After the Fall (term) ...

Traditionally (well, for a year at least), I try to assess how things went during the fall semester. It was a hectic term, where I taught three classes for a time, as well as “running” the writing workshop for the Windycon local sf convention, as well as a writers group made up mostly of my former short story writing students. Add to that writing a couple of book columns for a science fiction magazine. I did a lot of reading and wasn’t able to get my own fiction-writing projects, the frustration over which I am still trying to cope with. 

Not only that, but the courses I taught at the college level were not exactly my “home turf.” Fantasy writing is in the neighborhood of science fiction, but not quite the same thing – otherwise, why call one “fantasy” and the other “science fiction”? I didn’t feel at home, and for good reason: I wasn’t. Not in the way I feel at home with science fiction. 

It wasn’t that I felt unfamiliar with the forms and conventions of fantasy, it’s just there are so many, and so many forms differ from one another. The gamut runs from Franz Kafka to Brandon Sanderson, from Lord Dunsany to J. K. Rowling. My predecessor set up her class to teach fantasy writing as a publishing category in popular fiction. Up until then, that’s what I believed her students wanted. I believed they wanted to be the next Patrick Rothfuss, or Tomi Adeyemi, or Django Wexler, or Kelly Link. Or something. 

Instead, I found that many of my students don’t even know who these writers are. And whatever it is they want to write isn’t necessarily geared to what is currently selling in the publishing world. Frankly, half the class seemed to have trouble identifying what fantasy literature is, exactly (or even approximately). A number of them told me their reading of fantasy was drawn from the worlds of manga, graphic stories, and gaming. And a couple of students seemed to have little familiarity with any kind of fantasy beyond the oldest and dustiest examples; they were of a “literary” bent, and were taking this class to explore what they might possibly do in the form. 

I don’t wish to disparage manga, or graphic stories, or gaming, or literary writers. Except for the latter, I don’t feel comfortably familiar enough with any of the forms to express any opinions one way or another. Luckily, I don’t have to, but for a while I wasn’t sure of that. The role of a teacher somehow gets inexorably muddled with the role of an “authority.” After all these years teaching science fiction, and short fiction too for that matter, I should have known better, but it didn’t occur to me soon enough. 

In fact, it occurred to me to me only after I lay in bed one early morning before class, worrying about what I was going to do, what I should do, and what I thought I was expected to do. I worried and worried and couldn’t get to sleep until a clear, sharp, direct little voice sounded in my head: “Hey, this isn’t your class. It’s your students’ class. You’ve got sixteen other minds at work on these same problems. Now, some of them are just trying to figure out how to get through this class with a passing grade and the least amount of effort, but the best of your group not only are here to learn something, but to contribute something to the conversation you started in the very first session: What is this kind of literature we call fantasy?” 

What I can’t teach them, they can teach me.
I felt incredibly relieved. 

Of course, it’s never as easy as that sounds. On the contrary, it’s total chaos and madness, but I get to share in the process. But that process, of necessity, includes trial and error, and getting things wrong. 

This was also true for the Fiction Writing Workshop: Beginning I taught. Trial and error. Getting things wrong. True, I managed to do a number of things right, and I believe that with a few notable exceptions my students did their best. They were a great group, too. I had at least three students who were already capable of work that could be seriously considered for publication; two more who were very close to putting out publishable work. The one thing I never have to worry about at Columbia is having enough good students for a class. Yes, there are plenty of students who aren’t uniformly great at every facet of the creative process, but still, so many of these students are extraordinarily gifted. Even an academic bumbler like me can look like a good teacher. 

But I wouldn’t want to be judged so on my performance this term. If anything, right now, I feel less than competent.  

But I know, I think, what I can do better next time. 

The learning process extends to me. If I’m to learn anything at this gig, I have to allow for my own mistakes. I have to allow that I can learn from them. And allow that I can do better next time. 

For the Fiction Writing Workshop, I give myself a B-. For the Fantasy Writing Workshop, a C+. Short Story Writing is a non-credit continuing ed class, Pass/Fail … I think I pass, but after 28 years, I should be able to get it right.  

Mostly, at least. 

If I teach these classes next year, I’ll be going for As. 

This spring, I’m scheduled to teach Foundations in Creative Writing, which I’ve never taught before. I expect to make more miscalculations, but I already have a batch of ideas that will at least be fun to try. 

My science fiction writing class was canceled because not enough students signed up for it. So it goes. I guess most students don’t think science fiction has anything to teach them anymore. A science fiction writer like me should feel a little bummed out – and I did. It took me a while to remember that one of the most important aspects of my view of what science fiction is – is really – rests on sf’s ability to subvert the norms of any system or culture it finds itself in. Here at CCC, that means cultural, literary, and academic. 

If you’re a science fiction writer, or even just a science fiction thinker, you don’t shed that viewpoint when you leave the science fiction cave, so to speak, and venture out into all the little elsewheres available. 

Wherever I go, I take my science fiction with me. 

If the students won’t come to science fiction, I’ll simply have to take science fiction to them.  

It may not be much, but it’s what I do.

