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"The Red Sun Is High, the Blue Low": Towards a Stylistic Description of Science Fiction ("Lesoleil rouge est au zénith, le soleil bleu se couche": vers une description stylistique de la SF)Author(s): Kathleen L. SpencerSource: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 35-49Published by: SF-TH IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239526 .
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TOWARDS
A STYLISTIC
DESCRIPTION
OF
SF
35
Kathleen
L.
Spencer
"The
Red Sun is
High, the
Blue Low":
Towards
a
Stylistic
Description
of Science Ficfton
To understand
he
language
of a text is to
recognize
the
world to which
it
refers.
JonathanCuller,
Structuralist
oetics
The persistent attempts to define SF-dating roughly from the time Hugo
Gernsback
coined scientifiction-suggest
that a clear
and
widely
accepted
definition
has
been
deemed
somehow
essential
to
an understanding
and appre-
ciation
of the
genre.
Yet,
after some
50
years
of definitional
effort,
no formula-
tion
has been able
to win broad critical
support.
Given the intellectual
energy
expended
on this
project,
the
failure
to
reach
a consensus perhaps
ndicates
that
we have been asking
the
wrong question.
Instead of seeking
a
dictionary
definition
of
SF,
we
might
be better off to
ask,
"How
do
readers dentify
a text
as
SF?"
Such a change in question shifts the focus of the discussion from the
text-as-artifact
o the
interaction-between
text and
reader:
we are no longer
asking
simply
about
the characteristics
of the text, but
about
how the reader
understands and interprets
the text. Approaching
the
genre
by investigating
reader response
makes good
sense, at
least from a structuralist
point of view;
for,
as
Jonathan Culler explains
in
StructuralistPoetics,
a
genre
can best
be
conceived
of
as "a
conventional
function
of
language,
a
particular
elationto the
world which
serves as norm
or
expectation
to
guide
the reader
in
his
or her
encounter
with the text."' Faced
with
a work
identified
as
tragedy,
we know
what
to
expect:
"the bad end
unhappily,
the
good
unluckily"
as
the
Player
in
Tom Stoppard'sRosencrantzand Guildensternare Dead puts it). In traditional
comedy,
we
expect
one or
more
marriages
at
the conclusion.
Westerns
and
detective
stories have
predictable
casts
of
characters
involved
in
quite
limited
kinds
of
relationships
and
activities;
and
we
accept
these as the conventions,
the
proper
shapes,
of the
respective
genres.
End
a
"Harlequin"
omance
with the
heroine
neither married
nor
engaged,
compose
a
gothic
with no
old
mansion
or
brooding
Heathcliffian hero,
and your
readers
will be
outraged:you
will
have
broken
the
unwritten
contract
that
genre
represents.
Genre conventions
not
only
tell us what
generally
to
expect
in
a
given
kind
of work, but create a context which guides our interpretationof specific ele-
ments
of
that
work.
Consider,
for
example,
a
classic
"locked-room
mystery."
How could anyone
havegotten
into the hermeticallysealed
chamber
to commit
the
murder,
and
how could
he
or she
escape
afterwards without detection?
Faced
with
this
situation,
the reader
may
not at first
guess
the answer;
but she
or
he can confidently predict
that,
no matter how
puzzling
or
impossible
the
circumstances
may appear,
the
solution will
ultimately
urnout to be
a naturalis-
tic
one,
because
murder
by supernatural
agency
would violate the
conventions
of
the detective
novel.
(There
are,
of
course, genres-horror
or
gothic,
for
instance-in
which
such a
supernatural
murder
would
indeed
fall within
the
rangeof acceptable solutions, but the detective story is not one of them.)
Since all these
familiar
genres-westerns,
detective
fiction,
and
"Harle-
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36
SCIENCE-FICTION
STUDIES,
VOLUME 10
(1983)
quin"
romance-do
have
comparatively
limited sets
of
acceptable
plots
and
characters,
they
can be much
more
readily
characterizedthan SF.
But
readerly
competence must
operate
similarly
in
the more
complex
as
in
the
simpler
genres, a fact which suggests a series of questions we can profitablyask about
SF:
(1) What are
the norms or
expectations
by which
readers
nterpret
SF
texts?
What
assumptionsdo
they
makeabout the
text
whichallow
them
to make
sense
out of a
sentence
like "The
red sun is
high, the blue
low"-which,
if
found
in
what
Samuel
Delany calls
"mundane
iction,"2would
be
meaningless?(2) What
techniques
do SF
writers
use
to
create
and
fulfill
these expectations?
How do
they
produce those
sentences
which mark the
text as
SF?
1. To
determine the
conventions,
let
us
begin
with Darko
Suvin's
definition
of
SF,
generally
accepted
as the
most
satisfactory effort to date at
that
Sisyphean
task.
SF,
in
Suvin's
formulation,
is
"a
literary
genre whose
necessary
and
sufficient
conditions
are the
presence and
interaction
of
estrangement
and
cognition,
and
whose main formal
device is an
imaginative frameworkalterna-
tive to the
author's
empirical
environment."3That
is,
in
writing
SF,
the
author
creates an
environment
(an
"imaginative
ramework")
different in
some
signifi-
cant
way-in
place, time,
or
circumstances-from his
or her own. This
frame-
work, by
the
ways
in
which
it
differs
from
reality (or,
in
Suvin's
careful
phrase,
from
the "empirical
environment")
creates estrangement
for
the
readers, sepa-
rating
them from
their own
familiar
world.
Estrangement is not a characteristicunique to SF: according to reader-
response
theory,
all
literarytexts use
unfamiliar
elements to
disruptthe reader's
expectations. This is
because
reading
is a
dynamicprocess: the reader
does not
merely pass an
eye over the
text,
passively absorbing
the words
printed
there,
but
actively
engages
with
the text.
Sentences
do not
just convey
information;
they also create
expectations about
what will
follow
them,
from which
the
reader
constructs a
pattern that
allows her or him
to
interpretthe text. But
while
expository
texts
generally
fulfill
those
expectations,
literary
texts
frequently
subvert them.
When the
pattern
which
the reader has
constructed
proves not to
account for
the newest
piece
of
information,
he or she
must
disengage
from the
text and construct a new pattern, one in which the new informationdoes fit
properly;
and
this
new
pattern, too,
will
subsequently be
modified
in
its turn.
Thus the
readingprocess follows
a
repeated
sequence of patternforma-
tion/
disruption/re-evaluation/pattem
eformation:
he reader
oscillates between
involvement
in,
and
observation
of,
the
world of the
text- between
experienc-
ing
the
events of the
text as
if
they were
real
and
happening
to her or
him, and
disengaging
to
evaluate the
interpretation
constructed,
in
order to
identify
and
incorporate
a
disruptive-estranging-element.
Estrangement,
therefore,
plays
a vital
function
in
a
literary
text,
for it
creates thatdisruptionwhichforces the readertemporarilyout of aninvolvement
in
the
text
(during
which
she
or
he is
not able to
reflect
on
what is
being
read),
and forces him
or her
to
grapple
actively with
the material n
order to
evaluate
it.
