Fantasy and Science Fiction
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@ 2005-10-14 00:16:00
*Fantasy and Science Fiction*
_*FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION: A WRITER'S VIEW*_
Roger Zelazny
/One more essay shouldn't strain the reader's stamina, though I hasten to add
that I've a standing order with my tutelary deities to spare me the fading
writer's trip of trying to sum everything up. It's just a little talk that I
gave when key noting the Seventh Annual Eaton Conference on Fantasy and Science
Fiction at the University of California at Riverside, in 1985, where I was
treated well; and I thought it might make a decent endpiece./
I have often wondered whether I am a science fiction writer dreaming I am a
fantasy writer, or the other way around. Most of my science fiction contains
some element of fantasy, and vice versa. I suppose that this could be annoying
to purists of both persuasions, who may feel that I am spoiling an otherwise
acceptable science fiction story with the inclusion of the unexplained, or that
I am violating the purity of a fantasy by causing its wonders to conform to too
rational a set of strictures.
There may be some truth in this, so the least I can do is try to tell you why I
operate this way, what this seeming hybrid nature of much of my work means to
me and how I see this meaning as applying to the area at large.
My first independent reading as a schoolboy involved mythology-in large
quantities. It was not until later that I discovered folk tales, fairy tales,
fantastic voyages. And it was not until considerably later-at age eleven-that I
read my first science fiction story.
It actually did not occur to me until recently that this course of reading
pretty much paralleled the development of the area. First came fantasy, with
its roots in early religious systems-mythology-and epical literature.
Watered-down versions of these materials survived the rise of Christianity in
the form of legends, folklore, fairy tales, and some incorporated the Christian
elements as well. Later came the fantastic voyages, the Utopias. Then, finally,
with the industrial revolution, scientific justifications were substituted for
the supernatural by Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells. I had actually read
things in the proper chronological order.
I feel now that this colored my entire approach to the use of the fabulous in
literature. The earliest writings of the fantasy sort involved considerable
speculation from a small and shaky factual base. A lot of guesswork and
supernatural justifications for events came into play. I accepted these things
as a child would-uncritically-my only reading criterion being whether I enjoyed
a story. About the time I discovered science fiction I was somewhere near the
threshold of reflection. I began to appreciate the value of reason. I even
began to enjoy reading about science. In a way, I guess, I was a case of
ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
I have never gotten away from a fondness for all of these forms-I suppose
because my thinking has been touched by all of them. Emotionally, I find it
difficult to draw distinctions between science fiction and fantasy because I
feel them to be different areas of a continuum- the same ingredients but
different proportions. Intellectually, however, I understand that if the
fabulous elements involve the supernatural, or are simply unexplained in terms
of an intelligent person's understanding of how natural laws operate, then that
particular story should be considered a fantasy.
If the fabulous should be explained, or indicated to be explainable in terms of
the present state of human knowledge or theory-or some extension thereof-I can
see how a story of this sort can be considered to be science fiction.
When I write, though, I generally do not think in terms of such facile
compartmentalizations. I feel that fiction should mirror life and that its
modus is that classical act of mimesis, the imitation of an action. I concede
that it is a distorting mirror we use in science fiction and fantasy;
nevertheless, it should represent in some fashion everything which is placed
before it. The peculiar virtue of a distorting mirror is its ability to lay
special emphasis upon those features of consensus reality which the writer
wishes to accent-a thing which in many ways places what we do close to satire,
in the classical sense-making the science fiction and fantasy worlds special
ways of talking about the present world. Another is the particularly wide range
of characters this practice permits me to explore.
Not only do I not like to think of my stories in terms of separate science
fiction and fantasy categories, but I feel that for me it would actually be
harmful in terms of the creative act to drive such a wedge into my view of the
continuum. According to John Pfeiffer, author of The Human Brain, "There is an
entire universe packed inside your skull, a compact model of your surroundings
based on all the experiences you have accumulated during the course of a
lifetime." Of necessity such a model is limited by the range of one's
perceptions and the nature of one's experiences.
