Pax Americana: "Double Star" by Robert A. Heinlein

Implausible and impossible to put down- like all of Heinlein's books I've read its hero is a man of action and boundless self-confidence, a wisecracking all-American cowboy figure who brushes obstacles aside, a genial dictator figure who knows that as long as he's left in charge everything will be o.k. The voice is always the same - and I can see why the new wake of science fiction writers reacted against Heinlein: Aldiss, Moorcock, Ballard, Dick. Heinlein's Pax Americana and paternalism vision of the future certainly does have fascist overtones. But he's still a great storyteller, his books filled with mind-bending concepts presumably achieved without the help of the consciousness expanding substances that inspired some of his successors.

Yes, the Bonforte character was a very macho autocrat...Who cares? Nevertheless, “The Great Lorenzo” doesn't quite conform to the macho 'tit man' narrator as Heinlein... although the authorial voice does creep through in interesting ways in his stereotyped descriptions of Lorenzo's camp-actor personality and co...Heinlein enjoyed challenging established ways of thinking, and for most of his great period of writing liberal politics was on the rise, so he took great pleasure in poking holes in political sacred figures. The conservative viewpoint is already being expressed quite vocally in SF - take a look at Baen Books for a few examples. Some might argue its a viewpoint that doesn't merit expression, but I'm not sure what it says about contemporary literature if it can't manage a political dialogue.

My grumble with it is that I didn't really think it was proper SF - which may sound odd given the presence of Martians etc., but what I mean is that at its heart, the plot is about a man masquerading as someone else, and a pretty much identical story could be told in a real world setting. What I enjoy in SF is the way it changes the rules of the world and explores the consequences of these changes. I recently read Richard Morgan's brilliant “Altered Carbon”, which was superb in the way it used its central "rule change" (that people's personalities get stored in a chip implanted into the cortex, which can then be transferred into other bodies) to drive the plot and then use that plot to show the effects of this technology on people and society.

As I say, not that rewarding as SF, but fun and certainly intriguing.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Eye-Opening SF: "Saving the World Through Science Fiction - James Gunn, Writer, Teacher and Scholar” by Michael R. Page

“Thus, traditional criticism’s charge that science fiction isn’t, in general, ‘literary’ because science fiction writers don’t focus on or have the artistry to deeply delve into character misses the point that science fiction isn’t about character, it’s about ideas. And therefore, science fiction should be judged by a different set of criteria than mundane mainstream fiction is evaluated.”

In “Saving the World Through Science Fiction - James Gunn, Writer, Teacher and Scholar” by Michael R. Page

Don't critics ignore SF because there's far too much of it, and the vast majority of it - like any sector of genre fiction - is a bit safe, geared more to selling to a niche of fans than the mass market? Certainly SF fandom is obsessed with genre distinctions (steampunk, space opera, mundane, whatever) that have absolutely no currency in the mainstream world - just like crime fandom (maybe to a lesser extent) worries about distinctions between golden age, hard-boiled, procedural and so on.

In both cases the really good stuff, the stuff that transcends the formulae and has something worthwhile to say - Atwood, or Houllebecq, or Alan Moore, Ballard, or Gunn - it "does" get noticed, it's just that people don't call it SF anymore. That's not to suggest that some really good books don't get unfairly overlooked because they're trapped in the sci-fi ghetto, but I'd argue that the vast majority of them don't get noticed because they're written and published based on what will sell to a very specialised, conservative audience (which is fine, it's how some people relax and some other people get paid), rather than on ambition or actually having something to say. Similarly, it's not to say that I wouldn't like to see some more fiction that deals with, y'know, "actual" science and scientists - precious little fiction of any stripe does, and there's a hugged untapped wealth of stories and themes out there.

(My 4 volumes of Gunn’s road to SF; the first 2 volumes lent to someone and never returned…I must find out who the prick was…)

So yeah, in most cases critics are probably right to overlook SF because the best stuff tends to rise to prominence, but when they spend some time picking out the best overlooked stuff (which is undoubtedly part of the process of your James E. Gunn's getting noticed), that's all to the good. And that's where Michael Page's book comes in. And what a breath of fresh air it was. SF has a focus on story-telling that is almost entirely absent from wanky stream-of-consciousness "literary" fiction. I've read SF that has fantastic prose, but because you actually know what's going on (most of the time), it isn't literary enough. This is true of all forms of genre storytelling - there are fantastic suspense and romance stories out there as well, in terms of plot, characterisation, research and language.

