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The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination And Social Criticism
Based on a 1957 lecture series at the University of Chicago. Does science fiction have any real effect as a force of social criticism? This question has been given much thought and discussion, but until the publication of this volume there was no definitive inquiry available in book form. Here are four sharply different analyses of the question: a positive "yes," a positive "no," a literate "maybe," and perhaps most surprising, a revealing look at the inner workings of an author. These four broadly ranging essays by Robert A. Heinlein, C. M. Kornbluth, Alfred Bester, and Robert Bloch illuminate the successes and failures of science fiction considered as social criticism and as education for social change. Kornbluth's essay includes his famous explication of Orwell's 1984. Above all, The Science Fiction Novel is entertaining as well as informative and useful. As Basil Davenport says in his introduction, "This book has given me the pleasure, all too rare since my college days, of being a book that I could argue with. No one can agree with all these papers, since they do not agree with each other; but where you disagree you will find yourself wanting to say exactly how far and why. That is my idea of a really stimulating and enjoyable book."
128 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
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January 22, 2009
This slim little book is a collection of four lectures given at the University of Chicago by four prominent science fiction authors in 1957. These are stunning little texts by Heinlein, Kornbluth, Bester and Bloch.
They are stunning because, on one hand, they are rather prescient. It's amazing to see that the literary and social aspects of science fiction that they were discussing back then are still relevant now, and are even ahead (in their depth) of what most of us are talking about when we talk about science fiction.
On the other hand, they are sometimes amazing because they are antiquated, because the authors lived (in 1957, when they wrote those lectures) in a world different from our own.
Take the attitude of Heinlein towards what was considered important contemporary literature at the time:
"A very large part of what is accepted as "serious" literature today represents nothing more than a cultural lag on the part of many authors, editors and critics --a retreat to the womb in the face of a world too complicated and too frightening for their immature spirits. A sick literature. What do we find so often today? Autobiographical novels centered around neurotics, even around sex maniacs, concerning the degraded, the psychotic, or the "po' white trash" of back country farms portrayed as morons or worse, novels about the advertising industry or or some equally narrow area of human experience such as the personal life of a television idol or the experiences of a Park Avenue call girls. Ah, but this is "realism"! Some of it is, some of it decidedly is not. In any case, is it not odd that the ash-can school of realism, as exemplified by Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Joyce, Françoise Sagan and Alberto Moravia should be held up to us as "high art" at the very time when all other forms of art are striving to achieve more siginificant and more interesting forms of expression? Can James Joyce and Henry Miller and their literary sons and grandsons interpret the seething new world of atomic power and anti-biotics and interplanetary travel? I say not. In my opinion a very large portion of what is now being offered to the public as serious contemporary-scene fiction is stuff that should not be printed but told only privately -- on a psychiatrist's couch. The world, the human race is now faced with very pressing problems. They will not be solved by introverted neurotics intent on telling, in a tedious hundred thousand words, they hate their fathers and love their mothers."
Heinlein's rant against the psychological twists of the great novels of that period is all the more surprising because it came right after several pages of well thought up insights and a well formulated study on the nature of science fiction or, as he liked to call it, "speculative fiction".
I have read only one other work of the 1950s which shows such a canny analysis of the nature of science fiction, and that is Damon Knight's "In Search of Wonder". Of course, Knight is also a child of his era, even if he has a more open attitude towards contemporary (in the 1950s) literature than Heinlein.
They are stunning because, on one hand, they are rather prescient. It's amazing to see that the literary and social aspects of science fiction that they were discussing back then are still relevant now, and are even ahead (in their depth) of what most of us are talking about when we talk about science fiction.
On the other hand, they are sometimes amazing because they are antiquated, because the authors lived (in 1957, when they wrote those lectures) in a world different from our own.
Take the attitude of Heinlein towards what was considered important contemporary literature at the time:
"A very large part of what is accepted as "serious" literature today represents nothing more than a cultural lag on the part of many authors, editors and critics --a retreat to the womb in the face of a world too complicated and too frightening for their immature spirits. A sick literature. What do we find so often today? Autobiographical novels centered around neurotics, even around sex maniacs, concerning the degraded, the psychotic, or the "po' white trash" of back country farms portrayed as morons or worse, novels about the advertising industry or or some equally narrow area of human experience such as the personal life of a television idol or the experiences of a Park Avenue call girls. Ah, but this is "realism"! Some of it is, some of it decidedly is not. In any case, is it not odd that the ash-can school of realism, as exemplified by Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Joyce, Françoise Sagan and Alberto Moravia should be held up to us as "high art" at the very time when all other forms of art are striving to achieve more siginificant and more interesting forms of expression? Can James Joyce and Henry Miller and their literary sons and grandsons interpret the seething new world of atomic power and anti-biotics and interplanetary travel? I say not. In my opinion a very large portion of what is now being offered to the public as serious contemporary-scene fiction is stuff that should not be printed but told only privately -- on a psychiatrist's couch. The world, the human race is now faced with very pressing problems. They will not be solved by introverted neurotics intent on telling, in a tedious hundred thousand words, they hate their fathers and love their mothers."
Heinlein's rant against the psychological twists of the great novels of that period is all the more surprising because it came right after several pages of well thought up insights and a well formulated study on the nature of science fiction or, as he liked to call it, "speculative fiction".
I have read only one other work of the 1950s which shows such a canny analysis of the nature of science fiction, and that is Damon Knight's "In Search of Wonder". Of course, Knight is also a child of his era, even if he has a more open attitude towards contemporary (in the 1950s) literature than Heinlein.
Displaying 1 of 1 review