Introduction: Of "Pulps" and Respectability

Originally, I decided to write a thesis "about science fiction" because too much reading of the stuff in my youth had impelled me to enter M.I.T., in hopes of becoming a physicist. Finding literature much more to my liking, I thought that I could do a thesis which would, in a way, be "interdisciplinary" by applying literary criticism to science fiction works. When I suggested this project to my thesis advisor, I was warned that science fiction was of dubious "intellectual respectability," and that to convince the powers-that-be of the worthwhileness of such an undertaking would not be easy. Accordingly, I turned to the task of bibliography, expecting to find a very few articles by critics who thought it a great lark to say nasty things about science fiction; I assumed that I could dispense with them in a very few pages and then turn to my intended task of criticizing several pieces of science fiction, most of which I had already picked out.

Much to my chagrin and dismay, I discovered that literally dozens of critics had felt the necessity of airing their views about science fiction. Although most of the criticisms were as silly as I had anticipated, there were so many of them that I felt compelled on grounds of intellectual honesty to criticize the criticisms in some detail and give the scoffers their day in court before I could turn in good conscience to any original criticism. Finally, the thesis shaped itself into its present form: an endeavor to dispel the illusion that science fiction is still the "pulp" medium which it admittedly was before the last War, with the original criticism included subordinately, only included to prove certain points about the larger question of whether or not science fiction has "literary value"--in the broad sense of being valuable literature. That science fiction has outgrown the days of the pulps, whose contents were characterized quite clearly by the buxom girls in cellophane spacesuits being menaced by Bug-Eyed Monsters (bems, to the initiate) which appeared on their covers, I shall attempt to show. Some pulps still exist, and some "pulp" stories appear even in the better science fiction publications, but stories worthy of serious consideration also appear, and in great enough number that serious literary critics would be well off to stop thinking of science fiction as a field barely one step from the comic books, and worthy of no more attention.

The critical objections break down into two areas: there are objections to what is being said in science fiction--what is called "content" in some critical circles--, and there are objections to how things are said--"form" in those same critical circles. In Chapter I, I deal with the general objections to content by means of cross-criticism and the injection of my own opinions where necessary. The problem of content is only part of the problem of literary value, however, and nowadays it seems to concern critics a good deal less than the problem of form. In the latter case, there are certain general claims and counter-claims which are deserving of note, and these I mention in the second half of my first chapter. The only fair test of the formal aspects of science fiction stories is in the analysis of individual stories themselves, however, for the generalizations of the critics and my general rebuttals have a very tenuous grounding in demonstrable reality. It was this, perhaps more difficult, analytical task which I had originally set myself, and hence I am able to turn with some pleasure to a few close readings in Chapter III, although they are nominally only intended to justify the conclusion that works of science fiction can be presented in an "artistic" style.

The basic endeavor of this thesis, then, is to determine whether or not science fiction can reasonably be considered as "more than pulp"-- and if not, to consign it back to the rubbish heap of mere entertainment. That science fiction is entertaining few dispute; indeed, one of the arguments I have encountered most frequently in speaking with avid science fiction readers (called "fans" by themselves, "addicts" by such institutions as Time Magazine) is the argument that too much cerebrating about science fiction by people like me is ruining science fiction for them--by "taking the fun out of it." All I can say before commencing to do so is that such "cerebrating" puts more fun into it for me, and in theory it also does so for any serious literary critic. Fun is where you find it.

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©2003 Michael A. Padlipsky. All rights reserved.