm was
finally published by Secker and Warburg and, sure enough, was an instant popular success,
the first two printings selling out almost immediately, and the BOMC selling a half
million copies. And just as surely, the success of the book was accompanied by many
critics' misreadings of its purpose. Even its publisher found it to be an attack upon
socialism and socialist parties, all this regardless of the fact that even a casual
reading of the allegory makes it crystal clear that Orwell's attack is directed
particularly against totalitarian forces--German and British certainly, but Stalinist
Russian especially. So, with terrible irony, the first financial rewards came to Orwell at
a time when they brought least happiness, and were a result of his deeply felt ideas being
misunderstood.
Animal Farm is a well-planned, gracefully written allegory, understandably a
perennially dependable seller. But however readable and successful it is, the fact remains
that the thrust of Orwell's message has been consistently and deliberately misunderstood.
How effectively can it achieve its intentions if its readers persist in practicing
"blackwhite," the readiness to believe that black is white if party discipline
demands it?
Blackwhite is the main cause of 1984's failure to communicate its message that
totalitarian forces are so great a threat to us. Pohl is quite justified in his evaluation
of 1984: it is Orwell's worst book. However, one would err in attributing the
failure of the book to communicate to its shortcomings as a work of art. One can infer
directly from Pohl's observations on Homage to Catalonia and Animal Farm that
realism, vividness, and windowpane prose do not guarantee that a book will be understood.
Rather, readers are far more likely to succumb to the blandishments of what is facile,
safe, and expedient.
Colin Greenland's essay, "Images of Nineteen Eighty-Four: Fiction and
Prediction," addresses the question of intention more directly. He asserts that 1984
is not a prophecy but a satire on the elements which Orwell saw in 1948 and
which Greenland finds in the Britain of 1984: superpowers in uneasy confrontation, rampant
militarism, kitsch, equivocating national leaders and growing taste of nations for power
rather than as sources for care and opportunity. Furthermore, Greenland finds that
misinterpretation of 1984 is a deliberate, calculated attempt to throw a red
herring across the path of understanding. By suggesting that the thrust of 1984 is
its attack upon debasement of language, the London Times, speaking for the
Establishment, opposes pluralism of thought in economics, religion, morality, and
politics. Greenland's understanding of 1984's purpose affirms that the novel is
not dead prophecy, but vital, pertinent satire. The view of T.A. Shippey, set forth in
"Variations in Newspeak: The Open Question of Nineteen Eighty-Four," is
antithetical to Greenland's, for Shippey finds debasement of language to be the paramount
concern in Orwell's dystopia. His analysis of the novel demonstrates that its real climax
is reached when Winston Smith comes to believe that his recollections of olden days are
"false" memories. And, of course, along with the memories goes the language that
would preserve them. Elizabeth Maslen's "One Man's Tomorrow Is Another's Today: The
Reader's World and Its Impact on Nineteen Eighty-Four" discusses some
implications of the choice imposed upon writers who, because they write in a free society,
may write either realistically or obliquely. Orwell, as one of these who could choose,
selected futuristic fiction for his vehicle. With this decision Orwell opts for the
freedom of his audience and imposes upon them the responsibility to decide and learn for
themselves. John Huntington's "Orwell and the Uses of the Future" points out how
the Goldstein tract, that sociological study incorporated into 1984, resembles an
"anticipation," a Wellsian prophecy disguised as a dispassionate, strictly
logical description, thus effectively encouraging readers to resign themselves to the
inevitable. One wishes that the many pertinent observations in this timely, interesting
collection had focused more specifically upon the central question of purpose.
--Philip J. Snyder Kent State University
Christian Theology in Fantasy
Martha C. Sammons. "A Better Country": The Worlds of Religious Fantasy and
Science Fiction. ["Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction
and Fantasy," No. 32.] Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. 168pp. $35.00
One cannot read Martha Sammons' book without perceiving the depth and thoroughness of
her research on the subject of Christian fantasy. There is, indeed, very little that she
has missed, either in the literature itself or in the criticism. (The one big exception is
Charles Williams, whose novels are not even mentioned.) Here one can find useful
information about critical questions (the Lewis-Tolkien debate concerning artistic
creativity in the development of secondary worlds, for instance) and about works of
Christian fantasy themselves (many difficult to obtain or by authors not well known). She
deals with works by more than 40 authors, concentrating on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien,
George MacDonald, and Madeline L'Engle. The bibliography and index are useful. So her work
is a veritable "wordhord" of information and thus a real contribution to the
study of fantasy.
