Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ISM780B.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!dual!lll-crg!seismo!harvard!think!ISM780B!jimb From: jimb@ISM780B.UUCP Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Letter to Harper's (long) Message-ID: <27800024@ISM780B.UUCP> Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 11:55:00 EDT Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27800024 Posted: Wed Oct 2 11:55:00 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 06:06:13 EDT Lines: 112 Nf-ID: #N:ISM780B:27800024:000:5412 Nf-From: ISM780B!jimb Oct 2 11:55:00 1985 Following is a letter to the editor at *Harper's* in response to Luc Sante's review of the science fiction field. Thanks to Tim Ryan for first posting excerpts on the net, Bill Ingogly whose responses got me really going, and to dht at druri who posted most of the entire article. Since the probability of *Harper's* printing the letter is 1/x as x becomes exceedingly large, the net readership is probably the widest audience the letter will have. For any pragmatic nit-pickers out there, I did measure the letter's length and it is roughly comparable to the longest letters published in *Harper's* letters column. ----------- Dear Sir: Luc Sante's dissection of science fiction [Harper's, October] is a most astounding collection of ill-supported assertions and dubious interpretations concerning the nature, meaning, current position, and direction of the field. Mr. Sante faults science fiction for its hubris of intention, allegedly nothing less than to depict the future. Certainly while *one* of the central themes of science ficion is an examination of *possible* futures, the intentions of science fiction are none other than the classical intents of any literature, to entertain and to instruct. Moreover, science fiction's speculations can offer one of the few known antidotes for future shock, prodding readers into confrontng complex interactions of technology, society, and the individual before they come to pass. Science fiction *is* based on speculation, not only "what if," but also "if only" and "if this goes on." Sante dismisses such speculation for its own sake, contrasting it to allegory and satire's aim to provoke action. What better action than causing readers to think, to examine, to reconsider outlooks, all by using the literature of science fiction to illuminate previously unregarded dimensions? In a year when well-financed corporate-sponsored research into artificial machine intelligence reaches new heights (even as natural human stupidity seems to delve new depths), stories exploring the moral and ethical tensions between humans and machines seem to be not at all full of the "staggering irrelevance" that Sante finds. Mr. Sante states that science fiction "by relying on a tradition of mediocrity, has effectively sealed itself off from literature, and, incidentally, from real concerns." Elsewhere, the reader is told that "science fiction's great horizons have shrunk" and that "human concerns appear shrunken and pathetic." A survey of critically acclaimed science fiction works would seem to contradict these assertions. The vivid, jarring near-futre dystopia of William F. Gibson's NEUROMANCER and the eery, chilling all-too-possibly-real story of genetic engineering in Greg Bear's BLOOD MUSIC, as two recent examples, are stories about people caught in situations that are all too possible, full of the "relevance" that Sante finds lacing, and not at all the cotton candy of wish-fulfillment he finds dominant within the field. There is a wide range of writing ability and esthetic sensitivity in science fiction, as there is in mainstream literature. It was science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, now recently deceased, who, addressing the quality of writing in science fiction, coined the epigram known in the science fiction community known as Stugeon's Law: "95 percent of everything is crud." Yes, science fiction has its dull, plodding explainers of science; its tedious propagaters of relentless space operas; its producers of novelty for sheer novelty's sake. But just as mainstream literature has its Nabokov's, Gass', Fowles', and Pynchon's to act as counterweight to the droves of writers producing dissipated, self-reflexive, and maundering tomes of fiction and meta-fiction, so the science fiction field has the lyrical rhythms of Roger Zelazny; physicist Greg Benford writing out of the Southern tradition of Faulkner; the rich, deeply textured work of Gene Wolfe. Furthermore, many science ficion works which do not aim at high literary ambition nonetheless thoughtfully entertain, providing stores about people, ideas, situations. In this regard, science fiction at the least does not suffer in comparison with current mainstream literature. Finally, Mr. Sante makes gross errors concerning the history and current condition of science fiction. With the exception of one major editor and a handful of writers, science fiction was never deeply influenced by Dianetics as Mr. Sante claims. And the assertion that "The cultlike ferocity of science fiction fandom [author's note: that's us, folks] serves only to cultivate what is most sickly and stunted about the genre," is pure nonsense. The largest science fiction convention ever held, the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, Calif., in 1984, drew approximately 10,000 fans. As any editor in the field will attest, the hard core of science fiction fans is impossibly small to support publishing runs of any length at all; the vigor and vitality of the science fiction market is dependent upon the millions of readers who have a casual yet persistent loyalty to the field. Sincerely, James A. Brunet {Gosh, maybe I shouldn't have pulled my punches. I shoulda told 'em what I REALLY felt.} -- from the ice-cold fury of Jim Brunet decvax!cca!ima!jimb ucbvax!ucla-cs!ism780!jimb ihnp4!vortex!ism780!jimb Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com