According
to
Wolfgang
Iser,
a
leading
reader-response
heorist,
it
is
precisely
the reader's
attemptto balance
these
two
aspects of reading-
involvement
and
evaluation-that
provides
the
aesthetic
pleasure of
experiencing
a text.
Not,
of
course,
the
actual achievement
of
balance,
which
would be mere
stasis,
but the
dynamism
resulting
from the
failed
attempt
to achieve
balance.4
But if
all
literary
texts
employ
estrangement, how
can we
consider it a
defining
characteristic of SF? It is
not the
mere
presence
of
estrangement,
but
the unusual degree of estrangement and the particularkinds of estranging
devices it
employs
that
distinguish
SF
from other
genres.
SF's
characteristic
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TOWARDSA STYLISTIC DESCRIPTIONOF
SF
37
stance is accurately reflected in its name- that is, it is both "scientific" meaning
"concerned
with the
effects
of scientific
principles, real or imaginary,on socie-
ty," not "true according to the science we know"), and "fictional."
The
text
posits a novelty (what Suvin calls the"novum"),which separatesthe worldof the
text from the empirical world. But,
unlike the novelties of
mundane fiction
(which usually consist mostly of placing fictional, though plausible,characters
in a realistic setting), the novumof SF is "'totalizing'n the sense that
it
entails
a
change
of
the whole universe
of the
tale,
or at
least
of
crucially important
aspects thereof (and...
is therefore
a
means
by
which the whole
tale can
be
analyticallygrasped)" MSF, p. 64).
That
is,
the novum of an SF
story
is so
much
the
key
to
understanding he
work
that
any capsule summary
s bound to feature
it: "X
is about an alternate world in which the Axis won World War
II"
(Dick's
The Man in the
High Castle);
"Y
is about
a
computer
that
comes
alive and runs
the revolution
of
a moon
colony" (Heinlein's
The
Moon
is a Harsh
Mistress);
"Z
is
about a
man
who tries to get away with murder
in a
future world where
telepaths are
so
numerous and organized that premeditated
crime has
become
impossible"(Bester's The Demolished Man).
Having posited this totalizing novum, the SF text proceeds to
develop
it
with
ogical rigor, ollowing
out the
implications-social, technological,
cultural-
of
that
change
on the
world we
know. The
result,
as Suvin
says,
is "anarrative
reality sufficiently autonomous and intransitive o be explored at length as
to its
own
properties
and the
human
relations
it
implies" (MSF, p. 71).
Hence
the
importance of cognition in Suvin'sdefinition: the operations of logic limitboth
the nature of the
fictional world anld
he
way
that world is
explained
or
justified
to the
reader.
In
the first place, the world of the text niust stand in some
kind
of
cognitively discoverable relation
to
our
own
empirical situation. The writer
should not
present
us with some
mysterious
self-contained
world which
simply
exists somewhere without
explanation.
Unlike
fantasy, the society we are read-
ing about should be identifiable as, for instance, a parallel Earth, or a future
Earth,
or
an Earthcolony on another planet, or a race of humanoidsdescended
from a
colonizing expedition,
or
a
race
of
aliens.5
As
Delany explains,
not
only
does SF "throwus worldsaway, it specifies how we got there"(JHJ,p. 33).
Identifying "wherewe are and how we got there" establishes a base from
which the
reader can reason aboutthe ways
in
which theworldof the text differs
from our
world,
while
simultaneously ustifying
he
ways
in
which the two
worlds
are
similar. It
reassures us about
the
continued (though perhaps slightlymodi-
fied) operation
of
familiarscientific
and
logical
laws
(gravity, hermodynamics,
induction, cause-and-effect) and equally familiar patterns of humanbehavior
(family-formation, ymbol-making,
ritual
activity, establishment
of
hierarchies
or
systems
for
making group decisions
and
awardingprestige). The continued
relevanceof such basic patternsallowsusto make reasonabledeductions about
the world of
the text, despite its unfamiliar eatures.
Cognition
also
determines the kind
of
explanations the author offers for
the details of his
or her imagined world, particularly
for
the
technological
changes.
These
do not
need
to be based
on
current
scientific knowledge
(the
spaceships
with
"faster-than-light rives" found
in
numerous SF stories
are
a
classic
example),
but the author must invent a
scientific kind of explanation for
them,
an
explanation based
on
reasoning
from "natural
aws,"
whether
those
laws
happen
to be
empirically true
or
not. Where
in
fantasy one gets
magic
insteadof
technology-flying carpets,
for
instance-in
SF,
the reader
s
presented
with portable "anti-gravity evice" and possibly a brief history of its invention.
For some
points of view, this may appear to be a distinction without a
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38 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 10 (1983)
difference.
On the one
hand,
we have Arthur
C. Clarke's amous
dictum that
any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishablefroih magic; and
on
the
other, we have
a
world like Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, in which the magic is so
rule-governed hat it mayseem to have the inevitabilityof technology.6Andyet,
of course,
it
does
not.
Magic, even
in
Earthsea,
still
depends
on the
power,
knowledge, and abilities of the person using
it:
not everyone
is
capable
of
making a spell work. But, while
it
requires special
skill
and knowledge
to invent
a
technologically-poweredtool,
it
requires
no
great
skill to
operate
it. One does
not have to be an
engineer
or
a
physicist
to
flip
a
light switch,
or start an
automobile,
or
trigger
a laser
gun.
The
powers
of
technology
are
not
just
rule-governed
but
bound by law, impersonal, universal,
and
predictable,
while
the powers of magic remain personal and variable.No matter how much like
science
it
may appear, magic alwaysretains an irreducible element of
art.
Thus
the scientific explanatory mode of SF (one
of
the things Suvin sums
up
in the
term
cognition)
is
an
identifying
characteristic
of the
genre,
dis-
tinguishing
t
categorically
from
fantasy. Indeed,
it
distinguishes
t
from natural-
istic fiction as well. As Robert Philmus has observed, naturalistic fiction does
not require scientific explanation, fantasy does not allow it, and
SF
both allows
and requires
it.7
When
readers pick up an
SF
text, then, two of their most fundamental
expectations
are:
(1)
that the
story
will
happen
somewhere
else-that
time,
or
place,
or
circumstances
will
be significantly different
from their
"empirical
environment";and (2) that the environment of the fiction will be interpretable
by cognitive processes-that is,
that it derives from or is related to our own
environment
in
some
logical way,
and that it is as
bound by
natural aws
as
our
own
world, though those laws may differ from the ones
we
know. These
two
expectations together create
SF's
paradoxical relationship
with
reality-its
"realistic
rreality"
as
Suvin calls it (MSF, p. viii)-which in turn produces most,
if
not all, of
SF's
defining characteristics. This oxymoron, realistic irreality,
provides the key
to the
rules by which SF's identifying sentences are generated.
2. From the end of the
18th century until fairly recently, realism
was
considered
the essential objective of the dominant mode of fiction, one of its defining
characteristics.
