Interzone #265 - July-August 2016

by Andy Cox [Ed. ]

Thinking about literature should mean more than thinking, in a very insular way, about an accepted canon. I would go so far as to say that to continue teaching the western literary canon as it is, inviolate and unchallenged, is like trying to insist upon teaching physics as we might have taught it before the birth of Albert Einstein.

  I am not talking about chucking out all the old stuff, or trying to insist, as Waldman seems to believe the Yale students who organised the petition were trying to insist, “that the major English poets have nothing to say to students who are not straight, white and male”. I’d be happy to see Yale’s six major English poets stay on the curriculum – indeed they should be on the curriculum, but as opt-in components of a more flexible and exploratory approach to what constitutes great literature. Making these particular writers a compulsory requirement is to make a statement about their importance, not just then but now. “There are few (arguably no) female poets writing in Chaucer’s time who rival Chaucer in wit, transgressiveness, texture or psychological insight,” Waldman argues. “The lack of equal opportunity was a tremendous injustice springing from oppressive social norms, but we can’t reverse it by willing brilliant female wordsmiths into the past.” Indeed we cannot, but knowing this, why would we seek to perpetuate those same oppressive social norms – norms that have led to the erasure of women and minority writers from Chaucer’s time onwards – by insisting that those writers who have arrived at the top of the canon via a skewed system should remain there regardless, the yardstick by which contemporary literature must be judged and the bedrock upon which future literature must be built?

  I need not add that any or all of the above could equally be applied to debates about the supposed importance of so-called canonical writers from SF’s Golden Age.

  The men of both canons were writers. Some of them were great writers. Their work is freely available to be read and studied. But we should not ignore the fact that a year of studying Pope and Chaucer – or Heinlein and Clarke – whilst it might be valuable for some, might actively alienate others, and that to continue in the unspoken assumption that those for whom the current canon feels conservative, a limitation rather than a stimulus for our ideas about literature, are somehow failing to achieve the required standard is not an upholding of excellence, but simply the perpetuation of outmoded criteria and, as the text of the Yale students’ petition suggests, summarily dismissive of anyone for whom the western canon and worldview is less than gospel.

  As someone passionately invested in the university system throughout the second and third decades of my life, one of the hardest lessons I had to unlearn was the idea of objective standards in literature as laid down by academics. It is sad and deflating to come to the realisation that as an Arts student, a lot of what you are taught at university is not definitively ‘true’, that the high marks you have routinely been awarded for producing accurate representation and summary of current systems of thought and criticism have little intrinsic value, that they are a series of subjective adjudications based around a currently accepted tranche of received opinion. It wasn’t until I began to perceive this that I began to feel the necessity of finding other modes of expression. To challenge, even just in my own mind, the intellectual status quo. There has been much to assimilate, a process that is still ongoing. But I can say my ideas about literature have broadened and deepened significantly since I have freed myself from preconceptions about the automatic supremacy of the accepted canon.

  The story of literature is not a unitary thing, no matter how much some professors and course directors and critical commentators would have you believe that it is. It is a protean organism, constantly evolving. It has a secret history. Personally, I would like to hear more from writers, critics and commentators with an interest and passion for excavating parts of that secret history, rather than more from those who seem overly invested in maintaining the canon elect. The most important asset in the study of literature is not a body of pre-acquired, university-sanctioned knowledge, but an independent mind. We all bring baggage to our reading and to our writing, but rather than someone else’s pre-packed, pre-selected baggage, shouldn’t we at least be allowed to bring our own baggage instead?

  ANSIBLE LINK

  DAVID LANGFORD

  As Others See Us. ‘People buy romance novels, sci-fi and other genres because they know they will encounter no unhappiness, no depression, no angst, no killings, no family conflict, etc., the way they will in all of modern fiction.’ (Letter, NY Times Book Review) • ‘Written at the height of Britain’s imperial project, those 23 little tales are really a primer for navigating the merciless currents of amoral capitalism.’ (Guardian subhead for ‘Into the dystopian world of Beatrix Potter’)

  In Typo Veritas. ‘George R.R. Martin has been given an honorary dungaree from Texas A&M University.’ (SF² Concatenation newscast)

  A.B. Yehoshua, eminent Israeli novelist, explains: ‘I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction. […] The literary trappings and moralizing of science fiction I find insufficiently compelling. Very possibly I am missing out on important genres. But it’s too late to change my conservatism.’ (NY Times Book Review)

  Awards. British Book Industry. Book of the Year: Andrew Michael Hurley, The Loney. Children’s: David Solomons, My Brother is a Superhero. • Compton Crook (sf/fantasy debut novel): Fran Wilde, Updraft. • Kate Greenaway Medal: Chris Riddell (his third win) for illustrating Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper and the Spindle. • Kurd Laßwitz Preis for Best Foreign SF Book: Neal Stephenson, Seveneves, translated into German as Amalthea. • Lambda (LGBT etc) sf/f/horror novel category: Kirsty Logan, The Gracekeepers. Anthology (not genre-specific) went to Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology; Roz Kaveney won for Transgender Fiction with her non-genre novel Tiny Pieces of Skull. • Nebulas. Novel: Naomi Novik Uprooted. Novella: Nnedi Okorafor, Binti. Novelette: Sarah Pinsker, ‘Our Lady of the Open Road’ (Asimov’s). Short: Alyssa Wong, ‘Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers’ (Nightmare). Andre Norton: (YA) Fran Wilde, Updraft. Ray Bradbury: (film) Mad Max: Fury Road. • Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication: inaugural winners include composer Hans Zimmer for his Interstellar film score.