Notes Toward a More Coherent Essay, Someday, Maybe (Part 1, on the Fourth)

You know, writing something that is worth reading takes a long time. Maybe not for you, but for me I need at least a month to clear a comma from a lengthy prepositional phrase. I don’t want to just throw words out into the pixelverse. I want to write something that someone else might understand and maybe even appreciate.

In the meantime, I’ll scribble out this or scrawl out that – writing replies or replying to someone else’s queries. Some of these things echo what I’d like to say if I had the time to sit around and do what writers are supposed to do – and nothing else.

For example.

A writer friend for many years is getting back into the harness, sold a nonfiction piece and a short story to one of the pro-zines recently, has been asking me for advice – on particular stories and the field in general. He also read one of my recent book review columns for Galaxy’s Edge magazine (Am I a book reviewer? I am now. That doesn’t mean I’m a book critic or a scholar or a literary essayist. Circumstance has so far spared me from those fates). But he decided, since I was there and convenient to ask: “Is there something missing in my apprehension, something that will block my progress as a writer, if I simply cannot fathom some of the works of the so-called greats in the literary sf field?” He continues, I am willing to give PK Dick another try. But honestly, I have tried Le Guin, Delaney, Russ, others, and in each case I cannot go more than a few pages before putting the book aside, confused and irritated.”

He went on to describe a recent encounter with Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, where he got halfway through before giving up “in despair.” He liked the TV adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven, though, and thought maybe he should try again with that.

I replied that maybe he should. I think The Lathe of Heaven is still a favorite of mine (except on those days when The Left Hand of Darkness takes over). I also admitted that at times I find The Dispossessed a little too ponderous for me, but let’s not pursue that any further now, since I know many who consider it a masterpiece and love it dearly. It’s a great book no matter how I might stumble through it. The fault is all mine.

But my friend asked an honest question, so I tried to answer as honestly as I could:

That there’s so many books in the field of science fiction that we don’t want to read is part of the beauty of the form. Authors can write in so many ways, incorporate so many styles and techniques, and it’s still science fiction. To speak briefly of other “difficult” writers, I don’t think any other literary category, except perhaps fantasy (however one defines the boundaries of that field), contains the equivalent of Delany’s Dhalgren, or Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus, or Lafferty’s Past Master, or Joanna Russ’s Picnic on Paradise. Etc., etc., etc.

Science fiction is a coat of many colors, but we don’t have to like every shade of them.

Sf has had its crews of cultural movers and shakers over the years. … I try not to judge books by critics. A book review is a creative response to a book by one person. Often, I'll like a book lauded by a reviewer – but not for the same reasons.

Reviews and awards, at times, are a way for a culture to, consciously or unconsciously, try to impose a uniformity upon literature. Some might see it as “quality control,” and that’s fine. I’ve nothing against quality control (depending upon the qualities being, or not being, controlled), But in general, I don’t think much of uniformity – and neither does literature (in the widest sense of the term, without the capital L). Literature, in the widest sense, is bigger than that. It’s bigger than everything – almost. If we can read what we love and love what we read, the literary world would be a whole lot better off.

And any time I feel like I’m being forced to read a book – either in school, by compulsion, or through the influence of peers and “betters,” it distracts from any enjoyment I may receive from the task, if enjoyment is to be found there at all.

I want to meet the book on its own terms, and not the terms as defined by its supporters or detractors. Exceptions granted. But the whole notion of having books shoved into my face doesn’t help me figure out what I do or do not enjoy or what I value in my reading.

So, I wouldn't worry too much about what one “should” read in the field over what one wants to read.

If any of those highly-touted books keep calling to you, you’ll get to them, when the time is right. And if you don’t care for them, the “Lit Police” can’t take you away. They have no tin badges. They have no authority. Reading should be an exploration and an adventure, but it should probably contain equal measures of the familiar and the uncharted.

The best thing about books is that you can open them and go nearly anywhere.

The second best thing about books is that you can also close them and put them back on the shelf, whispering, “Not this one. Not now. Maybe not ever.” If reading can’t be an exercise in freedom, what’s the bloody point?

So there.

And … Speaking of freedom, have a wonderful Fourth.

Doing It Right, Maybe

Science fiction, if you’re doing it right, is reality in tight focus.

That’s the only sentence left from my first draft of this post, which for me was getting on a soapbox and complaining. (Okay, so I threw in a few more sentences once I got rolling, but I really did want to change the tone from a grumpy tirade to something more.) I looked it over and decided that complaining will get me (and you, and everybody else) nowhere. I want to do more. I want to actually understand what’s going on.

In the past couple of years, I’ve had a number of students who’ve wanted to indulge in the accoutrements of science fiction without really taking advantage of what can, potentially, be at the heart of this form. They want the smell of the burger, but not the meat – or, when it comes to science fiction, they want the rockets, ray guns and robots, but not the who, what, when, where, and why. They want to play in the dirt, but they don’t want to tell you what’s in the dirt, or where it came from, or why anyone would want to play in it in the first place. It’s a game. It’s a joke. It’s an evasion.

Escape literature is one thing. It helps define what we’re escaping from. Evasion literature is another. It altogether denies the thing we’re escaping from.

