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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-








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








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








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








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








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








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.








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.








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








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,








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








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








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-








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








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)

spencer - red sun is high

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