Microworlds

On the other hand, they feel tied to fandom, write for fanzines, answer the questions of their interviewers, and take part in science-fiction conventions. On the other hand, publicly, they try to stress that they “do not really” write science fiction; they would write “better and more intellectual books” if only they did not have to bear so much pressure from the publishers and science-fiction magazines; they are thinking of moving into mainstream literature (Aldiss, Ballard, and several others).

Do they have any objective reasons for surrendering to frustration and feelings of oppression in the science- fiction ghetto? Crime novels are another, an open-and-shut, case. Naturally, a crime novel reports on murders, detectives, corpses, and trials; Westerns, on stalwart cowboys and insidious Indians. However, if we may believe its claims, a science-fiction book belongs at the top of world literature! For it reports on mankind’s destiny, on the meaning of life in the cosmos, on the rise and fall of thousand-year-old civilizations: it brings forth a deluge of answers for the key questions of every reasoning being.

There is only one snag: in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it fulfills its task with stupidity. It always promises too much, and it almost never keeps its word.

For this reason, science fiction is such a remarkable phenomenon. It comes from a whorehouse but it wants to break into the palace where the most sublime thoughts of human history are stored. From the time it was born, science fiction has been raised by narrow-minded slaveholders. Thomas Mann was allowed to work on one novel for fourteen years; John Brunner complains that there was a time when he had to write eight novels a year in order to stay alive comfortably. From shame, science fiction tries to keep some sides of this situation a well-guarded secret. (Often we hear from science-fiction authors how much freedom they enjoy in their work.)

Science fiction is subject to the rigid economic laws of supply and demand. It has not completely adapted itself to the “editor’s milieu,” meaning that there are recipes on how to write a science-fiction work that appeals to a certain editor and gains his appreciation (for instance, the late John W. Campbell, Jr., was an authoritative man who published only a certain easily definable kind of science fiction, and some authors knew how to foresee his demands). In Geis’s Science Fiction Review, Perry A. Chapdelaine gives us a detailed account of how he was carefully briefed by well-known science-fiction authors when he wrote his first novel. Special care was taken to include those qualities that maximize sales; no mention was made of the immanent quality of the work itself. Often the same is the case in the Upper Realm — but only for beginners. However, science-fiction authors remain minors in the eyes of their publishers — all their lives. Such circumstances breed frustration and compensatory behavior. Indeed, the same sort of thing abounds in the science-fiction ghetto. All these compensatory phenomena, taken together, clearly have the character of mimicry.

(a)

In the science-fiction ghetto there is no lack of makeshift and ersatz institutions which exist side by side with those of the Upper Realm. The Upper Realm has the Nobel Prize and other world-famous literary awards. The science-fiction ghetto has the Hugo and Nebula awards; and American science fiction poses (still) as “world” science fiction, as can be seen from anthology titles such as The World’s Best S/F.

(b)

The Upper Realm has academic and other highbrow literary journals, containing theoretical and hermeneutical articles. Science fiction also has its highbrow fanzines (Riverside Quarterly from Canada, Science Fiction Commentary from Australia, and Quarber Merkur from Austria). These are parallel, although not analogous phenomena. The highbrow periodicals of the Upper Realm command real authority in cultural life. The most famous critics and theoreticians of the mainstream are all known to the cognoscenti and to almost all intelligent readers, at least by name (e.g., Sartre; Leslie Fiedler). Yet the names of the best science-fiction critics are not known to one soul outside the inner circle of fandom, and the silent majority of science-fiction readers does not know of the existence of the highbrow magazines. Even if they did know of them, they would not care for the evaluations of the cognoscenti — i.e., they are not influenced by these fanzines when choosing the new science-fiction books they are going to buy.

