Literature of Ideas?
Jul. 6th, 2015 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeOne of the standard lines about speculative fiction is that it is the "literature of ideas". This isn't always true (more on that later) but it is certainly true that much of the representative work of the field fits into that slot; by contrast, the classic mainstream novel has many exemplars which avoid being centrally about ideas in favour of examining interpersonal dynamics
As an aside, let me note that, whatever that says about SF, it really doesn't say much about the novel. If Henry James, following T.S. Eliot, had "a mind so fine that no idea could violate it", the novel begins with Fielding's definition of it being a "comic epic in prose", which leaves ample room for ideas, and one can hardly say that ideas are not integral to the work of George Eliot or Charles Dickens.
One has to be careful in formulating the claim. A true literature of ideas does exist, and it's the essay: essays are, literally, all about ideas, but they are not speculative fiction. An appropriately guarded claim would have to be something like this: a normative SF work is organized not only along plot lines, but also and at the same time around some sort of idea which the author is exploring at the same time.
What do we mean, though, by "idea" in this context? John Scalzi's overall title for his guest author platform is "The Big Idea", but frequently what those authors talk about are not ideas as such but plot contrivances or twists on common narrative tropes; if these are ideas, then even James writes about ideas.
I have more-or-less-just finished three shiny new 2015 novels which are all likely candidates for award lists next year. In each of them, there is a central idea, but in each of them what "idea" means is rather different.
First up is the one with most abstract idea, and probably the best work of the three: Jo Walton's The Philosopher Kings. If The Just City was "about" agency, volition, freedom and coercion, and about how those concerns illuminate the ideal state (Polity, Republic, Utopia), then The Philosopher Kings is about judgement and justice (which is frequently what potted summaries of The Republic will tell you it is about). We have artistic judgements, decisions over (potentially) war and peace, and a running theme transitioning from vengeance to justice (which is also the theme of the Oresteia, though there are no Eumenides here), and a climactic judgement providing a resolution (also along the lines of much classical tragedy, in particular Sophoclean tragedy).
These concerns do not interfere with the plot but rather illuminate it. They also remain in the mind after the last page is turned, because they are general concerns in many aspects of the real world. Walton leaves one thinking about the general issues raised long after the story has been absorbed.
In contrast, Stross's latest Laundry Files novel, The Annihilation Score, worries at one of Charlie's concerns on his blog: the scope and legitimacy surrounding the role of policing in the modern state. This is not unique to this novel: where Rule 34 presented a sympathetic look at modern policing from inside the force, this novel deals with the boundaries of police legitimacy, the blind spots and creeping militarization which afflict the (modern) policing mindset, and with morally dubious interactions between the political realm and the policing realm.
This is a highly concrete "idea", also (obviously) applicable to the real world, though the non-fiction domain it corresponds to is not a work of philosophy but a work of history, or possibly a form of journalism. The plot in itself is what makes it "speculative" -- the "what if" including the (we hope) counterfactual of the real existence of the King in Yellow -- but the thematic core of the novel is not speculative at all: there are many other cases triggering the same concerns which arise regularly on the front pages of the papers.
Let's look at a third case: Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. Here the "what if" and the "idea" are combined: the idea really is about the plot. It seems to me, though, that the triggering idea is not "what would we do if the moon blew up?", but rather, "what would a world shared between variant human species look like"? (I say species because although they seem to be interfertile Stephenson has rigged his backstory so that the closest parallel to his seven-plus-two types of human is not modern "races", whose divergences are literally only skin deep -- other distinctions cut across "race" lines and there is more diversity within any modern "race" than between any two of them -- but rather the Africa of a million years ago where there seem to have been many variant hominin species.) To get there, he needs a very elaborate setup -- requiring not only heavy use of genetic engineering but the provision of a set of environments where subgroups could grow in relative isolation -- so that he can then examine cooperation and conflict between these radiating groups with the background of a common "epic".
The idea is obviously, glaringly, susceptible to misuse, though Stephenson has largely avoided this, but it's an essentially SFnal, i.e. speculative concern. Every SF work is i some sense about "what if the world were other than it is", but in many cases that is just a background for a plot which makes use of but isn't designed to explore the differences in question. Here the exploration is of the concrete elements surrounding the difference. It is more a return to SF roots than anything else I've read recently: engineer's fiction. The first two thirds is about solving a really big engineering problem; the last third is about the concrete details of a society where both technology and social structures have taken off in a different direction.
Is there very much at all in common between these sorts of "ideas"? My own sense is that there is not, and that, furthermore, it's not the handling of ideas but rather the exploration of the ideas in a counterfactual manner which makes them speculative fiction. It's open to an author to explore justice in an historical novel, or policing and security issues in a contemporary one (Stephenson's "idea" can't be pried free of its SFnal context), but that doesn't make either of the first two works less SFnal, just examples of the relative breadth of the genre.
And finally, of course, there are books where there is no core idea, but rather a primacy of plot shaped by a counterfactual environment: space opera, urban and heroic fantasy, stories of planetary exploration or parallel worlds or the workings-out of fate. There are bildungsromans, novels of political agency, spy stories.[1] Every category has its very good examples; there's no intrinsic better or worse here as far as craft, power, and overall excellence is concerned.
But literature of ideas for the genre as a whole? That's probably overselling.
