When Science Fiction Grew Up

October 15, 2014 12:19 PM

How renegade sci-fi writers of the 1960s paved the way for today's blending of literary and genre fiction

via

posted by the man of twists and turns (34 comments total)

When Science Fiction Grew Up

With Stranger in a Strange Land ?

Oh, please...
posted by y2karl at 12:40 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Well, compared to A. E. van Vogt and E. E. "Doc" Smith, Stranger in a Strange Land *is* pretty grown up.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:46 PM on October 15, 2014

I'm not sure the dismissal of pre-60s sci-fi is fair. I think there were some stories that touched on deeper themes, spiritual ideas, or existential dread (where would you put Lovecraft's work in this, I wonder? Or Gilman's Herland? Or Frankenstein, for that matter?). I'm not an expert on early-20th-century sci-fi, though, so I'm not qualified to say. It does come off a little glib and under-researched. But then I'm always wary of "things were boring, and then, THE 60s, ta-da!"
posted by emjaybee at 12:53 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's got to be a name for the phenomenon of earlier works aging poorly because of later, better works despite the fact those later works only exist because of the foundation of the earlier one. In the dictionary next to the name of this phenomenon there is a picture of Stranger in a Strange Land.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:54 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

It would be fun to hear why he singles out A STAND ON ZANZIBAR but not the other two books in that trilogy, both of which stuck in my mind as better works (THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER and THE SHEEP LOOK UP.)
posted by newdaddy at 1:08 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's not explicitly a trilogy, mind you. They are just three dystopic novels that Brunner wrote in a few years. Sometimes you see The Stone That Never Came Down thrown in there as a fourth novel.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:13 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

too narrow in scope, kinda reads like the writer had a premise and cherry picked to write the piece to fit the established conclusion. There has been a wide variety of grownupness in Sci Fi from start to now. As well, dystopia is not necessarily "grown-up".
posted by edgeways at 1:30 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Can I just say it's weird that the hard copies of The Stone That Never Came Down for sale on Amazon are all listed under the name of John Brummer, but the Kindle edition has the name of the author correct?
posted by newdaddy at 1:37 PM on October 15, 2014

There's got to be a name for the phenomenon of earlier works aging poorly because of later, better works despite the fact those later works only exist because of the foundation of the earlier one.

Aging poorly is an interesting description for starting strong, then veering off into creepland to end up at religion.
posted by Dr Dracator at 1:49 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Previously.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:01 PM on October 15, 2014

Aging poorly is an interesting description for starting strong, then veering off into creepland to end up at religion.

I think 'aging poorly' is a pretty good description. At the time, that kind of atypical journey seemed fresh and new. Now it's kind of old hat.
posted by lodurr at 2:04 PM on October 15, 2014

There's got to be a name for the phenomenon of earlier works aging poorly because of later, better works despite the fact those later works only exist because of the foundation of the earlier one.


I, too, would love to have a word for this. Though I'd nominate Alfred Bester's picture in place of Heinlein (who I never liked very much).
posted by lodurr at 2:06 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

> I'm not sure the dismissal of pre-60s sci-fi is fair.

It's definitely not fair, not to mention ignorant. I stopped reading pretty quickly, because it became apparent that this is just another thumbsucker about how Everything Changed in the Sixties, Man! Which, yeah, a lot of stuff did change, but that doesn't mean everything before vanished into nonexistence. I could rattle off a bunch of thoroughly adult sf writers from before the magic decade (does anybody remember C.M. Kornbluth?), but fuck it. As edgeways so accurately says:

> too narrow in scope, kinda reads like the writer had a premise and cherry picked to write the piece to fit the established conclusion. There has been a wide variety of grownupness in Sci Fi from start to now. As well, dystopia is not necessarily "grown-up".
posted by languagehat at 2:35 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Despite being a little Dick-heavy this is a pretty good list.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:39 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not even mentioned was the most tireless, influential and successful campaigner for the maturation of SFF, Judith Merril:

Merril began editing science fiction short story anthologies in 1950—especially a popular "Year's Best" story-anthology series that ran from 1956 to 1967—and published her last in 1985. In her editorial introductions, talks and other writings, she actively argued that science fiction should no longer be isolated but become part of the literary mainstream. Early in her editing career, Anthony Boucher described her as "a practically flawless anthologist".[12] She also had an important role as Books Editor for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) from 1965 until 1969.[13]

