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October 12, 2006

'Mercurial and Perverse'

Im leaving off Annual Worlds Best SF for the moment to discuss something else.

I was recently trying to describe to a friend how Fantasy is different from other types of fiction. I finally concluded that Fantasy uses the same kind of ethical thinking that fairy tales do .... in the Grimm fable, we know there will be consequences when the heroine washes and tends the three bloody heads and others who pass them do not. The same chill of foreboding does not attend a mystery novel detectives refusal to help a stranded motorist - the outcome could be neutral, or ironic, or it could contain a clue - but mystery is not the same genre (and does not happen in the same kind of universe) as Fantasy does and the rules are different.

Science Fiction isnt the same, I thought to myself .... but most of the SF I can think of is about the implications and consequences of technological change or scientific discovery. SF functions as a conscience in how we apply science .... sometimes the things it fears are or unlikely or unfounded (or in the case of skiffy, silly) but a lot of SF seems to ask, 'Wait, is this a good idea?'

At the same time I was mulling all this over a new book crossed my desk: Jez and I had decided to buy Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia for Sprague. The publishers web page looked promising, and the the author, Brian Stableford, is a well-known SF author (although there is no replacing Asimov for this kind of undertaking), but I asked to look at the book to see if it was really as promised.

Science Fact surveys how scientific discovery and science fiction have influenced each other, how each has opened new vistas for the other. The encyclopedia is heavy on the science (linguistics, exobiology, zoology, archaeology) and modest (but well-chosen) in its coverage of SF authors (Niven, Verne, Clarke.) I was immediately pleased that I couldnt evaluate most of the articles with my meager 101-level science education and I will be delighted to hear your responses to the articles that touch on what you know.

(One article I could evaluate, 'Mars' discussed the excitement created by Pietro Seccis 'canali', Mars as the setting of late 1800s fictional paradises and utopias, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom, the pulp era, Bradburys Mars, the 1960s era real-world push to send piloted craft to Mars, the disappointment created by the Mariner and Viking data that showed a harsher Mars than had been anticipated, and how Mars as a dead planet influenced later SF (including visions of a terraformed Mars or modified humans.) SF reacted to these trends and ongoing Martian discoveries - with the occasional SFnal return to the old hope that Mars had sustained life. (The most recent fiction cited is from 2002 - so one wonders what recent reevaluations of water on Mars will do to future SF.) It is a thorough article with a broad acquaintance with SF - I couldnt think of a work it omitted and it mentioned several Id never heard of or had half-forgotten. (*kof* I need to re-read Wells.))

Other articles I sampled looked equally good and I recommend the rest of the book highly.

Science Fact even considered the very topic Id been mulling:

[In fiction] .... [t]he author not only has the power to determine on whom the rain falls, and when, but the authority to state without objection why characters do what they do. There is far less restriction on what can be stated in words than there is on what can happen in the world of experience, and fiction is therefore flexible in ways that the world of experience is not .... It is not only possible for the sun and the rain to discriminate between the just and the unjust, but perfectly routine .... Whereas science cannot deal with moral order, fiction must.
pg. xx

As soon as Jez persuades me to stop reading the book, you can find Brian Stablefords Science Fact and Science Fiction on Spragues 1st Floor under -

SPR REF FOL
Q
123
S735
2006

Yours,
LV

Posted by lisav at October 12, 2006 10:37 PM