A Function for Fable

Science Fiction (sf hereinafter) is unique among literary genres in the extent to which it is tarred by its own worst examples. Readers who readily discriminate between Ngaio Marsh and Mickey Spillane, between the likes of Shane and Hopalong Cassidy, between Hemingway’s fisherman and Wylie’s Crunch and Des, seem only too willing to wrap up all of sf in a brightly colored funny-paper and consign it to Hollywood where it is used to breed giant ants. Yet sf comes in many varieties—so many that even the kind of people who go each year to the World SF Convention cannot agree on a definition. It is certainly true that 90 per cent of sf is unadulterated crud. It is overlooked, however, that to the purist everything is 90 per cent crud, be it ball-teams or book reviews, cars, cats or congressmen. Sf’s special situation is that its virtuous tithe is overlooked, its rave reviews—one paragraph long—buried on p. 43 between kiddie books and dog stories.

There is a reason for this, and it probably lies in the fact that we are a science-worshipping culture which tells reverse-the-reverence jokes about psychiatrists and space-shots, as Boccaccio did about monks and nuns. Therefore it makes one namelessly uneasy to be faced with an example of unadulterated crud with a Science label on it. It is a subliminal sacrilege, so the public buys its sf wholesale only from non-sf writers like Nevil Shute, with an innocence as sanguine as that of Molière’s Amateur Gentleman. Which is a pity, because it thereby denies itself a species of literature of strength and scope, the best of which affords a proving-ground for ethical and sociological concepts new and old, along with rattling-good, or provocative, or brilliant, or even beautiful story. It may be a comfort to reflect that sf is a misnomer anyway; it would be more accurate to call it speculative fiction, or even adult fantasy. Its best examples are certainly capable of holding their own in the area of serious literary criticism, and they certainly should get it—as indeed they did in the days of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, whose work was written and received as “romance”—the contemporary term for any mainstream novelistics.

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Theodore Sturgeon

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Science Fiction (sf hereinafter) is unique among literary genres in the extent to which it is tarred by its own worst examples. Readers who readily discriminate between Ngaio Marsh and Mickey Spillane, between the likes of Shane and Hopalong Cassidy, between Hemingway’s fisherman and Wylie’s Crunch and Des, seem only too willing to wrap up all of sf in a brightly colored funny-paper and consign it to Hollywood where it is used to breed giant ants. Yet sf comes in many varieties—so many that even the kind of people who go each year to the World SF Convention cannot agree on a definition. It is certainly true that 90 per cent of sf is unadulterated crud. It is overlooked, however, that to the purist everything is 90 per cent crud, be it ball-teams or book reviews, cars, cats or congressmen. Sf’s special situation is that its virtuous tithe is overlooked, its rave reviews—one paragraph long—buried on p. 43 between kiddie books and dog stories.

There is a reason for this, and it probably lies in the fact that we are a science-worshipping culture which tells reverse-the-reverence jokes about psychiatrists and space-shots, as Boccaccio did about monks and nuns. Therefore it makes one namelessly uneasy to be faced with an example of unadulterated crud with a Science label on it. It is a subliminal sacrilege, so the public buys its sf wholesale only from non-sf writers like Nevil Shute, with an innocence as sanguine as that of Molière’s Amateur Gentleman. Which is a pity, because it thereby denies itself a species of literature of strength and scope, the best of which affords a proving-ground for ethical and sociological concepts new and old, along with rattling-good, or provocative, or brilliant, or even beautiful story. It may be a comfort to reflect that sf is a misnomer anyway; it would be more accurate to call it speculative fiction, or even adult fantasy. Its best examples are certainly capable of holding their own in the area of serious literary criticism, and they certainly should get it—as indeed they did in the days of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, whose work was written and received as “romance”—the contemporary term for any mainstream novelistics.