It is
therefore
appropriate
to
inquire
how novelists
convey
the
sense of
reality
n
their
work. As Culler
observes,
the basic convention
governing
it is
our
expectation
hatthe novel will
produce
a
world.Wordsmustbe
composed
in
such
a
way
that
through
he
activityof reading herewillemergea model of
the
social world,
models
of
the
individual ersonality, f
the
relationsbetween
the
individual
nd
society, and, perhapsmostimportant,
f
the kind
of
signifi-
cance which these
aspects
of
the worldcan bear.
(SP, p. 189)
Given
this
convention,
Culler
says,
we should be
able
to
identify
elements
within
the text
which
allow us to
construct the
world,
to naturalize he
details
of the text
by relating
them to some kind
of naturalorder
or
pattern already existing
in
our
physical
or cultural environment. On the
simplest level, this function
is
filled by
what
Culler
calls a
descriptive residue,
"items whose
only apparent
role
in
the
text is that of
denoting
a
concrete
reality (trivialgestures, insignificantobjects,
superfluous dialogue)....
Elements of
this
kind
confirm
the
mimetic contract
and assure the reader that he or she
can interpretthe
text
as about
a
real world"
(SP, p. 193).
It
is,
in
fact,
the
very
absence
of meaning
in
these elements
that
serves mostfirmlyto anchorthe storyin reality,thanks to the common Western
assumption
"that the world is
simply
there
and
can
thus best be
denoted
by
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TOWARDSA STYLISTIC DESCRIPTION
OF SF 39
objects whose sole function
is to be there."8
Beyond this most elementary
stage, in which we assume
a text refers to a
real world because it is full of items that exist in the real
world, is what Culler
calls levels of vraisemblance,or verisimilitude.9He identifies-at progressively
higher degrees of abstraction-five
such levels of "texts,"each of which repre-
sents a coherent system of
knowledge by
which we interpret our experiences,
both of the world and of the story itself.
Among these, three
are of particularrelevance to effectively identifying
an SF text. The first and most
basic level is "the real."This
is the world in which
people
have bodies and minds, eat, sleep, and die, love
and hate;
in
which
actions
begun
can be assumed
to end
(even
if we
are
not
explicitly
told
how);
in
which the sun rises
and
sets
daily and the seasons follow their normal course.
This level, Culler notes, "needs no justification because
it
seems
to derive
from
the structureof the world"(SP, p. 140).
The second level
is cultural verisimilitude. Features
on this level do not
have quite the power of "natural aw" as those on the first
level, for even the
members of the culture in question generally recognize
them as culturally
determined and therefore subject
to
change. Still, as attitudes
held by large
numbers
of
people over
long periods
of
time, they
do carry considerable
authority.
For
instance, to describe
someone as
being
"as inscrutable as
an
Oriental"
or "as
volatile as an
Italian"would be to
appeal
to cultural
verisimili-
tude. Reversing the attributes-as
volatile as an Oriental,as inscrutable as an
Italian-creates statements which will be rejected as unverisimilar.Cultural
verisimilitude
also
guides our
deductions about
persons
or incidents
we encoun-
ter both
in
life and
in
literary
texts.
Thus when
we
see
a
young
woman
wearing
a
diamond
ring
on the third
finger
of her
left
hand,
we
assume
she is
engaged
to be
married.
It is
primarily his cultural
level of verisimilitudethat provides the
infor-
mation
by
which readers
interpret
the
behavior of the
characters
n
stories;
and
often
the
text itself will
contribute explicit interpretations
of its
own.
If,
how-
ever,
these
textually-offered
nterpretations
eem
to
suggest
social and
cultural
models markedly"unnatural,"we must then shift to the
third level
of verisimili-
tude, which is a set of explicitly literary and/or generic norms. The operative
notion of
"genre"
n this context involves not only the familiar iterary types-
tragedy, comedy, pastoral, mystery, romance,
SF-but also the identifiable
fictional milieux
constructed
by, say, Faulkneror Henry
James, Jane Austen or
Mark Twain.
In
the works of such
authors,
we
recognize
a
range
of
character,
behavior,
and event as consistent
with their
fictional
worldview,
and hence
as
verisimilar;anything
outside
that
range
will be
rejected
as a violation
of
deco-
rum,
as
unrealistic.
A
character
ike
Heathcliff,
for instance, though
naturaland
believable
in
the
gothic
intensity
of
WutheringHeights,
would be
totally
out of
place inJane Austen. Inrecognitionof thistruth,Tzvetan Todorovremarks hat
"there are as
many
versions of vraisemblanceas there
are genres."'0
Let
us return, then, to the two
basic
expectations
of SF which we have
established: that the
story
has been distanced or
displaced
from us
in
time,
space,
or
circumstance;
and
that,
because the new
setting
is both related
in
some
discoverable
way
to our own
empirical
environment and
logically
consistent
in
itself,
it is
possible
for us
to interpret
t.
To
the extent that an SF text satisfies
our
first
expectation,
it is
"irrealistic":
y definition,
the novum
of
an
SF
text has no
correlative
in
what we
recognize
as the real world.
However,
to the extent that
the
text
satisfies
our
second
expectation,
that
the
world of the text
is
governed by
consistent natural aws, it is "realistic": xcept for those circumstancesdirectly
affected
by
the
posited
change,
the
laws and
logic
of our familiar
world/culture
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40 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 10 (1983)
apply.
The result
is that a
typical
SF text follows the normal conventions of
verisimilitude,
uses
the devices employed
in mundane fiction
to convince
the
reader that the text refers to a real world-but
the culture
referred
to is
imaginary. This fact creates the possibility of exciting new kinds of reading
experience, but also creates great challenges
for both
writer and reader.
3. Most of the technical difficulties both of writing and reading SF derive
from
the fact that the culture upon which the fiction's verisimilitude
rests
is
itself
a
fiction, a construct, and hence unfamiliar to readers.
From the writer,
this
situation demands much greater attention to description
and to
exposition
in
order to make the story intelligible.But description
and
exposition are,
even
in
mundane fiction, notorious cloggersof plot anddelayersof action;
so how is
the
SF author to include even more
of
them
without
crushing
the
story
helplessly
under their weight? On the other hand, if she or he includes too little, the
imaginary culture
will
prove opaque
to readers and the
story
will be uninter-
pretable,
unnaturalizable.The
simplest way
to communicate the
nature
of
the
constructed
culture would
be,
of
course,
to
explain
it
directly
to the audience.
However, that approach smore suitablefor a speculative essay
than a
story;
and
even
the "next best
thing," adopted by
so
many utopists-the
device
of the
stranger
from our world who is
introduced
suddenly
into the midst of this
new
culture and
to
whom someone
kindly explainseverything-is largelyunsatisfying
as fiction.
It
is
as
unsubtle as the
typical opening-act gossip
about the characters
we are about to meet in a play: clear, but undramatic.
The alternative is some kind of oblique approach,
in
which the author
discusses
unfamiliar
hings
in
the offhand and allusive manner
proper
to some-
one
referring
to items
familiar to initiates
in
the
culture-customs,
codes of
behavior, traditions, taboos, technologies.
