I'm posting here an article of mine that's in the current issue of the SFWA Bulletin
. The Bulletin
has been embroiled in a controversy that's thrown off attention to most of its contents, including my piece, so I thought I'd give you a second chance to scoff at my inanities and oversights. I wrote it with the intention of opening a discussion, since so many writers find themselves teaching these days, so I welcome any comments you may have on the topic. TOMORROW: The sidebar that accompanied the article, with comments from Tina Jens, Michaela Roessner and Amy Sterling Casil on teaching.
I look upon my task, teaching the Science Fiction Writing
Workshop for Columbia College Chicago, with this in mind: the science fiction
of tomorrow will not be the science fiction of today. It is certainly not the
science fiction of yesterday.
Over a year ago I started writing an article about teaching
science fiction writing. After committing about ten thousand words to
electrons, and another five thousand to pen and paper, I concluded that I knew
nothing about teaching writing. Worse – I knew nothing about science fiction.
Add to that – I knew nothing about writing.
And twenty-plus years of teaching have disabused me of any
illusions that I am a “good teacher.” I cannot teach my way out of a paper bag.
I know because I tried and the bag won.
I may be the worst teacher of science fiction writing ever.
When I took over this
course from the phenomenal Phyllis Eisenstein in the fall of 2009, I pulled out
a brand new legal pad (doesn’t everyone
use brand new legal pads when they teach?) and wrote on the first page – along
with the name of the class, the course number, meeting time and room number – “A course in search of itself.”
I, and the course (of
course), are still searching. But here is some of what I’ve learned about
teaching a course on science fiction writing, in a face-to-face classroom, at
the college level. Some of it might prove helpful if you ever find yourself in
a similar situation, or at another level, such as secondary school or
“continuing ed,” or in an online class.
This is not a “how to.”
This is not a “when to.”
It may be a “what to” –
or a “what not to.” It will depend. It works for me. Your mileage may
vary.
BE OPEN
Because you don’t know everything, much as you think you do. In
fact, you know very little – maybe nothing, depending on what we mean by
“know.” This is not navel-gazing or pure philosophical speculation. This is
neuroscience. Knowing and knowledge are two different things. You have mucho knowledge, but what do you know?
Really?
Don’t be too sure. When it comes to teaching, especially
teaching anything “creative,” the less you “know” the better.
BE HONEST
What you don’t know, admit. I’ve noticed dozens of other
teachers, especially in the creative writing field, dealing with their own
“issues” of knowledge, authority, competence, insecurity – you name it. They
take these issues into the classroom because they think a writing teacher is
supposed to act “a certain way,” as a J. D. Salinger character might put it.
Let me assure you: there is no certain
way.
Students can tell when you’re dealing with “issues” and playing
games. That’s your business. They
want you to concentrate on their
business. That’s what they’re there for and that’s what you are there for.
By the way, it’s okay
to ask for help. Fellow faculty members, the department chair, mini-teaching
workshops, pure ol’ Tech Support and the multitude of teachers you can reach
via various social media. The available resources are astonishingly plentiful.
Admit it when you have to say, “I don’t know if this is a
complete crock, but here’s what I think . . . “
Your students and colleagues will appreciate it.
ASK THE FIRST
QUESTION
Very first session, my usual practice, once the syllabus and
sundry announcements have been read, is to ask my class, “What is science
fiction?”
From a dozen students I’ll get a dozen distinct answers.
It gives us some notion of the territory we’re about to explore,
but it’s also helpful to consider that definitions of literary categories focus
on the product rather than the process. They are post-facto: about the
books, stories, shows, films, plays, etc. Completed
works. They are not about works-in-progress, works-yet-to-be-imagined or
yet-to-be-categorized.
A body of literature is one of thing. A process by which fiction
is created is quite another.
Damon Knight said that science fiction
“... is not just a category but a way of looking at the universe.” I prefer
that characterization to all the extant definitions of science fiction.