I do agree with SF sometimes being off-putting with the infodump syndrome, even the supposedly good stuff. I read Neal Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson, and back in the day, James E. Gunn, for that reason, because there’s an art to it. A bit of background and world-building is good, but wanking on about what you happen to know (or can imagine) in the most minute detail gets very boring. Gunn belongs to this category. It is true that the best SF writers can slip in the relevant information in a completely painless manner - it's a real skill, but sometimes a good old fashioned infodump does wonders to the novel at hand.

Finally, when I get numpties telling off others for using the term "Sci-Fi", it's not surprising that SF fans can get a reputation for being earnest anoraks. Let's see, I've been calling it "sci-fi" since I started reading it - the mid-80s. It's a familiar term to most, and is more precise than saying SF, which can also mean "speculative fiction". I agree that crappy TV sci-fi is about 20 years behind the written form - which is why I call it "crappy TV_sci-fi". The only problem with most SF is that it's crap. Actually, Kingsley Amis (I think) put it well, when someone asked him if it was true that 95% of science fiction was crap, and he said yes, it was true, but then 95% of everything is also crap.

Reading this encompassing analysis of all the stuff Gunn ever wrote was a one hell of an eye-opener. It made me want to re-read some of the novels: “The Listeners”, “The Immortals”, which I remember loving when I still had pimples. I didn't read Gunn for the prose. I read his books for the ideas and the humour. His books are never less than interesting but sometimes the characters are a bit two dimensional as is the dialogue. Who reads Harry Potter for the prose style? You could also argue that Gunn is not only a SF writer. He’s also accessible because there is always a core of humanity and wit at the centre of his books and a search for meaning. Hard SF was not his forte. I cannot think of anyone comparable to Ray Bradbury (Fantasy/Horror) in the SF field as far as prose stylists go but does that matter? I thought Frank Herbert's Dune was a great book and very well written. Solaris was a very interesting book as are some of A.E. Van Vogt's books such as “Voyage of the Space Beagle”. I don't think SF is inferior to other genres as there is good and bad writing everywhere. Gunn belongs to the former. Kudos to Page for bringing out this gem and making me want to re-read Gunn.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Mindfuck Literature: “Beyond the Aquila Rift – The Best of Alastair Reynolds” by Alastair Reynolds

Published June 2016.

“’Tell me, Thorn. Are we out beyond the Rift?" I can hear the fear. I understand what she's going through. It's the nightmare that all ship crews live with, on every trip. That something will go wrong with the routing, something so severe that they 'II end up on the very edge of the network. That they'll end up so far from home that getting back will take years, not months. And that, of course, years will have already passed, even before they begin the return trip. That loved ones will be years older when they reach home. If they're still there.If they still remember you, or want to remember. If they 're still recognizable, or alive.”

In Beyond the Aquila Rift short-story, “Beyond the Aquila Rift – The Best of Alastair Reynold”

I've finally finished this 768-page-mammoth tome. Is it everything Reynolds has ever written in short form? Not by a long shot. It contains only eighteen stories of a total of sixty-something that Reynolds has written so far. But this sample of 18 stories confirms it (I read some of these stories previously in “Galactic North”). It's in the short form that Reynolds is at his best. I’ve read a ton of Reynolds in short form. Almost everything I’ve read, I’ve liked. Collections like this both excite and bother me. I’m a huge fan of the short mode of writing, and an equally big proponent of the less-is-more idea when it comes to the size of books. Massive magna opera simply turn me off. Even when I end up loving them, like I did with this one. What I don’t like is carrying some cumbersome volume around, and my preferred method remains print over digital. For this one I had to go for the electronic version. No way around it. If I’d had read the print version, I’d never have finished it. The big hefty tomes I end up reading them on my Kindle. Not my favourite venue, but I really wanted to read it.

