C. "Artistic" Arguments

There being more things in heaven (pun intended) and on Earth (ditto) than our philosophy, let us turn to the broader aspects of the issue of "good" or "bad" writing. Finer observes that "to couple St. Thomas More ... with space fiction ... seems very shocking." The grounds for the shock are the differences in "literary merit" and in "intention"; he "agrees" that there is a difference in the former, but most of the remainder of his article is concerned with refuting the latter. I shall retain his term "literary merit" to apply to all the arguments which have been raised against the "form" or manner of presentation of science fiction.

One objection frequently encountered is that the ideas somehow "get in the way of the art." The one review in Spectator which was fairly friendly to science fiction makes this point; the claim is that the characterization is weak, "each hero is really a sawn-off version of Milton's Adam," and the prose is said to be secondary to the spilling out of ideas.[32] L. Michaelson, in an article entitled "Social Criticism in Science Fiction," maintains in essence that the soapbox is a more highly esteemed vehicle than the "literary" approach, to the science fiction writer.[33] The last I shall mention in this regard is Fletcher Pratt, himself a science fiction writer, who speaks of "this lack of realism in character [which] has led Bernard De Voto, probably the best literary critic in America, to describe it as 'a form of literature which has succeeded in almost completely doing away with emotion.'"[34] Amis, who also mentions the bad writing to be found in science fiction but declares the October, 1958 Astounding to contain no stories which are "offensive in style,"[35] manages to strike the mark later on the subject of character. The reason for the lack of "personality" in much science fiction, he points out, is that the characters are simply symbols being employed by a satirist.[36]

The symbolic, as opposed to "realistic," nature of a character in a satire does not acquit the field from the bad writing charge. However, I would point out that even in a hypothetical story where the idea is intriguing but the prose is bad the evaluation of the piece is quite subjective, depending on whether the individual reader holds mental facility to be more important than fastidiousness of prose. (The hypothetical case is not too liable to transpire for, as someone whose identity I can't recall remarked, the authors are professionals involved in making a living selling their stories and would not get away with writing so poorly as the pulp contributors could in the days when the idea of even space travel was so new and exciting that the reader would not be at all bothered by a double negative or a misnomer or two.) It is perfectly possible to attach a higher value to content than to form so much as to be virtually unconcerned with the latter; however, one rarely, if one is a science fiction fan especially, goes the other way. As Isaac Asimov[37] points out, "good writing" does not make for good science fiction; nor, I hope, can a mainstream story be considered good if it offers polished form but a paucity of content. Art alone cannot generate ideas, but ideas can be presented unembellished and still affect the reader favorably, though of course embellishment can be an asset. So much for "bad writing."

Arthur Koestler at least does not simply give his opinions as pronouncements and let them rest on the weight of his reputation, as many of the others seem to do. He offers reasoned arguments for his condemnation of science fiction as art, which we shall now discuss. He claims:

Science fiction is good entertainment, [but] it will never become good art... Art means seeing the familiar in a new light, seeing tragedy in the trivial event; it means in the last resort to broaden and deepen our understanding of ourselves.

His definition of art is similar to the one Rosalie Moore uses in berating mainstream fiction, in the Brettnor symposium: "To put it in the crudest possible terms, the mainstream writer too frequently is concerned with saying, in the most sensitive possible terms, of course: 'Isn't it terribly sad?'." Now although Koestler's argument can be called reasoned in that it states its premises and proceeds from them in a logical fashion, and this is a far more agreeable procedure than the pronunciamenti encountered above, the argument cannot exactly be called reasonable for its premise is, though fashionable perhaps, quite suspect. Koestler has delineated a reasonable mode of artistic expression, one which is more or less attractive to an individual reader depending upon his personal prejudices; his mode is not, however, the only one. It seems that every literary discussion must mention Aristotle somewhere, and whatever one thinks of him in general, he still remains a pretty shrewd observer of the factors of art which most affect human beings. So a legitimate complementary view to Koestler's, though also not the only mode, can be offered in terms of Aristotle's criteria of importance or magnitude of characters:

