A.L.: You have said that one of the “ways of reading” is thematic criticism. I do not know if the fantasy genre provides critical and sociological analysis as interesting as science fiction or crime fiction; if science fiction was undervalued, it is possible that fantasy was even more undervalued for literary critics.
F.M.: I don’t see why fantasy cannot be subject to sociological criticism. The relatively new field of Critical Race Studies (see the work of Isiah Lavender III) would be a place to start. Even at the big epic fantasy end, more and more writers and critics are asking hard questions such as “How exactly is that army kept in the field?” Authors such as David Drake and Diana Wynne Jones aren’t willing to allow “fantasy” to equal “wish fulfillment.” Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels was an excoriating story in which social and critical context is everything. There was one review of her short story “The Goosle” which demonstrated what happens when the critic tries to ignore a sociological analysis: the story was deemed too horrible, as if fantasy has to show only the nice bits, or at least only the violence ruled acceptable for fiction. (One issue may have been that it was a boy being raped; lots of girls and women get raped in fiction, and there are few literary objections.)
A.L.: Writers ranging from Tolkien to Stephen Lawhead have created epic fantasy that can be read from a Christian point of view. Are “axiological properties” (religious or moral values, and so on) the core of contemporary fantasy or a key figure within fantasy?
F. M: There is a real advantage to not being a Christian in this field (I’m Jewish); it allows you to see more closely the issue of Christian Fantasy. You see, until Lewis, Christian fantasy meant something very different. For the project I’m working on now, a history of children’s fantasy literature, I’m reading in historical order (an advantage of being a historian). Until the 1950s, what Christian fantasy meant was teaching children to be meek and mild. There were few adventures, and the journeys as such were modeled on John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a text that I think is underestimated for the way it shaped the genre. The meek-and-mild aspect of Christianity has had little effect on modern fantasy, but the journey structure, and the idea that there will be something important at the end of the quest, has become terribly important. Even here, however, I would caution that this is only one kind of Christianity. Pre-millennial Christians are much more interested in the journey than in the end point, what Quakers call “growing into grace.” Actually, it occurs to me that you could see that element in Middle Book syndrome—where they all wander around for a while and the hero gets a chance to learn things. Except that as well as Jesus’s (rather short) sojourn in the wilderness, there are the Israelites’ forty years. I swear, with some epic fantasies, it feels like forty years. I’m waiting for an author to realize that and write it in real time—so far we have Robert Jordan taking 23 years, and George R. R. Martin taking 17 so far. That’s serious Old Testament time scales.
I think people are too quick to rush to Christianity as the basis for fantasy. Yes, Christian fantasists have been important, but many of the late-nineteenth-century writers were radicals, Marxists, and freethinkers, as were many of the earlier twentieth century ones. In the twentieth century, there have been really important Jewish writers, including a mainstream writer such as Isaac Bashevis Singer to a popular genre writer such as Peter Beagle. We now have Muslim writers such as Saladin Ahmed and Nnedi Okorafor coming into the field, or Ashok Banker, a Hindu; Nalo Hopkinson is the daughter of a Muslim convert; and a lot of the fantasy writers are just flat-out atheists.
The third part of that is the issue of moral values and is the easiest: all fiction is an exploration of moral values, consciously or unconsciously. Fantasy is often more conscious of that than other fields, but it’s like asking bias. Of course something is biased/interested in moral values: what’s interesting is what that means.
A.L.: In Rhetorics of Fantasy, you provided four categories: the portal-quest, the inmersive, the intrusion, and the liminal fantasy. Have you read Possible Worlds of the Fantastic by Nancy H. Traill? I have included her typology of the fantastic. Are your taxonomies compatible? To me, your categories are clearer and more versatile. And what do you think of the possible/fictional worlds framework (Lubomir Dolezel, Thomas Pavel, Umberto Eco, and Marie-Laure Ryan, among others)?
F.M.: I haven’t read Possible Worlds (I’ve just tried to buy it. Ouch. Tip to aspiring critics: if you want people to read you, choose publishers who can publish cheaply, and to hell with the kudos of a university press) but I don’t think “compatibility” is a useful way to think of this. Both mine and Nancy Traill’s ideas are filters. Filters allow certain ways of thinking to show up more clearly. It is perfectly appropriate in my world to experiment with multiple filters, to see overlaps—because something that shows up no matter what filter is used is going to be especially interesting to me—and to note and explore the disjuncts. I don’t think there is a One True Theory, nor a One True Taxonomy: it is why Rhetorics of Fantasy begins with a health warning and ends with a challenge.
I like many forms of fantasy, although horror never really worked for me because I’m too rational: I’m at the “How does this work?” end of the reading experience, and it’s that which orients me to sf rather than to fantasy for pleasure reading.
A.L.: You have also studied science fiction. In Spain, Michael Moorcock is not very popular. New Wave authors do not sell many books in my country; but George R. R. Martin is the most popular fantasy writer now. Do you have a hypothesis of how some fantasy and science fiction writers fall into oblivion and others are exaggeratedly successful? I mean, a sociology of literary genres or something like that.
