“Did you
ever read Waiting for Godot?
“No.”
“Did you
ever read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead?”
“No.”
“Did you
ever read Kiss of the Spider Woman?”
“No.”
“Did you
ever read---“
“Jeff, stop
it. I’ve never read anything.”
“Some
coders read.”
“Yeah
that’s right. I’ve read The R Cookbook.
Also, Everything you Always Wanted to
Know about R. Also, R for Dummies.”
“I don’t
like R.”
In “New York 2140” by Kim Stanley Robinson
After having read the latest Stanley
Robinson, a scene in Kurosawa's 'One Wonderful Sunday' from 1947 popped up in
my mind, where at the very beginning two young lovers plead with the cinema
audience to support young lovers everywhere and clap and cheer as they imagine
themselves performing Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.
The background to the scene is that
the too poverty stricken young lovers spend a rare day off wandering the ruins
of post war Tokyo trying to have some fun and imagine some sort of future. They
try to see a performance of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, but are tricked out
of the tickets by scalpers. So, they go instead to the empty auditorium. The
young man threatens to fall into despair but his girlfriend instead turns to
the audience and pleads for 'all young lovers' to give them their support by
clapping.
Kurosawa was disappointed that the
scene was greeted with mute puzzlement by Japanese audiences (although the film
was a success). However, on its rare showings in Europe, this scene got an
enthusiastic response, especially in Paris.
Do you think modern SF readers will
notice what Robinson did we this novel? Robinson is not exactly a Neal
Stephenson, but comes close in his mastery of the dying art of the info dump
and breaking the 4th wall. The latter is a theatre term that dates
to the 19th century. It’s the imaginary wall between the audience and the
stage. Breaking the 4th wall is when the characters deliberately
address the audience, like the way Robinson did here with the chapters titled
“Citizen”, wherein the omniscient narrator talked directly to the reader. Did
he succeed? Regardless of its
sometimes-non-mastery, I tend to get immersed all the same because essentially
when I'm reading these novels of ideas-SF, I'm reading about some unexamined
aspect of myself. And everyone's interested in discovering something about
themselves. That’s why I usually enjoy both Stephenson and Robinson, even when
they’re not successful. I think that sometimes it works and sometimes it
doesn't; I’d imagine that it's very difficult to do well unless it's connected
to some sort of mental state in the characters. Stephenson does this
beautifully. I also belong to the sect which believes the info dump, when done right,
is what makes SF unique.
SF = Speculative Fiction
