a book set tomorrow isn't sf but one set five years from now is
So, M. John Harrison's Signs of Life isn't SF, but the near-future segment in End of the World Blues is?
Hav is more explicitly and more intricately twined into our history than is Middlemarch
How is this significant, given that it doesn't alter that history?
By the time of "Hav of the Myrmidons", the world Jan Morris is writing about is no longer our world, because Hav has reached out into it -- "There can be few people nowadays who do not know the whereabouts of Hav" -- or are your supermarkets carrying snowberries?
On the contrary. The world Morris describes is precisely our world. She brings her novel into an equivalence with our present through an equivalence with our past (which once again leads me to ask what about Hav is alternate). You're right that there are no snowberries at my supermarket, but there are plenty of snowberry-analogues: fruits and vegetables, most of them exotic, which have been altered, some of them through agronomic manipulation and others through genetic modification, to have a longer growing period and greater durability, and in the process rendered all but flavorless (I've been told by people with some grounding in the subject that you'd have to scour the nursing homes before you found a person who remembers what an apple or a cucumber are supposed to taste like). This isn't an alteration. It's a fact of modern existence. Most of the ways in which Hav touches the modern world are analogues of processes undergone by Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries, which is hardly surprising given that Morris wrote "Hav of the Myrmidons" to discuss precisely these processes. In other words, to discuss the present.
Furthermore, a definition of alternate history that encompasses novels which add to the world something imaginary, yet similar in quality and kind to something real, encompasses most of historical fiction and a sizable portion of modern, naturalistic fiction. By your logic, A.S. Byatt's Possession, which also reaches into and alters our present (unless your local bookstore carries a copy of The Letters of Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel Lamotte) is an alternate history, and therefore SF.
We could have a whole alternate history shortlist this year, if we put our minds to it.
At the rate you're going, I don't see how it could possibly be helped...
How is this significant, given that it doesn't alter that history?
Because, as I said, it's a difference of degree. The creation of Hav is a bigger alteration than the creation of Middlemarch, and the nature of Hav is central to Hav in a way that the nature of Middlemarch isn't central to Middlemarch.
I haven't read Signs of Life -- the book I actually had in mind was The Weight of Numbers, which has about ten pages set six months into the future, relative to the book's publication date -- but doesn't it include some pretty extreme genetic technology? If something science fictional happens tomorrow, then yes, the story is sf. But if tomorrow is just like today, it's not.
Same with Hav. I don't see how the fact that it has many real-world parallels -- though I disagree that snowberries are comparable to apples -- is relevant. I've already said it's the same kind of story as Middlemarch; for that matter, yes, it's the same kind of story as Possession. But it's taken to a greater degree than either of them. To turn it around, taking your logic to its extremes would mean The Separation isn't an alternate history. You say Hav isn't alternate because you can go to a dozen places and see aspects of Hav; I say Hav is alternate precisely because you can't go to any one place that's like it.
You say Hav isn't alternate because you can go to a dozen places and see aspects of Hav; I say Hav is alternate precisely because you can't go to any one place that's like it.
No, what I said was that there are dozens of places like it. I live in one.
To turn it around, taking your logic to its extremes would mean The Separation isn't an alternate history
How? The Separation is clearly an alternate history because it posits a diversion from ours and, from that point of diversion, arrives at a present radically different from our own. Hav, Middlemarch and Possession don't posit such a diversion. They merely add to history something very much like what was already there, and describe a present all but indistinguishable from the real one. These are two completely different approaches - two different kinds of stories.
What you seem to be saying is that adding something sufficiently big to history makes that history alternate regardless of whether the present it brings us to is any different from ours. Quite apart from the fact that I disagree with this assertion, this does not strike me as a very useful definition. If the difference between naturalistic and SFnal fiction is that of degree, where does the tipping point lie?
I'd be more willing to entertain this argument if you were trying to categorize Hav as fantasy. In that case, the question would revolve around the ratio of real to unreal, and it is possible to argue that in Hav, the latter outweighs the former (though I'd still feel that Hav's genericness gets in the way). When it comes to alternate history, however, I have to disagree with your claim that the question hinges on degree. Hav is a different kind of story than The Separation and The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
Hang on, I thought Tel Aviv was founded at the start of the 20th century? I'm sure there were other settlements on the site beforehand (although I admit I'll be surprised if any of them were Chinese or Russian), but in at least that one sense no, you do not live in a place like Hav, because it doesn't have the same continuity.
What you seem to be saying is that adding something sufficiently big to history makes that history alternate regardless of whether the present it brings us to is any different from ours.
What I'm saying is that the addition of something sufficiently big de facto makes the present of the story different from ours. The present of Hav *is* different than ours -- everyone has heard of Hav, and lots of people go there as tourists. But the focus of the book is not on the extent of that difference.
If the difference between naturalistic and SFnal fiction is that of degree, where does the tipping point lie?
Well, in one sense this depends whether you think science fiction is a form of naturalism or a form of the fantastic, which many people have spent a large amount of debating over the past fifty years, and which I doubt we're going to resolve today. The naturalism argument -- which is Le Guin's argument in her review of Hav -- is precisely that science fiction differs in degree but not in nature from the world around us today, that degree being the invention introduced. I find that persuasive, but in another sense it doesn't matter at all; there's a gradual shading between any two kinds of fiction, which means there's always a tipping point. Is Crowley's "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines" fantasy? Are Margo Lanagan's stories? Is Pattern Recognition science fiction? The answer in each case -- or at least, my answer in each case -- depends on whether I find it useful and interesting to say "yes." In the case of Hav I do.