The heroes in science fiction frequently have world-shaking powers or positions of importance, although Rice's The Adding Machine is one instance of a "science fiction hero" who is a lowly, unimportant bookkeeper. We are treating the general case, however, and Koestler is fairly accurate in inferring that most science fiction is not on the "trivial, everyday" scale (but see "Poor Little Warrior" for another interesting exception). Aristotle dictates kings and other "high" types as heroes, or protagonists if you prefer; now the titles are jettisonned, but the functions are the same as we frequently encounter in science fiction. The reason is clear, for a reader will far more readily identify himself with King Oedipus (if he isn't afraid of being accused of having the complex--but then "Oedipus" himself didn't) than with the sniveling little bookkeeper of Rice's modern play. As Knight says, "Our undiminished wonder at the mystery which surrounds us is what makes us human. In science fiction we can approach that mystery, not in small, everyday symbols, but in the big ones of space and time."

In terms of Aristotle's requirement of "affirmation," and perhaps even catharsis, science fiction is again far more Aristotelian than most other modern work. The hero doesn't always win; but when, as happens often, he does, there the act is an affirmation, both within the story and to the author, of Barron's "order in the universe" and of Amis's "pieties." Once again, the scale is the grand scale. Compare, for example, mainstream's The Last Angry Man to Pohl and Kornbluth's highly praised (even by Amis) The Space Merchants. In the former, Thrasher, the advertizing executive, finally returns to the fold of the agency, feebly insisting that he will do his best to inject a small note of dignity and social consciousness into the ad racket, although he admits to himself how little good it will do. In the latter, Mitchell Courtenay, "star class copysmith," falls from his high position, but when he is raised again and even made president of the biggest advertising firm in the country (a position far outstripping that of the president of the United States in the postulated society of the book), he manages to give control of the colonization of Venus to the "Conservationalists", and goes off to Venus with them to develop the planet along the lines of reason which were not followed in the rape of Earth's resources (much of which has happened already, in our real world of the present).

The choice between not even saving one's self, and saving both one's self and a world in the bargain is not a hard one to make. Further, the former book does not have a more reasonable conclusion, based on the premise of the innate depravity of Man; in the latter book, the depravity is there and Earth is abandoned to it--but, men can be better than Man, and the affirmation of the conclusion is not only in consonance with the premise, but all the more compelling because of the necessity of renouncing the home planet (which operates perhaps symbolically, but not, I think, as the rejection of Mother or whatever it is the myth hunters would have us believe; it is perhaps a rebirth, but it is definitely not a regression).

So Koestler's "monadic" view of art as restricted to the everyday is to be rejected even on the grounds that it is not a valid representation of reality, to say nothing of the moral values and audience-responses arguments which could be raised on our Aristotelian foundation. Koestler raised one other objection which would be worthwhile to consider, though he seems to be playing Amis's game of metaphor-making rather than arguing logically. He approves of Brave New World, Gulliver, and 1984 because of their "social message." They are "great literature because in them the additions of alien worlds serve merely as a background... In other words, they are literature precisely to the extent which they are not science fiction, to which they are works of disciplined imagination and not fantasy." Knight replies to him directly, saying that the objection applies to all fiction and making the excellent point that "science-fantasy is a form: what matters is what you put into it" (p. 2). Granted, I would even say urged, that science fiction is concerned with saying things artistically, as opposed to saying things artistically; the problem is not science fiction's functional employment of literature: Rather, the problem is Koestler's suggested alternative approach of the sacrifice of content for form, the practice of almost-infinitely embellishing almost nothing at all; not art, but "artsiness" for its own sake--in short, the limit which Kostolefsky and I agree modern poetry tends to approach. The limit also toward which Koestler would, paradoxically, seem to be urging us when speaking of the finding of tragedy in trivia (bigger and bigger emotions evoked by smaller and smaller situations, as the artist's "skill" increases), yet against which he seems to be warning us by speaking of "social message" and of "disciplined imagination."