[1]I'm thinking of Corey, McGuire, Cameron, Robinson, Schwab, Parker, Grossman, Addison, and Powers, respectively.
As an aside, let me note that, whatever that says about SF, it really doesn't say much about the novel. If Henry James, following T.S. Eliot, had "a mind so fine that no idea could violate it", the novel begins with Fielding's definition of it being a "comic epic in prose", which leaves ample room for ideas, and one can hardly say that ideas are not integral to the work of George Eliot or Charles Dickens.
One has to be careful in formulating the claim. A true literature of ideas does exist, and it's the essay: essays are, literally, all about ideas, but they are not speculative fiction. An appropriately guarded claim would have to be something like this: a normative SF work is organized not only along plot lines, but also and at the same time around some sort of idea which the author is exploring at the same time.
What do we mean, though, by "idea" in this context? John Scalzi's overall title for his guest author platform is "The Big Idea", but frequently what those authors talk about are not ideas as such but plot contrivances or twists on common narrative tropes; if these are ideas, then even James writes about ideas.
I have more-or-less-just finished three shiny new 2015 novels which are all likely candidates for award lists next year. In each of them, there is a central idea, but in each of them what "idea" means is rather different.
First up is the one with most abstract idea, and probably the best work of the three: Jo Walton's The Philosopher Kings. If The Just City was "about" agency, volition, freedom and coercion, and about how those concerns illuminate the ideal state (Polity, Republic, Utopia), then The Philosopher Kings is about judgement and justice (which is frequently what potted summaries of The Republic will tell you it is about). We have artistic judgements, decisions over (potentially) war and peace, and a running theme transitioning from vengeance to justice (which is also the theme of the Oresteia, though there are no Eumenides here), and a climactic judgement providing a resolution (also along the lines of much classical tragedy, in particular Sophoclean tragedy).
These concerns do not interfere with the plot but rather illuminate it. They also remain in the mind after the last page is turned, because they are general concerns in many aspects of the real world. Walton leaves one thinking about the general issues raised long after the story has been absorbed.
In contrast, Stross's latest Laundry Files novel, The Annihilation Score, worries at one of Charlie's concerns on his blog: the scope and legitimacy surrounding the role of policing in the modern state. This is not unique to this novel: where Rule 34 presented a sympathetic look at modern policing from inside the force, this novel deals with the boundaries of police legitimacy, the blind spots and creeping militarization which afflict the (modern) policing mindset, and with morally dubious interactions between the political realm and the policing realm.
This is a highly concrete "idea", also (obviously) applicable to the real world, though the non-fiction domain it corresponds to is not a work of philosophy but a work of history, or possibly a form of journalism. The plot in itself is what makes it "speculative" -- the "what if" including the (we hope) counterfactual of the real existence of the King in Yellow -- but the thematic core of the novel is not speculative at all: there are many other cases triggering the same concerns which arise regularly on the front pages of the papers.
Let's look at a third case: Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. Here the "what if" and the "idea" are combined: the idea really is about the plot. It seems to me, though, that the triggering idea is not "what would we do if the moon blew up?", but rather, "what would a world shared between variant human species look like"? (I say species because although they seem to be interfertile Stephenson has rigged his backstory so that the closest parallel to his seven-plus-two types of human is not modern "races", whose divergences are literally only skin deep -- other distinctions cut across "race" lines and there is more diversity within any modern "race" than between any two of them -- but rather the Africa of a million years ago where there seem to have been many variant hominin species.) To get there, he needs a very elaborate setup -- requiring not only heavy use of genetic engineering but the provision of a set of environments where subgroups could grow in relative isolation -- so that he can then examine cooperation and conflict between these radiating groups with the background of a common "epic".
The idea is obviously, glaringly, susceptible to misuse, though Stephenson has largely avoided this, but it's an essentially SFnal, i.e. speculative concern. Every SF work is i some sense about "what if the world were other than it is", but in many cases that is just a background for a plot which makes use of but isn't designed to explore the differences in question. Here the exploration is of the concrete elements surrounding the difference. It is more a return to SF roots than anything else I've read recently: engineer's fiction. The first two thirds is about solving a really big engineering problem; the last third is about the concrete details of a society where both technology and social structures have taken off in a different direction.
Is there very much at all in common between these sorts of "ideas"? My own sense is that there is not, and that, furthermore, it's not the handling of ideas but rather the exploration of the ideas in a counterfactual manner which makes them speculative fiction. It's open to an author to explore justice in an historical novel, or policing and security issues in a contemporary one (Stephenson's "idea" can't be pried free of its SFnal context), but that doesn't make either of the first two works less SFnal, just examples of the relative breadth of the genre.
And finally, of course, there are books where there is no core idea, but rather a primacy of plot shaped by a counterfactual environment: space opera, urban and heroic fantasy, stories of planetary exploration or parallel worlds or the workings-out of fate. There are bildungsromans, novels of political agency, spy stories.[1] Every category has its very good examples; there's no intrinsic better or worse here as far as craft, power, and overall excellence is concerned.
But literature of ideas for the genre as a whole? That's probably overselling.
[1]I'm thinking of Corey, McGuire, Cameron, Robinson, Schwab, Parker, Grossman, Addison, and Powers, respectively.