  Douglas Adams was remembered in a June ‘Inquisitor’ crossword whose solvers had to make unspecified thematic changes to eight unspecified answers in accordance with an unspecified book title. There were several varieties of fish in the grid, and changing all these to synonyms of ‘So Long’ and ‘Thanks’ revealed our author’s name.

  Court Circular. Marvel’s and DC’s joint ownership of a trademark on the word ‘superhero’ was nearly tested in court after they tried to squelch UK author Graham Jules over a self-help book titled From Business Zero to Superhero. The big companies backed down shortly before the scheduled hearing at the Intellectual Property Office in London. (Guardian) • J.J. Abrams said in mid-May that the Paramount/CBS lawsuit against Axanar Productions for Star Trek IP infringement was ‘going away’; a settlement is implied, but Axanar nevertheless filed a counterclaim against the studios. (www.trektoday.com)

  Ursula K. Le Guin broadens our scope: ‘I don’t know if Thog is interested in opening his Masterclass to anyone outside science fiction, let alone the writer some people call The Master. But I know he likes the more violent anatomical disjunctions and peculiarities, and humbly offer him this one, from Chapter 30 of The Awkward Age by Henry James (p.301 in the 1981 Penguin Modern Classics edition): “‘But we have, you know, as Van says, gone to pieces’ she went on, twisting her pretty head and tossing it back over her shoulder to an auditor of whose approach to her from behind, though it was impossible she should have seen him, she had visibly, within a minute, become aware.” I can’t tell you the joy this passage gave me, as by page 301 I was in danger of tossing the book back over my shoulder into a fireplace of whose location, though I might be uncertain, I had become willin
g to imagine, as offering me a final, if less than admirable, escape from endless thickets of clauses introducing incomprehensibly allusive conversations carried on by disagreeable people, among whom the owner of the pretty head is, perhaps, the most tedious.’

  Andy Weir was boggled by an official US Congress invitation to testify at a May hearing of the Space Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, titled Next Steps to Mars: Deep Space Habitat. Rejected headline: ‘Author Hauled Before Congressional Committee for Writing Novel’.

  As Others See Game of Thrones. ‘The Seven Kingdoms are divided into nine regions, with a logic that will be familiar to all fans of fantasy, and even to a few normal people.’ (New Yorker) • ‘Research reveals that there have been 60 flashes of female breasts in the HBO show so far, but only a pair of penises’. (Guardian)

  Brian Blessed, whose many genre credits include Space: 1999 (1975–1976) and Flash Gordon (1980), received the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

  Coming and Going. John Gilbert’s magazine Fear has been revived in print; Black Clock magazine, Gary Fry’s horror-oriented Gray Friar Press and John DeNardo’s SF Signal blog all announced closure.

  H.P. Lovecraft is on the Retro Hugo ballot as Best Fan Writer of 1940 despite having died in 1937. ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie…’

  Prediction Dept. Sixty years ago, Anthony Boucher wrote in F&SF: ‘I can only say that anyone with the faintest interest in imaginative literature must at least sample The Lord of the Rings. Not everyone will find it to his taste; it will never appear on any bestseller lists…’

  As Others See Us II. Gemma Chan of C4’s Humans on the series’ appeal: ‘I think someone called it sci-fi for non sci-fi fans … It was more thoughtful.’ (Radio Times) • ‘To call The X-Files “science fiction” is to degrade it and to elevate Sci-fi to a standard it doesn’t deserve.’ (Secret Sun blog)

  We Are Everywhere. The Panama Papers tax-haven story was tinged with genre by the now infamous law firm Mossack Fonseca’s secret email system: ‘Wealthy clients could correspond using invented names. Some in the files leap out at you: Harry Potter, Winnie Pooh and Daniel Radcliffe. Obviously not the real one. / One customer used the name Isaac Asimov, a nod to the master of twentieth-century science fiction, whom he admired.’ (Guardian)

  Terri Windling gave the annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford, in May.

  Thog’s Masterclass. Dept of Neat Tricks. ‘He sat cross-legged before the Prisoner’s Pillar, a smile held to his face only by the fortitude of his small flat ears.’ (Anne Edwards, Haunted Summer, 1972) • Gastric Anomaly Dept. ‘His stomach came up and shook hands with his throat … Fear forced it back again.’ (‘Lionel Roberts’, The In-World, 1960) • Walk Before You Run Dept. ‘The torment in his side slowed him to a dizzy, infirm walk. He ran face-first into a tree…’ (Patricia Anthony, ‘Two-bag Goddess’ in Eating Memories, 1997) • Vivid Symbolism Dept. ‘“Interestingly,” Sparkes told Matthews later, as they sat in the cafeteria, “not all porn addicts get erections.” / Ian Matthews raised an eyebrow as he rested his sausage sandwich on the Formica table. “Do you mind, boss? I’m eating.”’ (Fiona Barton, The Widow, 2016)

  R.I.P.