F.M.: I have not really worked too hard at thinking of this but I do have a few random thoughts which have no real evidence attached. I think if you want to be a mega-selling writer, you need to do at least some of the following:
a) Produce entry-level fiction in terms of the language used and the ideas—this is not intended as a put down, but both J. K. Rowling and (at least early) Terry Pratchett can be read by people who know little of the field, and neither make huge literary demands, although Pratchett is a very clever and witty user of the English language. Simple language does not have to be poor language.
b) Write consistently in the same vein, either a series or a particular kind of work: writers who produce a wide body of work may attain cult status, but they rarely become the mega-sellers.
However, Neil Gaiman bucks both those trends; I’d put both him and John Scalzi into the “And it helps to be utterly charming and have a brilliant online presence” category.
I would also offer a health warning: being a mega-seller does not guarantee immortality. It’s often the cult books, passed from hand to hand, and which are read by the bookworms, that make it into the next generation. Their children become the librarians, the publishers, and the educators. Diana Wynne Jones is one of the best examples of this we’ve ever seen, dismissed in the 1980s as “minor,” she may be one of the most important writers for children in the second half of the twentieth century. When she died, the list of authors citing her influence kept Tor.com’s comment section going for pages.
A.L.: What are you preparing or writing for the near future? Any conclusion?
F.M.: My very favorite writer at the moment is probably Frances Hardinge. If I had a bet on who would be in the cult status in twenty years, she would be my pick. Her first book is a picaresque (Fly By Night), her second a suburban fantasy (Verdigris Deep), her third a fantasy of genocide (seriously, Gullstruck Island) and her most recent is A Face Made of Glass, which I can’t describe without giving things away.
A more general comment is that the field is changing, and I wouldn’t hurry to look at the Hugos or the Locus poll that has just been released to indicate this. Popular polls are skewed by age demographics, and both of those groups are generally older than the readership in general. However, it was noticeable that in this year’s Hugo nominations there we
re young men and women of color, of different backgrounds, and with radically nonnormative experiences. I have little truck with those who suggest the field is dying: I think it is just mutating again. Some readers will be left behind, new readers will adhere. That is what should happen in any field.
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Andrés Lomeña lives in Málaga. Farah Mendlesohn lives in London.
Victor Grech
Star Trek’s Picard: Humanity’s Conscience
Introduction
Star Trek is a rolling and seemingly endless adventure, a continual reaffirmation of the Campbellian monomyth, a
universe in which Captains Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisko, and Archer are still one with Jason, Odysseus, Sinbad, Columbus, Cook, Ahab, Armstrong, and every other sea- or spacefarer, real or fictional, that has ever left (or will ever leave) the comfort and safety of home port in search of what’s lurking “out there” and waiting to be discovered. (Pilkington 54)
Several captains have led in Star Trek but arguably none have been imbued with more integrity and authority than Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the epitome of a twenty-fourth century Starfleet captain in Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) and related films.
A brief listing of Picard’s accomplishments includes: defending humanity against the judgment of the seemingly omnipotent beings that inhabit the Q Continuum, preventing treacherous Romulans from installing a puppet government in the Klingon Empire, preventing an entire species from being forcibly relocated, defeating the implacable cyborg Borg collective, saving Earth from annihilation by his own clone, saving humanity, saving the galaxy, and saving the universe. Picard is arguably a symbol, a synecdoche for the Star Trek gesamtkunstwerk and for the entire genre.
Reading Picard’s most important statements demonstrates his thirst for knowledge, truth, and new opportunities; his role as upholder of justice in resolute pursuit of duty; his leadership skills; his manifest humanism; his place as a friend and a compassionate man, the captain-philosopher, appreciator of the arts and harbinger of a brighter and superior future. Picard is not only the voice and conscience of the Federation and humanity, but “the bearer of Starfleet’s conscience and an exemplar of moral autonomy” (Eberl and Decker 141), and therefore an ideal role model.
Picard’s deontological leanings reify him as a moral paragon, a role model whose decisions and actions resonate with our individual desire to do the right thing, emphasizing the “ultimately liberating feature of Star Trek’s mythos . . . its emphasis on the growth of understanding. . . . Gene Roddenberry’s belief in humanity’s potential for self-transcendence” (Lundeen and Wagner 215).
In all of these ways, it will be demonstrated that Picard’s handling of the ship has certainly made “sure history never forgets the name, Enterprise” (Carson, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”).
Seeking knowledge, truth and new opportunities
The familiar opening soliloquy of each Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, delivered by Picard, reflects the Aristotelean notion that the more we know, the more we know that there are things that we do not know. Hence the desire “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!”
In addition, the search for veracity is Galilean, irrespective of the consequences:
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it is scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth. It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. (Scheerer, “The First Duty”)
This quest for knowledge may require tolerance and fortitude, even in the face of linguistic and cultural barriers when dealing with alien species. “In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination. I would like to believe these are qualities we have in sufficient measure” (Kolbe, “Darmok”).