So, M. John Harrison's Signs of Life isn't SF, but the near-future segment in End of the World Blues is?
Hav is more explicitly and more intricately twined into our history than is Middlemarch
How is this significant, given that it doesn't alter that history?
By the time of "Hav of the Myrmidons", the world Jan Morris is writing about is no longer our world, because Hav has reached out into it -- "There can be few people nowadays who do not know the whereabouts of Hav" -- or are your supermarkets carrying snowberries?
On the contrary. The world Morris describes is precisely our world. She brings her novel into an equivalence with our present through an equivalence with our past (which once again leads me to ask what about Hav is alternate). You're right that there are no snowberries at my supermarket, but there are plenty of snowberry-analogues: fruits and vegetables, most of them exotic, which have been altered, some of them through agronomic manipulation and others through genetic modification, to have a longer growing period and greater durability, and in the process rendered all but flavorless (I've been told by people with some grounding in the subject that you'd have to scour the nursing homes before you found a person who remembers what an apple or a cucumber are supposed to taste like). This isn't an alteration. It's a fact of modern existence. Most of the ways in which Hav touches the modern world are analogues of processes undergone by Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries, which is hardly surprising given that Morris wrote "Hav of the Myrmidons" to discuss precisely these processes. In other words, to discuss the present.
Furthermore, a definition of alternate history that encompasses novels which add to the world something imaginary, yet similar in quality and kind to something real, encompasses most of historical fiction and a sizable portion of modern, naturalistic fiction. By your logic, A.S. Byatt's Possession, which also reaches into and alters our present (unless your local bookstore carries a copy of The Letters of Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel Lamotte) is an alternate history, and therefore SF.
We could have a whole alternate history shortlist this year, if we put our minds to it.
At the rate you're going, I don't see how it could possibly be helped...
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Because, as I said, it's a difference of degree. The creation of Hav is a bigger alteration than the creation of Middlemarch, and the nature of Hav is central to Hav in a way that the nature of Middlemarch isn't central to Middlemarch.
I haven't read Signs of Life -- the book I actually had in mind was The Weight of Numbers, which has about ten pages set six months into the future, relative to the book's publication date -- but doesn't it include some pretty extreme genetic technology? If something science fictional happens tomorrow, then yes, the story is sf. But if tomorrow is just like today, it's not.
Same with Hav. I don't see how the fact that it has many real-world parallels -- though I disagree that snowberries are comparable to apples -- is relevant. I've already said it's the same kind of story as Middlemarch; for that matter, yes, it's the same kind of story as Possession. But it's taken to a greater degree than either of them. To turn it around, taking your logic to its extremes would mean The Separation isn't an alternate history. You say Hav isn't alternate because you can go to a dozen places and see aspects of Hav; I say Hav is alternate precisely because you can't go to any one place that's like it.
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No, what I said was that there are dozens of places like it. I live in one.
To turn it around, taking your logic to its extremes would mean The Separation isn't an alternate history
How? The Separation is clearly an alternate history because it posits a diversion from ours and, from that point of diversion, arrives at a present radically different from our own. Hav, Middlemarch and Possession don't posit such a diversion. They merely add to history something very much like what was already there, and describe a present all but indistinguishable from the real one. These are two completely different approaches - two different kinds of stories.
What you seem to be saying is that adding something sufficiently big to history makes that history alternate regardless of whether the present it brings us to is any different from ours. Quite apart from the fact that I disagree with this assertion, this does not strike me as a very useful definition. If the difference between naturalistic and SFnal fiction is that of degree, where does the tipping point lie?
I'd be more willing to entertain this argument if you were trying to categorize Hav as fantasy. In that case, the question would revolve around the ratio of real to unreal, and it is possible to argue that in Hav, the latter outweighs the former (though I'd still feel that Hav's genericness gets in the way). When it comes to alternate history, however, I have to disagree with your claim that the question hinges on degree. Hav is a different kind of story than The Separation and The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
Reply
Hang on, I thought Tel Aviv was founded at the start of the 20th century? I'm sure there were other settlements on the site beforehand (although I admit I'll be surprised if any of them were Chinese or Russian), but in at least that one sense no, you do not live in a place like Hav, because it doesn't have the same continuity.
What you seem to be saying is that adding something sufficiently big to history makes that history alternate regardless of whether the present it brings us to is any different from ours.
What I'm saying is that the addition of something sufficiently big de facto makes the present of the story different from ours. The present of Hav *is* different than ours -- everyone has heard of Hav, and lots of people go there as tourists. But the focus of the book is not on the extent of that difference.
If the difference between naturalistic and SFnal fiction is that of degree, where does the tipping point lie?
Well, in one sense this depends whether you think science fiction is a form of naturalism or a form of the fantastic, which many people have spent a large amount of debating over the past fifty years, and which I doubt we're going to resolve today. The naturalism argument -- which is Le Guin's argument in her review of Hav -- is precisely that science fiction differs in degree but not in nature from the world around us today, that degree being the invention introduced. I find that persuasive, but in another sense it doesn't matter at all; there's a gradual shading between any two kinds of fiction, which means there's always a tipping point. Is Crowley's "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines" fantasy? Are Margo Lanagan's stories? Is Pattern Recognition science fiction? The answer in each case -- or at least, my answer in each case -- depends on whether I find it useful and interesting to say "yes." In the case of Hav I do.
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