That
technique
allows
great
econ-
omy
at the sentence level: often a
single word can suggest volumes
about the
unfamiliar
ociety.
Onre
f the most famous and oft-cited
examples
is
a sentence
of
Heinlein's: "The door
irised."
The
term forces the
reader to visualize an
entirely
new kind of
door,
circular
ratherthan
rectangular,
constructed not
in
a
single piece
but
perhaps
of
overlappingpanels
like the shutters
of some
cameras.
A door of such design implies something about the technological level of the
society,
since
it is
more
complex
in
its
engineering
than the
hinged
door normal
to our
experience.
It also
implies something
about the
physiology
of the crea-
tures
for whom
such doors were
originallydesigned:
its roundness suggests that
they, too,
will
be more
nearly
round than human
beings.'I
Above
all,
it
separates
this
imaginedsociety,
in
a
subtle
but
powerfulway,
from the one we know. What
kinds
of
circumstances,
we
have to ask
ourselves,
could cause human beings, for
whom a
rectangular
door is the most functional
shape,
to
adopt
"irising" oors as
the
norm,
or at least as a
commonplace?
Indescribingunfamiliarcultures "from he inside" ike this, SFwritersare
manipulating
what Culler
calls the "threshold of functional
relevance,...
sequences
below which are
taken-for-granted" SP, p. 143).
The
threshold
of
functional relevance describes the level of
generality
at which we
normally
encounter
the world: in
which we "eat
dinner,"
rather than
"pick up
our fork
in
our
right hand,
insert
the tines into a
piece
of
meat,
lift
the
fork to our
mouths,
pull
the meat from our
fork
with our
teeth,
chew
vigorously,
and swallow."This
latter
description
occurs
below
the
level of
functional relevance,
with the result
that the whole
passage,
the
action,
is
de-familiarized."2We re-familiarize
t by
identifying
the
generalization which sums up this activity: eating.
When SF authors write from inside an alien culture (or our own culture
after
significant changes), they typically
set the level
of functional relevance
not
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TOWARDS A STYLISTIC
DESCRIPTIONOF
SF
41
lower (as
in
the example
above),
but
higher
than the
readers'actual
knowledge,
at a level that
would be
appropriate
to someone
living
inside it-the
level
at
which we
might,
in
mundane
novels,
refer without
elaboration to
"McDonalds"
or
"Hollywood"or "slumber
parties"
or
"lobbyists." They
can
also,
of
course,
when writing from
the viewpoint
of
an alien
in
our
culture,
write of familiar
things at a level of functionalrelevance
below our
ordinary evel,
to
convey
the
strangeness
of
the
alien'sperceptions,
and
to
force
us to
see these
things
from
a
new perspective. Ursula Le Guin uses this
technique effectively
in
her short
story "Mazes," which describes
the
impact
of
ordinary
laboratory
tests
for
learning
ability
from
the point
of
view
of the
subject.)
The
technique
grows.
out of a radical
separation
between the
actual
author, who
lives in
our
20th-centuryworld, and
what
Wayne
Booth would call
the "implied author," who inhabits the world of the
novum.
It requires a
similarly radical
separation between
the actual
audience, contemporary
with
the
actual
author,
and the
"implied"
r "fictive"
audience, whichusually
shares
a
world and a
culture with the implied
author.'3
This circumstance
produces the
characteristicobliquity
of most SF texts:
the fact that
the
implied
author and
implied
audience
are
conceived
of
as
inhabiting
the
same culture. Hence
things
that
puzzle us,
the actual
audience,
cannot be
explained
directly
without
destroying
verisimilitude.As Marc
Angenot
points out,
In a fictionset on an alienplanet, whatrepresents orthe 'terran eader' he
utmost
trangenessmustbe perfectly rivialandbanal
or
the Alien narrator. t
would
therefore be totally abnormal or
the narrator o
stress this obvious
feature at
the outset. It seems
more
'realistic'
hat
such
data be given
en
passant,
ate in
the narrative,
nd in a rather
ndirect
way.'4
However, the result of this
obliquity of
technique
is
that the reader must
approach
an SF
text
almost as
if
it
were in
code. He
or
she must
read
like a
detective,
collecting data which
may
or
maynot
turn
out to be
significant.What
the reader s
doing,
in
fact,
is
constructing
the
salient features
of the culture
from
the
clues which the
author
(the
actual
author)
has left him.
Consider,
for
instance,
the
following
passage
from
theopeningof Pohl and
Kornbluth's The
Space Merchants:
I
rubbeddepilatory
oapover myface andrinsed t with
the trickle rom
he
fresh-water
ap.
Wasteful,
of
course, but I pay taxes
and salt water
always
leaves
my face itchy.Before the last of
the greasy
stubblewas quitewashed
away
the trickle
stopped anddidn'tstart
again. I swore
a little andfinished
rinsingwith
salt. It had
been happening ately; some
people blamedConsie
saboteurs.
Loyalty
raids were
being held throughout
he New York
Water
Supply
Corporation; o
far
they hadn't
done any good.
The morningnewscastabove theshavingmirror aughtme for a moment
...
the President's peech
of
last
night, a
brief glimpse of the Venus
rocket
squat
on the
Arizona
sand.(1:1)
From
this,
the
second
paragraph
and the
beginning
of
the thirdin the book,
the
reader
learns
that
the
story
takes place
in
New
York and in the future. The
place
we
are told
explicitly, the time we infer
from hints of
technological
changes.
First,
and least important, a new and
more
convenient technique for
shaving
has
been
invented. We can
assumeit is
widely and
readilyavailable, a
commonplace
of this
world,
because the
speaker
refers
to "depilatory oap"in
so offhand a manner:clearlyit is not the most important hingon his mind,as it
might
be
if
it
were
unusual.
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42
SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 10 (1983)
Another change, both technological and social, is the presence of a
mass-mediaviewing screen in the bathroom-"the morning newscast above the
mirror."Again, the casualness of the reference implies that such viewing screens
are common and probably inexpensive and that they are now routinelyfound
throughout
the
living quarters
of the
affluent,
at least: after
all,
it is
unlikely
that
the
speaker,
if
he had
only
one
such
screen,
would
place
it
in
the bathroom.The
third
indication
of the
technological
level of this culture
is
the
Venus rocket:
apparently space travel
of some
kind has become a reality.
On the other
hand, despite these changes,
the
culture
has not been
transformed
entirely:
the US still has a
president for example,
and a state named
Arizona. The
implication
of all this is of a
time
in the not-far-distant uture-
none of the
technological changes
are
much beyond
our
current capacities,
and
the political structure seems to be roughlythe same.
However,
if
politics has not changed much,
other
social
conditions cer-
tainly
have. Potable
water
is
severely rationed,
with salt water the
norm for
most
non-consumption
uses. The
phrase
"New York Water
Supply Corporation"
indicates
something
even more
significant:
that
distribution
of
this
essential
commodity
is now in
the hands
of
private enterprise.