So … why? Why go for the easy stuff, other than that it’s easy? The problem I have with a literature of evasion is that it always travels on the same tracks, stops at all the same stations. It moves right on schedule. The changes are superficial. Red shirts become blue shirts. Desert planets become ocean planets. Robots become scary aliens, and vice versa. But it’s always the same trip taking us to same place. So what?

So bloody what?

A literature allegedly devoted to wonder and awe cannot run on schedule. It cannot rely on conventions. It should not settle for competency and mediocrity, even if that’s what sells. This is not to say there should be no schedules, no conventions, no competency. But somewhere, somehow, someone’s got to mess with the rules, switch the tracks, surprise us without getting us all killed. Someone has to write more than a variation to a theme, perhaps change the theme altogether. And when that theme becomes a convention, subvert that one as well.

Then again – we’re talking about young writers here. And I have to remember what was important for me as a young writer. In honesty, I have to say that nothing mattered to me more than what was called at the time “emotional expression.” I think that’s what we still call it. We want feelings to guide every element of storytelling we take on: character, setting, motivation, conflict and complications, resolution. In one sense, we’re right. Feelings are what we have to return to when we’ve labored at everything else. And labor we must, because none of this easy, especially for writers whose main influences are graphic stories, TV, and – dare I say it? – popular fiction.

I don’t want to denigrate “popular” fiction categorically. The best of what sells is usually something that transcends category, and in doing so creates its own niche. But it also narrows one’s perception as to what can be done in the field of written prose, not to mention science fiction in particular. There are books in the “unpopular” category that can do as much to widen a young writer’s perspectives as anything sitting in the racks at the airport concourse newsstand.

The problem with young writers relying so greatly on “feelings” alone is that young writers, in general, have a blurry, indistinct notion of what those feelings are. They are too busy “feeling” them to successfully render them on a page. It’s like trying to render a self-portrait without the aid of a mirror, and more – while one is in the process of doing something else, like running, or operating heavy machinery, or making a salad, or playing a video game.

It’s the process of writing, the actual work of putting the thing together word by word, that helps makes sense (every way in which that term can be used) of the raw feelings we feel so desperate to convey in our work.

When we’re young, we don’t know so much about writing – no mystery in that. We learn by doing, and the more we do, the more we learn. Or so we hope.

The truth that gets forgotten or overlooked is that when we’re young, we don’t know much about feelings, either. We know we have them, and that they shape us and direct us, but that’s not saying a lot. We can fly as passengers in a plane and know nothing of the basics of aerodynamics, either. We still get to places, though we don’t know how.

Writing is a place we can learn more about our feelings. We can examine them, test them, put them to work. We may not be conscious that this is what we’re doing, but we do it. We write to learn, whether we’re aware of it or not.

And one of the things that has most intrigued me about science fiction in particular, apart from the process of fiction-making at any level, is its natural tendency to put what we know to the test. When Philip K. Dick tried to “explain” science fiction in his speech, “How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” included in the collection I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, he boiled it down to two questions: 1.) What is Reality? and 2.) “What constitutes an authentic human being?” – this second I place in quotes because Dick’s wording is important. Dick has perhaps oversimplified the issue and defined what science fiction is for him, though not for everyone else, but a truth hovers over his assessment. Science fiction does – or at least can – include as much metaphysics as physics, but is not necessarily about the metaphysics. It’s about us. It’s about what we believe and what we desire – and what we feel. It’s about all the things we look for and often discover when we read what’s often referred to as “realistic” fiction, but then takes that and applies an even sharper lens to this “reality.” It allows for alternatives to the status quo. It allows for glimpses into what we cannot know – the future – through what we do know, or think we know.

At its best, science fiction can do this.

Would that we do it more often, especially now, when “status quo” and conventions have become the objects of constant struggles – when science and technology may play an even more important role in shaping a world culture than even money and power. Science fiction need not be a limitation, not a simplification, of human experience, but an opportunity to expand our experience and comprehension of it.

And our feelings toward it.

If we do it right.

The Semester Commences

(more notes toward more stuff I’ve been thinking about sf and teaching and maybe even living)

I have a truly fine class this term. They haven’t read much in the field, which would infuriate some of my colleagues, but several of my students have answered that complaint very well already.

“I haven’t read a lot of science fiction but … that’s why I’m here.”

Students are students. That’s what they do.

And I know, in some instinctual way, they won’t let me down. Which puts the burden on me, but that’s okay. I’m looking forward to the challenge. If I’m lucky, every class teaches me something new, and I’m looking forward to what I’ll learn this time.

I ran across a posting on Facebook, from another teacher, who was trying to work out a comprehensive definition of “speculative fiction.”

Speculative fiction is what you call science fiction when you’re taking it to meet your parents for dinner. Yes, I’m being facetious, but you know what I mean.

I never define speculative/science fiction. I let my students do that in the first session. Then I check with them at the end of the term and see if their definitions have changed.

Science fiction, contrary to its strongest defenders, is a living form. It changes and reshapes itself as the world changes and reshapes itself. If one can successfully define it in a way that makes all other definitions superfluous, call the undertaker. We’re outta here.