BE INVENTIVE
I get some of my best ideas heading for class in the morning. I
have a syllabus, all carefully worked out and as perfect as I can make it, but driving
down Lake Shore Drive, I decide what I have planned is a bore and stupid and
will do no good for my students.
Like the time I decided everyone should go look out the window.
Looking out the window is supposed to be a bad thing in every other kind of
class. In a science fiction class, though, why not be contrary?
Our classroom, usually, is on the twelfth floor of an old former
office building in the South Loop. I told everyone to go and look out at anything: the nearby skyline, the “L”
tracks, rooftop gardens, exhaust fans, streetlights, fire escapes, passing jets
in the sky, neon signs.
Then, I asked them to go back to their seats and write for about
ten minutes on A) What you saw and B) What you didn’t see.
In a science fiction class, A is not necessarily more important
than B. In fact, what we look for more often is B. We don’t see
hovercar-shuttles to the spaceport. We don’t see anti-gravity platforms. We
don’t see bioluminescent advertising on the sides of solar-powered airships.
There are lots of things we don’t see that fit in category B.
But without looking out at A – at what’s really there, what we
put in B may not have the same resonance or urgency. We need A to make B
meaningful.
Every window is the frame of a story.
That wasn’t on the syllabus, but it helped produce some
interesting work from my students. Maybe they didn’t learn anything from it,
but I made my point that, for a writer – especially a science fiction writer –
nothing should be taken for granted. And I wouldn’t have come up with that idea
if I didn’t leave myself open to try something crazy.
BE TRUSTFUL
Yes, your students may not know who James Tiptree, Jr. is. They
may not know the difference between a compound and a complex sentence. Maybe
you think they should have learned all this stuff before they entered your hallowed
classroom. You’re probably right.
They may not know what you want them to know already. They’re students. Deal with it. You can work on
it.
They’re not in this state to personally frustrate you. And since
they have come to your class, willingly (most science fiction writing courses
are elective), you can help them.
That’s what they came here for. That’s what they want you to do.
Okay, some of them came to your class because they thought they
could pick up an easy grade. But they won’t stay if you convince them
otherwise. Or maybe they will stay,
because you convinced them it’s worth the time.
Exceptions? Certainly. But for the most part, students come to a
science fiction writing class because they want to learn about writing science
fiction. Welcome them. Help them. Share what you know with them. That’s your
job.
Trust me on this one.
Irreproducible Results
n Every class in some way must define itself.
n Every group of students is as unique as every individual student
is unique.
n You cannot repeat the experience of a previous class … each
class invents itself.
n The last person to be aware of this, very often, is the teacher.
Remember, I am looking at what I’m doing from the perspective of
a bad teacher. I am a terrible disciplinarian. I empathize too much with my
students to remake myself as a taskmaster.
The way I handle (or mishandle) my class is this: we are all
writers. Writing is a job – an insane job, but a job. You don’t screw around
when you’re on the job.
In other words, do you want to learn this shit or not?
Science fiction is an elective. My students take this course
because they want to. Here, they read
what they can’t read in other classes. Here, they write what some of their
instructors won’t allow them to write in other classes. We talk about writing
and writing science fiction. They know this. Though we proceed at a relaxed
pace, they stay on course as best as one can expect of a herd of cats (i.e.
writers).
And somehow, we make it through 95 to 99 percent of the
syllabus. I know better-organized, better “disciplined” teachers whose
percentages fall much short of that.
STICK TO THE BASICS
Science fiction is a field not bounded by any stylistic or
thematic concepts or narrative conventions. We pick out and borrow from other
modes and forms. Or we make up our own.
But still, it all boils down to storytelling.
As one of my predecessors at Columbia, Algis Budrys, once wrote,
“ . . . what most readers want most of the time is story.”
A fairly basic proposition. And the basic elements of a story
are common to all forms of storytelling.
So, why should we teach it in a science fiction writing class?
Because we’re there. And, some might argue, because we do it
better. And if you look at the curricula of some of the more serious creative
writing programs in the country, it’s because we do it at all.
