More Concerning “Serious People,” This Time With Regard to Fiction

     It would be a mistake to group genuinely serious people such as I wrote about below with self-important types who imagine that their tastes and prejudices render them superior to others. That latter group can often seem appallingly large. Dave Freer highlights a manifestation of interest to us who write speculative fiction:

     The Onion: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

     Sir Terry Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

     O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

     P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one of the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

     O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

     Do you get the sense that the Onion’s interviewer shares the notion that fantasy is somehow “less than serious fiction” — ? I did. But does that interviewer, or any of the unnamed persons who share that assessment, have a reason for regarding it thus? One they would care to defend in public?

     The attitude is comparable to that of the supercilious atheist: he who sneers at theists because what we believe “simply can’t be true.” The emotional infrastructure is the same: a desire to believe oneself superior.

     Note also this exchange between Pratchett and a bookstore manager:

     “Bookstores treat science fiction like the literary equivalent of an STD: no one wants to admit to having one,” Pratchett lamented.

     In England, as elsewhere, it’s common for bookstores to have a section reserved for the newest bestsellers. Jolly good. So, his agent expected that he would find Terry there. After all, Terry’s books tend to spend weeks on the bestseller lists. But despite this, the bookstores would have his books in the science fiction section—frequently in the basement or the back, back of the store. One day, Terry chanced to confront a store manager about this practice.

     “Excuse me, how come I’m not in the bestseller section?”

     “Because you’re science fiction,” the officious manager told him.

     “Yes, but I have been on the lists,” Terry reminded him.

     “But you write science fiction,” the manager said patiently.

     Terry persisted, “I’m on the lists. Why aren’t I in the bestseller section?”

     Terry imitates the manager’s reaction: He tilts his head, narrows his eyes and twists his mouth. He leans in close and lowers his voice, and at this point his voice goes prissy in the telling.

     “Well, you’re not really bestseller material,” the manager confides, as if this settles everything.

     The circularity of the attitude could hardly be clearer.

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     One of the worst contemporary intellectual shortcomings, itself a pandemic of sorts (and in certain ways as destructive as any), is the inability to distinguish one’s opinions from the universe of verifiable facts. I say inability to be kind, even though in many cases – perhaps even a majority – it’s more a matter of unwillingness. The serious person, who expects to base significant decisions on his thinking, must learn to do so early in life. Yea verily, even if it should sometimes pain him to do so...which it will.

     While we must always respect Sturgeon’s Law, a serious person, even if his personal preferences should tend away from the speculative genres, will admit that they have known their share of writers of ability and grace. Gregory Benford. James Blish. Arthur C. Clarke. Robert A. Heinlein. Ursula Le Guin. Clive Staples Lewis. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Jack Vance. For artistry and elegance, I’d put any of them – especially Vance – up against any “literary” writer without a qualm.

     Are they shown little respect by the “literati?” Indeed. But beneath their dismissals lies an almost palpable envy: the resentment he of little imagination bears toward him who sees more widely and thinks more courageously. For it is imagination that makes possible the concoction of settings, conflicts, and challenges that evoke a sense of drama. Without imagination, nothing can animate a writer’s tales except what is plainly visible to him.

     The great asset of the fantasy or SF writer is his imagination: his ability to conceive of new situations in which the human mind and heart would be tested in new ways. He could not write F&SF without it. As a reviewer of one of my books once wrote, in a truly new situation, new morality – perhaps more precisely, new thinking about morality – must emerge. That novelty, rather than the rocket ships, ray guns, teleporters, magicians, elves, dwarves, or zombies, is what makes for excitement.

     But the supercilious literary writer (or critic) can’t — or won’t – see that far. It’s his failing, not ours. He’s simply not inclined to think beyond the constructs to which he’s acclimated himself. In discussing such things, he refuses to be serious.

     Let him enjoy his self-imposed limitations while we enjoy our admiring readers and sales figures.