Moreover, Picard exhorts us to to seize precious opportunities as they arise: “[l]ive now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again” (Lauritson, “The Inner Light”).
Upholder of justice and pursuit of duty
Picard is, again and again, set as “the wise man. He rules the Enterprise with a sagely wisdom” (Ghosh 63). Picard carries out actions irrespective of consequences, because he “thought it was the right thing to do” (Lynch, “A Matter of Time”).
Picard also believes in justice, preferably in trial by jury of one’s peers, since “the courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product, the truth for all time” (Scheerer, “The Measure of a Man”).
Picard scoffs at the usual excuses that are employed for the sake of tyrannical convenience: “‘[m]atter of internal security,’ the age old cry of the oppressor” (Bole, “The Hunted”). Indeed, when an inquiry degenerates into a witch hunt on board the Enterprise, with overtones of a drumhead, he defends his crew, with escalating levels of emphasis: “Admiral, what you’re doing here is unethical. It’s immoral. I’ll fight it” (Frakes, “Drumhead”).
Picard holds fast to a Kantian deontological course of action, opposing any actions that benefit many at the expense of one individual since “no being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another” (Landau, “The Schizoid Man”).
Picard also deontologically defends the minority, such as the species known as “the Ba’ku,” when Starfleet, under the direct instructions of the Federation, deviates from basic principles and plans the forced relocation of these six hundred individuals who constitute an entire species. “We are betraying the principles upon which the Federation was founded. . . . How many people does it take . . . before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million?” (Frakes, Star Trek: Insurrection).
Moreover, Picard is a prime upholder of Starfleet’s General Order Number One, the “principle of non-interference” (Bole, “Redemption”), which categorically states that “we have no right to interfere in the natural evolution of alien worlds” (Lynch, “A Matter of Time”), and more generally, “[i]t is not our mission to impose Federation or Earth values on any others in the galaxy” (Phelps, “Symbiosis”), eschewing any paternalistic stances toward less technologically or culturally developed races.
Picard’s deontological leanings are so ingrained that even when the crews’ memories are partially erased, and the ship’s new false orders require an attack on a purported enemy base with a crew of fifteen thousand, he balks when he finds the base poorly defended and calls off the attack, correctly suspecting a conspiracy and declaring “I do not fire on defenseless people” (Landau, “Conundrum”).
Leadership and Patient Implacability
Picard’s leadership has been the subject of books of management and decision-making exercises, since the “underlying themes and messages are not so different from the real-life situations and circumstances each of us encounter daily” (Wess, xii). Indeed Picard’s role “is based on myths of masculine gods that pose the male as warrior leader, guide, and savior—an active agent in the making of culture” (Balinisteanu 401).
While fostering peace and diplomatic relations with alien species and groups, the “the coolly paternal” Captain (Cranny-Francis 249) represents Starfleet’s attitude of self-defense when under attack or in captivity.
Picard optimistically insists that “[t]here is a way out of every box, a solution to every puzzle, it’s just a matter of finding it” (Frakes, “Attached”), adamantly claiming that “[t]hings are only impossible until they’re not,” (Manners, “When The Bough Breaks”). Furthermore, Picard is fully cognizant of the possibility of defeat despite all one’s best efforts, noting that “it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life” (Scheerer, “Peak Performance”).
Picard also scorns compromise with any form of evil, quoting Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound,” “A great poet once said, ‘all spirits are enslaved that serve things evil’” (Scanlan, “Skin of Evil”).
This includes his belief that “there are times . . . when men of goo
d conscience cannot blindly follow orders,” (Frakes, “The Offspring”). Thus, the commands of a superior officer should not be used as an excuse to unthinkingly carry out orders that may trample on the rights of individuals or minorities.
Human Limitations
He too however, is human, with his own flaws and weaknesses but “there are times when it is necessary for a captain to give the appearance of confidence” (Frakes, “Attached”). Indeed, he acknowledges the fact that “[e]xcessive honesty can be disastrous particularly in a commander. . . . Knowing your limitations is one thing. Advertising them to a crew can damage your credibility as a leader” (Bole, “The Ensigns Of Command”).
Picard himself is riven by his personal experience of being assimilated by the Borg, a hive organization comprised of cyborgs wherein individuality is lost in subservience to a Marcusian collective. He had been “transformed through technological prosthetics that stifle his élan vital” (Balinisteanu 398) and even after being recovered, he deeply regrets this, breaking down in front of his brother and confessing
They took everything I was; they used me to kill and to destroy and I couldn’t stop them, I should have been able to stop them, I tried, I tried so hard. But I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t good enough. (Landau, “Family”)
Scriptwriter and producer Michael Piller remarked that this was a deliberate stroke,
the indestructible captain, untouchable, above all risk and danger, and suddenly, . . . he is a man who’s been raped by the Borg and has to deal emotionally with huge consequences. You see the first needle going into his forehead, and a single tear rolling down his cheek. And after that, Picard was more complex, never the same. (“Mission Overview”)
NYRSF February 2013 Issue 294 Page 7