Friday short fiction #30: Recursive SF
M.C. Escher Relativity 1953
"I love you sons of bitches. You’re all I read any more. You're the only ones who’ll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last for billions of years. You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell."
- Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965
"...we already had trouble being regarded as relevant or sensible, further noting how the fantasist could turn cheerfully or guiltily upon her own devices would only make us appear more ridiculous to the hostile ... In sincerity, I wonder where all of this is taking us, but note that it probably will be my fate to never know. God bless you, Mr. Rosewater."
- Barry N. Malzberg, 'Thinking About Thinking About Science Fiction', 1990
It's been a good few weeks for science fiction: first, the forthcoming (and entirely free) third edition of the Encyclopedia of SF is announced, then last week we learned about Gollancz's SF Gateway, making thousands of out-of-print books available as e-books. What other genre can be so self-sustaining and at the same time so recursively inventive? NESFA's Recursion index clearly needs a third edition as well.
Henry Kuttner, Reader, I Hate You' (SUPER SCIENCE STORIES, MAY 1943)
Kuttner and artist Virgil Finlay are coerced into writing and illustrating a supposedly true tale for Super Science Stories. Probably a rather good joke at the time, it's since lost some of its panache but still has its moments. The cover Finlay painted for this story's issue is here.
Lavie Tidhar, 'The School' (LAVIETIDHAR.WORDPRESS.COM, 27 JUNE 2011)
The most recent talk-piece of recursive SF, a polemical rant modelled around Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which strictly speaking makes it fanfiction although Tidhar is clearly no fan of Card. There is the sound of axes being ground here and the axiomatic stuff is neatly tossed in, designed to give vent to some of fandom's trigger issues, but the story itself is still a bit too thin on the ground for my liking. Now everyone wants to know: which magazine and website backed down and avoided the possible lawsuits? Inevitably Lavie's post also has a combative comments section.
Ian Watson, 'How to be a Fictionaut: Chapter 19: Safety Check' (INTERZONE #106, APRIL 1996)
Plagiarism avoidance advice for the budding science fiction author... if you've ever had a conversation over a beer with Ian Watson you'll know how the merest spark of an idea will just send him off on a long tangential monologue which probably also functions as a way of exploring a possible story, and this reads just like one of those occasions. Also, I don't recall ever reading any SF before that actually reads like a sales pitch. When he's on form Watson can be very entertaining.
Mik Wilkens, 'The Pen is Mightier' (DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, 11 APRIL 2011)
Aliens discover that Earth needs to be destroyed because humans are just too creative for the multiverse to handle. This only just makes the cut for concept (ie. the idea doesn't descend into complete superficiality) and I expect others may have tried something similar over the decades, however this still feels both too lightweight yet at the same time not light-hearted enough. I know, I'm impossible to please sometimes. Though not a bad try, Mik.
Favourite short story of the week: John W. Campbell, 'Twilight' (ASTOUNDING STORIES, NOVEMBER 1934)
One of the top fifteen stories of the period 1929-1964 and therefore collected in Silverberg's The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol. 1, which I've begun this week. It's not a recursive piece, just a time-travelling extrapolation of far future humanity all but replaced by the machines it once relied on. Our journey out to colonise the rest of the solar system feels positively Stapledonian at times, and I also liked the way Campbell moves deftly between the story's three narrators without any heavy-handedness. A gorgeously moody story, very much of its time.