(I would like to apologize both for the general snarkiness in this week’s article, as well as for the relative shortness of it. I was struggling for an idea for an argument to begin with; then after I started crafting the argument I felt as though I was hitting one brick wall after another. I would like to think that this week’s work has some merit, but I guess I’ll just have to let you decide.)
Out of all the things I had to be, you ask, why did I have to be a sci fi nerd most of all?
Given that I will quote you lines from Babylon 5, The Martian Chronicles, and back issues of The Amazing Spiderman, how did I ever get a girlfriend, or for that matter a first date with anyone of my own species?
With all the complexities we’ve yet to even discover, much less solve, how can the answer to life, the universe, and everything, be 42? Why a number, and why that one especially Doug Adams?
It is a common stereotype in film and television, that the nerds who play role-playing games and dissect the director’s cut for The Lord of the Rings trilogy are nothing but sloppy, unkempt losers who are essentially rejects of the world. To be a comic book fanatic was to stay lowly and virginal for the rest of one’s life. I could go on and on with illustrating my point, but you get the gist of it.
It’s not pretty folks, no sir, no ma’am, not at all.
During the Golden Age of Science Fiction, when the grandmasters such as Asimov, Heinlein, van Vogt, and del Ray were starting out in the pulps, science fiction literature was just as maligned as it is today. Probably more so—the pulp magazines in which they published were seen as trash, and the stories inside the covers were seen as pure escapism, with no trace of literary merit—book publishers wouldn’t even print science fiction novels or collections, so when a story saw print inside a magazine that was it. Today we have much of the same attitudes, not just for science fiction but for comics as well as television, action movies, and other forms of art which do not fit the stringent, pompous standards of the elite literary circle, too blind to tell that J. G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, and Norman Spinrad can be in the same league as Grahame Green, Pete Dexter, and Henry James.
But where, pray tell, were the Jonathan Franzens and the Michael Chabons when I needed a voice in which to channel my rampant wanderlust? I was pushed into the nurturing arms of Fahrenheit 451, and from there I read Flowers for Algernon, and from there Angry Candy, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and so on and so on. Daniel Keyes, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and even Jules Verne…these cats really knew how to write, and better than the masters of literary fiction in some places!
So why, pray tell, is it so wrong to sojourn out amongst the stars for my own reading comfort and reflection? Why is it so hard to accept the merits of speculative literature, when time and again it is the literature that sent us into space that has saved us as a species?
Science fiction is a literature of ideas. Imagination reigns supreme here, for the sky is not the limit but just the beginning. We have entire galaxies to run here! Nobody who reads “A Sound of Thunder” by Bradbury leaves the page unaffected, and neither do the souls who work through the Solomon Kane stories as written by Robert E. Howard (which are a mild form of fantasy, but I’ll allow it). These are stories to pump the imagination full of rocket fuel, to send a spirit back into childhood in order to make magic out of thin air.
This is my literature, and I do not apologize for it. What choice do I have? The pulps were what made me after all.
Kurt Vonnegut helped to give credence to science fiction with his novels and stories. So did Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. All of these guys have helped popularize the literature to a point where we start receiving our due respect. But still we have a long way to go, and I am willing to wait, for only the best is fit for those who are patient enough for the future to be brought back inside for further discussion.
To help calm the storm that my rantings might inspire (that is, if anybody reads my words at all, I’m not so sure), I would like to add that my diet doesn’t entirely consist of “escapist” science fiction. Among my favorite books are Flannery O’Conner’s A Good Man is Hard to Find as well as Ask the Dust by John Fante. A previous article of mine discussed the merits of Charles Bukowski. And I am quick to frequent the pages of August Wilson’s century cycle, some of the most heartbreaking works to come out of American drama. I do not merely read science fiction, adventure stories and comics—I pour myself into all kinds of excellent literature.
But while I tend to read across the board (with the exception of Harlequin Romance; I can’t stand to look at Fabio on the cover!) I do have my favorites. Wells and Verne bring out the kid in me, and now that I am starting into Asimov’s Foundation trilogy I begin to wonder what took me so long to begin with. I have found a literature teaming with ideas and hope, and I feel at peace with what the stories say. For it’s not about the social experiments, or the political bents of the writers, or even the conventions of fans pouring about the awards banquets. At the end of the day, it’s about the stories, and I think they shall be here a long time from now.
I am a sci fi nerd, and I am proud to be labeled as such. What choice do I have? My surrogate parents are calling me back to Barsoom, and Edgar Rice Burroughs is waiting to introduce me to a certain Martian princess. I have received my calling and I must answer swiftly so as not to be left behind.
You wouldn’t begrudge a man trying to find his way back home amongst the stars, now would you?
