by David Brin
I'm paraphrasing a bit, obviously.
Now, trends come and trends go, and we might, as a genre, have been able to get through this and eventually make up lost ground, except Star Wars was not a one-hit wonder-unlike Gone with the Wind, which is the only movie ever to rake in more at the box office. The Empire Strikes Back was the highest-grossing film of 1980, and any hysteria that may have begun to die down in the intervening three years was ramped right back up again. In 1983 Return of theJedi did the same thing. It seemed Star Wars hysteria was self-sustaining for three years and then needed a hit. Unfortunately, in 1986 there was no new Star Wars, as Lucas had walked away from the series.
"What will we do?" cried Marketing. Unfortunately, before Editorial could make its voice heard, they answered their own question. Movie tie-ins were clearly hot properties. And if movies, why not television?
In 1997 John Kessel, referring to the Star Wars phenomenon, said, "Ask yourself why 60% of SF today arises out of the media."3
60% in 1997.
In 1999, Star Wars came back. It has been said that The Phantom Menace was the most eagerly anticipated sequel in the history of motion pictures. All right, technically it was a prequel, and people quoted were usually fans or in marketing, but that doesn't change the fact that most of the 13,701,507 million of us went back to Luscasland, all of us trained by over twenty years media tie-ins to expect a new surge of Star Wars books.
Nor were we disappointed.
May 2002, and Attack of the Clones goosed the marketing hysteria by earning $110 million in its first four days of North American release. May 19, 2005, and Revenge of the Sith opens at theaters all around the world to record box-office grosses. It was deja vu all over again, except this time, the marketing forces were already in place.
Amazon.com, the largest online book retailer, has a Star Wars store. The day I wrote this, a simple Star Wars search gave me 203,459 hits. At Barnes and Noble online, 1,412 hits under books alone. Even up here in Canada, with roughly one-tenth of the U.S. population, a search in books on chapters.indigo.ca came up with 1,014 responses.
In large chain bookstores, the books that sell are given the prime positions. They're given the displays with brilliant eye-catching head ers. They're given the shelves that are the most visible from the common areas of the store. What science fiction books have the highest numbers in chain bookstores? Go on. Take a look. I'll wait here. The evidence certainly suggests that those books are media tie-ins. Movies. Television shows. Computer games.
Yes, computer games. Which would not be as advanced as they are without the CGI developed by George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, a company made possible by the success of Star Wars.
Of course there are other books in the stores. The year I was on the jury for the Philip K. Dick Award, I was amazed by how many smart, exciting, convention-breaking books are still being written. Mind you, many of them are coming from independent presses, most of their marketing done by word of mouth, a large percentage of their distribution done over the Internet one sale at a time, and most of them never see the inside of a large chain store where books are treated as product.
However, large chain stores are exactly what the general public wants in a bookstore. They can get a coffee and a paper and pick up the latest celebrity offering and maybe wander around a bit to see what's happening in the rest of the store. An SF fan might indulge a craving for trendy bit of fluff and then move on to find something a little more substantial, but the general public, wandering past Mysteries and into Science Fiction while sipping their pumpkin latte, takes one look at shelf after shelf after shelf of media-tie ins and thinks, understandably I'm afraid, that this is all that Science Fiction is.
Why do we care? We care because that author writing the smart, exciting, convention-breaking book is barely making a living, and, eventually, the knowledge that multinational corporations are making millions from books that say little more than "good is better than evil because good has snappier dialogue" will have one of two effects-that author will realize he or she doesn't want to be associated with that kind of thing or that author will sign on to do the next blockbuster novelization.
Cops. Lost another one.
And we could have never devolved to this point without Star Wars.
Star Wars was the grandpappy of media tie-ins and has become a shorthand definition of science fiction for an entire generation. It isn't just that Star Wars-simple, sparkly and not exactly cohesive under critical analysis-has wiped out any literary merit science fiction had gained in the minds of the general public; it's worse: there are adults, with children of their own, who have never lived in world where science fiction wasn't reeling under the weight of Star Wars. There are adults who have never known the science fiction section of bookstores when they weren't dominated by media tie-ins.
We, science fiction writers and fans, were used to being considered weird, but now we, as a genre, are being dismissed as shallow, sparkly and not, let's face it, particularly smart if Star Wars is the best we can do.
In 1980, a U.S. border guard waved five fans across the border by accepting a definition of science fiction as Star Wars and saying, "I loved that movie."
In 2005 one of those same fans went to her travel agent for plane tickets to the World Science Fiction Convention in Scotland, and her travel agent said dismissively, "I'm not into that Star Wars stuff...."
Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Ontario, Canada, with her partner Fiona Patton, six and a half cats and an unintentional Chihuahua. Her latest book and the third of the Tony Foster novels, Smoke and Ashes, will be out in hardcover in June 2006.
THE COURTROOM
DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover?
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Yes. Thank you, Ms. Huff, for sharing your experiences with the Court. Tell the Court, if you will: in the days when science fiction was not "that Star Wars stuff" but was instead "that Flash Gordon stuff" or "that Buck Rogers stuff," do you seriously think that the reputation of the genre was substantially better in the popular imagination? What evidence do you have for this?