Some of that is changing, because at some sophisticated schools
that offer degrees in “Professional” writing, and from all the publications and
websites devoted to writerly interests, talk of story arcs and character
motivations and three-act structures abound. Everybody knows the lingo;
everybody can use the terminology.
But can they tell a story? And what does that mean, really?
In the very first class session, I use a set of
cards made up of six categories: 1.) Characters, 2.) Settings, 3.) Motivations,
4.) Nemeses/Oppositions/Conflicts, 5.) Resolutions and 6.) Science Fictional
Elements and Themes. The students get to pick one of each category by random
choice (“Pick a card. Any card . . . ).
We look over the cards. One person gets a
“Character” card with the name “Anastasia Ballantine.” (I like using names.
Many students hate to give their characters names for some odd reason. But
names are cool. Names are evocative. Give anyone the name “Anastasia
Ballantine” and it will generate a picture in the mind’s eye of what Anastasia
looks like – though no two Anastasia Ballantines will look the same) The
setting card is “An archaeological site on an earth-like planet.” The
motivation card is “Revenge.” The Nemesis/Opposition/Conflict card is a “Rival
Colleague.” The resolution card is “Character succeeds with the aid of
neglected talent.” The science-fictional element or theme card is “Reality
Manipulation.”
I then ask them to sketch out, or outline, or try a
brief scene from the story suggested by the cards. Depending on the remaining
time in class, we’ll discuss the possibilities of each group of cards, maybe
start the writing process in class, or if we’re really pressed, let them take
the idea home and see what they can come up with.
What is this supposed to teach? What does this prove?
One thing it might prove is that – given the
necessary elements – anyone can make a story, at least in a very rudimentary
way. We are storytelling creatures. We think in terms of stories. We look for
stories even when we’re not aware of it. Finding a story is more a reflex than
a task.
It also proves that having the basics of a story
doesn’t make a story – or make it any good.
Some students have a hard time with this exercise.
Other students take to it quite naturally. Either way, the exercise gives them
something to work with, and the working with it provides some important lessons
about making stories.
Stories have shapes. I’ve long forgotten where the
phrase “story-shaped idea” came from, but it has stayed with me. A story is a
like a vessel – a vessel ostensibly designed to perform a function, like
holding water. An open-ended cylinder shape doesn’t work for the task. A vase
shape does. If that sounds “limiting,” remember that vases can be narrow, or
flat, sharp-edged or contoured, transparent or opaque, metallic or porcelain.
No two vases have to look the same, unless they’re run off an assembly line.
Another reason for trying this exercise becomes very
clear for those students who are able to see it: even when the elements of a
story are imposed upon you, as the chance selection of these cards does with my
students, you always place a little of yourself in every story you write.
Very often, students will feel that the card story
is not “their” story. They would never have come up with such an idea on their
own. It’s an imposition. Some of them
will suffer through it for that reason, do what I require of them, and go on to
the next exercise. Others request that they keep working on the card story –
something in the elements – and what they’ve initially done with them – compels
them to go on. Something in their unconscious has been sparked.
Very often, in the world of fiction writing and in
its teaching, there’s a perceivable tension between writing that’s “personal”
and that which is “popular” – something like the tension that exists between
“fine arts” painters and “illustrators,” the latter undervalued for having been
generated through another work of art (the one they’re illustrating). If the
conception of a work of art is not born entirely from the imagination of the
artist, does that make the completed work, by definition, a lesser work of art?
Not necessarily. You need go no further than the
work of Chaucer and Shakespeare (or Rembrandt and Doré for illustrator) to
dispel that notion.
Or, you can see how much of yourself appears in an
exercise generated by five or six randomly chosen cards.
Stick to the basics. Every skyscraper needs a solid foundation,
even imaginary ones.
BE REALISTIC
Most college students these days overbook their class loads.
They’re on a budget. They’re on deadline. They have loans to pay, eventually.
They have writing assignments and reading assignments from three other
instructors who treat their courses as the most important classes their
students will ever take and nothing else their students do is more important.
And if you’re teaching a continuing education class, or an
enrichment course or anything along those lines, your students have lives, and
families. And maybe jobs. And obligations.
