FutureTense

Tobias, of tobias s. buckell online offers a list of references on post-colonialism:

• Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature
• Commonwealth and Post-Colonial Literatures: a select bibliography
• Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literature in English. 2 vols.(book review)
• “Postcolonial Literature”: Problems with the Term
• So Long Been Dreaming

Why a post-Colonial SF Anthology?

Nalo Hopkinson responds to a question about why SLBD was restricted to writers of color.

You make good points. I’m on record as saying that left to me, I’d have asked for submissions from white writers too to SLBD, because I think it’d be useful to give them a place in that discussion. And as Toby’s pointed out, my last anthology published stories by both white and black writers, for similar reasons. (And to nitpick a bit; since Caribbean people come in all races and blends of races, even my first anthology was not restricted racially.) However, SLBD is the baby of Uppinder Mehan, who invited me on as co-editor, and his dream was to create the anthology as a forum for people of colour to talk about our stuff. That protected space is as valuable and necessary as open discussion is, so I agreed. Why do I think that protected space is valuable? Well, for one thing, I’ve noticed that if I don’t take the trouble to include the experiences of marginalized people in my world–if I don’t pay attention to how I pick the books I want to read, say–if I just take what’s offered to me, it is very easy to end up surrounded predominantly by straight, white, Western, male experience. I’ve learned a lot from being told about those experiences, and I absolutely want to continue to hear from them (I’ll fight anyone to keep my Gene Wolfe, Guy Kay and Ray Bradbury books on my shelves!), but I want more diversity as well. I have a very personal take on this; I can’t afford to be blind to differences of race, body, language, gender, class, geography, sexuality, ability, age, else the dominant culture for the most part “disappears,” belittles, misrepresents or ridicules the experiences of myself and people like me. And being made invisible is not good for my mental and emotional health.

Which in some ways is what SLBD is about; claiming space that otherwise isn’t given to you. I understand the dilemma about how do you break down prejudice amongst people if you keep erecting barriers–I wrestle with it all the time. What I keep coming back to is that it’s a gradual process, and this practice of making small pockets of safe space is part of the beginning of a long road towards equality. Things are getting better. When the scales are evened up a little more; when marginalized people are a little less likely to be overrun, injured and silenced by the dominant cultures, then I think we’ll see some of those defensive barriers start to come down in increasing numbers.

The full discussion.

I’ll add to Nalo’s difficulties. The interesting thing about the Internet is that I get to lurk in disucssions that otherwise I couldn’t be party to. The discussions of race, identity and color that I’ve dropped into are quite advanced and sophisticated. Take the response to use of images of black americans by conservative white media in the struggle over gay marriage.

Not only will Nalo and others attempting to build these bridges have to worry about integrity and safe spaces, they will also need one huge clutch to get those of us who have not participated all along in the discussions up to warp speed.

Why should you care about post-colonial writings?

How about “It’s captivating and compelling,” for starters, if you like stories of struggle, sacrifice and the eternal quest for the freedom of the spirit.

SF is an excellent literature that encourages the reader to meet, explore and confront the alien other. Critically important, SF, more than most other literatures, offers the chance to confront the alien within: to expose that which may not be as wholesome as we would like to the light of awareness. For most of us, colonial and imperial structures of thought are not an immediate part of our day to day lives. But the ghostly echoes of those paradigms haunt all of us, affecting the way we see ourselves and the relationships around us.

You can tell yourself you’re doing it for research. SF and fantasy are repleat with stereotypical situations of the oppressed–conomic domination in the slums that typically surround spaceports to slave owning cultures in fantasy. Usually humans are the victors but not always.

Or you can look to post-colonial literature as an introduction to a brotherhood the vast majority of us will be forced to join in the next forty years. The forces of imperialism and colonialism aren’t gone: the players have shifted and the rules changed. Who thinks conglomerates and international companies won’t exert an increasing and unwelcome influence on individuals and culture over the next forty years. Post-colonial literature might be merely practical–a survivor’s handbook, if you will–to be able to recognize the symptoms and be able to mount a response.

