Sci-fi as literature

On Newsnight Review last night, the panel discussed science fiction. That got me thinking about what science fiction is, or at least what it should be. Kevin Smith, the creator of Dogma, said that essentially sci-fi just transfers real life stories into another framework, characterised by being very different to our reality. That’s probably true, but it’s not the full story. Not all stories are easily transferrable, or transferrable at all, to this imaginary other world. Imagine, for instance, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in a space station. Words can’t begin to express how this would utterly ruin the story. Firstly, its charm would be utterly removed—but that’s probably immaterial. Most importantly, nothing at all is gained from the shift. We learn no more about pride, prejudice or love from having the story exactly the same but in a different location. The writer must think, when choosing his location, why he wants it to be set there, and how, dramatically, it serves his story.

The purpose of science fiction is, to a great extent, the location and the situation. The writer must ask: how would human relationships differ in this alternate or possible universe? For instance, a post-apocalyptic world, as clichéd as it might be, is a good setup for sci-fi. Never in human history has there ever been an apocalypse (I assume). And yet, if a few people were to survive it, presumably they would be affected by this. Since there is no precedent for this in reality, the author must really think, and use all her knowledge of the human condition, to show how human life will have changed—or indeed, stayed the same.

Necessarily, science fiction must deal with extremes of one kind or another. A story that can just as effectively be told in otherwise normal circumstances may as well be told like that—otherwise the brilliantly realised world with all its fantastic contraptions serves only as a distraction. But these extremes don’t have to be thought of as so very distant from us that we can’t relate. They can lend themselves easily to metaphors for our time or for any other time. The post-apocalyptic world, for instance, can be thought of as a country in the years after being ravaged by war.

Perhaps sci-fi is not so well respected in literary circles because, except in the best examples, it doesn’t follow these ideals. But that shouldn’t put people off reading it. After all, isn’t all fiction to some extent speculative? When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth he hadn’t really killed Duncan and become king. When Homer write The Iliad he hadn’t fought in the Trojan wars or been literally maltreated by the gods. Writing fiction of any kind, not least historical fiction, is not so different from writing science fiction. In most cases the writer hasn’t had the benefit of being there—but if he uses his knowledge of human nature and walks around in his imagination, his speculation may just be an accurate prediction.