The situation is
neither
new nor the result of some recent
emergency
but
is
chronic and
has been well-
assimilated into the
political system,
as we can tell from the
speaker's
connec-
tion of his
right
to use water with his status as a
taxpayer,
and
by
his
generally
resigned
air about the
inconvenience. Resignation, however,
is not the
only
re-
sponse to the shortages: sabotage is an occurrence (or threat, at least) Wide-
spread enough
to
prompt
an
organized
and official
response-the "loyalty
raids"
by
the New York Water
Supply Corporation. Furthermore,
this culture
possesses
a
semi-official
(at
least
organized
and
recognized) opposition-the
"Consies,"
who
may
or
may
not
be
supplying
saboteurs.
This
opposition pre-
sumably
has
little
actual
power, however,
or
it
would
not
stoop (or
be
suspected
of
stooping)
to
extrailegal
and
anti-social activities
like
sabotaging
the water
supply.
Thus,
this
one brief passage very early on in the fiction yields considerable
informationabout the world of the story, but most of it is implied rather than
communicated
directly
or
explicitly.
And it has
been done very efficiently: note
how much
longer
this
analysis
is
than the passage itself.
Of
course,
some of the
assumptions we have made from this opening
passage
turn out to
be not
quite
accurate:
Mitch Courtenay, the narrator,far
from
being
an
ordinary
middle-class
taxpayer, is one of this world's wealthier
citizens; space-travel
s
indeed
a
reality
n
this
world, but a very new one, still the
subject
of
considerable
struggle; and the political system is not quite as familiar
as it
sounds. The
Presidency,
we later
learn, is now a hereditary and largely
ceremonial
office,
while the members of
Congress represent
not
states or
districts,but corporations.
Still,
these
very readjustments-part of the normal process of pattern
revision that
is
inherent
in
reading literary
texts-serve to
reinforce our impres-
sion of
verisimilitude. The narrator
is
speaking
from
inside his world, to an
implied
audience of his
fellows,
for
whom the
hereditary nature of the Presi-
dency
is
common
knowledge.
It
would
be most unusual for him to
make any
pointed explanation
of such a
fact. The
effect of
reading
such a
text
is
that we
have, temporarily
at
least, joined
the
narrator
n
his world. As Suvin says, the
text has created "a
narrative
reality sufficiently
autonomous
and intransitive o
be
explored
at
length."Indeed, exploring
that
reality
in all its
detail and
texture
is one of the primeaesthetic satisfactions of readingSF.
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TOWARDS A STYLISTIC DESCRIPTIONOF SF
43
4. But how is this "reality"created? By adapting
the normal
techniques
for
establishing the "reality"of a fictional
text to the
special circumstances
of
SF.
The main purpose of what Culler calls descriptive residues-items
with no
apparent function in plot or character development, items which are simply
there- is to denote the thereness of the world.
SF
writersalso include such
items
in
their texts,
but
now
the
items do
more
than
denote
the
simple
thereness of
the
worldthey belong to: they also tell us-again, usually
n
obliqueways-something
about the
nature
of
the
world
we find them in.
As
Delany explains, comparing
such catalogues
in
mundane
fiction to their SF
counterparts,
Themundanealeproceedsas a seriesof selections
roma
theoretically ixed,
societally extant lexicon
of
objects, actions,
and incidents.
In the
s-f
tale,
a
series of possibleobjects,possibleactions,possible ncidents whose
possibil-
ity is limited, inally,only bywhat s sayable,rather hanwhat ssocietal) ixes
a
more or less probablerange
of contents for a new lexicon.'5
That
is,
in
mundanefiction the catalogue
of
items
is
limited to
objects
and events
which
actually exist (or could now exist)
and which
reflect the
real
world;
in SF
the
catalogue, limited only by
the author's
maginationand ability
to assemble
and
justify
new combinations
of
words, helps
to create
the world to
which
it
refers. Thus Delany's sentence "The red sun is high,
the
blue
low"
creates
a
planetary system with two suns,
a
red
one
and
a
blue
one.
Let us consider a more extended example, also from Delany, from the
beginning of his Hugo-winning story, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-
Precious Stones." The story, we know, occurs
in
the future, since Mars
and
the
"Outer Satellites" have
been
colonized
and
space flight
is common.
We
also
know that our narrator s
a
professionalthief, just returned rom Bellona
to New
York. The
city
is
recognizable:
the Pan Am
Building,Grand CentralStation,
42nd
Street,
and
Eighth
Avenue all sound like the
present New York. But
it is
not, quite. Our narratorremarks:
Crossedthe
plastiplexpavement
of the Great
White
Way-I
think t
makes
people
look
weird,
all that white
light
under
their
chins-and skirted the
crowds coming up in elevators fromthe sub-way, he sub-sub-way,nd the
sub-sub-sub.. bulledmy waythrough crowdofgiggling, oo-chewing chool
girls
with
flashing ights
in their
hair,
all
very embarrassed t wearing rans-
parent plastic blouses
which had
just
been made
legal again...
The
ribbon
of news
lights looping
the
triangular
tructureof
Communication, nc.,
ex-
plained
n
BasicEnglishhow SenatorReginaAbolafiawaspreparing
o
begin
herinvestigation f OrganizedCrime n the City.'6
Whathas
happened
here? The
population
of
New York has
apparently
ncreased
drastically,
if
two
new
levels of
subways
are
needed to handle
people (not
to
mention what
changes
in
buildingtechniques must have been necessary to allow
construction of those levels underneaththe current system-unless the current
city
is built on
top
of the
old
one,
or its
ruins,
and there is no
suggestion
of
that).
The
metaphor
of the
Great
White
Way has been amusingly iteralized: instead
of the
light coming
from the theater
marquis,
it
now comes from underfoot,
shining through
the
transparent/translucentplastic of the street itself. (Is this
the
only plastic street,
a
special place? Or
is
this common? We are never told.)
Women's fashions and sexual taboos are operating in their familiar cyclical
pattern (viz.,
the
way skirt lengths have shifted up and down since the beginning
of
the
century).
The
transparent blouses,
which the
girls
are embarrassedat
wearing,havejustbeen madelegal again, saysour narrator:at least once before
they
had been
introduced,
and
then banned. The
ribbonof
news
lights
is
nothing
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44
SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME
10
(1983)
new, but the
"Basic English"
n
which
they
communicate is:
the
capital
letters
indicate
that this is an official
dialect of sorts, for
the
benefit
of
foreign
travel-
lers, perhaps, or perhaps an
indication of reduced
literacy levels and fluency
in
Englishin the city as a whole-or both.
The changes are not particularlydramatic,
certainly not difficult
to
deci-
pher;but note that not one of
these details is relevant
in
any way
to the
plot
of
the
story. They do two things:
they assureus
that
the
text
refers
to a "real"
world,
one in
which some things aresimply there, filling
in
the
background
of
existence
(as some things
in
our own world are
merely there);
and
they
tell
us
something
about the kind of world this is, what has
changed
from
the New York we know
(the space
port,
the new
subways,
Basic
English)
and what has
not
(school girls
giggle
and chew "goo," senators investigate organized
crime).