To conclude with Koestler: On the subject of universals versus trivia, I admit that I prefer artists to deal with universals because I have a personal inclination to agree with Shelley about the poet/artist's being the unacknowledged legislator for mankind--this shows that I may be naive, but at least my art's in the right place. Also, if Koestler had read works other than the apparently strictly adventure pulps about which he apologizes for his "occasional addiction," and had read enough in the field to have grounds for his generalizations, he would probably have come across the works indicated in the Treguboff statistics, the Finer "Profile," and the other samples cited above, which he would have found quite similar to Brave New World and others which he likes. Had he done so, we would have been spared the last few pages, perhaps. However, we must be duly grateful to him, for the Aristotelian parallel he forced me to discover is a corroboratory point to the "more than pulp" thesis which far outweighs in importance the squandering of so much space on a relatively unimportant article. (Please note, as a parting shot, that the protagonist of Koestler's own Darkness at Noon was no mere Party small fry himself; methinks the gentleman saith not as he doeth.)

D. Summary and Conclusion

As advertized, the critical arguments against science fiction break down along the lines of objections to content and objections to form. Through cross-criticism and the injudicious employment of my own observations, I believe that the content aspect has been taken care of as thoroughly as can be managed under the circumstances. As to form, or "literary merit," the general refutations can be made in like manner to the Koestler affair and bandied about as interminably as a mainstream-of-consciousness monologue. However, we have arrived at a point where my original intention of simply digging in and criticizing some specific science fiction stories is necessary to the conclusion of our inquiry. It would seem to be inescapable that we get down to cases, if we want to reach at all fairly a conclusion as to the literary value of science fiction; for, although the ideas to be found in it are often valuable, literary merit is also a very large factor in the adjudging of literary value--perhaps Koestler would suggest that it is the whole question.

Now, it is impossible to analyze enough science fiction to reach an over-powering, clearcut conclusion here; but, after indicating briefly in the next chapter what literary value and merit are, I shall try to show that the requirements for conventional literary merit are met by some science fiction works. It is then assumed to be incumbent upon the critics to assess other works individually, for they have no excuse to ignore a field which even its detractors frequently call entertaining and which can be shown to have some (though probably no more than any other "serious" field) nuggets in it. To a miner intent upon enriching himself with the nuggets he finds, the dirt with which they may be surrounded is of small consequence. Knight's sensible credo is that "science fiction is a field of literature worth taking seriously, and that ordinary critical standards can be meaningfully applied to it: e.g., originality, sincerity, style, construction, logic, coherence, sanity, garden-variety grammar." (p. 1) Even Amis, who had earlier said that "stylistic adequacy is all one need demand from examples of the idea-category, which is not a vehicle for the verbal imagination" (p. 137) and missed the point of the artistic embellishment of ideas making them more effective, finally admits that:

A new volume by Pohl or Sheckley or Arthur Clarke ought, for instance, to be reviewed as general fiction, not tucked away, as one writer has put it, in something called "Spaceman's Realm" between the kiddy section and the dog stories. Hostile critics from outside the field will make public utterances upon it revealing a degree of ignorance that would never be tolerated if the subject were Indonesian pottery or Icelandic loan-words in Bantu. And, alongside the justifiable skepticism of the otherwise intelligent, considerable prejudice remains. That a badly produced pulp magazine can contain adult writing is a lesson not easy to learn, however often it may be spelled out.
[pps. 149-50]

Aside from observing that he abuses commas almost as badly as I do, perhaps all I can do is repeat my initial query: is there anything more we can ask?

on to ch. 2

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©2003 Michael A. Padlipsky. All rights reserved.