(more notes toward more stuff
I’ve been thinking about sf and teaching and maybe even living)
I’m
never satisfied that I’m teaching what my students need, but at least at times
I feel like I’m making an effort at it.
Science
fiction is a moving target a.) because it is moving, and b.) because it’s a
target, has been a target, remains a target (in spite of many assurances that
our work has become “respectable,” whatever that means), and may always be a
target – perhaps because no matter what we do, someone who knows better thinks
we should be doing otherwise.
There
are times when a syllabus looks like a death certificate. The good news is that
the patient isn’t dead, just the syllabus. We leave it in the rearview and the
class goes where it needs to go.
The
syllabus doesn’t teach the class – the teacher (for lack of a better word)
teaches, or leads, the class. Or at times the teacher runs just fast enough to
keep from being rolled over – by the students, the subject, or by the teacher’s
own expectations for what the class should or can accomplish.
The
thing I want most from my class – the thing I set out as my highest goal – is
that they leave by the end of the semester thinking like science fiction
writers. What they write is their own business. What they do is their own business. But if they can think like science
fiction writers (and it occurs to me that many people who write science fiction
can’t) they will at least have the equipment not only to write in the form, but
to think of the world around them in ways they wouldn’t have before.
# # #
I
have no trouble calling what I write science fiction. I don’t spend a lot of
time worrying about what it’s called. I’ve noticed a lot students I encounter do worry. “I’m working on this story.
I’m not sure if it’s sci-fi or something else.”
“Are
you finished with it?”
“No.”
“Don’t
worry, then, until it’s done. We’ll figure out what it is when you’ve got
something.”
As
much I love science fiction, and as much as I believe that science fiction will
save our planet, our universe, our culture, and maybe even our lunch, what I
love more is story. A good story means more to me than all the categories you
can come up with.
Back
to the student:
“I’m
working on something. I don’t know if it’s a story or not.”
Oh
dear. Here we go again.
“Keep
working. When it’s ready, and if you’re paying attention, you’ll find out what
it is. You won’t tell if it’s a story. I won’t tell. The thing you’re working on
will tell you if it’s a story or if it’s something else. Keep working.”
I
know that answer may strike many here as unsatisfactory. It is unsatisfactory. Here you are, a
roomful of writers who want to write all the great things you know you can, and
will, write, and I’m telling you that a pile of scribbled letters is going to
tell you what it is.
Remember,
that pile of scribbled letters is yours.
I’m
not trying to be “literary” or “aesthetic” about this. I am, I believe, being
practical. My employers at Columbia College Chicago hired me, I suspect,
because they wanted someone to teach what they believe is a “commercial” form
of writing – i.e. something that someone will pay you to write as compared to something that no one will pay you to
write but will exist for – well, for some
reason. My employers seem to make some distinction between what they think they
want their students to do and what they think I want my students to do. It’s a misapprehension. We both want them
to write the best possible work they’re capable of producing.
Besides,
I don’t think they know what writers of science fiction really get paid. If they ever find out, my butt is on the street.
We’re paid crap compared to what writers in other fields receive.
What
it means is that a good story goes beyond the boundaries of the teachable. I
have colleagues who go on about three- and six-act structure; they’ll go on
about narrative “arcs”; they’ll talk about having an “A” story and a “B” story;
they’ll talk about character and motivation and conflict and complication
(hell, even I do that).
They
can show you how to build the statue that is Galatea – perfectly life-like, but without life.
How
do you make Galatea live and breathe and speak and laugh, and even cry?
The
question is big. The answers are many – or the same answer worded many ways.
I
came upon this wonderful quote from the great screenwriter Emeric Pressburger,
who worked with Michael Powell on such classics as The Red Shoes and Black
Narcissus. He is talking about films, but what he says applies to any kind
of writing:
I think that a film should have a good story, a clear story,
and it should have, if possible, something which is probably the most difficult
thing – it should have a little bit of magic. Magic being untouchable and very
difficult to cast, you can’t deal with it at all. You can only try to prepare
some nests, hoping that a little bit of magic will slide into them.
Yes,
even a science fiction story needs a little bit of magic.
Where
does it come from?
I
don’t know. Like most of the universe, it remains a mystery.
But
very often, most often, the magic comes from you. You give to every story a
little piece of yourself that no other writer can give to that story. It may
come easy or may come with unbearable agony, but it comes from you.
Let
me throw in some words from smart people, so that you don't just have to take
the word of a stupid teacher-guy:
“ . . . The mature science fiction writer doesn’t merely
tell a story about Brick Malloy vs. The Giant Yeastmen from Gethsemane. He
makes a statement through his story. What is the statement? Himself, the
dimension and depth of the man. His statement is seeing what everybody else
sees but thinking what no one else has thought, and having the courage to say
it. The hell of it is that only time will tell whether it was worth saying.” – Alfred Bester, “My
Affair With Science Fiction” (1975)
“It was 1956, and the beginning of a conscious realization
that to limit science fiction to outer space was just that – a limitation, and
that science fiction has and should have as limitless a character as poetry;
further, that it has a real function in inner space. This in turn led me to a
redefinition of science itself, and to an increasing preoccupation with
humanity not only as the subject of science, but as its source. It has become
my joy to find out what makes it tick, especially when it ticks unevenly.” — Theodore Sturgeon, in
his introduction to “And Now the News . . .” in the collection, The Golden Helix
“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks
on wood pulp. The reader reading it makes it live: a live thing, a story.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
“Any bad fiction, no matter the genre, is a wild exercise of
the imagination which explodes in the night of our minds, makes garish
pyrotechnics, then dies, leaving the night blacker than before. But good
fiction is a steady light even if sometimes a small one. By it we walk without
stumbling and we may return at any time to see under its flare other
topographical features we did not understand the first trip.” – Philip Jose Farmer
I
know – if I’m teaching a “genre” class, is that
what I’m supposed to be talking about? Aren’t I supposed to be talking about
tropes and arcs and structure? Isn’t it all about the “Three Rs”: Rockets, Robots
and Rayguns?
No.
No.
No. No.
Not
necessarily so.
It
can be, but it doesn’t have to be.
The
thing that probably most infuriates my colleagues who have no interest in
science fiction – or any forms of “popular” literature – is their belief that
it doesn’t have to be good writing,
by their standards, to be “successful” – by their standards. What those
standards are is an argument for another time, but let’s say we can agree on
what constitutes the basics of good writing. They have a point. All you have to
do is review the quality of prose in most bestsellers to see that a lot of bad
writing makes a lot of money for someone. They will also see that bad writing
is not the exclusive domain of science fiction – in fact, our standards are
much higher than they are in many other forms. And yet the belief persists that
science fiction depends mostly on “ideas” illustrated through cheap dramatic
conventions, which makes none of it “real” or “serious” literature.
And
very often, to be honest, they’re right.
This
isn’t to say the work has no value,
but that it engages in a currency they do not recognize.
I
believe it’s possible and even necessary, to write to the higher goal, i.e. it
takes as many sheets of paper (or equivalent electrons) and as much ink to
write a good book as a bad or mediocre one. A box of good books weighs as much as
a box of bad ones. Why not fill that box with the best work possible?
The
coolest thing about science fiction is that, so long as we keep “story”
somewhere in the upper corner of our imaginations, we can invent the form as we
go along. And we can imbue it with a finesse and nuance it never had before. Why
I maintain such prominence for “story” is a subject for another time.
We
are situated on the corner of Popular Street and Personal Avenue, and the cross
traffic comes from both ways. In a culture that is changing in so many ways, it’s
not a bad place to be.