In the meantime, I’m rolling a number of things around in my head, juggling them around to see what comes up.

What we want from life is magic.

What we want from science is magic.

If we want to figure out where we’re going, and write about it, look for what we want, and what it will do to us.

If you want to write about future science and technology, look for magic. Look for mystery and miracles.

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” – Sir Arthur C. Clarke

“I am only really interested in a fiction of miracles.” – Flannery O’Connor

All great stories are love stories.

All great stories are about loneliness.

The two sentences above do not exclude each other.

A good story is a good story, whether it is based upon objective reality or a subjective interpretation of reality. A good story, however, does not necessarily result in a good reality. Fiction remains fiction, no matter how many people believe in it.

But if you have to believe in a fiction, at least pick a good one.

We return you now to our regularly scheduled programming …

A "Bomp" May be in Your Future

And so, another saur story comes into the world.

I’m very glad and relieved to say that “The Man Who Put the Bomp” will be in the March/April 2017 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

What took me so long?

Well might you ask.

You may recall that “Orfy” came out in 2010. That’s a long span between stories, isn’t it?

Life always gets in the way of a good story, at least for me.

Many people like these stories, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Another group of people are not so fond of them. Well, you can’t please everyone. Those folks usually talk about them being maudlin or sentimental, and I wonder what it is in my work that comes off that way. I’m not particularly maudlin, not very sentimental – not really. If anything, I would think folks would object to my stories because they’re just crazy. Bioengineered dinosaurs! DIY robots! Dinosaurs sending messages to “Space Guys”! Misanthropic stegosaurs! Tyrannosaurs writing novels under pseudonyms! Sauropods in cardboard castles and shoebox labs!

What insanity is this?

Honestly, I don’t know. I paint what I see.

I see creatures trying to recover from a bad experience with humanity. I happen to know a lot of folks who can empathize with that situation. Humanity is an experience from which many of us need to recover. Every time it looks like we’ve found the right path to a sort of Arthur C. Clarke-ian transcendence, we scoot down a blind alley of ignorance and despair. It’s like we can’t help ourselves.

A number of people insist my saur stories aren’t science fiction, but fantasy. Call them what you like, but I write science fiction. It’s just that the science may not be in the places you expect to find it, but it’s there.

A lot of readers who like the stories like Axel. A lot of people who don’t like the stories don’t like them because they don’t like Axel. A lot of readers on both sides mistake me for Axel. Would that I were. Maybe then it wouldn’t take me so long to write a saur story.

When we write, we incorporate many parts of ourselves to fill in the places we need for our characters. At times I can be Axel. At times I am Agnes. I would like to be Doc more often, and would like to be Tibor as little as possible, though too often I find myself humming the Tiborean National Anthem.

I have never been Geraldine – well, maybe once or twice.

Science fiction, like any other literary form, is a way to exercise our need to tell a story. A story can be simple and straightforward. It can even be superficial. But, as E. M. Forster pointed out many years ago, you’ve got to have one. A story is a construction. A story is artifice. A story is a tool. A story is a structure. But it can be more than all these things combined, if you’re lucky, if you’re doing it right, if you’re willing to risk looking like a complete fool when you’re done with the thing. And science fiction, at least for me, is the form that is most flexible – that can take any shape, imitate old shapes or create new ones.

You have to keep looking for the story until the story finds you. Once it has found you, the best thing you can do is follow it, trust it – trust it with all your heart, craft, skill and anything you have that passes for talent. Trust it enough that you’ll abandon all those gifts to keep the story on its trajectory.

Whether I’ve managed to do that with this novella, I can’t imagine. The great Chicago poet Paul Carroll used to say, “Our poems are wiser than we are.” I would respectfully add that our stories are also wiser than we ... even when they’re stupid.

Blast From the Past

It’s been four years almost to the day since the event that inspired this piece I originally wrote for the SFWA Bulletin, back in the day, occurred. It was already old news when I finished writing it. Since then, the conversation, if we can call it that, has moved on to various squabbles, riots, brawls, puppies, ponies and dragons, as to who’s doing what in sf, who’s doing what to sf, and why this is bad and this is good and why the other folks are not only wrong, but detestable people with bad hygiene.

The one thing in this piece that may still feel current is the opening and closing metaphor: we’re on a bridge and the folks coming the other way are shouting, “Turn back! Turn back!” Perhaps it has always been this way. Perhaps, as well, it seems much more desperate because this time we’re really on the verge of a critical juncture in the way we think of science fiction, and how the rest of the world thinks of it.

I’m fond of telling my students that science fiction is more like a public park, where all are free to play, and not a private club where you have to fill out an application, or are recommended by a member in good standing, or qualify by having a minimum income, or education, or a golden ticket extruded from the wrapping of a candy bar. Perhaps I have been naïve in thinking our public park can regulate itself; that bullies and cliques would not try to exclude those they deem unworthy or unnecessary. That doesn’t bother me. I have no trouble being wrong, no trouble being naïve. I’ve been both many times and so far, I’ve survived. I believe, if I can’t say I know, that the public park is the direction we’re going, and nothing can stop it. Fight it, complain, resist, hold your breath – you can’t stop it.