But both these examples
come
from
works
dealing
with
America
in a
not-too-distant future.
Constructing catalogues of an alien culture,
creating
neologisms and words
in
alien
languages,
is
rather
more complicated,
both for
author and
for
audience. Such
catalogues, according
to
Angenot,
are built
by
a
technique
he
calls the creation of "absent
paradigms."The author invents terms
and then places them
in
contexts (or syntagmatic
relationships)which lead the
reader to "believe
in
the
possibility
of
reconstituting
consistent paradigms-
whose semantic structures are
supposedly
homologous
to those in
the fictive
textual
'world"' "Absent
Paradigm,"p. 13). That is, the author leads the reader
to suppose that the world can be
cognitively grasped and
a whole
constructed
fromthese pieces we have been given. If we look at some examples,we ca-n ee
more
clearly
how
this works.
Let us
take,
first of
all, the
following
sentence
from Sterling
Lanier's
Hiero
's
Journey:
Hiero
had
thoughthe was familiar
with manytypesof leemutes, he Man-rats
and
HairyHowlers,
he werebears
which
were not
bears
at
all)'
the stimers
and severalothe'rsbesides.'7
Here we have
part
of a
paradigmassembled for us;
and while no single term
is
defined,
the names
Man-rat,HairyHowler, and
werebear aken together
suggest
that "leemutes"are a familyof large (man, bear), furred (rat, hairy, bear), and
dangerous
rodent-like
(rat)
creatures. But
just
in
case we
begin
to feel too much
at home with these
terms,
too confident
that
we know what
the creatures are
like,
the
parenthetical qualification of "werebear" serves
to reassert
the
strangeness:they
are
not
really
like our bears at
all;
they
are alien.
Note
that
the
one item in
the
catalogue-stimers-is entirely impenetra-
ble in
isolation.
It
is
no accident that
this
term is
the last
in the
series.
Coming
first,
t
would be
entirely
opaque,
hence
frustrating
and
ineffective
at
buildingup
the sense of an
intelligibleparadigm. Coming last,
when we have
constructed
some imageof what"leemutes"are, it reinforces our belief in the fullnessof the
paradigm,while-precisely because the term offers no
linguistic
handles to
us,
no
English
elements as the
others do-it reaffirms
he alienness of the
sequence.
In
short,
the
primary purpose
of such
impenetrable terms at the
end of
cata-
logues
like
this
is,
as The
Mikado'sPooh Bah
observes,
"to
lend
verisimilitude o
an
otherwise
bald
and
unconvincing
narrative."'8
We find another such
catalogue
in
HarlanEllison's "'Repent, Harlequin '
Said the Ticktockman":"To his
staff,
all the
ferrets,
all the
loggers,
all
the
finks,
all
the
commex,
even the
mineez,
he
said,
'Who is
this
Harlequin?"'
Since we
have
already
learned
in
the
story
that the Ticktockman is the
Master
Timekeep-
er, responsiblefor punishingpeople who are late, the first three of these terms
seem
relatively interpretable.
Fink
seems to retain its
contemporarymeaning,
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TOWARDSA STYLISTIC
DESCRIPTION
OF
SF 45
something
like "stool
pigeon'
or
"spy";
"ferrets"
presumably
"ferretout" infor-
mation; and "loggers"probably "log"
or
record that
information. Given
the
furtherclue of the headword "staff,"
we can construct a
paradigm
which
allows
us to assign a general meaning to the remaining wo (more impenetrable) erms.
Commex perhaps has something
to do
with
communication.
As for
mineez,
the
name suggests minutes,
and also
miniature-we do
learn
later that the
mineez
are small,
and the least
important
of the staff as well. In
any case,
notice
that
again
the most
opaque
terms
come
at the end of the list.
Here,
as in the earlier
example, these mysterioustermshelp
to fulfill
the
mimetic contract
of
SF,
with
its
peculiar
demands on both
writer and reader.
But the
paradigms
we construct
when
reading
an
SF
text do more
than
explainthe particular erm
or
terms
nvolved: the
imaginedparadigm, tretching
beyond the terms we have been given, adds
a
depth
to
the
realization of
the
world.It implies other termsin the paradigmwhichwe have not been given, and
other
interlockingparadigms
as
well, by analogy
with the
way paradigmsorgan-
ize
our own
world. By this activity
of
our imaginations,stimulatedand shaped by
the
author,
the
imaginary ulture gains
a
richness
and roundednesswhich
makes
the
story
more
convincing and satisfying to the reader.
This
technique of implicationand indirection n itself creates new possibil-
ities for
conveying informationabout a culture
in
what Delany
calls
"syntagma-
tically startling points" (JHJ,p. 80).
For
instance,
in
Starship Troopers,
while
discussing
men's cosmetics
(prompted by the appearance
of his hero's face
in a
mirror),Heinlein reveals in an entirely tangential manner (and after 250 pages)
that
the first-personnarratorof thebook is non-caucasian.Not only was
this
fact
in itself a
stunning discovery
for a black
teenager
in
1959, but,
as
Delany
explains,
"the
placement
of the
information
about
the
narrator's ace
is
proof
that
in
such
a
world much of the race problem, at least, has been dissolved" JHJ,
p. 80). A fact which is profoundly significant in American culture-race-has
become,
in
the future envisioned
by
this
novel,
so
ordinaryas
to
need only
the
most
casual, even accidental, mention.
One
of
the most significantways in which SF differsfrom mundanefiction,
as
Delany observes,
is that
the relationshipbetween foregroundand background
has shifted.This is a naturalresultof the fact thatthe worlds and cultures being
described are
imaginary:
nformation
which the reader of a mundane novel can
take for
granted-the appearance and function of bathrooms, for instance, or
airplanes,
or
Christmas,
or the
general geography and history of the Earth-
must be
specified
in an
SF text. Thus,
if
we posit a mundane and an SF text
devoting equal
numbers
of sentences to
character analysis and such traditional
literaryconcerns,
we
would
find that the SF
text reserved
a far
higher number
of
sentences than its
counterpart
to matters
of
"background"-landscape, culture,
climate, history,
customs. That
is,
in SF
"the
deposition
of
weight
[or
ratiol
between landscapeand psychologyshifts"(JHJ,p. 79). This factor, too, like the
oblique method, inclines the experienced reader of SF to work slowly: knowing
that information
is being conveyed in indirect ways, and therefore less sure of
recognizing immediately what is backgroundand what foreground, the reader
tends to
pay close attention to everything-which in itself, of course, further
skews
the
relationship between foreground and background. To put the same
point another way: practically everything in an SF text, at least on first reading,
is
foreground.
5.
To
return,then, to our originalquestions, and summarizeour conclusions: (1)
What are the assumptionswhich readers make about SF texts? First, that such
texts
will
concern a world
displaced
from the
reader'sempirical
environment
n
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46
SCIENCE-FICTION
STUDIES,
VOLUME
10
(1983)
time or in space; or if neither, then circumstances will be radically different
(e.g., Earth s being invaded by aliens). Second, that the world of the text can be
understood by cognitive means: it is related in some logical (and usually speci-
fied) way to our world, and it is bound by its own natural aws (which may or may
not be identical with ours, but which in most cases will be fairly similar). (2)
What
techniques do SF writers use to fulfill these expectations? They employ
the
normal techniques
of
verisimilitude, except that the world reflected
is
entirely imaginary.