You don’t need to be a wuss. Construct your course
realistically. My students usually read no more than two short stories per
week. Some of the stories are longer, but two stories is not an imposition.
They also have to complete seven writing exercises, two stories (or
“story-like” compositions) and a revision of one of those stories.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s not unreasonable. Remember, it’s a
writing class, so you have to read
all that work, too.
You may not have to worry about outstanding loans in your future,
but very likely you have a life, and a family, and maybe even a career (even if
it’s teaching).
Being realistic also means being so to/for yourself.
NOT a Science Project
My Columbia students are not science majors. Columbia students
major in film, video, fiction writing, playwriting, music, arts management and
marketing, fashion design, theater, poetry, computer game design – all sorts of
things.
But not science.
Is this a bad thing for a science fiction writer?
Well, it is not an insurmountable barrier. There may be a
contingent of science fiction fans who believe it is – who believe a science
fiction writer worth his sodium chloride should have an engineering degree, or
its equivalent, and an abiding interest in clear prose; that, a little talent
and a few “gosh-wow” ideas and – BOOM! – you’re the next Larry Niven.
It worked in 1953. It worked in 1973. Why shouldn’t it work in
2013?
No reason at all, except – forty years have passed.
Science literacy may be in a crisis stage, but science
information is readily available – and in abundance. We can drown in an
ocean of science news – if we choose. It’s a contradiction – but so is human
nature.
A science fiction writer has to address this contradiction just
as much as she or he has to address the new findings in many different fields
of inquiry – hard and soft sciences, physical and social sciences and the
technological disciplines that overlap these categories.
The important thing, sometimes, is not to “think like a
scientist,” but to think scientifically
– at least part of the time – about the world in general – which is more than
some scientists do.
Therefore, in the interests of making sure my students
understand that science fiction is more than the recycling of old concepts from
SF books and media, I ask them to take a look at the most recent postings on
some of the science-oriented websites: stories about gravity waves, orphan
planets, neurally-directed prosthetics, discoveries of new planetary systems or
new evidence that theropod dinosaurs had tail feathers.
I don’t necessarily limit to them to discoveries or scientific
concepts. Stories about the scientific community or about the impact of
scientific/technological developments on the greater culture can be just as
intriguing. I ask them to find a piece of news that interests them and plot out
a story from it.
I call the assignment “NOT a Science Project.”
Often, some interesting stuff comes out of the exercise. Even if
it doesn’t, the students have done some research and wrestled with
extrapolating from recent information.
BE SURPRISING
If you start with discussions one week, next week start with an
exercise, or vice versa. If every class meeting has several components, mix
them around. If you have students read back exercises by going left to right in
seating arrangement, go right to left. Pick out students differently from the
way you do it “usually.”
If the chairs are arranged facing the chalk board (or white
board, or whatever board you have), turn them the other way. Of if they’re
north-facing, turn them east-facing, or northwest facing.
Write enigmatic quotes about science fiction on the board. One
week you discuss them. Another week, don’t even refer to the quote – the let
the words hover like a cartoon thought balloon over the class. If you’re giving
a timed writing assignment, use a hotel call bell to signal the start. When the
assignment is finished, signal with a slide whistle like the one in Bob Dylan’s
“Highway 61 Revisited.”
This is not done to be “theatrical.” It’s not done to be
“merely” creative.
You don’t want your students to feel they’re in a rut, or that
if they miss the first part, they know they’ll be missing the discussion of the
readings – or whatever begins your class. They may even be timing their
tardiness to miss the “boring” part.
You’re teaching a fiction writing class – a science fiction writing class! Hell, you’re supposed to be teaching students to be inventive, interesting,
compelling, surprising. What serves this purpose less than going about the classroom routine the same way, every
week, every session, from beginning to end of semester?
My class begins eight-thirty in the morning, on a Friday, every
week. I’m just trying to keep my students awake.
Not to mention keeping myself awake.
Subvert expectations when you can without derailing the whole
train.