TANYA HUFF: Back in the days when science fiction was, as you call it, "that Flash Gordon stuff," its reputation was much as it is now. And that's the problem. I'd like to think that after all those years of good writing as well as social and scientific considerations that we, as a genre, might have progressed beyond "gee sparkly" and "gosh wow" or even "good Lord..." in the popular imagination. We were, in point of fact, garnering some serious attention in the years immediately pre-Star Wars-as you yourself said in your 2001 SF Site interview:
"That's what the New Wave did for SF: injected real literary quality-a concern with character, relevance and plain old-fashioned good writing-that helped rescue SF from the scrap heap of spacecraft, robots and ray-guns."
Then the bright lights and the witty repartee and the overwhelming weight of the Star Wars phenomenon knocked us back a few decades as marketing took over from content. Also, I would argue that in the days when science fiction was, as you call it, "that Buck Rogers stuff," the genre had no actual reputation in the popular imagination, if you define popular as "prevalent among the general public," as the general public spent no time thinking of science fiction at all. These days, post-Star Wars, the general pub lic has no choice but to notice us and form an opinion-it would be as difficult to ignore an elephant in the living room.
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Have you ever taken the time to correspond with SF fans who have become SF fans precisely because of Star Wars? That for whom this "simple, sparkly, not exactly cohesive" saga was a "gateway drug" to a profound and serious lifelong commitment to the wider genre we all love (at least one of whom has become a spectacularly talented novelist who is a witness for the Defense in this very trial)? Do you have any idea how many of them are out there?
TANYA HUFF: As a matter of fact, I'm married to an SF fan who came into the genre with Star Wars. She's now working on her fifth novel for DAW Books. Star Wars was indeed her "gate
way drug to a profound and serious lifelong commitment to the wider genre we all love," but she kicked the drug and moved on to become a talented novelist who writes books of brilliant complexity. I would argue that in order to become the writer my wife is or the writer the witness for the Defense is, you must move past simple, sparkly and not exactly cohesive-you must move on. And there's the sticking point.
I was the mass market buyer at Bakka Books in Toronto for eight years. Throughout the eighties and early nineties I worked the Bakka table at Toronto conventions. During that time, I watched the genre change from the front lines, and I spoke to hundreds of SF fans weekly. For every one of them looking for a book that could expand their universe, at book that could raise questions, a book that would make them think, there were easily a couple dozen looking for the same thing they read the week before. And the week before that. Yes, we have always had lazy readers-every genre has lazy readers-but I would argue that the weight of the Star Wars phenomenon expanded our cadre of lazy readers far beyond where it would have been otherwise. We're looking at a generation who have been told cradle to grave what to think. Media informs all of their choices-what cereal to buy, what car to drive, what music to listen to, what books to read. Star Wars has told them that this is what science fiction is, and given the amount of space media tie-ins take up in our bookstores-virtual and physi cal-a depressingly large number of them have never questioned that.
There are many people who came into the genre with Star Wars; there are many more people who define the genre by Star Wars.
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Speaking as an author who was indeed barely making a living writing convention-breaking books, and who did indeed sign on to write a blockbuster novelization, are you entirely certain it's appropriate to describe me, personally, as lost? Are you willing to concede even the possibility that some writers might write as seriously for Mr. Lucas as they do for themselves, and then take their borrowed celebrity back to their own careers, to support their nasty habit of writing conventionbreaking books-and in the process, lead some not-inconsiderable numbers of Star Wars ex-geeks with them, giving them a taste for SF Beyond the GFFA-so in fact helping to support the rest of the genre?
TANYA HUFF: Am I willing to concede the possibility that some writers might write as seriously for Mr. Lucas as they do for themselves? Sure. But I'm a big believer in anything being possible. Actually, let's turn that around: Am I willing to concede the possibility that some writers might write as seriously for themselves as they do for Mr. Lucas? God, I hope not. Unless things have changed a great deal since I last looked at the work-for-hire market, the work has to be completed within a very curtailed time frame. Good books can be written in three months, sure, but under a deadline so tight there's little room to explore possibilities-significant wordage must be cranked out daily because falling behind isn't an option. This is not a situation where you can get an extension for the demands of either art or craft-these books are marketing driven and marketing doesn't work that way. Timing is everything. Again, unless things have changed in the last few years, writers produce work-for-hire work under very strict parameters-you may not, for example, cause the characters to act in ways that haven't already been predetermined by the source production. You may not allow the novel to develop organically under the demands of story. I'm not saying these are badly written books-although some of them undeniably are-nor am I saying that books written with out these constraints are all well-written books-because some of them undeniably aren't. What I am saying is that I sincerely hope that when writing for themselves, these authors take the opportunity of time and freedom of artistic expression a lot more seriously than they take a three-month deadline and characters they cannot change.