The most
significant element
in
producing
this sense of
verisimilitude s the creation not only of a fictive author but of a fictive audience
which shares the culture of the same period. This leads to all the other tech-
niques specific to the genre: the usual allusiveness and obliquity of explanation
(since
the actual author
must be careful not to offer direct explanations
of
things
the fictive
audience would take for granted), the manipulation of levels of
functional
relevance,
and
the construction
of
absent paradigms.
This
is
not a complete list of the strategies of SF, nor have I discussed or
even identified
all
the
implications
and
corollaries
of
the
techniques
examined
here. A
number
of
intriguing linguistic questions
still need
investigation.
For
instance,
it
would be instructiveto catalogue in some detail the terms authorsof
SF invent to
realize
their
imaginaryworlds-both those
terms
which
involve
morphological
invention
(like
leemutes and
mineez)
and those where
the
"sci-
ence fiction" enters at the
syntactic level,
like
"depilatory oap"
or "The
red
sun
is
high,
the blue low." Such
a
catalogue
would allow us
to
analyze
much more
specificallythanI have here the natureof the linguisticmanipulationsSF writers
use
to
create their
different effects.'9
On another
level,
we
need
to establish
a
convincingset of criteriaby
which
we can evaluate SF on its own
terms. Academically-trainedcritics tend
to
discuss
SF in
terms of
depth
of
characterization,originality
of
plot, subtlety
of
style, perceptivity
of
theme,
richness of
symbol,
and the like. But
these may
not
be the
only,
or even
the most
important,criteria by which
to
judge
it. As
Delany
remarks,"By
and
large,
science fiction does not have time for
symbolism(in
the
accepted
sense of the
word);
its
aesthetic framework,
when
richly
filled
out,
is
just
too
complex" (AS, pp. 60-61);
and while this is not true for
all
SF
(it
is not
true of Delany's own work, for instance), it is nonetheless a suggestive state-
ment. The
genre
makes intense
demands
on the writer
in
ways
that mundane
fiction does
not, particularly
in
the matter of
creating
an
imaginary
culture
which is both
convincing
and
comprehensible,
and then
communicating
t
to the
reader as the
background
of a
story.
To
complain
in
such
a case that "character-
ization is flat" is to
overlook
the
possibility
that the culture itself should
rightly
be
considered
the
leading
character
of
an SF
story. Again,
most discussions
of
"style
in
SF" mean "traditional
literary style."
While some
SF
writers
are,
indeed, gifted literary stylists
in
this
traditional
sense,
such a focus
ignores
the
specificallySF uses of language,which maybe comparativelyskillfulin a story
undistinguishedstylistically
in
the
ordinaryway.
On
yet
another
level,
we
need to construct
a
convincing
model that
explains
the
relationship
of SF
to the other
non-mimetic
genres
of
fiction,
especially fantasy
and the Fantastic
(as
defined
by
Andrzei
Zgorzelski
in "Is
Science Fiction
a
Genre
of
Fantastic Literature?"
n
SFS No.
19).
Such
a
model,
clarifying by
contrast
the
ways
in
which these
genres
are
structurally
alike and
those in
which
theydiffer
from
one another,can help uscomplete the catalogue
of
defining
characteristics.The final
result
of
all these
investigationsshould
be
an
aesthetic of
SF,
distinct from
(if partiallyoverlapping)
the aesthetic criteria
for mundane fiction. Such an aesthetic would allow us to explain whya text that
has
few
of
the
ordinary
artistic
elements of mundane fiction can still validlybe
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TOWARDS
A STYLISTIC
DESCRIPTION
OF
SF
47
considered
a good
example of SF,
and
thus allow us to
defend
these works
and
our own judgments
of them against
our
more traditionally-minded
olleagues,
who still largely
assume
that "good"
and
"sciencefiction"
are mutually
exclusive
terms. And that, it seems to me, is an end worth strugglingfor.
NOTES
1. Culler,
Structuralist
Poetics:
Structuralism, Linguistics,
and the Studv
ot
Literature (Ithaca, NY: 1975), p. 136-hereafter,
SP.
2. The sentence is to
be found
in
Delany's
"About
5750
Words," reprinted
in
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (NY, 1977)-hereafter,
JHJ.
I
have chosen
to
adopt
his
designation mundane, despite
its
condescending overtones,
as a
usefully contrastive
form, implying here not "pedestrian"
but
merely "earthly."
The other
advantage
of
the term is that it avoids the debates often aroused by the other most current terms,
"mainstream," "realistic," or
"naturalistic."
3.
Suvin, Metamorphoses of
Science Fiction
(New Haven,
CT:
1979), pp.
7-8-subsequently,
MSF.
4. Iser, "The Reading Process:
A
Phenomenological Approach,"
in
Reader-
Response Criticism:
From Formalism
to
Post-Structuralism,
ed.
Jane
P.
Tompkins
(Baltimore, 1980),
p.
61.
5. Recently there have been
some works
published
which
by
all other stand-
ards established in this
paper
would seem to be
SF,
but
which
do not
specify
their
relationship to our world-for instance,
Elizabeth
Lynn's trilogy,
The
Chronicles of
Tornor. The land and its inhabitants, human and animal, are frankly earthlike,
biologically
and
psychologically,
but
Tornor
does not exist
on
any maps
of Earth. It
may
be
significant, however,
that the
trilogy
is
marketed
as
fantasy, though
it has
none of the usual hallmarks of that genre-no magic,
ino
fabulous beasts, no super-
natural elements of any kind, except
that
the world is imaginary and the society
feudal.
6.
I
am
indebted for this observation
to
Prof. Richard Erlich of
Miami Univer-
sity
of Ohio.
7.
Philmus, "Science-Fiction:
From Its
Beginning
to
1870,"
in
Anatomy
of
Wonder, ed. Neil Barron (NY, 1975), pp. 5-6.
8. Roland Barthes, "L'effet de reel," Communications, 11 (1968):87.
9.
My discussion is essentially
a
summary
of
Culler's extended discussion of the
first three levels of vraisemblance (SP, pp. 140-48). He also discusses at length (pp.
148-60) the two remaining levels: the "conventionally natural," marked by both an
explicit
awareness
in
the text of
literary
convention
(e.g.,
detective
novels which
talk
about
the conventions of detective novels), and the implicit or explicit claim to
realism on
the grounds
of
not following such conventions; and the level of parody
and irony, which Culler explains as a "localized and specialized variant" of the
fourth level. On this fifth
level,
the text
in
question
and the text it
parodies
are
both naturalized by reference to another level in which the terms of the opposi-
tion can be held together by the theme of literature itself. However, neither of
these
additional levels is germane
to
my topic; and
I
have therefore
omitted
them
in
the body
of
my essay.
