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"Book Review" of The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction (1980)
This is MIT Press's first effort to cope with the reality of science fiction. Although less than 300 pages, it weighs almost a pound and a half, compared to Ballantine Books' edition of Ted Sturgeon's classic More Than Human, which weighs exactly a quarter pound. Therefore Warrick's book must be six times as important as Sturgeon's. Her study, Warrick tells us, "is based on 225 stories and novels written between 1930 and 1977." She states her conclusions up front in her introduction: "This study demonstrates that much of the (science) fiction written since World War II is reactionary in its attitude toward computers and artificial intelligence. It is often ill informed about information theory and computer technology and lags behind present developments instead of anticipating the future." She then goes on to present a fully developed aesthetic approach by which to judge SF (here she does quite well). The three SF writers whom she deals with most fully are Asimov, Lem, and myself. I get the impression she considers the three of us important, and here lies my quarrel with her. As far as I am concerned the concept "important" is of no use in judging SF. I could quarrel with the vague style of the book (for instance, I cite "... a prison of false illusions" as being not only a double negative but also verbose, and "A shower of bizarre metaphors trails from Dick's imagination as it journeys through the patterns of possibilities in the evolving reciprocal relationship between man and his artificial constructs" and "He throws torches of possibility into his dark future, and their flashes of light reveal a survival," etc., as boring and sophomoric and a waste of the reader's time). But I would prefer to quarrel with the purpose of the book instead, and start out by saying that it has no purpose. It is a parasitic thing, and its very existence suggests that SF as a field is begi
The main complaint expressed repeatedly by Warrick in this book is SF's tendency to emit warnings about the dangers of technology -- dangers to individual humans and human society generally. Well, it is just too bad, but it is a fact: Science fiction writers worry about trends, worry about possible dystopias growing out of the present, and this is a cardinal value of the field. Admittedly, there was a time when science and progress were assumed to be identical. If we worry now we have cause to. This is not due to ignorance of the state of the world and the breakthroughs in science. Warrick devotes an entire chapter to my stories and novels that deal with robots, and she quotes me -- fairly -- as saying: "The greatest change growing across our world these days is probably the momentum of the living towards reification, and at the same time a reciprocal entry into animation by the mechanical." Am I not to be allowed to view this with alarm? Who will legislate what SF writers will be allowed to write and to worry about? This book praises me by terming my writing important but it arrogates to itself the role of arbiter of viewpoint and proper concern. Viewpoint and concern in SF are a transaction among author, editor, and reader, to which the critic is a spectator. If the reader enjoys what I write, there you have it. If he does not enjoy it, there you have nothing. "Important" is a rule from another game that I am not playing. I did not begin to read or write SF for reasons dealing with importance. When I sat in high school geometry class secretly reading a copy of Astounding hidden within a textbook I was not seeking importance. I was seeking, probably, intellectual excitement. Mental stimulation.
If SF becomes a
"My Definition of Science Fiction" (1981)
I will define science fiction, first, by saying what SF is not. It ca
Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment's thought will show why. Take Psionics; take mutants such as we find in Ted Sturgeon's wonderful More Than Human. If the reader believes that such mutants could exist, then he will view Sturgeon's novel as science fiction. If, however, he believes that such mutants are, like wizards and dragons, not possible, nor will ever be possible, then he is reading a fantasy novel. Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment call, since what is possible and what is not [ca