Science fiction is something greater than all its constituent factions, and we can’t “take it” to one place or another we think it should go. It takes us, and the thing which is at once glorious and terrifying about science fiction is that we don’t know where it’s going next.

The Invasion of the MFAs

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say at the outset: I am not now nor have I ever been an MFA. I do, however, teach in a program that awards MFAs (among other degrees), and that some of my students (mercy upon them) will receive graduate degrees in the writing of fiction.

#             #             #

There is a scene that opens Andrzej Wajda’s deeply tragic 2007 World War II film, Katyn. It’s 1939. Polish refugees fleeing the Nazi advance from the west arrive at a bridge. On the bridge already are a multitude of Polish refugees fleeing the Soviet advance from the west. Both groups meet in the middle and shout to each other, “Turn back! Turn back! They’re coming!”

Yes. It can feel like that at times.

What can feel like “that”?

Well, if you’re reading this publication, you’re probably aware of the uncertainty and tension which has become part of the science fiction world: for writers, readers, “publishing professionals” – the “community.” To push understatement to a new level of absurdity, let’s say many people in said community are not in agreement with one another – including who’s in the community and who isn’t.

Science fiction has never been a stranger to controversy. The difference between “then” (wherever you want to place that marker) and “now” (meaning, well, right this minute) is how quickly, and widely, our electronic media can disseminate those controversies – and how public they become. Not to mention how volatile.

In such an atmosphere, one would think discretion would be the favored course. And one would be wrong.

Oh, so wrong.

NO “ROSIE” PICTURE

Let me give you a “for instance.” It happened back in 2012, at Chicon 7, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Chicago. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and one might assume I’d just let it go, but new stories in the media keep reminding me of this instance, so I can’t. Not completely.

I was asked to appear on a panel called “Teaching and Science Fiction,” which, along with me, consisted of teachers and “educational professionals.” 

It seemed (excepting of me) a panel fairly determined to agree on at least one major point: from their perspective, the main purpose of science fiction was to interest children in science and technology; once inspired, students, therefore, would continue their love of learning by majoring in scientific and technological fields.

The differences on the panel were more tactical than strategic. With one notable exception (which I’ll bring in later), you could easily come away with the impression that the primary (if not sole) vocation of a science fiction writer is to be a propagandist for the sciences.

Science fiction as an engine of indoctrination.

The science fiction writer as word-painter of “Rosie the Riveter” posters for bioengineering and astrophysics.

It’s not a bad thing to be. Especially when we have so many gatherers of statistics telling us through the media that we in “the States” are falling behind in science education. A lot of presumptions are there: that nations are in competition to educate; that “education” may have peculiar and particular goals that have to be met, like points on a checklist or hurdles on a track; and, less explicitly, this education is to be gained in order to achieve some sort of extra-educational rewards, like space travel, artificial intelligence, bigger (or smaller) TVs; cures for all known diseases (don’t forget the Immortality Pills); new sources of cheap energy; sustainable methods of food production . . .

These are all admirable things that I would in no way impugn or cajole.

And if we were to include that science fiction might play a role instilling within students an interest in the social sciences, and economics, and even – dare I say? – politics, I am even more inspired to make my Rosie the Gene Sequencer even rosier.

But – no.

It’s not a bad thing to be – just not the only thing.

The sole other concern voiced about what science fiction might accomplish in the classroom was that it might lure non-readers into the world of books. Again, this is a laudable goal. In no way would I ever dispute it.

I was afraid, though, the implication here was that once young readers were lured in by science fiction, these educators would quickly hand them a technical manual – that a love of reading – a love of science fiction – in and of itself wasn’t enough.

THIS CAN’T BE LOVE

I confess, I stumbled through my responses to the other panelists and the questions from the audience (and a good-sized audience it was). I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to sound like I was at war with them. I’m not. We all love science fiction. We all think science fiction should be in schools. We all think science fiction has a very important role to play in the education of all people, with as wide a definition of “people” as you can imagine.

My point, in a nutshell, however poorly expressed, was, “Why stop there?”

I bumbled my way through an explanation of what I meant, wanting to say that, as okay as it is for science fiction to inspire students to become great scientists, it isn’t wrong or counter-productive to also inspire kids to simply love science fiction.

Or to become science fiction writers – hell, to become writers.

And thinkers.

And informed do-ers who, in any occupation, can look at the world the way science fiction writers do: taking a long, critical gaze at our reality and saying, “This isn’t the only way it can be.”

No limitations.

Granted, in some ways I’m coming from the other side of the equation: I teach science fiction writing. They’re teaching English, or reading, or “communications,” or maybe social studies, or even “literature.” They deal with the product after it’s been processed and packaged. I’m teaching students how to make the product.

Put another way, I knew the hamburger when it was still a cow.

As such, I try not to direct my students to any particular goal beyond the creation of interesting, compelling, real stories. It’s their job to figure out the direction of science fiction. They’re who the future belongs to.