I Don’t
Know What I Like, but I Know Where
the Art is
We do about six or seven exercises every semester. The one that
works out best is the one where I bring in copies of cover and interior
illustration art. All sorts of artwork: from the highly abstract (like some of
Richard Powers and Paul Lehr’s work) to the more strictly representational (Tim
Hildebrandt) and a lot in between (John Berkey, Jack Gaughan, Ed Emshwiller,
Burt Tanner, Ron Walotsky, Moebius, Janet Aulisio, Leo and Diane Dillon and
more).
I explain how, back in the day, editors often bought art “on
spec” for covers and interior illustrations, then ask writers if they could
come up with stories the artwork might be illustrating, reversing the
conventional process.
Like most of my exercises, I ask for the minimum of a couple of
pages, outlining or sketching out what the story would be like; or writing a
couple of pages of a scene that might appear in the story. A number of students
end up turning in complete stories, or at least many pages more than I first
requested. And several of them have been very good stories, among the best
turned into me.
There doesn’t seem to be any rule on what’s chosen and how the work
is interpreted. Every class has its own favorites, but the two most popular
images seem to be a John Berkey painting of a colossal wheel-shaped spaceship
hovering over a small, rural town at night; and the Moebius-drawn cyberpunk guy
in shades and trench coat sitting on a junk pile of broken electronics.
Several students have written stories based on the same Janet
Aulisio black and white illustration, featuring a human and alien standing
together, staring gravely in different directions. Each student interprets the
illustration – and the expressions on the two characters – differently. And
often, once the artwork has provided the initial impetus for the story, they
take it elsewhere from where they started.
Students often ask me if it’s okay to bend the rules on an
exercise if a story is taking them somewhere out of the boundaries, as they see
them. I usually say they should never let the rules stand in the way of a good
story.
The importance of the illustration exercise – and the other
exercises, each in their own way – is to spark something that the imagination
will work to fill: an image that makes a student (or writer) ask all the
who-what-when-where-why questions, then answer them (at least to some degree).
It’s part of the window exercise and part of the card exercise,
the point of both being, “What happens next? Where to from here? If this, then
– what?”
It’s hardly the exclusive domain of science fiction. I’ve done a
similar exercise in my short story writing classes at another school,
substituting “fine art” reproductions for the SF illustrations.
So what makes this teaching “science fiction”?
Maybe it’s just because science fiction attracts a number of
outstanding illustrators. And science fiction writers are just suckers for cool
pictures.
Every picture is a window.
And every window is a frame for a story.
BE PATIENT
We all know writers who can get work done, quickly, efficiently
– on time. We may even be one of
these writers.
We also know writers who are slow, thoughtful, who pace about,
who flaunt deadlines and ride them to the last possible nanosecond.
Both kinds of writers are capable of excellent work. Both kinds
of writers are probably sitting in your classroom.
You don’t have to put up with a lot of crap. Set the rules. You
have a syllabus – use it. Make clear that the line is here – if they
cross it, they must pay. Not because you want to be cruel, but because the
rules are set that way.
Make them read “The Cold Equations,” or, if you already have,
make them read it again. Then explain that you are the pilot of the emergency
vehicle in the story. If you have to push the sweet kid through the airlock,
you will.
But – be patient.
I know that I am one of those writers who paces about, who takes
long walks, who is seized by sudden crazy impulses to tear up the first ten
pages of my first chapter and change the name of my protagonist throughout.
I’ll do my best to get my work in, but I have my own method, or lack thereof,
and until I can work out a better way it will have to do.
You can talk to particular students if they have a real problem.
Maybe you can offer suggestions.
Sometimes the suggestions might even work.
Critique Groups
in the Classroom
Critique groups could be the subject of an entire article.
Critique groups abound. Not only do they form the backbone of
most workshops like Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise and Taos Toolbox, many
college classes at the MFA level are built upon the model.
I once explained the “Clarion Approach” (i.e. the critique
session, brilliantly and vividly explicated in Kate Wilhelm’s Storyteller) to one of the Fiction
Writing chairs at Columbia. She replied, “Oh, you mean the ‘Iowa Method.’”
