A View From Corona #7

Jeremy Lassen | May 16th 2002 at 11:36 am

“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”

- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness

“Just because someone can read does not mean that he necessarily can read SF…” – David G. Hartwell

SF (including its sibling genres fantasy and horror) has a rich and varied history which infects, permeates, and informs most contemporary forms of the genre. This is at once a Good Thing ™ as well as a Bad Thing ™. It is a Good Thing because it means the even the most “low brow”, reader friendly space opera/fantasy/horror epic will by its very nature have a depth and complexity to it… simply because the author will be (usually intimately) familiar with the tropes and traditions of the genre, and there will be (at the very least, subconsciously in the authors mind) a dialog with what has gone before. Contemporary genre fiction is littered with winking allusions to previous genre works, both landmark and obscure. And a good percentage of the readers of genre fiction expect and like these allusions. They allow a reader to observe and participate in an ongoing dialog between multiple generations of writers who have all read the same things. This is one of the big pleasures of reading genre fiction of any stripe, be it SF/fantasy/horror, or Mystery/Crime, or Western or Romance.

This history and interconnectedness is a Bad Thing because it is one of the barriers that prevents those other people… Those straightt people… from reading and enjoying what you and I know is the best thing since sliced bread. You know the kind of person. Those people who’s only exposure to SF is from $tar Wars and $tar Trek. Those people who stand in front of a SF specialty store and say (In a dismissive tone) “I think they specialize in mystery or something…” You know. Those poor, soulless automatons who would think that something as pitiful as TV’s Dark Angel is cutting edge cyberpunk, if they had the slightest clue what cyberpunk was.

What this means is that, with many notable exceptions, the best and most exciting genre writing is going to be mostly inaccessible to the vast majority of readers out there. This is a controversial statement, because there are two opposing aesthetic schools of thought. One says that great art is universal, and will have universal appeal. The other says that to fully appreciate great art, there is a price of admission. You have to be familiar with the history and context in which the art is being produced, in order to understand and appreciate it. As Hartwell says above… The ability to read doesn’t give you the ability to truly appreciate SF.
For example. I think there is universal agreement in the SF/fantasy community that George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is a very solid, compelling piece of fantasy literature. Even people who don’t as a rule like traditional western European medieval fantasy fiction have admitted that this particular series is very well done. But could I give these books to Joe/Jane Blow off the street, who has never read fantasy before, and expect them to appreciate its finer points? Or even like it? You might initially think that Martin’s straight forward and compelling style, as well as keen sense of suspense and pacing would suck any body in, weather they read SF or not.

I would argue, however, that even something as accessible as Martin’s books are pretty inaccessible to the non-genre reader. Juggling 30 different viewpoint characters is common in fantasy fiction, but how many mainstream novels have “casts of thousands”, with viewpoint characters that switch with each chapter? How many mainstream novels continue a single narrative arc across six books, each the size of a phone book? How many people recognize or care about, or are willing to put up with the allusions and references to historical fiction in general, and the war of the roses in particular. How many people are willing to go along with the fetishization of medieval Western Europe? Readers of SF are trained to accept these types of thing, but it can be pretty intimidating and/or off-putting to non genre readers. So even the most accessible genre fiction has barriers to entry, because like any good piece of fiction, the author has an “idealized reader” in mind, and that idealized reader usually has read a lot of SF and fantasy.

Let me give you an example of this effect, in a completely different medium – Movies. Movies are universal, right? Sound and moving pictures… what could be more natural? The type of “barriers to entry” that I described above don’t exist in the movies, right? Wrong. They do. Movies are probably one of the most complex narrative vehicles in existence, because they combine pictures, and dialog, and music… all together. It just seems natural because they are so ubiquitous, and ingrained into late-20th/21st century culture. We’ve all seen them, and we’ve all seen a LOT of them. But the grammar of films is VERY complex.

When movies first came out, they were filmed like plays – everything was a mid-shot, with every character in the scene on screen at the same time. There were no close-ups. One of the biggest innovations in early cinema was the close-up, and more specifically, the “reaction shot”. You know what I mean. There is a long tracking shot of a train, hurtling towards a car that has stalled on the tracks. Jump cut to a horrified onlooker… an extreme close-up of the onlookers face, so we can see the nuances of the actors expression. It’s obvious that the actor is reacting to the train rushing towards the car right? Well its only obvious because the film grammar of the “Reaction shot” and the close-up has become ubiquitous through repeated viewing. We know that there was not a long period of time passing between the train rushing towards the car, and the bystander looking at the train… We know the person is looking at the train… because it’s a “reaction shot”. What if there had been a long, slow fade to black as the train approached the car, followed by a long slow fade from black to the same close-up of the same actors face? A viewer could rightly assume that some period of time had passed… that the car had already been struck by the train, and the face was perhaps someone standing at the train crossing remembering the horrors of the accident, or perhaps the person isn’t even on the street corner: they could be at a funeral. One makes these assumptions about the story because they have been trained to recognize the visual grammar that a filmmaker uses.