Best regards,

Alan Lattimore

“Reviews” by Jonathan Strahan, appearing in the March, 2004 issue of Locus focuses on authors who are, each in their own way, reshaping fantasy: Gwyneth Jones and Patricia McKillip.

His review of Patricia Mc Killip’s new Alphabet of Thorn left me wanting to hunt down not only Alphabet but Ombria in Shadow and In the Forests of Serre as well.

What left me sputtering in my coffee was his comment on “mastery” in the field of fantasy: how rare it is to see a writer advancing their craft throughout their career.

It may seem odd to suggest that an author with as long and prestigious a career as McKilip’s could still be said to be growing and evolving, but that’s very much what Alphabet of Thorn reveals: a writer at the top of her form testing her boundaries, stretching and growing.

I haven’t keept as current with Patricia McKillip as I would like–the last book of hers I read was Song for the Basilisk–but her constant evolution as an author is one of the things that attracts me to her work. So I’m simpatico with Jonathan’s assessment of both the writer and her work.

But I was trying to think of other writers who have continued to progress in their art throughout their career. Ursula Le Guin and Chip Delaney come readily to mind. After that, I stall. Maybe you readers can come up with some more writers, but I bet overall it’s a small percentage of the writers out there. I think Jonathan is right. I think many writers of fantasy reach a plateau and stop.

I’ve spent enough years in the martial arts to be uncomfortable with the idea that mastery is a position you can arrive at. Mastery is a process, not a destination. There are some qualified Senseis out there who have “arrived,” who figured everything out a decade back and are still doing it the same way. But I tell you, they aren’t as good as the ones who are still refining, still experimenting with form and technique. To run into an old buddy and see them performing technique the same way they were five or ten years ago leaves me sad.

In the same way, to see venerable writers in the field still writing nearly the same thing nearly the same way twenty and thirty years after they’ve made their mark leaves me sad.

It is also another one of those little differences between the genre ghetto and the expectations of mainstream literature, where I feel we fall out on the inadequate side of the equation.

Best regards,

Alan Lattimore

If you only buy one issue of Locus a year, make it the February issue. Beaucoup reading lists to keep you busy. The Locus Poll & Survey paper format.

What caught my eye this year was the industry survey. More publishers, more titles. Total books published by SF imprint up 14%. (This includes Fantasy and some horror as well.) And that’s not accounting for POD. SF novels down slightly. Fantasy and horror both up.

Reduce, reuse, recycle! New titles as a percentage of total titles has been in a plateau for a few years, up from a low of 53% in 2000 but still a far cry from the 64% new titles back in the mid-90’s.

Small Press. More of them, more titles, generally.

Magazines. Bloody H. The major magzines dropped issues and subscribers. There are now no yearly magazines according to the requirement of at least 11 issues per year. Overall circ was off from 3 1/5% for Analog to almost 15% for ROF (mostly newstand). Analog must be meeting the expectations of its readers pretty well. If I were F&SF or ROF, I’d be running some surveys outside of my current readership to find out what, if anything can be done. The most distressing thing, for me: the magazines have been in steady decline since 90, the earliest date for which figures were published. Get out there and help them push the subscriptions! Well, I guess that goes for all of the mags.

Best regards,

Alan Lattimore

Shocklines discussion forum distills to: more male readers of horror, more male writers of horror = more men in the TOCs but generally the women writers responding to the discussion feel solidly accepted on the basis of their work.

A quick, but important, aside:

Years ago when I edited BONE-CHILLING TALES I had only two submissions from female authors and I used both of them because their tales were chilling.

This is the second time in a week I’ve had an antho editor note that they have trouble getting subs from women writers. What’s with that? But if your’re an editor and you’re looking for women writers, you might send an email to Cynthia Ward at LocusOnline and ask her to post it to the BroadUniverse mailing list of women genre writers.

A bonus for those of you who head over: a number of good lists of women horror writers to browse.

Iain Banks has an essay on the society that makes up the setting for his novels, the Culture. It’s a fascinating look inside the theory of one particular future, and though it’s very long, well worth the time.

Check it out at Future Hi.