Frankly, I’d never heard a description of the “Iowa Method,”
though I’m familiar enough with the reputation of the Iowa Writers Workshop.
One of my MFA students once described the Iowa Method as the “Slash and Burn”
approach.
Apparently, in the highly competitive world of graduate creative
writing programs, it is not enough to endeavor to write good fiction, but to
“eliminate the competition.” You savage the work of your classmates, explicitly
demeaning the work and implicitly demeaning the authors. Break their
confidence. Break their spirit. Or at least that’s the impression I’ve received
from some (not all) grad students.
Everything I don’t
allow (nor do any other writing teachers I know of) is embodied in “Slash and
Burn.”
“Slash and burn,” is about getting through grad school at the
head of the class. It’s about landing a teaching position, preferably tenured,
at some prestigious school. It’s about writing the stuff that will impress
fellow academics – the ones on the selection committees – and no one else.
In my class, we’re into something else. There may be an academic
track for writing about science
fiction, but most science fiction, believe it or not, is written for readers.
It’s written to be read.
We read work and exercises aloud in class, but work that’s meant
to be read deserves to be read – as
close to the reading experience as one would have trolling the pages of an
anthology or magazine.
So my students exchange manuscripts. The idea is that they have
some time (a week, I hope) to read it beforehand. That doesn’t always work out,
but that’s the plan. I break the class into four groups, so no one has to read
more than three manuscripts per session.
For the session itself, I lay out some ground rules:
n We are all writers. Repeat that: we are all writers.
n We’re all here to help each other, because we can learn to
improve our own work by helping others improve theirs.
n We discuss the work.
We may not understand it, but we respect it, and we respect the author who
produced it.
n Every story critiqued is a work in progress. We’re here to point
out what works, what doesn’t, suggest what could be better. Making judgments like
a hotshot webzine critic is not part of the process.
Does the process work like clockwork? Of course not, especially
with me at the helm. But I am serious
about the ground rules and do my most to instill them in my students.
Truth is, though, I don’t have to work that hard at it.
Maybe it’s because I have the best students in the world, but
they take up the ground rules and run with them – splendidly. They may blow
their deadlines, but they apply themselves to the critiques with insight and
respect.
Do they all learn from the process? I’d say,
emphatically, yes, though not necessarily all at the same speed, and not in the
same way. Some lessons you learn with a snap of the fingers; other lessons have
to be experienced, forgotten, repeated, forgotten again and ultimately placed
into a context the student didn’t have before and never anticipated. Even ten
years after your student leaves the protective confines of college, if she
says, as she heads through the subway station, surrounded by hundreds of fellow
commuters, “Oh! Now I get it!” –
– we’ve won.
Sometimes you just have to be patient.
WELCOME CONTROVERSY
The best writers seem to be the writers who also
read the most.
Coincidence?
Through the semester, I assign two stories per week
for my students to read. It’s not excessive. I don’t want to weigh them down
with readings. I have no intention of teaching them the history of science
fiction literature. This is not a literature course – it’s a writing course.
And yet, I want my students to be aware of what can
be done in the form. Science fiction does not subscribe to any particular
narrative structure or requisite iconography. Well, yes – starship bridges and
homicidal robots and evil galactic empires – you can indulge in them but
they’re not necessary.
I may assign a classic (or at least famous) story. I
will pair it up with a selection from the latest edition of David Hartwell and
Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best SF
series. The former because . . . well, because there are plenty of great
stories out there. The latter because students should see the work of their
contemporaries (what they’re competing against).
In most college classes, even in writing classes,
there’s often a resistance to reading assigned works. It comes with the
territory. It’s like making children eat vegetables. At the school where I
teach, the reading list for “core” (i.e. “required”) classes is pretty
well-established, and most of the faculty has to tow the line for what’s
assigned.
In my classes – and the similar classes in fantasy,
horror, historical, young adult and “popular” fiction (called in my department
the “specialty writing” classes) – students usually take to the reading list
enthusiastically, which is especially gratifying. I know some teachers who
complain that their students don’t want to participate in classroom discussions
about readings. In my classes, sometimes it’s hard to conclude the discussions.
