hat follows is a simple list, containing titles with which many of you will most likely be familiar. Study the next paragraph carefully, and then see if you can answer my one loaded question. Get ready, here it comes:
The Martian Chronicles. Childhood's End. Alas, Babylon. Speaker for the Dead. Flowers for Algernon. Stranger in a Strange Land. The Man in the High Castle. Dune. The Illustrated Man. 2001. A Canticle for Leibowitz. The Female Man. A Clockwork Orange. The Time Machine. I, Robot. More Than Human. The Left Hand of Darkness. Slaughterhouse-Five. Fahrenheit 451.
I could go on, but by now, you should get the idea. Now here comes the question: What do all of these titles have in common? Your first thought might be that these are all science-fiction classics, works that have stood the test of time. Or perhaps that they are all beloved books that were the entry point for many people to become science-fiction fans in the first place. Or that these are the books to which we choose to retreat when the real world starts to get us down.
If you were to answer any of these, I'd have to say that, yes, you are correct, but I'd also have to add that in today's pop quiz, that is not the answer I was seeking. Unfortunately, what the above list turns out to be is some of the books which it appears many people are trying very hard not to read. As the editor-in-chief of Science Fiction Weekly, each day brings me e-mail from people who are hoping that we'll have reviews of these titles posted, and not just the sort of reviews that you're used to getting here, letting you know whether or not a book is worth your time. They are explicitly asking instead for analyses that will help them with term papers--detailed critiques that will analyze themes and subtext, provide chapter-by-chapter breakdowns and list all characters along with their motivations, creating SF's own version of Cliffs Notes.
The science fiction novel, it seems, instead of being the place to escape to, has become the place to escape from.
The deadly disease of aliteracy
When I think back to all of the books that were ruined for me in high school, I am glad that science fiction at the time was only in its infancy as an academic subject. The approach we were forced to take to Moby-Dick was enough to destroy that book for me for years to come. I was told, for example, that I could read no more than a chapter a night, no matter how the plot called to me, to insure that the entire class was ingesting the book at the same pace. Don't dare read ahead, I was warned, don't allow yourself to be dragged along by the narrative, because the teacher wanted the class to be able to discuss the book's foreshadowing and subtext without some of us having an edge by knowing the outcome. (I'm sure that's just how Herman Melville meant for me to enjoy his artistic creation.)
The joys of reading, of meeting new people and discovering new worlds, came in second place to the experience of dissection. And as we were all taught in a different high school class, Biology, there's only so much anyone can learn from dissecting frogs. Sure, you can pick up an awful lot about the inner workings of an amphibian by slicing it open, but once you've done that, all that's left, sadly, is a dead frog. The magic of life has fled.
The educational establishment that started teaching SF as an inducement to get kids to read has instead managed for some to take a genre that is supposed to be fun and made it homework. Based on the evidence of the e-mails I receive from students seeking help, it seems that the school system, having embraced science fiction, is helping to turn novels that are supposed to be fun into dead frogs.
I don't want to be one of those who advocate getting SF out of the academic world and back into the gutter where it belongs. And yet I did not embrace SF to get an A on a book report. I embraced science fiction because it was fun. It still is fun. And I can see that as soon as you tell kids to read SF not for that awe and sense of wonder, but for a need to analyze it to death, the magic goes away. Anyone motivated to seek help from a science fiction editor rather than from the thrill of reading the story itself has been made to see SF as drudgery.
Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and the other authors of the books listed above wrote to be read, not to have their prose autopsied. In the rush to make SF respectable, we've somehow forgotten that we're meant to love science fiction, not labor over it. I just hope that those meeting up with science fiction in school today don't let homework turn SF into a chore.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, and also edited SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel, in addition to
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. His short story collection These Words Are Haunted is just out from Wildside Press.