According to science fiction scholar Rob Latham, "throughout the 1950s, Merril, along with fellow SF authors James Blish and Damon Knight had taken the lead in promoting higher literary standards and a greater sense of professionalism within the field." In particular they established the annual Milford Writers' Conference in Milford, Pennsylvania, where Merril then lived [as did Knight and his wife Kate Wilhelm]. Manuscripts were workshopped at these avid gatherings, thus encouraging more care in the planning of stories, and a sense of solidarity was promoted, eventually leading to the formation of the Science Fiction Writers Association."[verification needed] However, "disaffected authors began griping about a 'Milford Mafia' that was endangering SF's unique virtues by imposing literary standards essentially alien to the field."[14]

One anthology project Merril began in the early 1960s under contract to Lion Books in Chicago was aborted, but inspired her publisher's editor Harlan Ellison to go forward with his own version of the project, which yielded Dangerous Visions (Doubleday, 1967). As an initiator of the New Wave movement, she edited the 1968 anthology England Swings SF, whose stories she collected while living in England for a year.

I had all 12 of her "Years Best" anthologies as Dell paperbacks, and she wrote a percipient, sophisticated and occasionally almost prophetic editor's individual introduction to most of the stories, which, were they to be collected together, would constitute by far the best and deepest account of what was happening to the field in those crucial years.
posted by jamjam at 2:44 PM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

Oooh, jamjam, that sounds like an excellent start to a new reading list.
posted by emjaybee at 3:14 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can I just say it's weird that the hard copies of The Stone That Never Came Down for sale on Amazon are all listed under the name of John Brummer, but the Kindle edition has the name of the author correct?

See, there's your dystopian trilogy premise right there.
posted by mwhybark at 5:14 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Stranger is one of those pieces of art that are important without actually being good.

Other than the Heinlein and the Niven, the list is pretty good though.
posted by octothorpe at 5:31 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, I for one continue to welcome our hep 60/70's New Wave SF overlords. Groovy stuff, has been, and always will be. Also, I liked Gioia's lists here last month, as noted by MW above.

(but if someone wanted to stir it up a bit, you could mention Lessing).
posted by ovvl at 5:43 PM on October 15, 2014

Other than the Heinlein and the Niven, the list is pretty good though.

Yeah, Ringworld is where Niven started to go off of the rails. Kind of nifty sensawunda, but you can see the rot underneath. I think his earlier, better short stories - the ones collected in Neutron Star - still hold up pretty well, though.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:46 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Let me recommend Kate Wilhelm's book STORYTELLER about teaching in the early Clarion workshops.
posted by newdaddy at 6:49 PM on October 15, 2014

I recall reading an essay wherein Larry Niven revealed that his editorial methodology -- and this was in the days when he was writing the stories in Neutron Star -- was to basically take his manuscript to the pub and regale the other patrons with excerpts so as to get their suggestions for things that didn't work.

You can actually kind of see it once it's pointed out, and it's a thing that doesn't really work at novel length. This is undoubtably why Ringworld comes across as a series of loosely beaded set pieces instead of a coherent plot arc.

There was a period in my teenage years when Niven was one my favorite writers. (He was also much more prominent than he is now.) By my mid-20's that got to be almost embarrassing to remember, and after awhile I looked the other way when my girlfriend put all the Niven books in the used-bookstore recycle pile.
posted by localroger at 7:10 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

I was a teenager in the 1960s with a strong interest in science fiction and pretty much devoured everything that I could in the field. The "New Wave" was really getting going just as my interests were maturing and it has shaped much of what I've read then and since. I read Ulysses in eighth grade because it was referenced in something in science fiction that I'd read - well, that and the fact that it seemed to annoy the adults around me (not my parents who let me read pretty much everything, but all the rest).

In particular I read as many of the Judith Merril anthologies as I could - and they very much helped to shape my reading tastes.

And Brunner remains a favorite. For me, Stand on Zanzibar is a much more interesting stylistic exercise than Shockwave Rider or The Sheep Look Up but both of those may prove to be more lasting - the first because of the seriously weirdly prescient ways it presents computer networking, and the second because it feels all too chillingly real in this age of ecological fragility.
posted by Death and Gravity at 7:29 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Stand On Zanzibar was still scarily realistic as a possible near future as late as 2000, which is amazing for a '60s-era book, and its writing style is exhilarating. Shockwave Rider, with its big Internet run by The Government and resisted by some refugees from The Whole Earth Catalog, is still a great story but our country got off that bus in the late '70s. The fourth book in Brunner's dystopian series hasn't been mentioned yet: The Jagged Orbit, about a total failure of gun control and the paranoid personal arms race that results; it's disturbingly prescient.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:42 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, Brunner *really* went through a pessimistic period, there.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:18 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not a bad list overall, but naturally I will quibble with it, because that's really the point of these things:

Using '58 as a cutoff seems a little arbitrary, if only because I'd say the list would benefit from going two years further back and including the The Stars My Destination - I don't think you can fully understand the house that Dick built until you know the foundations that Alfred Bester laid. For the Michael Moorcock, I really would have gone with some of the neo-pulpy swords, sorcery, and rock-and-roll stuff, which for my money is much more interesting and essential than Moorcock trying to be high-brow. And Larry Niven has always been a hack - for me, rather than Ringworld being where he went off the rails, it's more like the dividing line between "stuff that seemed cool when you were fourteen but doesn't hold up in retrospect" and "stuff that didn't hold up even when you were fourteen".
posted by strangely stunted trees at 8:54 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Chrysostom: It's not explicitly a trilogy, mind you. They are just three dystopic novels that Brunner wrote in a few years. Sometimes you see The Stone That Never Came Down thrown in there as a fourth novel.

The "Club of Rome" Quartet is usually considered to be Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. I would say Brunner wasn't so much pessimistic as he was prescient. The worlds described in these books were frighteningly close to the actual worlds of 40 years after they were written.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:16 AM on October 16, 2014

DOORWAYS IN THE SAND always gets blasted for stylistic and structural excesses that people attribute to New Wave, though it's not heavy in the way the Brunner works are. At the time I thought it was an awesome read, though I long ago lost my copy. What's up with Zelazny's work not being (legally) available in eReader format?
posted by newdaddy at 2:41 AM on October 16, 2014

Nice to see Bug Jack Baron on there. Spinrad seems to be a little forgotten these days and that's my favorite of his. I've always wondered if E. L Doctorow stole the plot for Waterworks from Spinrad's book.
posted by octothorpe at 4:39 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

I recall reading an essay wherein Larry Niven revealed that his editorial methodology -- and this was in the days when he was writing the stories in Neutron Star -- was to basically take his manuscript to the pub and regale the other patrons with excerpts so as to get their suggestions for things that didn't work.

You can actually kind of see it once it's pointed out, and it's a thing that doesn't really work at novel length. This is undoubtably why Ringworld comes across as a series of loosely beaded set pieces instead of a coherent plot arc.

Ah, thank you. That explains just about everything about him including why Ringworld is a collection of short stories with a framing story and why Neutron Star is so much more ... empathic than his later work like The Burning City (which is utter fail as a book even without getting the analogy).
posted by Francis at 4:45 AM on October 17, 2014

I gave up on Niven and Pournelle around the time of Oath of Fealty. Their politics sours their story telling for me.
posted by octothorpe at 6:28 AM on October 17, 2014

I still find them a little bit entertaining, but I often find authors with goofy politics to be sort of amusing.

For me the things that turned me away from Niven, except as silly fun, were (1) all the people, seemingly including Niven himself, who treat Known Space as hard sf in spite of it not being, and (2) his inability to come up with an alien who would be psychologically out of place in 1975 LA. Kzin are basically bikers, etc.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:37 AM on October 17, 2014

Yeah, one of the criticisms of Niven is that everybody is from Southern California. Vivid characterization was not his strong point, even when he was at his peak.

Inferno is probably the ultimate expression of this - the protagonist actually IS a 1970s science fiction writer from L.A.

I think several other people from Inferno were tuckerizations, too.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:29 AM on October 17, 2014

Early Niven was politically neutral with liberal tendencies; the Known Space timeline is steeped in the idea that technology will eliminate scarcity, and with that poverty and suffering. For a period, until humans encounter the Kzin, war and violence are even eliminated. One early story even emphasized the need for government to protect people; when a hacker mischievously disables the cop robots in an "anarchy park" the resulting actual anarchy turns out not to be so much fun.

But after working with Jerry Pournelle, who always wore his fascism on his sleeve, Niven turned rightward and eventually gave up Known Space in favor of the future of the State from A World out of Time. It's true that it is easier to tell stories in a world where there are stress-inducing influences, but the tone of The Mote in God's Eye is strikingly different from anything Niven had previously written and that tone became more and more noticeable in his later work, even when he wasn't working with Pournelle.

I had the impression from that essay I mentioned and some other sources that Niven mainly wrote SF for the same reason less wealthy people go to SF conventions. He never had a lot of ideas of his own and was able to write full-time because he didn't need to work. But outside of SF the world he knew was mainly the LA bar and club scene and once he started hanging out with other SF writers their voices tended to trample what little he had left to say.
posted by localroger at 12:40 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]