Thus, the world about which I write, the world to which I hold up my distorting
mirror, is not the real world in any ultimate sense. It is only my limited,
personal image of the real world. Therefore, though I have tried hard to make
my version of reality as complete a model as possible, there are gaps, dark
areas which exist in testimony to my ignorance of various matters. We all
possess these dark areas, somewhere, because we have not world enough nor time
to take in everything. These are a part of the human condition-Jung's shadows,
if you like; unfilled addresses in our personal databases, if you prefer.
What has this to do with the fabulous-with fantasy and science fiction? My
feelings are that science fiction, with its rational, quasi-documentable
approach to existence, springs from the well-lighted, well-regulated areas of
our private universes, whereas fantasy, in the tradition of its historical
origins, has its roots in the dark areas. Somewhere, I already hear voices
raised in objection to my implication that fantasy springs from ignorance and
science fiction from enlightenment. In a way it is true, and in a way it is
not. To quote Edith Hamilton, "There has probably not been a better educated
generation than the one that ushered in the end of Athens." Yet it was these
same highly rational Greeks who passed classical mythology along to us, in its
most powerful, sophisticated forms, while providing material for early chapters
in world history books.
Fantasy may take its premises from the unknown, but what it does with them
immediately thereafter is subject them to the same rational processes used by
any storyteller in the working out of a tale. The story itself then unfolds in
a perfectly clear-cut fashion.
I am not saying that the dark areas represent things which are ultimately
unknowable, but only that these are representations of the unknown within the
minds of individual authors-from the nameless horrors of Lovecraft to the
mental processes of Larry Niven's Puppeteers. I doubt that any two authors'
world models coincide exactly. And I feel that the generalization and
representation of these clouds of unknowing in literature are a basis for
fantasy.
I wish to take things one step further, however. I can hardly deny the
effectiveness of a good story which is purely fantasy nor of another which is
purely science fiction, in terms of the distinctions as I see them. As I said
earlier, I tend not to think of such distinctions at all while I am working.
When I am writing a story of some length, my personal sense of aesthetics
usually causes me to strive for closure, to go for the full picture, to give at
least a nod to everything I regard in that version of reality. As a
consequence, my stories reflect the dark areas as well as the light ones; they
contain a few ambiguous or unexplained matters along with a majority of things
which follow the rules. In other words, I tend to mix my fantasy and my science
fiction. Looked at one way, what I write is, I suppose, science fantasy-a
bastard genre, according to some thinking on the matter. I am not sure what
that makes me.
I followed this pattern in my first book-This Immortal-by leaving certain
things unexplained and open to multiple interpretations. I did it again in my
second book-The Dream Master-only there the dark areas were in the human psyche
itself rather than in events. It was present in the Peian religion and its
effects on my narrator, Francis Sandow, in the otherwise science fiction novel
Isle of the Dead. In Lord of Light, I wrote a book where events could be taken
either as science fiction or as fantasy with but a slight shifting of accent.
And so on, up through my recent novel, Eye of Cat, where the final quarter of
the book may be taken either as fantasy or as hallucination, according to one's
taste in such matters. I write that way because I must, because a small part of
me that wishes to remain honest while telling the calculated lies of fiction
feels obliged to indicate in this manner that I do not know everything, and
that my ignorance, too, must somehow be manifested in the universes which I
create.
I was wondering recently where this placed me within the general context of
American incarnations of the fabulous. I began reviewing their history with
this in mind, and I was struck by a serendipitous insight into our relationship
to the grand scheme of things.
We did it backwards.
American fantastic literature began the pulp magazines of the late 1920s. From
that time on through the 1930s it was heavily indebted to other sorts of
adventure tales. We can regard this as a kind of C/r-science fiction, whence
rose the impetus which has carried all of the rest.