Science fiction started out as one thing, then comes Hugo Gernsback. It became something else after John W. Campbell, Jr. enters the scene. Then a Theodore Sturgeon comes along, or a Robert Sheckley, or a Hal Clement, or an Ursula K. Le Guin, or an Octavia Butler, or a Ted Chiang, and so on. Once they have arrived, science fiction isn’t what it was before. It may contain what it was, but it’s also something more.

And this, apparently, is where we get into trouble.

A SENSE OF “NO WONDER”

Someone on the panel, in regard to finding new books that would inspire students to invent jet-packs and Immortality Pills, bemoaned the current state of science fiction and insisted that the “sense of wonder” was gone. Where were the books that would do for the current generation what the books of her generation did for them?

Science fiction was all “negative” and “depressing,” she said. Why can’t science fiction writers do something more “positive” and “uplifting”?

Okay – you all know the quick answer to that one: because science fiction writers, like any artists, have to work with the world they inhabit. You may have noticed a dearth of “positive” or “uplifting” news – not an absence, but a definite shortage. Insisting on optimistic science fiction is an admirable goal, but in the current circumstances it’s somewhat like asking the inheritor of a dungheap not only to clean up the mess, but to smile while doing so.

So, in response to this teacher’s appeal, I tried to describe a story I have my students read: Paolo Bacigalupi’s “Pump Six.” It’s about the breakdown of things (primarily the water pumps supplying the greater Manhattan area), about living in a polluted world, where BHP endocrine disruptors are wreaking havoc on human growth and development. The protagonist is Travis Alvarez, who could be the inheritor of Campbell’s or Heinlein’s “capable man” status. He’s a high school dropout, but he knows how things work and he can learn swiftly and effectively. Unfortunately, the world is breaking down at a rate perhaps much swifter than he can learn to save it. Permit me to be a “spoiler” and tell you the last image of the story is of Travis, sitting in his kitchen, with a stack of pumping system maintenance manuals, not knowing where to begin with such an enormous problem, and the devastating consequences should he fail – he opens one of the manuals and turns to a page.

A bleak universe? Certainly. An “impossible” problem? By all means. Depressing? Negative?

No.

Travis is heroic. He is doing what heroes have always done. Will he succeed? Who knows? Travis is facing the problem squarely and won’t be thwarted.

The response from the teacher: “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Why is all this new science fiction so depressing?”

It gets better.

INVADERS AMONG US

“You know what it is?” she adds. “It’s the invasion of the MFAs.”

Okay, I don’t remember verbatim her elaboration of what she meant. To my ears it sounded like this: writers from MFA programs were coming in and spoiling the science fiction she grew up with. MFAs, with all their literary pretensions and sensibilities were making a mess of things.

That alone took me aback. What made it even more disarming was that no one in that room really challenged the assertion.

My first response was dismissive. My second response was to wonder if I was missing something. From where could such a perception arise? Was there any truth to it?

I judge my effectiveness as a teacher not by what I know but by what I readily admit I don’t know (which is a hell of a lot), so that I can pursue an answer.

Along with being a SFWAn, I’m a member of the Modern Language Association. I’m also a member of the National Council of Teachers of English. More relevantly, I belong to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs – where the MFA and Creative Programs dwell. I read their journals. I attend their conferences. If the world of creative writing is raising martial banners and rolling out siege engines to invade science fiction and take it over, they are doing so behind my back – or plotting somewhere in deep cellars (or secret faculty lounges).

Or maybe they’ve already staked out the field, like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Maybe we’re being turned into MFAs as we sleep.

I decided to check it out (the motto of the late Chicago City News Bureau: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out”).

NAMES NOT CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT

I took out a bunch of “Best of the Year” anthologies, edited by Gardner Dozois and David Hartwell. I looked through the contents of Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, edited by Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. I looked through the recommended reading lists of Locus magazine. I threw in a few extra names of some writers who may not be young and starting out but are far from Grandmaster status.

The list isn’t up to scientific/demographic standards, but it isn’t selectively cherry-picked either. I just tried to pick out about fifty-plus names (fifty-five, to be exact) of writers whose work has been significantly cited for its quality, and see how many of them are “invaders.”

What the hell. Why not?

Vandana Singh – an Assistant Professor of Physics.

Aliette de Bodard – software engineer.

Ken Liu – Practicing attorney and software developer.

Aliette de Bodard – software engineer.

Ken Liu – Practicing attorney and software developer.

Hannu Rajaniemi – From Finland. His Ph.D. is in String Theory. Co-founder of ThinkTank Maths, applied mathematics consultants.

Madeline Ashby – A “foresight consultant.”

Tony Ballantyne – Went to school to study math; has taught Math and Internet Technology.

Pat MacEwen – Physical Anthropologist.

Yoon Ha Lee – Master’s degree in secondary math education.

Deborah Walker – Museum curator and science journalist.

Catherine H. Shaffer – Writes for BioWorld Today and freelances science journalism in various places, including Analog.

Nikki J. North – Degree in Computer and Information Science and works as a web programmer.

Mercurio D. Rivera – Former Manhattan litigator.

Ann Leckie – Music degree. Also a Clarion grad.

