Cross posted from [noise]
Dec. 7th, 2004 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heiligekuhIt may be gauche to try and stretch this topic over two days.
For my personal viewing (and purchasing) habits, I find that I side with Matt for epics (but not necessarily against one-shots or short stories). But discussions of length aside (and doubly aside any discussion of length in Dick. Oh, god, I love those jokes) what we're talking about is a part of the literary ascendancy of what (for huge chunks of the century) was a rigidly classified genre with some goddamn strict rules. Those two factors were symbiotic: there were few outlets for publishing SF in the early/mid-century and many of those were magazines that were headed by men with very exacting and specific editorial policies (Gernsback and Campbell). So for a big chunk of this century, what a few men though SF should be, SF was. When we discuss the New Wave period from (say) 65-75, what's happening in large part is this publishing hegemony is breaking apart and new stuff slips in to the market. But anyway. No one comes here for a SF lecture.
What I wanted to mention is the question of "What ifs." Johnathan Lethem has a new short story collectioin out that Jodi's read through and *not loved*. Which has put the rest of the Lethem catalog in my head. Lethem, more than I, more than Jake, loves Dick. LOVES! (If you doubt my assertion, I'll direct you to his great essay: "You Don't Know Dick (Like I Know Dick)." Can I tell you how much joy I got from seeing Lethem abuse that joke?). Over the last decade Lethem's writing has moved steadily away from big SF "what ifs" and towards what I can only call "general fiction." Maybe character fiction, which also might extend to some of his early work. When you look at his first novel, "Gun, with Occasional Music" there's a whole host of SF questions and concepts in it. What are the ramifications of intelligence enhancing uplift - on animals? On human babies? How far can "protect the children" censorship go? Would there still be a news broadcast? What will become of Prozac culture in 50 years? What is the physical seat of gender? Each of these could easily power a short story or mid-century novel (and have in many cases). But Lethem just slathers them into the novel as background. The core of "Gun" is the noir structure and the SF elements just create the details and plot beats of the world. I'd argue that this is something he learned from Dick; if not from Dick's successes than certainly from his failures. Dick often built his characters as a coat rack to hang what-ifs on, and most of his stories suffered for it. Once the idea has been transfered from the page to your head, the book is 80% over. I can now chew over this strange bit of "the new" and the conclusion of the story barely concerns me anymore. Learning form that, Lethem sprinkles these concepts along the through-line of a story, little moments where you can cackle at the sheer mad beauty of a tough gum-shoe fight with an intelligent kangaroo ("Watch the feet, watch the fee...oooh!") but get pulled along with the plot & characters before you can wander off to explore the rest of that idea.
Somewhere in my Dick reading he mentions a concept/technique he stole from Stanislaw Lem, an SF writer from Poland who was a contemporary of Dick's (and I think still alive and cranky). Something new every 100 words (actually, the number may be in the neighborhood of 500). If you keep in mind that when Dick was at his most prolific he was writing something on the order of two full novels a month (take that NaNoWriMo!), you can understand why it was important to have some means of moving forward at all times. If you look at the first few chapters of novels like Game Players, Zap Gun (ugh), or even Do Androids Dream, you'll see that he starts in media res and throws a new thing on a regular beat. This may be a new scene (they land on the roof garden) a new character or object (there's a sheep here) or a new twist (the sheep is artificial), but he'll maintain this pace until the tableau is set. These new elements don't need to be prefigured in any way. They just arrive and the text reacts. It's in these sections that Dick will drown you in "what-ifs," and my enjoyment of his work often sharply drops after the halfway mark when this flood slows. Lethem's fiction achieves what Dick's aims to (and occasionally hits), namely to have a compelling character that inhabits this interesting world, and where the questions that formed the world inform the character. Of course, Lethem's also not publishing 500 pages a year in an amphetamine haze while living on horse meat.
And, if I can just go blogosphere dorky for a minute, I'd point those folk on noise looking for more contemporary what-if fiction to read some of Cory Doctorw's fiction. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (What if we had personality backups and clones for effective immortality, and what if Disneyworld was run by sourceforge), and his short fiction (0wnz0r3d and Adna's Game, both of which are available on Salon). Down and Out in particular reads like a smart, funny Dick novel of the present moment. Which you'll hopefully recognize is high praise for me.
