A thought about SF&F and Academe

[sraun]

There was a panel at Minicon some years ago - IIRC, the title was
something like "Science Fiction and Fantasy: Instantiating the
Metaphor". Someone (maybe one of the panelists?) raised an interesting
point - a number of things that are exclusively metaphorical in
mainstream fiction can easily be literal truths in SF&F. (For example,
my wife described a character as a silk-dressed cobra - the first
question asked about the passage was 'is she a snake or a human?')

Since there is that problem, the metaphors, similes, and similar
constructs in SF&F are either absent, or much larger or more
subtle. From what I can tell, this drives the academic nuts - part of
their world-view is that they provide the explanation of what the
author was saying by pointing out all these constructs, and explaining
what they mean. And in SF&F it's (mostly) just not there! The
whole story (or big blocks of it) may have meaning or illumination
outside the story proper, but it's not there at the nit-picky detail
level that academics love.

Comments

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

The presence or absence of a particular message in a fictional work doesn't make it better or worse than any other. The "marriage is the reward at the end of the story" message is the classic definition of a "comedy"--in the Greek sense of "not a tragedy," not the modern sense of "funny." Male or female, marriage was the reward and the story was over afterwards. Doc Smith, from what I've read of him (Lensman series only), moved the marriage forward, which is different, but kept it as the reward, which is the same. It's not a good thing or a bad thing: it's just a thing. Being able to recognize what the thing is and whether it's there is useful, in my opinion, but not as an indicator of quality.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

If you mean message isn't integral to literary value, sure, that's true.

Smith certainly treats marriage between two people who want to be married as a good thing. But in this particular case, as much a duty as a reward (Mentor even tells them that their marriage is *necessary*).

And, as I said but you ignored, it happens in the first book of the Skylark series. And as I didn't mention but could have, in the first chapter or two of Subspace Explorers and fairly early in Spacehounds of IPC, and not at all in The Galaxy Primes.

Sure, avoiding one characteristic flaw doesn't elevate a book significantly. I happen to know all this Smith trivia in such detail because *I* like the books, but the trivia is not why they are good, really, no. Although avoiding most characteristic failings of SF all at once *is* part of why I like the books.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

You're missing the point, I'm afraid. Marriage as the final act isn't a "characteristic flaw" of anything, it's just plain a characteristic of at least 99% of the non-tragic fiction written in the last four thousand years, including most of what is considered "classic literature." I used it as an example of a theme or message that can be found if you look for it (or not found, as the case may be), not as a flaw to pick at.

I probably shouldn't have used the phrase "critical eye" in my original comment--blame the time of night I posted it. I meant an analytical eye, not a fault-finding one. Pity "critic" has picked up such a negative meaning.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Looks to me like you're not reading the same books I'm reading. Marriage as any kind of finale is rare in SF, rare in mystery, moderately rare in historical and spy fiction. I believe it's common in...romance. Strangely enough. :-) But nowhere else.