  Daniel Atterbom (1959–2016), Swedish fan, journalist and comics expert who edited the comics journal Bild & Bubbla and two books on the subject, died on 4 June; he was 56.

  Adrian Berry (1937–2016) – Viscount Camrose since 2001 – UK science journalist and spaceflight advocate whose books included the pop-science The Next Ten Thousand Years (1974) and The Iron Sun: Crossing the Universe through Black Holes (1977) plus the sf novel Koyama’s Diamond (1982), died on 18 April; he was 78.

  Rhoda Blumberg (1917–2016), US author of many historical books for children plus such speculative ‘non-fact’ works as The First Travel Guide to the Moon (1980) – addressed to 21st-century kids – died on 6 June aged 98.

  James H. Burns, US fan who wrote for Starlog, Fantastic Films (as contributing editor), Cinefantastique, Starburst, Heavy Metal and Twilight Zone, was found dead on 2 June; he was about 56.

  Katherine Dunn (1945–2016), US author and journalist best known for her bestselling horror/paranormal novel Geek Love (1989), died on 11 May; she was 70.

  Nicholas Fisk (David Higginbottom, 1923–2016), UK author of much challenging and often unnerving sf for children, including Space Hostages (1967), Trillions (1971), Grinny (1973), Antigrav (1978) and the uncompromisingly grim A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair (1980), died on 10 May; he was 94.

  Roberta L. Gellis (1927–2016), US author of historical romances and fantasies (including the ‘Sceptr’d Isle’ series with Mercedes Lackey) and of sf as by Max Daniels in the 1970s and under her own name with Overstars Mail: Imperial Challenge (2004), died on 6 May; she was 88.

  Lars Gustafsson (1936–2016), major Swedish author, poet and academic who used fantastic themes in novels and published both essays on sf and short sf stories – notably in The Strange Beast from the North and other Science Fiction Tales (1999) – died on 3 April; he was 79.

  H.B. Hickey (Herbert B. Livingston, 1916–2016), author of some eighty stories including much sf from 1946 to 1970 (when ‘Gone are the Lupo’ appeared in the Delany/Hacker anthology Quark/1), died on 8 March; he was 99.

  Peter Janson-Smith (1922–2016), UK literary agent who among many others represented Ian Fleming and (for A Clockwork Orange) Anthony Burgess, died on 15 April aged 93.

  Philip Edward Kaldon, US physicist, academic and author of several genre stories beginning with ‘The Gravediggers’ (2004 CrossTIME Anthology III), died on 20 April.

  Paul Pinn (1955–2016), UK writer of horror and other genres whose first novel was The Pariah (2000), died from cancer on 4 February at the age of 60.

  Gregory Rabassa (1922–2016), noted US translator of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other major works by Latin American authors, died on 14 June; he was 94.

  Richard Selzer (1928–2016), US surgeon and author whose works include some short horror fiction, died on 5 June aged 87.

  Robyn Sisman (1955–2016), US-born author and editor who published J.G. Ballard reprints and the first Interzone anthology while at J.M. Dent, plus sf including Kim Newman’s The Night Mayor and Brian Stableford’s The Empire of Fear at Simon & Schuster, died on 20 May.

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  comment

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  book & film reviews

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  ALL YOUR CITIES I WILL BURN

  JOHN SCHOFFS
TALL

  illustrated by Martin Hanford

  As we marched down to Fennario,

  As we marched down to Fennario,

  Our captain fell in love

  With a lady like a dove,

  And they called her name pretty Peggy-O.

  —Trad.

  They say that when telling a story, it’s important to pick the right place to start. Not too far into the story, but not too long before its beginning. In telling my story about the love of Captain Terrell Johnson and Peggy O’Neill, about the Meteor Gods and the end of the world, I’m going to start 435 million years ago. I hope that’s not too soon.

  There was a mass extinction of living species 435 million years ago, according to fossil records. There was another mass extinction 355 million years ago. And 250 million. And 203 million. And 65 million. In fact, the closer we look, the more mass extinction events we see. There may have been as many as twenty-six in the last billion years.

  At one time, we had a theory that asteroids crashing into the Earth caused mass extinctions. In 2042 we got to test that theory, though not by choice. We found that it was only half-right.

  In early February of 2040, NASA’s Near Earth Object Program detected an asteroid on a collision course for Earth. They named it Object 2040-CA19. CA19 was about a kilometer in its longest axis. NEOP assigned it a ‘9’ on the Torino Scale: certain impact, massive local destruction, but the human race was expected survive. Predicted impact point was in the Gulf of Mexico, midway between New Orleans, Brownsville, and the Yucatan.