The structure of the flow of information is quite different in the Upper Realm than in the Lower Realm. In the Upper Realm the highbrow periodicals form the peak of a pyramid whose base is mass culture. The popular critics of the dailies need not agree with the judgments of the initiated highbrow experts, but if one of them opposes a man like Sartre, he knows quite well that he is fighting a world-wide authority. Nothing of this sort in science fiction. Its pyramid is hidden deep in the fan underground, the best fanzines have only insignificant circulations, and they cannot count on financial help from social or cultural institutions. (There are rare exceptions, such as New Worlds, which at one time received essential aid from certain British cultural institutions, but this is no longer the case in the United States.)

(c)

Science-fiction conventions are intended to form a kind of match for the meetings of the PEN Club and other similar gatherings. This also involves mimicry, because PEN meetings do not have in the slightest the character of a party that is so characteristic of science-fiction conventions. At conventions, theoretical reflections are nothing but seasoning; at PEN meetings, however, as well as at similar conferences of professional writers, they are the main course.

I must stress that no esoteric highbrow magazine of the Upper Realm has any direct influence on the policies of publishers. These magazines possess only a purely moral authority, founded on tradition. They do not try to wage open warfare upon the typical phenomena of mass culture today (e.g., normally they hide all data about one-day best sellers) and their activity becomes visible only in the long run, as all of the institutions in the structure feed the slow process of the Upper Realm. They should be the (often quite powerless) conscience and memory of world culture, its highest tribunal, which is at the same time an unbiased witness and judge. Often this tribunal loses a single skirmish but wins the great, epic wars — just the way Great Britain did. It cannot give a guarantee of today’s fame to a great, misjudged poet, but it provides a memory, helping the next generation sometimes to dig up treasures that are almost lost. In short: these tribunals are not subject to the economic rules of the market, and because of this they are able to defend the cultural heritage against the chaotic onslaught of mass culture.

Nothing like that can be seen in the Lower Realm. Science fiction has no independent periodicals that supervise critically the whole production and form a similar fraction of the bulk of publications in the field, as in the case in the Upper Realm (measured by the yardstick of the circulation of books and especially of literary periodicals). The evidence of the best and best-known science-fiction authors is suppressed when it is contrary to the interests of the publishers — a fact that Knight reports on. The highbrow fanzines are known exclusively to a very small circle of initiated readers, and their influence on publishers’ policies is nil. These amateur magazines often publish analyses and reflections that are equal in quality to the best of what is published in the Upper Realm. But this does not change the fact that no one listens to the voices of the critics. This important fact shows clearly that it is not the immanent quality of a statement that determines its scope of action, but this radius is contingent on the broader structure of the whole network of information with which the medium that published this statement is connected.[5]It is a typical science-fiction custom that critiques are not produced independently, but are written by either the authors or the editors of anthologies, who evaluate each other’s works. This state of affairs only helps to cloud the line of demarcation between apologetics (a public- relations affair) and objective criticism.

Taken as a whole, science-fiction institutions (cons, fanzines, and awards) appear similar to those of the Upper Realm, but dissimilar as regards the function of furthering social values and selections. In the Upper Realm, as time goes by, the worst and the best literary works drift apart from each other; in science fiction however, the forces that are the result of economic laws of the marketplace, an absence of independent criticism, and a lack of cultural assistance are all directed toward the opposite tendency. They put trash next to valuable books; they impede any experiments in literary creation, choke independent, demanding, probing criticism, and they assist publishers in camouflaging as true criticism the advertising that boosts the sales of their products.

Furthermore, the chain of publishers who specialize in science fiction — and the silent majority of mute, passive readers — forms an environment to which even the most gifted science-fiction authors must adapt themselves eventually. The authors are initiated early into the rules of the game, and they must either obey or take immense risks. Suppose an ingenious, even inspired author enters the realm of science fiction. This man must adapt rapidly and without scruples to the simple truth that it is impossible for him to be valued and esteemed according to his extraordinary achievements. The silent majority of the readership will devour his valuable books in just the same way, at best, as they are used to absorbing the worst nonsense of mass production. Taking into account just the