The Culture, in its history and its on-going form, is an expression of the idea that the nature of space itself determines the type of civilisations which will thrive there.

I’m getting that feeling of the two halves of my brain tearing apart at .9 light again. Robert Heinlein’s resurrected first novel, For Us, The Living, picks up interest from the lit crowd but modern day SF and fantasy writers are as welcome as a skunk at those wine and cheese affairs.

But after I recover from my pre-programmed frustration over whether F/SF/H genres are being taken seriously, I was floored.

The impression was that he was writing commercial fiction from Day 1. Like a juggernaut he dominated science fiction. Actually from Day 1 he was writing what society should be about. But then, couldn’t one conceivably make the argument that “writing what society should be about” is what every “Grand Master” of the genre (whether they were formally awarded that title or not) was and is up to, to varying degrees?

And that this sociocritical element was pretty much understood within at least a core portion of the readership? In my mental library, for example, it’s always been interesting to compare Bruce Sterling–and, more recently, Cory Doctorow–to Heinlein, or Frederick Pohl, or [insert name here], with an eye towards how their futuristic settings offer satirical critiques of very contemporary trends.

Someone has given away the secret handshake! We’ve been infiltrated! The ominous “they” have been paying attention and they’ve stolen the secret plans. If we don’t act, they’re going to steal all of the good stuff out of our genre and leave us with empty, planet sized hulks like a sky full of stars, orbiting a planet that killed itself off.

For me, it comes back to the “SF ghetto.” I don’t understand what happened or why. I can say that back in the mid 70’s, when I was a teen, people read SF. (Fantasy in its modern form–despite hundreds if not thousands of years of development–was just being invented so I can’t speak to it.)

They were regular people, not fans. The Mauls, friends of my parents, introduced me to The Lord of the Rings. Hearing that I loved LotR, the Beems introduced me to Heinlein.

I don’t mean to go day tripping down nostalgia lane. What I mean to point out is that these were not SF readers. They were ordinary, if college educated, folk. They were not SF identified. They merely read–and enjoyed and talked about–the stuff. Come to think of it, if they were offered a choice between having to become “SF identified” in order to stay with the field and abandoning the field, they didn’t have much investment. So long, and thanks for the fish.

It leaves me wondering: did the field abandon and alienate these normal folks in the hurry to create a separate identity as a SF culture? We got our space ships over here in our own little corner, we don’t really need to listen to anyone else, and we don’t have to interact with the rest of society. Back in “the day,” when social science fiction represented the core of the literature, at least we could be seen playing well with others. Non-SF identified readers could see that we cared about what their future would be like/ We could show them glorious visions or dark, and maybe how to avoid them.

We developed an attitude of splendid isolation and enjoyed it for almost three decades. I think it’s killing the field.

Have we created a SF culture that is distinct from, while exerting a strong influence on, the marketing category known as SF? Are the walls of our ghetto cultural instead of literary? SF originated as a populist–and popular–field. So where did all of the eye-balls go? Is the field too elitist, not in its product but in its social interaction? With no middle ground between the freak-fest of dedicated fandom and avoidance, there could be a lot of would-be readers out there.

Best regards,

Alan Lattimore
[the reading experience]

Trent Walters, who reviews for SFSite offers this list:

Trent’s list so far (and growing and no doubt forgetting way too many–apologies to all the great writers out there! I’m working my way through or to your work at this very moment):
___

Brian Aldiss — one of the genre eldergods — the gamut (although I was disappointed by a poem I read–I’ll need to read more of his poetry to decide for certain)

Martin Amis — short fiction (only read one or two novels but was disappointed)

Margaret Atwood — incredible voice and dialogue — analogue to Willis

Nicholson Baker — vastly underrated by the genre. Mind blowing.

J.G. Ballard — I love his regular genre stuff. Some of his experiments are cool (i.e. The Atrocity Exhibition) taken as a whole.

Donald Barthelme — eldergod — short fiction

Greg Bear — always a helluvan imagination and sometimes a fine stylist (he’s impressed real-live, working PhD.s with his knowledge of their fields!)