Benjamin Crowell – Ph.D. in Physics from Yale. Teaches Physics at Fullerton College.

Charles Stross – Degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science.

Paolo Bacigalupi – Journalist and webmaster. Degree in East Asian Studies.

Neal Asher – Machinist, machine programmer and gardener.

David Levine – IT professional and Clarion West grad.

Oliver Morton – Science writer and editor.

Marissa Lingen – Trained in physics and mathematics; worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

Karl Schroeder – Consultant on the future of technology.

James L. Cambias – Has worked in the role-playing game industry. He has a degree in the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine from the University of Chicago.

Peter Watts – A marine mammal biologist.

Cory Doctorow – Is Cory Doctorow. Next question.

Karen Traviss – Clarion graduate. And, citing Wikipedia: “She worked as both a journalist and defense correspondent before turning her attention to writing fiction, and has also served in both the Territorial Army and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service.”

Alistair Reynolds – studied Physics and Astronomy at Newcastle. University, received his Ph.D. from St. Andrews University and worked as a research astronomer for the European Space Agency.

Brenda Cooper – Collaborated with Larry Niven, which, I believe, is the equivalent of the “Get Out of Jail Free” card to the anti-MFA crowd.

Liz Williams – Card reader on Brighton Pier; educational administrator in Kazakhstan.

Ted Kosmatka – Has held many jobs in northwest Indiana (and yes, that includes working in a steel mill); currently working in the gaming industry. His resume is conspicuously free of any lurking MFAs.

Elizabeth Bear – Graduated from the University of Connecticut; has taught at many workshops. Many jobs in many disciplines. No evidence of MFA hidden in closet.

Mary Robinette Kowal – Puppeteer of great repute. Held two SFWA offices, including Vice President.

Tobias Buckell – Clarion graduate. Once stated in an interview that he started taking writing seriously in college but with the added observation that this interest arose in spite of rather than in pursuit of his studies.

Catherynne M. Valente – BA in Classics; and since she is known mostly a fantasy writer, maybe she’s clear to carry as many MFAs as she desires.

Alaya Dawn Johnson – Studied East Asian languages and cultures at Columbia University; worked as a journalist and in book publishing.

Kage Baker – the late author worked in theater and in the insurance industry. I found little about her post-secondary education, but I have a hunch that if MFAs weren’t given out in Elizabethan studies, she figured she could do without one.

M. Rickert – Has worked many jobs and has attended many workshops, including John Kessel’s at Sycamore Hill, but no MFA as far as I can detect.

John Scalzi – Of the many things he may accused of, one rap you can’t pin on Mr. Scalzi is that he’s an MFA. But for those who must know, though he studied with Saul Bellow when he was a student at the University of Chicago (uh-oh), he never received his intended degree with that writing program (according to his Wikipedia bio). He was editor of the Chicago Maroon for a while and worked as a movie critic for the Fresno Bee.

Cat Sparks – No background on her degrees, but she’s an active SFWAn, attended the inaugural Clarion South workshop in Australia, has won a passel of Ditmar and Aurealis awards.

Paul Cornell – Got his start in writing doing Dr. Who tie-in work.

David Moles – Sturgeon Award winner. Has degrees from UC Santa Cruz and Oxford but can’t find what they’re in. Closet MFA? Oxford, as far as I can discover, does not award MFAs in Creative Writing.

Adam Roberts – A Senior Reader in English at London University. Not an MFA, but he has an office right down the corridor from them. Are English degrees to be in logged in with MFAs? You might try, but the English profs will fight you.

Daryl Gregory – Double major in English and Theater from the University of Illinois.

Genevieve Valentine – English degree.

Joe Pitkin – Teaches English at Clark College but “belongs to the Evolutionary Ecology Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver,” according to David Hartwell.

Carrie Vaughn – Has a Master’s Degree in English Literature and also is a grad of Odyssey Writing Workshop.

Karen Heuler – Has written across a number of genres, including “literary,” so there may be an MFA back there we don’t know about.

Nnedi Okorafor – Professor of Creative Writing, first at Chicago State University. Now Associate Professor of English at SUNY – Buffalo. MFA? Hah! No – a Ph.D.! How do we count that one?

Charlie Jane Anders – Has run the Writers with Drinks series and was an editor/contributor at io9 – too cool to even measure.

Brit Mandelo – has worked as a senior fiction editor for Strange Horizons.

Rachel Swirsky – Hey! We caught one! She went to the Iowa Writers Workshop (as did Joe Haldeman), but she also attended Clarion West.

Cat Rambo – (form her website) “I came through the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005, where I studied with Octavia Butler, Andy Duncan, L. Timmel DuChamp, Connie Willis, Gordon Van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick. I’ve also got an MA in Writing from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where I studied with John Barth and Stephen Dixon.”

Indrapramit Das – Yes, an MFA. He is also a graduate of Clarion West and a recipient of the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship.

Lavie Tidhar – A recipient of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize given out by the European Space Agency. He is widely traveled, but I haven’t found out much of his educational background, so the book ain’t closed on his MFAnitude.