I remember a student, a film major, remarking after I
asked him if he liked the readings, “Where have they been hiding this
stuff?”
It helps, I think, that science fiction stories are
usually about something, often very directly. It may not be the most
important factor in weighing the quality of a work of fiction, but it does provide
an entrance into discussion.
From there, we’ll address the way the authors chose
to present their ideas: third person over first person; conversational over
formal narrative voice; mythic, parodic or “realistic” structure; choice of
protagonist; multiple or single points of view – if it works we want to know
how and, if it doesn’t, we want to know why.
We don’t get particularly reverent, either with new
stories or old. We’re not here to enshrine or deconstruct stories – that’s for
lit classes. It’s okay in our discussions to say that some well-considered work
just isn’t cutting it for you.
Also, I like to pair up stories. Some of the
pairings are obvious: “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin and “Think Like a
Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly is a good way to start. Both stories feature
protagonists forced to “kill” someone under fairly difficult circumstances;
they’re doing something entirely unjust, though the rules they work under
dictate their actions.
Other pairings aren’t quite as obvious. How about
Cordwainer Smith’s “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” and Paolo Bacigalupi’s “Pump Six”?
Any common threads there? Yes, there are, but it takes a little while to
discover them.
In my advanced class, I paired Clarke’s “The
Sentinel” with Gene Wolfe’s “Useful Phrases.” They’re both “First Contact”
stories, but in very different ways with unique approaches. My class surprised
me with their acute appreciation for Mr. Wolfe’s subtle, intimate voice, as
well as Mr. Clarke’s carefully researched version of lunar exploration.
More recently, I paired a James H. Schmitz story,
“Balanced Ecology,” with a post-Singularity story by Ken Liu, “Altogether
Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer.” Where’s the logic in that?
There may be no logic in it at all. But we looked at
how carefully Schmitz set up the first half of his story, and how everything
presented in the first part is effectively utilized in the second. Then we
discuss how much of what Liu gives us as “background” in the early pages of his
story becomes essential before the story ends? Both writers are playing a game
of “hiding in plain sight,” each in their own unique way.
“Leading” a discussion becomes a curious task for
me. Too much “directing” and you’re giving a lecture. Not enough and you’re
lost in the chaos. My job involves a delicate balance between leading and
following, because your students’ responses have to shape the discussion. Your
job is to be a guide, not a judge. We’re not picking Miss America candidates,
we’re trying to figure out how good stories work.
And you never know how a discussion will go, because
every class is different. One class couldn’t make heads or tails out of
Theodore Sturgeon’s “Tandy’s Story.” Another class couldn’t stop talking about
it, though they were about evenly divided between those who thought it
manipulative and unnecessarily verbose, and those who thought it brilliantly
eerie.
And I love it when a student strongly objects to one
story or another, especially if I can get him to articulate what’s there, in
the “text,” that didn’t work for him. Very often they can’t, but I want them to
struggle with the question. Many of the stories I value most now, as an adult,
were stories I despised when I first read them many years ago (R. A. Lafferty,
wherever you are, forgive me my trespasses).
If a story makes you angry, it has spoken to you.
It’s worth taking note of that anger. It can guide you in a number of directions,
not least of which can be to write a story in “response” to the story that made
you so angry. I once heard Gene Wolfe say many of his stories were born by
reading someone else’s story and saying, afterward, “That’s not the way I’d
have done it.”
I tell the class: if literature is a conversation
between stories, science fiction is a barroom brawl.
ASK THE NEXT QUESTION
Here is the quandary: I am teaching (ostensibly) science fiction
writing.
n I am not teaching “The
History of Science Fiction.”
n I am not teaching
“Science Fiction as Literature,” or any variations thereof.
n I am not teaching
“Science Fiction as Techno-Propaganda.”
n I am not teaching “How
to Write Stuff Like They Did Sixty Years Ago.”
n I am not teaching “How
to Write Like Your Literary Idol.”
n I am not teaching “How
to Write the Stuff Fandom Will Embrace and Make You a Popular GoH at
CheezyCon.”
n I am not teaching
“Creative Writing With Sci-Fi Sprinkles.”