T.C. Boyle — any short fiction

Orson Scott Card — helluvan imagination

Jonathon Carroll

Raymond Carver — the bastard who reinvented Hemingway!

Roald Dahl — his adult-short-story method of unpacking surprises in the middle always impressed the hell out of me.

Harlan Ellison — what a voice! — any collection

Carol Emshwiller — like Wolfe, her short fiction is not always on, but when it’s on–watch out!

Ernest Hemingway — what modern writer is complete without him?

Milan Kundera — I’ve never seen politics and scope [large and small] handled so well as The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

R.A. Lafferty — the similarity to Barthelme is uncanny although not quite as often as literary. Read him.

Ian McDonald — maybe he overdoes the lyric prose, but it’s still nice if you’re in the mood.

Joyce Carol Oates — With Black Water she beat Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s game of Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Her early and her dark collections are also well worth reading–Martyr is one of the most poignant and horrifying grotesques.

Flannery O’Connor — Everyone must painstakingly dissect a collection of her stories.

Annie Proulx — her Wyoming stories — these actually have a strong genre feel

Robert Reed — helluvan imagination

Kim Stanley Robinson — short fiction, especially “The Blind Geometer”

Robert Sheckley — read one of his early collections and “Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?”

Lucius Shepard — his first collections and the masterpiece “The

John Steinbeck — the only writer to my knowledge to match Shakespeare’s best with Of Mice and Men.

Leo Tolstoy — War and Peace (still working through, slowly) & The Death of Ivan Illych.

Connie Willis — incredible voice and dialogue — analogue to Atwood

Gene Wolfe — The Fifth Head of Cerberus — like Emshwiller, his short fiction is not always on, but when it’s on–stand back!

Roger Zelazny — the man whose work let me know I loved genre fiction. Everything and anything. The Amber series begins with a bang but trails off. Avoid at all costs Damnation Alley. The movie was bad, too. This should actually uplift hopeful writers: every god drops one.

Maybe the singularity isn’t so bad.

If “in the high-tech 80s, ‘technological literacy’ meant outright *ecstasy and dread.*,” as Bruce Stirling proposes in Cyberpunk in the 90’s, perhaps I should be more understanding if today’s current rate of technological innovation has frightened the science fiction community into “head in the sand” SF and flight to fantasy, while the core of fantasy has become so static as to be confused with deceased…… Only the faint fog of “New Weird” and interstitial appearing on the mirror as a sign of like–and even these movements are keeping their distance.

“Cyberpunk,” before it acquired its handy label and its sinister rep, was a generous, open-handed effort, very street-level and anarchic, with a do-it-yourself attitude, an ethos it shared with garage-band 70s punk music.

Cyberpunk’s one-page propaganda organ, “CHEAP TRUTH,” was given away free to anyone who asked for it. CHEAP TRUTH was never copyrighted; photocopy “piracy” was actively encouraged.

I’ve always had a high regard for CP as a breakaway literary movement, a radical departure from what came before. I was never aware that it was a successful grass roots movement, or that it owed its success to a samizdat publication–CHEAP TRUTH–which would correspond to Gabe Chouinard’s smartmobs.

CHEAP TRUTH had rather mixed success. We had a laudable grasp of the basics: for instance, that SF writers ought to *work a lot harder* and *knock it off with the worn-out bullshit* if they expected to earn any real
respect. Most folks agreed that this was a fine prescription — for somebody else.

Somehow it is both reassuring and distressing to visualize the influence and health of SF as a cycle, but I’d be a lot more comfortable if the genre looked like this cycle belonged to an ascending spiral of increasing readership, influence and adventure. From here it looks like each turn of the wheel brings fewer readers and more of a sense of claustrophobic contraction. If this were a revolution, reducing the genre to a core membership might be a strengthening move, but this is supposed to be a populist literature.

What the history of dawn of cyberpunk also says is that anyone, even everyone, can play a part in identifying what is good, original, unique, and promoting it by doing nothing more than talking about what you like to others who might like it (or something like it).

Best Regards,

Alan Lattimore

This essay first appeared at s1ngularity::criticism