Yet there are problems. She says her aim is "to explore why fantasy is used to
convey theological principles, and the forms and methods used to achieve various
effects" (p. 4). This implies that she is writing a critical work rather than putting
together a body of information for reference. Furthermore, it promises an explanation of
purpose and of the implication of particular forms and methods. The book ends with a
sentence which seems to fulfill that promise: "This similarity between fantasy and
the Gospels, perhaps more than any other, gives this genre its legitimacy and true
purpose" (p. 151). Perhaps the theses ought to contain the word "Christian"
somewhere. I think I could be persuaded to accept the final conclusion about Christian
fantasy, but what goes on between theses and conclusion does not persuade me; in fact, the
evidence presented does not seem to be very coherent, to lead toward, or to support the
conclusion.
The key questions may well be the place of didacticism in literature and how primarily
didactic works are to be evaluated. A number of the sources she quotes (and one might
mention in passing that she quotes so widely and extensively, especially from C.S. Lewis,
that one begins to doubt how well she has assimilated her material) imply that religious
fantasy is essentially didactic. Yet the book never comes directly to this conclusion and
it skirts the collateral questions: Who does this literature teach? How does it teach?
Does didacticism sometimes or often undercut literary effectiveness? Sammons does not
ignore these questions, but she does not grapple with them directly and certainly does not
present her evidence so as to clearly support or confirm such assertions as she makes
about them.
Presentation of evidence may well be the book's most serious deficiency. Consider one
example. She says "The writer must also get the characters in and out of the
secondary world effectively and credibly" (p. 64). This uncontroversial assertion is
followed by three fairly extended examples. However, none of the examples is analyzed so
as to demonstrate how it is effective or credible. This reader wants to know the basis for
judging whether an event is effective or credible.
Given the body of data Sammons has collected, this book is disappointing. The
individual parts offer fascinating possibilities which never come to fruition.
--Robert Reilly Rider College
Madness in their Method
Donald E. Morse, ed. The Fantastic in World Literature and the Arts.
["Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy," No. 28.] Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1987. 272pp. Donald Palumbo, ed.
Spectrum of the Fantastic. ["Contributions...,"
&c. No. 31.] Same publisher, 1988. 286pp. $45.00 each
Among the more characteristic products of the now extensive "Contributions"
series from Greenwood are the Selected Essays from the annual Conference on the Fantastic
in the Arts, of which Donald Morse and Donald Palumbo have now edited the fifth and sixth
volumes respectively. It is no accident that we are seeing these volumes of proceedings so
regularly since the president of the organization sponsoring the conference is also the
editor of the Greenwood series. It is also high time, I think, for a hard-headed
assessment of exactly what value these contributions have beyond their obvious one of
helping to sustain the conference. Anyone with a commitment to the systematic study of SF,
however, is apt to recoil from such an assessment once it is clear how wide-ranging, even
naive, these volumes, which are characteristic of the conference, really are. Perhaps
Morse gives us the best preview in the introduction to his volume when he observes with no
qualification that SF is only a "stepchild" of fantasy. At the very least, I
must say that the books here are problematic in their intentions and scope so that any
reviewer would be remiss just to catalogue the contents and to make a blanket
recommendation for libraries. This overall enterprise with regard to the
"fantastic" needs commenting on, and I trust I will not be the only reviewer to
do so.
First of all, even a cursory look at the contents of these volumes or at the ubiquitous
promotional material for the annual conference will indicate that all of literature and
art seem to fall under the purview of the fantastic here--from Dante to Asimov and from
Canadian film to the surrealist Max Ernst to Wuthering Heights. In the Morse
volume, for example, the reader is asked to consider significant amounts of Latin American
fiction along with Tolkien, Vinge, and Gene Wolfe as well as to appreciate methodologies
ranging from linguistics to a kind of mock film criticism. The Palumbo volume has even
less focus. There we find Emily Brontë, two Dante essays, and some drama criticism
ranging from Ionesco to a piece titled "Two Sides of Paradise: The Eden Myth
According to Kirk and Spock." Further, none of the essays is developed to an adequate
length. Most seem still like conference papers. There are 16 contributions to the Morse
volume and 23 to the Palumbo, not counting prefaces and introductions by the editors. The
impression I get from such profuseness is that everyone involved (many of the contributors
are graduate students) genuinely thinks that new ground is being broken.
