Don't Genrify My Neighborhood!

The first books I can remember selecting for myself were cheap paperback versions of Dragonlance and Anne McCaffrey at the BX bookstore in Germany. As far as I recall (and we all know how murkily untrustworthy recollections can be), no one introduced me to them, told me what they were about, clued me in to their subgenre, non-literary status. Perhaps I just liked the pretty covers.

Thus began years of reading science fiction, exhaustively and--for monthlong stretches--exclusively. Sometime in college, I left science fiction behind, with few exceptions. I completely left fantasy and sword-and-sorcery to wither by the wayside. Somehow, the topics of books that had previously engulfed my mind just weren't relevant anymore, to my experiences as a woman, as a college student, as a seeker of meaning and direction for my life. Yet, the critic in me says, Hold up a moment! Science fiction and fantasy treats all those topics/themes/what-have-you's, and more! How can you simply decide it's not relevant?

I'll tell you how, or at least my half-congealed ideas of how. About the time I broke up with sci-fi, I found a new boy(girl)friend. Literature. Let me restate, making sure to emphasize the initial capital: Literature. And Literature was a jealous creature, that didn't want me going out for coffee with my ex. At those moments when I missed the delight with which I discovered new unabashedly nerdy authors, devoured descriptions of demonic meta-computers gone astray, at those moments, I reminded myself (subconsciously, of course) that I had traded all that in for a shiny new ride with reputable bucket seats and a whole host of upstanding folk ready to oo and ahh over it.

Perhaps that metaphor went a bit far. The point is, my interest in reading as something beyond escapism, beyond a hobby came together with my earnest search for a position in the world from which I could feel secure in who I was and what I was doing. And nothing provides a sense of security more easily than the codified institutional label of reputability. Literature is reputable and science ficiton is not. Therefore, since I must read, I cannot imagine not reading, I will read Literature, and it will give me all the social gratification of belonging to an intellectual (and in hindsight, elitist) group, as well as the individual gratification of running my eyes over words on a page, making sense of them, enlarging my knowledge and worldview and understanding of others without leaving my easy chair. I even found one of those 100-Greatest lists, and read through it like it was my job, highlighting with satisfaction every book I finished.

I won't deny still having that highlighting impulse today (the MA Reading List is a constant lure!), but I will claim to better understand that impulse. More importantly, I have consciously chosen to resist it, for reasons that have nothing to do with what's actually on the list and everything to do with what isn't.

You certainly won't find any science fiction on the list, but that's alright with me. I'm not losing sleep over sci-fi's lack of place in the academic canon. It would be oversimplifying to say that sci-fi is a more productive and interesting and lively enterprise because of that lack, but that's generally about half the idea I'm getting at. The other half consists of exploring why sci-fi, as a genre, has been relegated to subpar literary status. All my thoughts on this question have been heavily influenced by Samuel R. Delany's Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics, which I'm currently reading.

The problem with sci-fi's low standings does not result from its particular generic characteristics, but rather from the fact that academics sincerely believe that it has particular generic characteristics. Certainly this is true of other types of books, from the picaresque to the art novel, but something about this belief is different. I agree with Delany's supposition that critics and general readers believe that sci-fi can be wholly circumscribed by its characteristics, and that circumscription constitutes the boundaries of all that defines sci-fi. It's the old problem of demonizing the Other: If we non-nerd kids can build a semantic wall around all that is sci-fi, then we can stand on this side (the right, reputable side) of that wall, and make all our critical pronouncements from solidly socially acceptable ground. Most critical questions being asked of sci-fi assume the presence of the wall as an unassailable--in fact, necessary--condition of sci-fi. But it's not.

Just as poetry borrows from prose, and novels can borrow from epics, and a literary adventure like Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives can be an art novel, a detective story, an interview, a pornographic escapade, sci-fi is not so limited in its topical and stylistic options that it cannot cross over, lend, borrow, and thieve to and from other genres. Something about what sci-fi allows us to do to conventional social mores and rational worldviews creates discomfort that forces a restrictive labeling. In other words, if we can call our discomfort a name, put it at a distance, and compare it unfavorably to things which really aren't that different, but don't make us so uncomfortable, well then, the discomfort just doesn't matter so much anymore.

All this is to say, I'll be reading more sci-fi from here on out. But I won't choose it because it's sci-fi. I'll choose it because I like the author, or I read an interesting review, or someone recommended it to me. Precisely the way I now choose all the Literature I read. And when it comes right down to it, no matter what I choose, I'll be reading a text. A text that require me to be a reader, with all the strategies and elision of meaning and grasps at understanding that that label entails.