Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site druri.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!packard!edsel!bentley!ihnp1!ihnp4!drutx!druri!dht From: dht@druri.UUCP (Davis Tucker) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY, PART II Message-ID: <1091@druri.UUCP> Date: Sun, 19-May-85 23:45:45 EDT Article-I.D.: druri.1091 Posted: Sun May 19 23:45:45 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 21-May-85 04:34:37 EDT Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver Lines: 96 THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY PART II: Meet The New Hack, Same As The Old Hack by Davis Tucker _____________________________________________________________________________ What do we mean when we use the word "hack" in reference to an author? This is often a very fuzzy phrase, and everyone has a different definition. Mine is "an author who is merely competent, and who does not attempt to improve." Stasis is death, at least in the creative world. Competency is a compliment to mechanics, journalists, and airline pilots. It is a veiled insult (or a left-handed compliment) to any creative person. To say that someone is a "competent painter" means nothing. To be merely competent is to never rise above a given level. In science fiction, competency and mediocrity go hand in glove, dancing merrily into justifiable oblivion. We all have heard the lame excuse that science fiction has different rules than mainstream fiction until it sounds like a broken record. But all it is is an excuse for being a hack, or being lazy. I'll agree that it has *more* rules: since there's much more imagination and extrapolation involved, science fiction does require more attention to detail and consistency. I could think of other rules, also. But the basic fundamentals of mainstream fiction still apply - realistic characaterization, depth of understanding, plot development, correct use of descriptive passages, realistic dialogue, structural integrity, everything that is important to literature. Stephen King, for all that we may think of him as a wasted talent, knows this, and obeys all these "rules". But incredibly, many science fiction writers get away with cheap puns, absolutely wretched dialogue, ridiclously constructed plots, inconsistent character motivation, terminal cuteness (Gidget's Disease), and worst of all the "And-Then-He-Woke-Up" ending, or some kind of deus ex machina ending (sometimes both together). And the readers lap it up, and go to their conventions and sit around watching Dr. Who or Star Trek reruns and listen to their favorite author explain why he wrote his seventeenth novel on the same subject with the same characters. This is the stuff of comic books, of children's literature, though you'd get no argument from me that the Silver Surfer has more craft and art and blood, sweat, and tears than the Xanth novels, or that "Where The Wild Things Are" and the Dr. Seuss books show more imagination and extrapolation than Star Trek. A creative person is allowed to break all rules and all conventions provided that the end product is a work of art. And as many of the masters have proved, Rodin, Picasso, Joyce, Proust, etc., to break the rules you must learn them, and learn them well. But it is hard to believe that Robert Heinlein *ever* kept his overbearing personality out of the mouths of every character. "Time Enough For Love" was a nightmare - Robert A. Heinlein living forever, and worse, *talking* forever. It's a shame, but science fiction, unlike almost any other creative field, has almost no true masters that are recognized as such, no people who are held up by the aficionados as examples to young acolytes. Instead, the old hacks are deified and glorified. Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. What would science fiction be like if instead, the examples for new writers were Aldiss, Ballard, and Silverberg? All that you will see when you wander through the science fiction section of your local bookstore is new authors who are rarely more than warmed-over Eric Frank Russell, Keith Laumer, or Gordon Dickson. Hackdom reigns supreme. Where is a new Thomas Disch? Another Barry Malzberg? Maybe even another Ursula LeGuin? For too long science fiction has built on such a narrow pedestal, and now this trash-heap is threatening to fall over on us. Barry B. Longyear, Brian Daley, Christopher Stasheff, Jerry Pournelle, Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin, Spider Robinson, Joe Haldeman, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, etc., etc., ad nauseum. The fault does not lie with the author; it lies with the readership that continues to demand the same old crap in different colored toilets, or at the very least, continues to buy it. A readership that wants a sequel to every novel, a readership that wants a novel out of every short story, a readership that has grown fat and lazy on a diet of trash, like metropolitan raccoons. Theodore Sturgeon, who knew a thing or two about being a hack, wrote a corrolary to Murphy's Law that said "90 Percent Of Everything Is Crap". So let's not wallow in the 90 percent, let's get our heads out of the toilet and go look for the 10 percent that's worth reading. It's science fiction's doom as a viable 20th Century artform if its readership continues to wallow in mediocrity, merely competent writing, and glorification of hacks. Notice that "mainstream" authors who have written science fiction for the general reading public have by and large maintained a higher standard of craft than is present in current new offerings within science fictions. "Duluth" by Gore Vidal. The "Canopus In Argus" series by Doris Lessing. A few others here and there, not many, because it's the kiss of death for a mainstream author to become associated with writing science fiction. Possibly it's because in the eyes of the reading public, that descending to write science fiction is exactly that - descending. Being lowered. Jumping in the muck with all the Trekkies. Bug Eyed Monsters. All of the hackneyed, overused, cliched constructs that science fiction has been relying on for much too long, rather than finding something new. In some ways, the general reading public has a clearer view of what science fiction is and what it isn't than those who have been reading it all their lives. The forest for the trees. That's all for now, kids. Tune in next week for "THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY, PART III: Self-Censorship And The Science Fiction Establishment".