But this open-faced enthusiasm and eclecticism seems to me the essence of the
conservative. These people keep everything and, furthermore, suggest to me that they are
trying to hold onto the impossible ideal of the Renaissance Man that most of us have
wistfully missed since the 18th century when the term was coined. Theory about
"wholeness of being" from phenomenology and from Eastern religion, as it is
evoked in particular in the essays by Peter Malekin in each collection, also saturates
both of these volumes so that, if one were to absorb it all, the spiritual effect of the
fantastic would surely be fantastic. But like an armchair Lt. Henry somehow infected with
Hemingway's skepticism, I found myself continually writing in the margins, "Wouldn't
it be lovely." Ironically, the editors of these volumes and the organizers of the
conference think they are at the forefront of a movement to stake out new academic
enterprises. But since nothing from the past is outside of their consideration, I hardly
think that their methodology is radical at all; by trying to be all things to all people,
the fantastic becomes, indeed, rootless.
Here my bias toward "scientific" methodology comes into play so that what
strikes me most about these two volumes is their treatment of method. By suggesting that
we revise our studies (those of us who work with SF and fantasy) into such global
eclecticism, the fantasists would destroy the discoveries of the last couple of centuries
about the value of skepticism and the practicality of partial knowledge. Indeed, they
would urge us all to be Renaissance Men. But the SF enterprise of careful, skeptical
category-making needs to be protected not only because it is one fraternity of scholars'
as opposed to another's but also because we have learned the practical value of careful
and limited categories. The most appropriate example of this practicality, or the absence
of it, that I can use at this time comes from the organization of these volumes
themselves. In fact, the editors (or perhaps Greenwood Press) continually stumble over
their own poor categories. Palumbo's book contains a section of three essays labeled
"Comparative Studies," but clearly outside of that section are several essays
that deal with comparative literature. The lead essay in the volume, in fact, compares
Dante and Chaucer but appears in a section labeled "Poetry." This problem is
everywhere, contagious, throughout both collections of essays. Everyone wants to talk
about everything all at once.
Obviously, I seem to be lapsing into Enlightenment scorn over the enthusiasm of these
"diseases of the imagination"; and I could continue to evoke authorities, from
18th-century science on down to our own day, in order to suggest a sane and moderate sense
of skepticism for these confrères of the fantastic. But instead I will conclude
with a caution about the "madness" inherent in fanatics who sacrifice the sense
of clear categories in favor of transports to "wholeness" that comes from Bram
Stoker (who, of course, is mentioned in these volumes). The following passage, however, is
not quoted in Sharon Russell's essay on the Vampire Film. I came across it while rereading
Dracula in the fine new illustrated edition from Unicorn Press and thought of the
intention of these "wholistic" volumes to be more omnipotent than is possible.
Stoker's Dr. Seward is writing about Renfield, and I can only hope that a future conference
on the fantastic will consider his dilemma: "...in his sublime self-feeling the
difference between myself and attendant seemed to him as nothing....These infinitesimal
distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being."
--Donald M. Hassler Kent State University
Not What You're Looking For
H.W. Hall, ed. Science
Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index, 1878-1985. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1987. 2 vols. 1460pp. $175.00
Hal Hall, in his Preface to the first of these two folio-size tomes, tells us that they
record "[m]ore than 19,000 individual books, articles, essays, news reports, and
audiovisual items...indexed by over 42,000 author and subject citations," all of them
bearing on SF and/or "fantasy and horror/supernatural/weird fiction" (p. ix).
The last figure does not quite tally with Gale's information sheet, which breaks down the
entries (as the Preface does not) into 16,000 by author and 27,000 by subject. Whatever
the exact number, it seems impressive, however much it may owe to Hall's listing of
virtually every "news report" (or so it appears) from Locus and
Science Fiction
Chronicle. The ostensible selling points of this bibliography, then--$175 worth in US
funds--are these: it gives the impression of being the only source that one need consult
to find out what has been written on a given subject; and it anatomizes the secondary
literature far more extensively than any of its competitors.
Neither of those seeming advantages accounts for the nearly 600 pages comprising the
volume headed Author Entries. Nor does Hall otherwise explain why he chose this
mode of proceeding rather than following the MLA's example of providing an index by author
to numbered citations by subject. (Hall, by the way, has no such system of numbers.) To be
sure, he did in principle have a rationale available to him: the third of his project
given over to listings by "author" (viz., critic) would have been justifiable as
a dictate of consistency if he had recorded with some degree of completeness the
contributions of those who are also writers of SF&F. That, however, is far from being
the case: to take what I hope is the most egregious instance, H.G. Wells is credited with
only three pieces (out of a possible 25, at the minimum), and these three do not even
include his "Preface to The Scientific Romances...."