As for borrowed celebrity ... well, I've seen a lot of people buy media tie-ins over the years, and I can pretty much guarantee you that nine out ten of them don't care about the author. There is no borrowed celebrity because there is no celebrity. There's only three months of your life you got very well paid for-and hey, that's nothing to sneeze at, but career-wise, to the book-buying public, it means little.
Is there a chance that a Star Wars fan will see your name on a non-Star Wars book, recognize it and buy it, moving away from shallow and sparkly and into the genre as a whole? There's a chance. If nine out of ten fans don't care then there's obviously one who does, and for you, personally, that 10% may well lead to a significant sales bump of your other work. Unfortunately, though, for the genre as a whole, when we're talking Star Wars numbers, it's those nine who don't care who count, because when you're talking about 90% of Star Wars-sized numbers, you're talking about a lot of people. Enough people to skew the genre. To paraphrase from an earlier fandom: "Marketing to the many outweighs the needs of the one."
Do I think it's appropriate to describe you as lost? Ask me again in five years.
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Thank you, Ms. Huff. I certainly hope to. If I live that long; there's a rumor that the Sith are out to get me. I'm not sure I believe it. Does this look like a Kaminoan sabre-dart to you?
DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover-
MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Yes, yes. Call Richard Garfinkle.
E ALL KNOW THE SCENE. The Millennium Falcon fleeing pursuit jumps into hyperspace. For a moment the stars become lines and the audience cheers. At least that's what happened the far too many times I saw the original Star Wars at the age of fifteen (this was before it was A New Hope). I'm putting in the biographical information because it should be held against me in making this strangely slanted defense. I was at the right age to have my head blown off by the visuals of Star Wars.
Don't get me wrong, this was not by any stretch of the imagination my first exposure to SE I was a science fiction fan long before I saw the movie. I had read my way through most of the major writers of the time and several from before that time, and had watched Star Trek and 2001 and all the other required viewing for a fan of that era. Everything that showed up on the screen in that initial viewing of Star Wars I had already read from one author or another: hyperspace from Niven, robots from Asimov, an order of psychic good guys from E. E. "Doc" Smith. Even at the overly impressionable age I then was, I knew that I was watching fun sci-fi, not original science fiction.
At the time I had no ambitions to be a science fiction writer, nor were my friends proto-writers. We did not discuss the movie in terms of its place in the canon of science fiction; we just sat back and en joyed the view, the dialogue (particularly Leia's dialogue) and the events as they unfolded before our eyes. We had no concerns about the movie's relation to the broader context of science fiction.
Now, far too many years later, I am called to look back upon it from the seat of the writer and ask whether or not the source of the experience I had as a fifteen-year-old has created a general perception of SF that is good for the field overall.
In two critical respects the Star Wars movies have been good for SF, although the ways they have been good are backhanded.
I do not defend the movies as good SF; they are not. However, I do maintain that they did a great favor for all of us who write SF and those who read that writing, because they took away the need for post-Star Wars SF writers to waste space explaining certain things. I also maintain that in the long run the Star Wars movies will have done us a very strange favor by drawing the audience for cinematic writing to the cinema. These two favors are not strictly connected, so I won't bother to try. I will start with the case that is easier to make.
STAR WARS HAS GIVEN US USEFUL SHORTHAND
One of the most common problems facing a writer, particularly an SF/F writer, is having to explain what his or her characters are undergoing and what they are seeing and what the implications of those experiences are without losing the audience's interest. In some genres this is not a real problem. Romance writers and their edgier counterparts can spend page after page going on about the minutiae of certain commonplace events without worrying about boring their readers. But in SF/F the writer has
to explain the less racy aspects of the world the characters are in and sometimes has to clarify such oddities as doors, windows, foods, means of transportation, religions, architectural styles, etc., etc., etc. All books, classes and workshops on writing SF help student writers deal with these problems using a variety of strategies and tricks which I won't detail here. But behind all the sophisticated methods lies the simplest trick, a writing tool that is employed every day by everybody: familiarity.
This tool is based on the principle that it is easy to write what is familiar to the audience. An example: for just about the last century a writer could pen the following sentence without risk of confusing the reader:
Norma answered the ringing phone.
However, if an author in 1850 had tried to write a story with telephones in it, that author could not have written the above, because no one would know what a telephone was, why it rang or what it meant to answer it. This hypothetical author would have had to explain how a telephone worked or how people used them in their daily lives. Depending on the author's skill this would have taken anywhere from a paragraph to several pages. As a real instance of this, L. Frank Baum in the book Tik-Tok of Oz (1914) has a magical wireless telephone. He needs a paragraph to explain it to an audience used to wired telephones. Nowadays one could use the phrase "magic cell phone" and need nothing more.
A basic truth of writing is that what is familiar is easy to write and easy to communicate. Speechwriters for politicians use easy short phrases (such as "I love my country," "Support our troops," "Enemies Bad!") that are familiar to their hearers and will quickly connect to their audiences' thoughts. A person trying to write something subtle, unfamiliar or nuanced to counter one of these slogans has to take a lot of time, effort and well-chosen words to create as strong a mental connection as familiar phrases can bring across in just a few words.