10. Todorov, "Introduction," Communication, 11 (1968):2-5.
11. I am
indebted to Prof. George Guffey of UCLA for pointing out the
physiological implications of the door's shape.
12.
The technique can also be used for comic effects, as Samuel Beckett's
work
frequently demonstrates.
13.
Other patterns, of course, are possible: the fictive author could address an
audience which does not
share
his or her
culture or
time-say,
his or
her
own
descendants, who might need explanations of details which would be comprehensi-
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48
SCIENCE-FICTION
STUDIES,
VOLUME 10
(1983)
ble to a fictive audience
of contemporaries.Or both fictive author
and audience
could inhabit a time
following the events of the story (talking
about their own
long-pasthistory).
Whatdoes not seem justifiables for the fictive
author o address
the actualaudiencedirectly,since the actualaudienceexists n thestory'spast. This
is a subject which
obviously needs more
detailed study; but even at this stage, it
seems clear
that the
narrative
tance,
the
precise relationship
stablished
between
the fictiveauthorand
fictiveaudience n any
given SF text, is a significant lement n
solving
the
problems
of exposition.
14.
Angenot,"The Absent Paradigm,"
cience-FictionStudies,
17 (1979):16.
15.
Delany,
TheAmericanShore:Meditations n a Taleof
Science Fictionby
Thomas
M.
Disch- "Angouleme"(Elizabethtown, Y: 1978),p.
55-subsequently,
AS.
16. This
quotation
s
based on the
text in The Hugo Winners,
Volumes
One
and Two(GardenCity,NY: 1971),p. 814.
17.
Cited by
Angenot,
op cit., p. 13.
18.
I
am
indebted
to Prof. Susan Brienza
of UCLA
for
pointing
out stimer's
terminalposition (amongmanyother insightful
omments).
19. Eric Rabkin,
n "Metalinguisticsnd Science Fiction,"
Critical
nquiry,
6
(Autumn1979):79-97,aises
a
relatedquestion;
but he is concerned nstead
withthe
different
usesSF
makes
of the
metalinguistic
spect
of
language,
whileI amconcerned
with how
the
authorscreate
the
terms
n the first
place.
RESUME
KathleenL. Spencer. "Le'soleil
ouge est au
ze'nith,
e soleil bleu
se couche"': ers
unedescription tylistiquede
la
SF.
-I
s 'agitd 'tine tude
tvpologiquede la SF qui
cherche
a repondreaux questions
relativesau langage
caracteristique
e ce genre:
(1)
Par
quelles conventions e lecteurinterprete-t-iles
enonces
de SF?
(2)
Quelles
techniquesutilisent les auteurspour
satisfaireces attentes?
L
'auteur
nali'st
a
definition
de D. Suvin
qui etablit
e
genre
sur
l
'interaction
de la connaissance t de la
distanciation.
En termes
d
'attentes u
lecteui;
cela veut
direque
l'intrigue
st etablie
"quelque
art
ailleurs
en un
lieu
signiJicativement
difterentdu
monde empirique
du
lecteur.
mais
que l'e6cart
vec
le
monde.fonction-nel est
derive
de
/acon logique.
c'est
a direcognitivement
valide,
et
que
ce monde
lictionnel
est.
comme le
n6tre.
regi par
des lois
naturelles.
Ces deux attentes
determinent
es
caract&istiques itteraires
du
genre.
L'auteur
utilise
la
poetique structuraliste t la theorie de la
reception
et
decritla
facon
dont la
SF
adapte
es
techniques
de
la
vraisemblance arrative
our
presenter
une
civilisation
maginaire.
La
technique
a
plus
cruciale
est un procede
obliquepar
lequel
la
societe imaginaire
st
decrite
du
point
de vue de
quelqu
unde
familier
acette
cultutre
maginaire
adressant un
public fictif
qui
tiendrait
pour
acquis
ce
que
le
public r*el percevra
comme
speciJiquement
etranger
a
ses
paradigmes
emphiques.
On examine d'autres
echniquesanalogues
et
on vienta
conclureque le texte de SF dependdune reconstruction ctiveparle lecteurde la
culture
ictionnelle
presente~e
lui
par
des voies indirectes.
(KLS)
Abstract.
Mv
aim in this
paper
s
to
answer ome
questions
about
the
characteristic
language f
SFas a
genre:
I)
What
re the
normsor
expectations-
the
con
ventions-
bv
whichreaders nterpret
he
sentences
of
SF texts?How do
thev
make sense of
sentences
(like
the
one
in
nit title)
which, n a "realistic text,
wouldbe
nonsensical?;
(2)
What
echniques
do SF writersuse to create
and
fufill
those
expectations?
I
begin
withDarkoSuvin
sdefinitionof SFas "a iterary
enre whose
necessarv
and sufficient
conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangementand
cognition.
and
whosemain
ormal
device
is
an imaginative
ramework
lternative o
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TOWARDS
A
STYLISTIC
DESCRIPTIONOF
SF
49
the author's
npirical
environment.
The
two
crucial
erms,
cognitionand
estrange-
ment,
intieract o produce the SF
readers
most
fundamental xpectations
of
the
g(enre:
1)
that the storyt
happens
somewhereelse-that place.
or-
ime,
or circum-
stancesaresignificantlv ifferent romthe reader'sown realworld;and(2) that the
"enmpirical
nv
ronment
"
of
the
fiction
is derived
from
the reader'sown
empirical
environment
n some logical, and
theretore
cognitivelv
discoverable.
wav;
and
fU,rther;
hat
this
new environment
s bound
bhi
natural
aws
as our
own
is.
These
two
expectations ogether
create
SFs paradoxical elationship
with
reality
its "realistic
irreality
as
Susvin
alls it- which n turnpr'oducesmost.
if not
all,
of'SF's
detining
literary
haracteristics.
The
next stage
of the paper uses
structuralist oetics
and reader-response
theory
o
explain
how
fictional
textscon
vev
the
impression
f reality,
and then ooks
to .see howtSF adapts
these techniquesto
make convincing
the
portraval
of
an
imaginar)'ulture.Themostcrucialand characteristicechnique s an obliquitvif'
appi'oach:
atherthan
describingan alien
culture
rankly
to an "earth audience
fr-om
he
outside,
the SFauthor
ypicallv
writes
rom
the
standpointof'an
nhabitant
of
the
cultureaddressing
fictive
audience of
his or her contemporaries,
who take
forgranted
precisel/ those characteristics
f'the
culture hatthe actualaudience
will
find
most
unlike heirown real
experience.
Another echniquerelieson
thepowerof
afeu'
ulntamiliar
invented)
erms.
properli'grouped
and
sequenced,
to
suggestthe
existence
of
a wvholelass of beings
or experiences
of which hese terms
arepart. The
common
actor
in all
these techniquesof SF is
that they
depend uponthe reader's
activtel/vonstructing
an
image
of
the culture
being
conveyed to her
or him
by
indirect means, and hence interpretingthe significance of details which the
author narrator
upplies
but does no*t
vertl/
explain.(KLS)
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