Let me give you another example. Prior to the advent of MTV, and music videos, quick cuts and “fast & choppy” editing simply did not exist in movies. There was an assumption that the human mind could only assimilate so much visual data at a time, and that you needed at least 12-48 frames (1/2 - 2 seconds) to understand what you had seen. One of the real revolutions of MTV was that, because of the need for filmmakers to tell a story in a very short period of time, they began pushing against the edges of what was considered acceptable editing. Cuts became quicker and quicker. Camera movements became faster and faster. And viewers not only became used to that style of editing, but they began associating it with specific types of narratives. This is one reason why older reviewers, who didn’t grow up watching this type of visual narrative, often complain about the “MTV style editing” of movies. Younger reviewers rarely if ever comment on it because it is simply part of the visual grammar that they grew up with. Younger reviewers may say that the movie Blade is fast paced, but they probably won’t say that the movie is un-watchable or incomprehensible because of the editing. However, If you were to go back in time, and show Blade as a double feature with Dracula, in 1931, chances are that the audiences would find Blade incomprehensible – not because of plot or storyline, or the late 20th century setting, but because it simply wouldn’t make any visual sense to them – The visual grammar of movies has changed and evolved a great deal in the last 70 years. Have you tried reading Chaucer in the original Middle English, lately?

Because of the phenomenon described above, I would suggest that “Great Art” is not universal. Aesthetically pleasing generalities might be universal, but Art is always a dialog between the creator and viewer. And this dialog is always informed by a set of common reference points.

I have rambled on in this column about barriers of entry and genre traditions, because I recently read one of the most exciting, and at the same time, the most inaccessible books I have ever read. Tim Powers is a brilliant writer, and his most recent novel, the World Fantasy Award winning novel Declare, is a masterpiece. After reading it, I wanted to run out and tell everyone about it. Except the audience outside of the genre that can read and enjoy Declare seems to be very limited. Hell, even the audience inside the genre seems to be pretty small. One has to recognize and understand the grammar of contemporary urban fantasy or magic-realism (a very specialized sub-subset of SF). And in the same way that George Martin fetishizes medieval Western European history, Powers fetishizes WWII and Cold War history… specifically, he fuses the sub-genre of the “cold war spy thriller” with the traditions of SF, for remarkable effect.

It helps tremendously if the reader understands the political and social details of WW2, and the Cold War… Part of the magic and joy of this book is recognizing the detailed and accurate historical events, and seeing them all put together in such a way that they add up to a completely fantastical world. The Fantastic is believable and compelling not only because of the carefully constructed, internally consistent details, but because it is built on a foundation of historically accurate details… details which are probably not known or recognized by the vast majority of the reading public (much less the “un-read public”). I can’t begin to tell you why or where I learned the historic and social background that was so important to the understanding and enjoyment of Declare, and Powers probably couldn’t tell you where or why he first learned those things. But we both share an interest and fascination with that information, and this shared experience created the special frission that characterizes “great art”.

So while it may not be popular to say so… You gotta pay your dues if your gonna really enjoy the good stuff. This might smack of elitism, and be reminiscent of that horrible place called “Academia”, where they discuss “Literature.” But it’s true. Even the most simplistic and mundane piece of contemporary space opera is operating in an incredibly complex and rich historical context. If you don’t recognize that context, you will only be seeing half the picture.

So in the spirit of paying your dues… In the spirit of expanding the scope of possible reference points that you can share with any given author of SF, I am going to recommend that after you run out and read Declare, you run out and read a couple of the many critical, genre spanning anthologies that have been edited by non other than the person who’s words began this column: David Hartwell. The quote came from an essay entitled “The Golden Age of SF Is Twelve”, which was reprinted in Visions of Wonder. This anthology offers itself as a textbook for teaching SF to people who don’t read SF. While this may be its primary goal, this anthology offers many gems and insights to the regular reader of SF. Another great SF anthology by Hartwell, which puts SF into a historical context is The Science Fiction Century. The Dark Descent, and Foundations of Fear are two critical anthologies that cover the horror genre, and Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder give a nice overview of fantasy fiction. These titles represent only a fraction of the anthologies that Hartwell has edited. You may not always agree with his statements or conclusions, or even his selections of stories, but Hartwell’s ability to present and contextuallize the incredible range of fiction that falls under the SF/Fantasy/Horror rubric is phenomenal. Hartwell’s various anthologies are a cornerstone of my personal library, and they should not be missed by people who consider themselves students of the genre.

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