An SF Canon?

*Sigh*. So people are arguing about "the" SF canon again.

I posted about this in a less fraught context a few years ago, but I was less tired of this then.

So let me be blunt: there is no SFF canon. There is no authoritative body capable of defining one, there is no function to be served by one, there is no arena in which one would be, as it were, exercised.

SF is barely old enough to have "classics", and damn few of them. Defining what a "classic" is is fraught, but aspects of it are straightforward, and one of the minimum thresholds of defining a classic is the reasonable belief that a work will have permanent appeal. And for permanent a reasonable approximation is "will still be read a hundred years from its date of publication by anyone except scholars". (Scholars will read minor works smelling of deep levels of dust because they are influences on major works; this does not count.) I don't think that's the only criterion, and there are some surprises (Freckles, Greenmantle and Seventeen have all made it past the hundred-year mark), but it's a reasonable minimum.

I'm not suggesting that Wells and Bellamy, who have already passed that mark, (some of Cabell is there as well, and Eddison is coming up in 2022) are the only candidates for SF "classics", but you have to have a real confidence that works will be read for themselves a generation or more from now for most SF works. Occasionally something comes out with a stature which suggests staying power, an "instant classic", and just maybe Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is up there.

My primary influences when I grew up (roughly 10-16) were weighted in the Fantasy direction (Tolkien, Dunsany, Cabell, Eddison, Morris, Kurtz, Chant, Zelazny...) though I certainly also read the SF standards at the same time - Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Niven, Le Guin, Dickson, Laumer, Van Vogt. But I moved on to five years of studying English (and some classical) literature, and by the time I hit my third degree I had a pretty good idea of the lastingness of most of the works I read for relaxation.

I have no real expectation that Foundation (which won the "Best All-Time Series" Hugo in 1966, over LOTR, the Lensman series, and Heinlein's Future History) will actually be read much if at all in 2042. I can imagine some Asimov and Heinlein in anthologies. For guessing about Stranger in a Strange Land I'd have to guess at 2061, and I'm not about to guess 40 years out on that. (Barring civilization-scarring calamities - not out of the question right now, but not my immediate problem, because I'm trying to assess quality, not make predictions, I think I feel comfortable saying LOTR will be read in 2055.)

Guessing about The Dispossessed in 2074 or Little, Big in 2081? I'm not even going to try, and those are among the stronger candidates in my view.

I agree in general with Jo Walton that a work has to be in conversation with SF/F to be a part of the field (which is why mainstream authors so often stumble). But there's no set of determinative works which provide that immersion. If you want to write about grand, galaxy-spanning space empires Asimov won't hurt but Banks, Scalzi, Asher and Martine will almost certainly serve you better. Gibson's cyberpunk is well-written, foundational, and still good, but you can react to thirty years worth of works responding to Gibson since Neuromancer. The same applies to reading - the only novel for which the Foundation series should be required reading is Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis.

There's some far more interesting discussions possible about groupings of works in conversation with each other which create effective subgenres, rather that going down the rabbit-hole of arguing about canonicity.