I think I want to talk about science fiction some more. I don’t remember the first time I heard the expression “literary science fiction? But I think it was being used to compare to space opera. Now I’m not well versed in the history and evolution of science fiction past the 1970s. Halfway through that decade I became deeply interested in making a living so I didn’t have the leisure to read all of the books coming out. But what I could tell was some of it didn’t seem to be science fiction. I can remember reading a couple of Samuel R Delaney books and thinking, “This guy has problems that I’m not interested in.” And so, I decided that literary science fiction was not for me.
It seemed to me that there should be a middle ground between space opera and Samuel R Delaney. Without a doubt some of the writers from the olden times like Asimov completely eschewed producing characters that sounded and acted like real live human beings. Now granted, we don’t expect to get James Joyce when we pick up a book with a cover illustrated with a half-naked woman in the clutches of a giant lobster. But by the same token once you’ve grown up and have some understanding of what people say and do in real life it would seem to me that an author who wants to make his story interesting would make his people act and speak like … people!
So, if you go back and read, for instance, Jack Williamson’s “The Legion of Space” as an adult you may be amazed at how threadbare the writing seems. The characters are for the most part caricatures of the chivalrous hero battling monsters (literally) to save the damsel in distress. And this is too far in the other direction from literary s-f. Space ships, evil giant intelligent amoebas and space-time tearing secret weapons are great stuff but unless the characters have at least some similarities to actual human beings it’s kind of hard to get the readers to want to finish the story.
And there is a pretty wide bandwidth between these extremes. Writers like Asimov and Clarke didn’t spend much time on characterization. Hari Seldon and Dave Bowman were thumbnail sketches that barely provided enough description to convince the reader they existed. But these were plot driven stories and as long as their authors would give us anything at all to allow us to pretend that they were people, we could suspend disbelief.
And Heinlein was able to write dozens of stories that were populated with various flavors and ages of his “competent man” whom I guess we were supposed to imagine were stand-ins for Heinlein himself. And there was some humanity on display there. Definitely not James Joyce but voices that were reminiscent of real people (at least somewhat).
And over the decades, characterization, especially in the hands of female authors (authoresses?) has become the dominant ingredient in literary science fiction. And now it has reached the point where leaving out the science is completely acceptable. Wonder has been replaced by social justice and grievance reckoning. That’s how you end up with something like “The Handmaid’s Tale” as the exemplar of successful science fiction.
Well, all of this is very interesting. But there’s nothing like actually trying to write a full-length novel to show someone just how much work it is to balance along that tightrope between too much and too little characterization. And the hardest trick (for me) is getting dialog between a man and a woman to work. I really only have my discussions with Camera Girl as my template. But we’ve known each other for fifty years so it’s almost a pantomime at this point. One- or two-word sentence fragments, facial expressions and gestures gets a lot done at this point. This doesn’t translate into character dialog. Nor would I want my protagonist to sound like me. I’m anti-heroic. I’m more like comic relief.
But it has given me greater respect for good writing, even in other genres. And I think I’m getting a taste for it. It grows on you.