Ian Creasey – From his website: “I began writing when rock and roll stardom failed to return my calls.”

RETURN TO YOUR HOMES – NOTHING HAPPENING HERE

I’m not trying to produce overwhelming evidence for anything pro or con, up or down, in or out. But a quick list of recent, notable writers of science fiction does not turn up much to support anyone’s belief that “literary” MFA-types are taking over science fiction.

And what if they were? Is there a belief out there that all MFAs fit a certain stereotype? How do you feel about folks in academia who stereotype science fiction writers? Is the pot calling the kettle black or is turnabout fair play?

The voices of contemporary science fiction come from a diversity of places. That should be encouraging news, not a reason to fold up the tents or raise the drawbridge.

I don’t believe any of the writers mentioned above have been cited for being “depressing” or “negative” in their work. Frankly, I haven’t seen any specific names cited at all – not from any writers who are published in the more recognized journals of the field or by major publishers of science fiction.

Well, then, who is depressing and negative?

Stories and blogs have appeared on the internet with headlines like Dear Science Fiction Writers: Stop Being So Pessimistic, Stop Writing Dystopian Sci-Fi – It’s Making Us All Fear Technology, and Enough With Dystopias: It’s Time For Sci-Fi Writers To Start Imagining Better Futures. These headlines have appeared, respectively, under the banners of The Smithsonian, Wired and The Huffington Post: fairly respectable places.

From the tone of those headlines, one would think every science fiction writer pecking words into their devices were starting with nihilism on their very first pages and dropping the mood from there. Who are these poor souls? Perhaps we can send them some medication.

The Smithsonian article’s only cited examples are the film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road (which makes one wonder if the author of the article knows that the novel exists) and the cable series, The Walking Dead.

The Wired article’s cited examples are two: McCarthy again, and the television series Battlestar Galactica.

The headline of the third article was repudiated by its author, Kathryn Cramer, who co-edited a number of Year’s Best SF anthologies and has written extensively about science fiction for the New York Review of Science Fiction and other journals. The examples she cites are almost entirely positive. She mentions Bacigalupi’s “Pump Six,” Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and the film adaptation of The Hunger Games as examples of dystopian science fiction, but adds that these works continue a long tradition of cautionary tales in the field and doing so admirably. The other examples she cites come from the anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future. The anthology is the initial venture of Project Hieroglyph, spearheaded by Neal Stephenson to promote “technological optimism” in the field. That use of “optimism” might strike one as a critique of current science fiction indulging in the opposite, but the tone of the article, and Stephenson’s own statements on Project Hieroglyph’s website, seems to indicate not so much an admonition to stop being pessimistic as an appeal to writers in the field to redirect their interests to solving the technological challenges the world faces.

So far, the principal culprits I can perceive from these criticisms are television shows and Cormac McCarthy. Even though The Road is considered, arguably, sf, McCarthy is not thought of as a science fiction writer.

He doesn’t have an MFA, either.

So, who else?

YA = MFA?

Apparently, dystopian visions have been well represented in the Young Adult section of the publishing world, a section that continues to grow at a healthy pace. If you Google search “Dystopian Science Fiction” you’ll find a significant number of titles that come up are YAs – not MFAs. It is true, though, that Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) holds and MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts (among other degrees in Theater Arts and Theater and Telecommunications; Veronica Roth (the Divergent series) holds a degree from the writing program at Northwestern University; Amie Kaufman (The Starbound trilogy) has a graduate degree in Conflict Resolution; Beth Revis (Across the Universe) has a Master’s in English Literature; Scott Westerfeld (the Uglies series) took his degree in Philosophy. So, though MFAs have made their mark in the YA world, it’s no clean sweep there, either.

YA is a region that seems impervious to the influence of educators or to any part of the “science fiction community,” whatever that means at this stage. These books are bought by people who want to read them – dystopian or “negative” or not. To be less subtle, no one is holding a gun to the heads of readers and forcing them to buy these books. Quite the contrary.

Perhaps, then, the dissatisfied educators and bloggers should be addressing their protests not to the writers of science fiction, but to readers.

Let’s see how well that works.

BACK TO THE BRIDGE

I’ve spent a great deal of space and wordage over this one statement at this one admittedly minor event not because there was anything singularly outrageous about it, but because it seems part of a mosaic of doubt, questioning, admonitions, accusations, ultimatums, cris des coeur and out-and-out bloviations that have become so much a part of the discourse on science/speculative fiction. Whether the manner in which this discourse is carried on is inevitable and unavoidable is a subject for a far more comprehensive presentation than I am capable of here.

But it does return me to those refugees on that bridge in Poland in 1939. For them, the threats were real. For us, the threats may be more a matter of perception.

No one should wish to silence the voices of civil (and, to a degree, uncivil) protest, but it may be the better part of sensibility (and sensitivity) to not only listen to what’s being said, but to examine those statements carefully and make sure that in protecting our borders from the invaders we’re not also preventing the entry of our allies.

Perhaps, rather than escaping on the bridges we have, we should be building more of them – in all directions.

From the 2007 film, Katyn, directed by Andrzej Wajda.