Something that consistently blows my mind every time I take a class on a subject I have never considered too deeply is just how broad the field of study for any given topic is. Of course, this class was not the first time I had been exposed to science fiction and my favorite author of many years is actually a science fiction writer as well. However I had never really considered any of the higher-level study about the genre itself. Our first assignment was to read a selection of articles that talked about science fiction and how to define the genre and I can still remember my first thought being that I hadn’t expected the definition of the genre to be a highly debated topic. It was never something I thought deeply about but the image of science fiction I had in my head was one of spaceships and time travel. After reading the various articles and the works of all the authors we studied this semester, I now realize that science fiction provides some of the most powerful and radical critiques of humanity. Unlike other genres, science fiction allows authors to create worlds that serve as mirrors to our own and allow us to step outside of our limited capitalist perspectives.
In this class we focused specifically on science fiction during the Cold War period from both the United States and the Soviet Union. Prior to this class I honestly knew nothing about the Cold War so it was very much a new lens for me to analyze literature. The Cold War came about after an extremely unstable time of war and introduced a new type of fear in the hearts of the world: the fear of nuclear annihilation. Science fiction flourished during this time period of tension and speculated on what kind of future would be born from this nuclear era that was full of political and social change. Interestingly enough, the Cold War seemed to influence science fiction from the Soviet Union more heavily as there were extremely harsh guidelines about what could get published. Novels that alluded to the evil of the United States and the moral superiority of a socialist society had a much higher chance of being published and writing something that criticized the government was an invitation to get jailed or killed. In the United States, science fiction was often created for entertainment purposes but the conflict between capitalism and socialism/communism definitely makes an appearance in many highly-regarded science fiction works (like the ones we read in class this semester).
I enjoyed each of the novels we read this semester and my favorite part was definitely close reading in order to understand things about the world that was being presented to us. I find world-building to be the most challenging aspect of writing and I’m more interested in trying to decipher the commentary an author is making about the current status quo. I decided to showcase the following blog posts because I think they are good examples of close analysis of excerpts that are saying a lot more implicitly. I think that attentive close-reading is one of the most important parts of reading science fiction because there is always so much to dissect in normal dialogue or seemingly offhand descriptions.
The first blog post focuses on Samuel Delaney’s article “About 5,570 Words” which seeks to define science fiction and dissect the language author’s use in their work. This article really shaped my understanding of science fiction throughout the semester and highlighted the importance of close reading in a science fiction contect. This blog post serves as a good introduction to the others as it is the article that heavily influenced the way I approached the novels we read these past few months. I will get into the specifics of Delaney’s argument later on in the post but one of his central claims was about the level of subjunctivity of science fiction and how that separates it from all other genres. The level of subjunctivity for science fiction is “has not happened yet” which can be attributed to all the events that happen in a science fiction novel.
The second blog post I chose focuses on an excerpt from the 1957 novel The Glass Bees by Ernst Junger. Junger was a German veteran who wrote a book that spans two days in the life of veteran Captain Richard, an unemployed ex-cavalryman who feels ostracized in a world that has become increasingly impersonal and technologically advanced. The Glass Bees was a very interesting read as it primarily focused on the inner thoughts of Richard and spent pages upon pages recounting his memories of being in the war. The Glass Bees provides an interesting perspective on society from the point of view of a jaded veteran. The reader is able to put on a new pair of shoes and look at technology from the eyes of someone who has lived a very different life than most people. The excerpt I analyzed was full of Richard’s emotions and this character-heavy writing can still tell the readers a lot about the world that has made Richard feel the way he does.
The third blog post I chose was a close reading of two lines of dialogue from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. This novel, inspiration for the classic movie Blade Runner, follows bounty hunter Rick Decker whose job is hunting and killing androids on Earth. This novel heavily deals with the concept of humanity and the purpose of this blog post is to show how just two lines of dialogue can add so much to a novel and be representative of a much bigger issue. This blog post is a perfect example of why I consider close reading to be such an important part of reading science fiction as there can be so much detail packed into so little words.
The fourth blog post I chose was an analysis from The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula Le Guin. This novel follows the journey of a physicist by the name of Shevek who lives in an anarchist society on a moon called Anarres. Shevek is the first person from Anarres to ever come to Urras, the main planet, which is highly profiterian and capitalist. Shevek has outgrown Anarres intellectually and comes to Urras to continue his work with other scientists. However, as Shevek spends more time on Urras he realizes there are many problems that both worlds have and that he does not feel like he truly fits into either of them. Once again, this excerpt shows a very interesting relationship between the society as well as the character, whose lens we are viewing the world through. By making Shevek the narrator, Le Guin is able to portray Urras through a very unique perspective.
The fifth blog post I chose was an analysis of the first eight pages of Samuel Delaney’s novel Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia. This was my favorite novel this semester and even though Delaney himself has said he starts with characters and then builds his world around it, the society and world-building is what really stuck with me from this novel. This novel follows the main character, Bron, who lives on Triton which is a libertarian society where there is limited government (one that barely ever appears in the novel) and unlimited freedom for the people living there. This blog post focuses on the first few pages and deciphers what information does the reader get about this world from the very beginning. Delaney certainly throws the reader in headfirst and leaves nearly everything up to interpretation. I consider him to be the most difficult author to read out of the bunch we were exposed to this semester as his writing style is very unique and it takes some getting used to. Aside from syntax, though, Delaney is also one of the rare authors that acknowledges how different social relations and structures (specifically gender and sexuality) can change in a future world – a topic that many authors tend to shy away from. I thought his attempt to cross the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality was very commendable and something a lot of the other authors we analyzed did not do. The last blog post I chose was also about Trouble on Triton and I analyzed the difference between Bron’s home Triton and Earth. Delaney is very vague when it comes to the specifics of politics so it takes a lot of inferring and close-reading to make assumptions about the differences of the two societies. I chose this post because it is a perfect example of having to analyze small details in order to understand the social and political structures of both Triton and Earth.
Overall this class really influenced the way I read science fiction and I am excited to use this new knowledge in the future. I really enjoyed reading about the gender critiques of science fiction and I am planning on reading a lot more work done by women authors specifically to see how they tackle the challenge of gender and sexuality in different worlds. I definitely now see science fiction as radical literature that can change the course of humanity.