Science-fiction isn't just spaceships

[trixtah]

I've become irked in the last few weeks about a number of statements I've seen about SF as a genre for pimply-faced nerds who only care about space-ships, aliens and muzzle velocities. While a lot of SF is about precisely that, it's not the kind I read. It might be a surprise to some, but quite a bit of SF consists of character-driven stories which examine everything from economics, ecology and politics through to interpersonal relationships of all kinds (of course, the latter two are the same, jut macro and micro). Of course, the background and plotting relates to spaceships, strange worlds and aliens... and sometimes big guns too (although if I enjoy a novel that features that kind of thing, it's despite the weapons). Genre fiction can tend to be more prosaic in its prose compared to the more literary varieties of writing, but when you find an Ursula Le Guin writing beautiful SF, you realise that the one doesn't necessarily preclude the other.

Elizabeth Lowell wrote an essay on Popular Fiction: Why We Read It, Why We Write It, which went around a few months back.Yes, I like escapism (and most other fiction isn't?). Yes, I like a fairly-definitely delineated plot. I really don't want to spend time when I'm trying to relax sitting there wondering what the hell is going on (if anything is) - it irritates me. And what isn't so explicitly laid out in that essay is the fact that I like the internal character development to be subordinate to the plot. Just like real life. If I am totally stuck in my own head in RL, then there is something wrong with me. For me, a healthy state of being is for life to be continuing, and for me to be dealing with it, and my own self-awareness is something that comes and goes. I find a lot of so-called literary fiction to be claustrophobic, if not outright narcissistic.

Just to show what I mean about internal awareness being part of a plot, I'm going to post a longish excerpt from Komarr, by Lois McMaster Bujold. The background is another world, where everyone lives in domes. There are space "wormholes", where spaceships can "jump" to remote solar systems. There are a bunch of conspirators, whose aim is to collapse one of these wormholes, and so isolate their world from the militaristic overlords who conquered their world a generation back. The lead character is the son of the man who conquered the world. He meets the wife of one of the colonial administrators, who (the administrator) turns out to be in the pay of the conspirators. Things happen, lots of them. But read the following excerpt and see if you still think SF is only ever just about the spaceships. And while realising that this describes the background to an event that has a major influence in moving the plot forward. I like the aspect of internal character development driving external results...just like in RL. By contrast, I also like the fact that most genre fiction has a positive ending... because you get enough crap to wade through in reality. If making internal changes leads to positive external results, I'm all for it as a theme. Anyways, read on:

Ekaterin studied Tien as they undressed for bed. The frowning tension in his face and body made her think she had better offer sex very soon. Strain in him frightened her, as always. It was past time to defuse him. The longer she waited, the harder it would be to approach him, and the tenser he would become, ending in some angry explosion of muffled, cutting words.

Sex, she imagined wistfully, should be romantic, abandoned, self-forgetful. Not the most tightly self-disciplined action in her world. Tien demanded response of her and worked hard to obtain it ... . The inward erotic fantasies required to absorb her self-consciousness had become stronger and uglier over time; was that a mere unavoidable side-effect of learning more about the ugliness of human possibility, or a permanent corruption of the spirit?

I hate this.

... She knew when the shift had occurred in her, of course, back about four, five jobs ago now. When Tien had decided, for reasons she still didn't understand, that she was betraying him—with whom, she had never understood either, since the two names he'd finally mentioned as his suspects were patently absurd. She'd no idea such a sexual mistrust had taken over his mind, until she'd caught him following her, watching her, turning up at odd times and bizarre places when he was supposed to be at work—and had that perhaps had something to do with why that particular job had ended so badly? She'd finally had the accusation out of him. She'd been horrified, deeply wounded, and subtly frightened. Was it stalking, when it was your own husband? She had not had the courage to ask who to ask. ... Then he had accused her of sleeping with her women friends.

That had broken something in her at last, some will to desire his good opinion. How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot? ... She began then to believe he was living in a different universe, one with a different sense of physical laws, perhaps, and an alternate history. And very different people from the ones she'd met of the same name. Smarmy dopplegangers, all. ...

Why was he so impossible?

She didn't want the insight, but it came nonetheless. Because he fears losing you. And so in panic blundered about destroying her love, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? It seemed so. It's not as if you can pretend his fears have no foundation. Love was long gone, in her. She got by on a starvation diet of loyalty, these days. ...

Most of all, she despised in herself that crippling desire for physical affection, regenerating like a weed in her heart no matter how many times she tried to root it out. That neediness, that dependence, that love-of-touch must be broken first. It had betrayed her, worse than all the other things. If she could kill her need for love, then all the other coils which bound her, desire for honor, attachment to duty, above all every form of fear, could be brought into line. Austerely mystical, she supposed. If I can kill all these things in me, I can be free of him.

I'll be a walking dead woman, but I will be free.

Comments

Re: *nods*

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

You know, I am extremely unsurprised by that. It seems a lot of people, or at least way more than I would have expected, either went or are going that route. My not-so-secret affection for the people who apparently evolved out of Xena fandom (send help, I may be mentally ill) has resulted in my finding a tremendous amount of stuff to read at the local women's bookstore.

I actually haven't read any LMB at all, because I keep forgetting who's on my to-read list whenever I happen past the library, and I grab things like "The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl" instead. Which is fun, but perhaps a bit too pulp for most people's taste.

Re: *nods*

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

You know, it's terrible (and terribly unpatriotic), but I've not read any Xena fanfic. Argh! I have to rectify this terrible lack.

And, hey, we all need to read tripe occasionally. At least it's not Daughters of a Coral Dawn (which I own. And reread. Mea culpa.)

Actually, my one and only claim to fame was meeting Lucy Lawless at at a dyke party in Auckland in the late 80s. :-D