Reading SF takes a bit of getting used to; it's not like other forms of fiction and has its own legacy-codes and ground-rules, just as mundane fiction does. The difference is that people who've put in the time and effort to learn mundane fiction’s values, proudly and loudly proclaim their superiority as readers, while anyone who's taken time and effort to learn how SF works and how to play that game is sneered at. Visual media, films, TV and games, can take elements from SF and re-use them imaginatively (or not) but that's not the same as what the prose-form does and expects readers to do. When a Brontë critic nit-picks about Austen, this is legitimate criticism and shows how diligent reading ought to function. When we talk about SF, a form of fiction built on close reading to invoke a world otherwise unverifiable, is analysed that way, it's because we're all neurotic and stupid. SF readership is reported on as weird folklore rather than as a side-effect of publishing economics or, heaven forbid, just like readers of anything else but with an extra string to their bow because they can read something most people won't touch. I read SF as a teenager (I still do). I spent the time to learn its "rules". I still read a lot of superhero comics, which also have their own "rules". A few years ago, I read “A Game Of Thrones”, and the first time I genuinely couldn't do it. It was so clichéd-riddled in conception, and its prose so tired (it's like every other fantasy book) that I was astounded by it and remain so. Well, 'Game of Thrones' is Fantasy and works by different rules. I had trouble too. The Fantasy aspect of SF, unless it's done very well and is entirely autonomous, isn't my thing. The mass-produced Tolkien-on-a-stick stuff appears to be written to be skim-read. “Game of Thrones” is set up that way, but once you get far enough you realise it's actually a refutation of those genre rules and clichés on a number of levels. That's why it's fun. I do wonder though how far Martin can smash those conventions and still deliver a satisfying ending - epic fantasy, like romance, having to fulfill certain expectations at the close. Without the conventional set-up, the shock of finding yourself in a different moral landscape from the vast majority of epic fantasy wouldn't be nearly so effective. For example, every character can be either right or wrong depending on their perspective. There are no good guys, and the guys who are set up to good guys don't sweep along heroically and win the day. The characters set up to be villains become human and understandable when we switch to their perspectives, which is a neat trick. It's really not at all like every other fantasy. I can understand finding the prose “difficult”, because it defies our own expectations.

For me, it is often style that separates the literary from the genre. For example, I felt I'd read the story in “The Road” many times before, even down to that last little glimpse of hope. I've seen in it books, I've seen it on TV. I've read better, more interesting, wide-ranging stories that take on similar material and have that very similar ending. But I've not read another quite so consistently and beautifully written. This is why I don't hold with the 'SF and Fantasy are the same thing' (they both belong to the SF line, but they’re quite different in mode and form). There's less in common between 'Game of Thrones' and 'The Book of the New Sun' (to cite an example publishers and lazy reviewers think is fantasy but doesn't work if read that way, as it's unimpeachably SF). I've read a lot of stylists, in a number of contexts. I suspect I've encountered more than most people have. Moorcock (also a fantasy specialist) isn't one of them. If these are the best examples you've read, I pity you... or maybe envy you for the authors you've yet to discover. But it does feel as if SF advocates seem to think that mundane fiction is synonymous with domestic realism, as opposed to Pynchon or Borges. Of course, to acknowledge that the modernist and postmodernist novel doesn't work that way would open up other pitfalls. When I hear someone taking a pop at Ballard for his lack of characterisation, I just go ballistic. When a significant proportion of literary writing is suspicious of traditional realism, Ballard fits a European postmodernist aesthetic pretty well.

SF (the Science fiction kind) is the genre that deals with ideas, their consequences and how they can exist. The latter meaning that there is a considerable amount of world building that goes into science fiction. A huge amount of effort goes into ensuring that the implications and extrapolations are consistent with each other - a kind of ensuring that the hidden implicit world makes sense. Believe me, as a veteran science fiction reader, the hidden world consistencies have to be worked out, or the work quickly falls apart.

Rule of thumb: anything in the Gollancz Masters series is worth a look, just to find out if you like it, anything from Baen should only be approached if recommended by someone who has had fluid bonding sex with you. Reynold’s sense of otherness and loss are firmly ensconced in the first category. “Beyond the Aquila Rift” is one the best collections that I've ever read and undoubtedly one of the best books of 2016. This is mindfuck SF. 4.5 as a minimum for the stories, rounding up to a 5 star read altogether. It’ll be on my list of favourites at the end of year. I’m repeating myself.

Table of Contents:

◦ Great Wall of Mars

◦ Weather

◦ Beyond the Aquila Rift

◦ Minla’s Flowers

◦ Zima Blue

◦ Fury

◦ The Star Surgeon’s Apprentice

◦ The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter

◦ Diamond Dogs

◦ Thousandth Night

◦ Troika

◦ Sleepover

◦ Vainglory

◦ Trauma Pod

◦ The Last Log of the Lachrymosa

◦ The Water Thief

◦ The Old Man and the Martian Sea

◦ In Babelsberg

◦ Story Notes

SF = Speculative Fiction.