What happened, then, in the 1940s? This was the time of the "hard" science
fiction story, the time of the sort of story referred to by Kingsley Amis as
having the "idea as hero." Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein in particular
exemplify this period when the idea, derived from science, dominated the
narrative. At initial regard, it should not seem strange that our science
fiction entered its first recognizable period with what was the latest phase in
the historical development of fantastic literature-that technologically
oriented form of the fabulous narrative which had to await the appropriate
development of the sciences. But what happened next?
In the 1950s, with the collapse of many of the science fiction magazines and
the migration of science fiction to the paperback and hardcover book markets,
along with the freedom from magazine restrictions thus obtained, came a
shifting of concerns to the sociological and political areas. The idea was
still hero, but the ideas were no longer derived exclusively from the physical
sciences. 1 think of Edward Bellamy and of Fred Pohl. I think of Thomas More
and of Mack Reynolds. I think of Nietzsche and of some of Freud's character
studies (which I can only classify as fantasies) and I think of Philip Jose
Farmer. Looking back even further to the pastoral genre I also think of Ray
Bradbury and of Clifford Simak.
Moving-ahead, I suppose-to the experimental work of the 1960s, I recall the
Carmina Burana, the troubadours, the minnesingers, the lyrical literature of
self of an even earlier period.
And the 1970s? We saw a resurgence of fantasy-fat-volumed trilogies detailing
marvelous exploits of gods, warriors, and wizards-a thing which is with us
still, and which in recent years, as with Tolkien, has taken on the overtones
of ersatz scripture.
American fabulous literature appears to have recapitalated phylogeny in
reverse. We worked at it steadily and have finally made it back to the mythic
beginning-which is where I came in. I have a strange sense of deja vu, of my
lost past recaptured, on reading much of the current material in the area.
Such are the joys, you might say, of being able to select my own examples.
True. I can point to numerous exceptions to every generalization I've made. Yet
I feel there is something to what I have said or I would not have sketched this
tendency in even this wavery impressionistic outline.
So where do we go from here? I see three possibilities and a whimsical vision:
We can drop back into the Ur-and write adventure stories with just the fabulous
trappings-which is the direction Hollywood seems to have taken. Or we can turn
around now and work our way forward again, catching up with H. G. Wells
sometime around the turn of the century. Or we can fall back upon our
experience and strive for a synthesis-a form of science fiction which combines
good storytelling with the technological sensitivity of the forties, the
sociological concerns of the fifties, and the attention to better writing and
improved characterization which came out of the sixties.
Those, I say, are three possibilities. A less likely avenue might be to do the
latter and also to incorporate the experience of the ancient 1970s, when
fantasy reached what may have been its greatest peak in this century. That is,
to use all of the above with a dash of darkness here and there, to add to the
flavor without overpowering the principal ingredients, to manipulate our
fancies through a range of rationality and bafflement-in that our imagination
needs both to fuel it, and a fullness of expression requires the acknowledgment
of chaos and darkness opposed by the sum of our knowledge and the more
successful traditions of thought to which we are heir.
I feel that it is this opposition which generates the tensions and conflicts of
the human mind and heart implicit in all particularly good writing, secondary
to the narrative line itself but essential if that nebulous quality known as
tone is to sound with veracity in the search for mimetic verisimilitude. This
quality, I feel, is present in the best writing in any genre-or in no genre at
all, for labels are only a matter of convenience, and subject to revision by
manufacturers or college catalog editors. One must, of course, feel strongly
about such matters when attempting to recast the field in one's own image, for
one would hate to dim the vision of those hard, gemlike authorial virtues of
narcissism and arrogance.
Will science fiction and fantasy go this way? Partly, it depends on who is
writing it-and to the extent that I see many talented newcomers in the area, I
am heartened. The most gifted writers seem to be the ones who care the least
what you call one of these things we are talking about, other than a story.
Their main concern is how effectively a tale has been told. The area itself,
like life, will go through the usual cycles of fads, periodic overemphasis of a
certain sort of theme or character-as well as fat books, thin books, and
trilogies. The best stories will be remembered years later. What they may be
like, I can't really say. I'm not in the prediction business.
End
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