For my personal viewing (and purchasing) habits, I find that I side with Matt for epics (but not necessarily against one-shots or short stories). But discussions of length aside (and doubly aside any discussion of length in Dick. Oh, god, I love those jokes) what we're talking about is a part of the literary ascendancy of what (for huge chunks of the century) was a rigidly classified genre with some goddamn strict rules. Those two factors were symbiotic: there were few outlets for publishing SF in the early/mid-century and many of those were magazines that were headed by men with very exacting and specific editorial policies (Gernsback and Campbell). So for a big chunk of this century, what a few men though SF should be, SF was. When we discuss the New Wave period from (say) 65-75, what's happening in large part is this publishing hegemony is breaking apart and new stuff slips in to the market. But anyway. No one comes here for a SF lecture.
What I wanted to mention is the question of "What ifs." Johnathan Lethem has a new short story collectioin out that Jodi's read through and *not loved*. Which has put the rest of the Lethem catalog in my head. Lethem, more than I, more than Jake, loves Dick. LOVES! (If you doubt my assertion, I'll direct you to his great essay: "You Don't Know Dick (Like I Know Dick)." Can I tell you how much joy I got from seeing Lethem abuse that joke?). Over the last decade Lethem's writing has moved steadily away from big SF "what ifs" and towards what I can only call "general fiction." Maybe character fiction, which also might extend to some of his early work. When you look at his first novel, "Gun, with Occasional Music" there's a whole host of SF questions and concepts in it. What are the ramifications of intelligence enhancing uplift - on animals? On human babies? How far can "protect the children" censorship go? Would there still be a news broadcast? What will become of Prozac culture in 50 years? What is the physical seat of gender? Each of these could easily power a short story or mid-century novel (and have in many cases). But Lethem just slathers them into the novel as background. The core of "Gun" is the noir structure and the SF elements just create the details and plot beats of the world. I'd argue that this is something he learned from Dick; if not from Dick's successes than certainly from his failures. Dick often built his characters as a coat rack to hang what-ifs on, and most of his stories suffered for it. Once the idea has been transfered from the page to your head, the book is 80% over. I can now chew over this strange bit of "the new" and the conclusion of the story barely concerns me anymore. Learning form that, Lethem sprinkles these concepts along the through-line of a story, little moments where you can cackle at the sheer mad beauty of a tough gum-shoe fight with an intelligent kangaroo ("Watch the feet, watch the fee...oooh!") but get pulled along with the plot & characters before you can wander off to explore the rest of that idea.
Somewhere in my Dick reading he mentions a concept/technique he stole from Stanislaw Lem, an SF writer from Poland who was a contemporary of Dick's (and I think still alive and cranky). Something new every 100 words (actually, the number may be in the neighborhood of 500). If you keep in mind that when Dick was at his most prolific he was writing something on the order of two full novels a month (take that NaNoWriMo!), you can understand why it was important to have some means of moving forward at all times. If you look at the first few chapters of novels like Game Players, Zap Gun (ugh), or even Do Androids Dream, you'll see that he starts in media res and throws a new thing on a regular beat. This may be a new scene (they land on the roof garden) a new character or object (there's a sheep here) or a new twist (the sheep is artificial), but he'll maintain this pace until the tableau is set. These new elements don't need to be prefigured in any way. They just arrive and the text reacts. It's in these sections that Dick will drown you in "what-ifs," and my enjoyment of his work often sharply drops after the halfway mark when this flood slows. Lethem's fiction achieves what Dick's aims to (and occasionally hits), namely to have a compelling character that inhabits this interesting world, and where the questions that formed the world inform the character. Of course, Lethem's also not publishing 500 pages a year in an amphetamine haze while living on horse meat.
And, if I can just go blogosphere dorky for a minute, I'd point those folk on noise looking for more contemporary what-if fiction to read some of Cory Doctorw's fiction. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (What if we had personality backups and clones for effective immortality, and what if Disneyworld was run by sourceforge), and his short fiction (0wnz0r3d and Adna's Game, both of which are available on Salon). Down and Out in particular reads like a smart, funny Dick novel of the present moment. Which you'll hopefully recognize is high praise for me.
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this is why...
Date: 2004-12-07 03:35 pm (UTC)are we having a party at my house tomorrow? 'cause if we aren't i'm doing a lot of cleaning for nothing.
TIme
Date: 2004-12-08 04:45 pm (UTC)Chun
Re: TIme
Date: 2004-12-09 06:00 am (UTC)Although I read most of my Dick at least 4 or 5 years ago while I was still in school. And the Lethem around the same time (then spaced out once I caught up to his publishing cycle). And the Doctorow is all short stuff that I've picked up over the last year.
off topic from Greg
Date: 2004-12-17 05:48 pm (UTC)