And so on. And so on.
I am not teaching any of those things . . . and yet I am.
To a hit a home run, you have to touch the bases.
However, it never leaves my mind that there’s something more I
should be doing.
Science fiction writers are not scientists (necessarily), nor
politicians, nor corporate moguls (though if you are, I could use a large
grant). Science fiction writers are not movers and shakers – except perhaps in
one sense: though we cannot bring about the things to come, we can
(potentially) move and shake the minds, hearts and spirits of those who will.
Skeptics will already have passed over this article (or screed,
or whatever it is), perhaps after huffing in indignation, “Writing can’t be taught! Science
fiction can’t be taught! Science fiction
writing can’t be taught!” There are very good reasons to believe this.
Of the thirteen or fourteen students who sign up for my course
every fall, I don’t expect to see thirteen or fourteen future Hugo nominees
carrying off armloads of prizes and swag.
I don’t even expect to see a few dozen former students laboring
away in the freelance mines, sending in manuscripts to Asimov’s and F&SF (a
few would do nicely, though, thank you).
I would not be surprised if some of my students never again try
to write a science fiction story. Some of them may never even write another
short story, even among my Fiction Writing majors. Students will do what
students will do.
So, why engage in this process? What earthly or unearthly good
will it do my students to be subjected to the brain-eating labyrinth that is
science fiction?
Why bother?
I cannot speak with any certainty, much less authority. I am not
an “educator.” Nor am I a specialist in curriculum.
It occurs to me, though, that the teaching of science fiction
writing fits neatly into the greater scheme of “educating” students, whatever
that means, and any earnest effort in the direction of educating individuals,
whatever the outcome, is worthwhile.
Perhaps “writing,” in the sense we usually mean it, can’t be
taught, but it can be exercised. For some students, even Fiction Writing
majors, “exercise” won’t lead to a professional writing career, or even an
academic career. But they will learn that the putting together of words
into sentences and sentences into paragraphs have consequences, good and bad.
They will also learn that writing is more than just
putting the words together. It is a process of seeing, of sensing – comparing,
evaluating and making choices: skills which can be applied to other pursuits –
like surviving in the twenty-first century.
It is a process of looking through windows.
And a way of looking at the universe.
They will learn that there are definite things that make up a
story, and that the difference between twenty pages of prose and a twenty-page
short story is the author’s ability to utilize and shape those definite things.
We write and read stories not simply because we enjoy them (though that’s good
enough a reason) but because stories are also tools through which we examine
and comprehend the universe we live in (and the universes we don’t live in).
They may not be the best tools, but they’re the tools we keep making and
continue to use. A story fits well in a human-shaped mind.
Science fiction, for those already attuned to imaginative
writing, provides a wide and varied selection of colors to paint with. It
amplifies the tools we already use in plain vanilla “mimetic” fiction. A
science fiction writer not only has to utilize the elements all fiction writers
use, she or he has to kick up the amperage and bring us to the next stage – or
the “next question,” as Theodore Sturgeon would put it.
There’s always a “next question.”
Whether we see science fiction as anticipatory, or metaphoric,
or speculative, teaching students about it, and about writing it, provides more
than four graded credit hours and some diverting reading.
It provides an education – of sorts.
We’re doing more than teaching them to write a few thousand
words of that crazy “armies of killer robots” stuff.
Algis Budrys again: “"The field [SF] has always, whatever its mode,
looked at Mankind in terms of our future, and has told us much about ourselves
because it has always assumed that today is fleeting, and only an aspect of
tomorrow. Whether hopeful or gloomy, it has without question always made the
staggering assumption that tomorrow will be different, and that therefore today may not be everything it seems.” (italics
mine)
We are teaching them a way to learn, and to share what they’ve
learned. Not the only way, but not a
bad way.
That’s not too shabby.
