|
I am an avid reader of science fiction. To me, however, this means that I read things that are about the application of science or technology to human culture. This definition puts me at odds with the vast majority of other readers of science fiction and, I believe, the overall public opinion of science fiction. I feel pretty certain that if a work contains aliens or spaceships, most people decide that that is science fiction. Which to me is pretty ironic, given that one of the most thoughtful science fiction films to come out in a long time, The Truman Show (I would put a link to the official site here, but that site has been badly hacked) has no aliens in it nor spaceships. But it is about technology and its effect on human culture. A really simple test of my definition is to ask yourself, "If I took out the primary scientific application of this story, would the story remain essentially the same?" If the answer to this question is "Yes," then you are not reading or watching a science fiction story. |
As an example, take what is for most people the quintessential science fiction movie, Star Wars, and ask the question. Immediately, we run into problems, for what exactly are the primary scientific applications that drive the movie? The Force isn't very scientific at all, and all those cool gadgets, like light sabers and hyperdrives, can be replaced by other plot contrivances without adversely affecting the movie. In fact, I'd argue that Star Wars is a big Western in the Stars...is it really a coincidence that the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black? This idea flies in the face of most people, even those folks who claim to be science fiction fans, and believe me, I've had few converts to such an apparently radical way of thinking. More often than not, I find that most people haven't really given much consideration to what defines the genre of science fiction; they generally fall back to the aliens and spaceships definition. And, of course, my definition puts almost every episode, movie, or novel in the Star Trek franchise out of the realm of science fiction. Try telling a Trekkie that his life's blood isn't really science fiction.
Now, this is not to say I don't like Star Wars or Star Trek; in fact, I enjoy them immensely. Just not as science fiction (but more on this in a bit). What then is a good example of science fiction? Try out the definitive question on Bladerunner or its source, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The technology in question is obvious: cloning. And the answer to the definitive question is a resounding "No." Taking cloning out of Bladerunner destroys the movie, and it cannot be replaced by any other technology...or anything else for that matter. Similarly, the Truman Show is about television. Take out the TV, and there is no story left.
| For me, science fiction falls under a far larger category of speculative fiction that also includes all the forms of fantasy and the alternative history stories. And I love speculative fiction as well. In fact, of my all-time favorite authors, more of them are in the realm of speculative fiction at large than in the far smaller domain of science fiction. But I digress. Let's just say that my two favorite authors, Robert Heinlein and Edgar Rice Burroughs, though described in the mass market as science fiction writers, are neither one writers of science fiction by my definition. Robert Heinlein himself argues against describing himself as a science fiction writer and for being known as a writer of speculative fiction. That's really enough to clench the argument for me. |  |
So, what's my point? Not a whole lot, really; just using my webspace as a place to preach one of my favorite things. I mean no insult to those who call themselves science fiction fans nor to the works they enjoy. I probably like them too, but I just think about them in a different way.
Therefore, as a reward for watching me gesticulate madly from my soapbox, I offer to you my four favorite living writers of speculative fiction. Whenever a new book is released by any of these authors, I rush about madly to find and read it. I hope you can find their works and will like them as much as I do.
Iain Banks - A Scottish writer (as though that makes any real amount of difference) who writes both "mainstream" (you'll notice the quotes) and sf. His mainstream novels are signed Iain M. Banks and include Walking on Glass, The Bridge and The Business, but stretch most definitions of mainstream by using a multipartite narrative structure and characters who are decidedly not mainstream. The Bridge is arguably sf, but the basis for the more fantastic elements of the story are explained by the end in such a way as to dismiss it from the genre for me, and it does bear the Iain M. Banks name. His sf novels include Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Against a Dark Background, Excession, and Inversions. His most marked trait is, again, convoluted and complex patterns of narration, of which I am most fond in Use of Weapons, in which two stories are told simultaneously but in opposing chronological order until they meet in their middles, and Against a Dark Background, which is cyclical. If you like your fiction, of any sort, to be deep and thought-provoking, and even artistic, Iain Banks will stretch your mind.
Steven Brust - Although Brust has written books outside of his two main series (To Reign in Hell is my favorite of those), his Vlad Taltos series, comprised of Jhereg, Yendi, Teckla, Taltos, Phoenix, Athyra, Orca, Dragon, and Issola, takes the fairly standard tropes and turns them on their ear. Vlad himself is alternately likeable and despiccable, as are all real people, and I find myself cringing at his gaffes as easily as cheering his successes. Related to this series are the Khaavren books: The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, and the forthcoming Viscount of Andrilankha. This series takes place chronologically before the Taltos books and describes the important historical events that shape the world that Taltos lives in. It is also written in the vein of Dumas's Musketeer books (as the titles indicate), complementing them in style, structure, and plot. The narrator appears often in these books, and the author even makes a few appearances in a combative relationship with that narrator. Brust's characters never disappoint and his stories are never predictable, a rarity in the field of fantasy nowadays.
Guy Gavriel Kay - Also never really predictable, Kay takes what are usually written as fantastic realms and makes them real. The good guys don't always survive, let alone win, and his plots twist just as much as your worst day at your job. His first books were The Fionavar Tapestry: The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road, and begin with what has become a fairly standard premise, that of people from our place and time magically transplanted elsewhere to help a world in suffering. But it rapidly moves away from the standard cliches of fantasy. His later books uses realms based on real European countries but transported to situations more often found in the fantasy genre. Tigana (based loosely on Italy, so much so that the region is in the shape of a glove rather than a boot) deals with magic with rules based on ration but no less powerful than what we have come to expect, A Song for Arbonne (based on France and Germany) imagines war intermixed with passion with plot turns aplenty, and The Lions of Al-Rassan (based on the Moors and Jews in Spain) considers forbidden love in an age of war. His latest series, The Sarantine Mosaic (made up of Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors), is based on the Byzantine Empire. Kay's later books are history, romance, and fantasy all intermingled, and his characters are real. His plots manipulate the reader's emotions mercilessly, but not in expected ways, and at the end of the ride, you will be simultaneously breathless and eagerly awaiting more.
Neal Stephenson - One of only two fiction writers to ever have their work published in Time magazine, Stephenson is a master stylist whose stories involve a future only one step (or perhaps two) away from where we live today. Like the great science fiction writers before him, Stephenson extrapolates our current technologies in ways that are both wondrous and depressing...and thus all the more realistic. I remember not being able to put down Snow Crash through its first 50 pages as we follow Hiro Protagonist, pizza delivery man for the mob, on what begins as a simple pizza run. What results is a plunge into a world of break-neck action that pulls you in and from which you will be unwilling to escape. Virtual reality, language, sociopolitics, and culture are mingled in what has become a Stephenson trademark: a convoluted plot that is driven by the characters' response to the world and technology that surround them. Diamond Age is an award-winning novel set in a slightly different world than the one in Snow Crash, while Zodiac could take place tomorrow. Stephenson has also written two books under a pseudonym, Stephen Bury: Interphase (about what happens when politicians really do have the pulse of their voters) and The Cobweb, a story taken from international fears about the Gulf War. For me, though, what sets Stephenson apart from the rest is his beautiful style and economy of language. It is not often that a reader can see the craft of writing and shaping sentences as apparently and beautifully as Stephenson's prose. And so I offer two quotes from his work:
"When it gets down to it--talking trade balances
here--once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have
evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling
them here--once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong
ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a
nickel--once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical iniquities and smeared them
out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be
posterity--y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery"
--Snow Crash
"Bud's relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition."--The Diamond Age