No bibliographer, of course, can credibly claim to have overlooked nothing. But given
the would-be virtues of Hall which I have mentioned, the number of items that he leaves
out constitutes a significant deficiency, and one which is all the greater by reason of
his not clearly spelling out what he has omitted or why. So far as I can see, his express
acknowledgments about the limits and limitations of his bibliography are two. He says that
he has "not fully analyzed" the contents of the bibliographies published by G.K.
Hall (p. x); and he admits that coverage of foreign-language criticism is rather cursory.
What he means by the former qualification my reader can guess from my subsequent remarks.
In the area of foreign-language material, he has relied on David Samuelson for information
about work up to 1981 and on Luk de Vos thereafter. Of the two, Samuelson appears to have
been the more thorough, but that is relatively speaking. The subject entry for Jules
Verne, for instance, lists 98 items by my count; and of the 22 of these in foreign
languages, only one is post-1981 (and it is an Italian translation from English). In other
words, if the Verne is a fair sample, Hall's volumes ignore just about 95% of the
pertinent criticism ("2600 articles" on Verne had been published as of 1982,
according to William Butcher: see his "Handle with Care" in SFS No. 44).
In the area of English-language criticism, the omissions--it perhaps goes without
saying--are not nearly as quantitatively formidable. They are, however, many of them
unexpected and unaccountable. To start with my own entry (as the one on which I can
pronounce with some authority), Hall understandably overlooks an essay on A Tale of a
Tub as SF (and all the more understandably since it appeared in English Studies
in Canada [1984]); but he also leaves out an article on Wells in Texas Studies in
Literature (1978), my prefatory essay to the first edition (1976) of Anatomy of
Wonder (which also does not figure among the entries for the subject
"Definitions"), and H.G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science
Fiction (1975). And while he does make a practice of noting reprints, often giving
them a separate entry (in line with what I consider to be the extravagance of his entire
first volume), he does not inform his readers that my SFS article on Borges can also be
found in H.G. Wells and Modern Science Fiction (1977) or that a new edition of Into
the Unknown was issued by the University of California Press in 1983.
The fact that, by my unsystematic examination, my case is far from being unique will
probably not trouble most would-be users of the Author Entries volume, who may
have even less occasion to consult it than I would (in my editorial capacity, I mean). The
problem is that the oversights apply as well to Subject Entries. Under
"Nuclear War" (and also under "Atomic Bomb"), for instance, someone
relying on Hall will not find Bruce Franklin's Countdown to Midnight (1984) or Paul Brians' "Nuclear War and Science Fiction, 1945-59" (also 1984); the subject
entry for Karel Čapek does not mention, inter alia, the important study by William E.
Harkins, even though that book is called Karel
Čapek (1962); and the subject
entry for C.S. Lewis omits an essay collection bearing his name as its subtitle (edited by
Peter J. Schakel, 1977). What I found even more disturbing, however, were omissions of
items listed in the Tymn-Schlobin bibliographies of SF&F criticism. Checking a portion
of "The Year's Scholarship in Science Fiction and Fantasy: 1977" (Extrapolation,
20 [1979]:238ff.), I discovered that about ten per cent of its entries are missing from
the Hall volumes, something which is all the more surprising in view of the 11-line
paragraph in Hall's Preface which concludes with his assertion that "this volume
[sic]...is much more comprehensive than the combined Year's Scholarship bibliographies"
(p. ix).
Compared with its lack of comprehensiveness, certain other aspects of the Subject
Entries volume appear as annoyances rather than as serious handicaps. Nevertheless,
anyone who has not yet seen this Hall bibliography should know that the "27,000"
subject citations (a figure, by the way, which I for one am unwilling to verify) do not
accommodate any individual titles as such. And not only is there no independent entry,
say, for The Dispossessed; it is also the case that all writings about Le Guin
(for example) appear in one or another of no fewer than three alphabetical listings by
title: books; articles whose title begins with a book-title (usually, but not necessarily,
of a book by the subject-author); and other articles. Moreover (and as might be
anticipated from the absence of any numbering system), there are no cross-references.
I am sure that I am not alone in devoutly wishing for the kind of bibliography of
secondary literature that Hall promises in his Preface and is certainly capable of
producing: one that would bring together and add to our previous information, which it
would thus make readily accessible in one place. It therefore pains me to say that this Science
Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index is not it.
--RMP
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