At the moment, I can only think of a handful of truly great science-fiction movies:

2001
Tarkovsky's Solaris
Metropolis
Things to Come
Blade Runner
Silent Running
Dark City
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Quiet Earth
A Clockwork Orange
Contact


Other films, such as Brazil, Forbidden Planet, and Close Encounters have science-fiction elements, but not enough so for me to classify them as science fiction. Star Wars and The Matrix are too fantasy-oriented to be SF. (These are all great films, but don't truly fit my definition of science fiction.) Quest for Fire and Godard's Alphaville are very good, but not essential. Asimov's "Nightfall" was voted the greatest SF story of all-time in one poll, and it's a favorite of mine, but the film wasn't very good. Alien, Day of the Triffids, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Village of the Damned are excellent films, but are more horror than SF to me.

The original term for SF/fantasy was "speculative fiction," and I tend to adhere to that definition when I'm classifying SF films. True SF is forward-looking; it doesn't have to be "futuristic," but it has to address a "what if" question and have that question at its core.

I realize many will attack various films on my list on that basis ("But Dark City doesn't..."). But I have my reasons for each of them being SF, even if I can't necessarily explain it.

Dark City is brilliant. I like sci-fi movies that are fun to watch the 15th time. (Matrix, Star Wars, X-Men)

Actually, Albireo, there is neither time nor space to explain that all the films mentioned in your post have been embraced by the SF community in one way or another at one time or another. Suffice to say that the house of SF have many rooms and leave it at that.

And a correction, the “original term for SF/fantasy was "speculative fiction" is not true:

“Modern” SF begins with Hugo Gernsback and his pulp magazine Amazing Stories. He paid ¼ cent to 2 cents a word and he called it "science fiction." People like Kutter and Van Vogt wrote for it. Sturgeon and Bradbury started around then, as did the young Asimov, Bester, Dick and Heinlein. Starship Trooper and Tyger, Tyger date from this period. The 40s and 50s.

Pohl, Kornbluth were in the 60s, including such upstarts like Budrys, Dickson and Herbert. Social satire in the form of distopian novel became the rage. By the end of the decade and the beginning of the next, Disch, Delany, Ellison, and Zelaszy became commanding voices. From across the pond came people like Aldiss, Roberts, Moorecock and JG Ballard.

“Speculative fiction” was coined than to accommodate this infusion of people with serious literary intent, who wanted to pushed SF beyond space opera and mere “what if” and “sense of wonder” stories. Ballard’s Vermilion Sand stories sit comfortably next to LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea and Pamala Zoline’s Heat Death of the Universe. 70s and 80s.

The science fantasy of Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffrey, and outright fantasy of Terry Brooks took purchased of the marketplace, and Star Trek and Star Wars created a broader constituency that come to displace what was call “hard” SF. There follows cyberpunks and steampunks, and in the late 90s and the new millennium, a return to something called the “new space opera”. “Serious” “hard” and/or “straight” SF is probably not more than 15% of the science fiction/fantasy publishing marketplace. The rest is fantasy, horror, graphic novels, film and television franchises of one ilk or another.

Everyone seems to forget Incredible Shrinking Man, cheesey title but sublime and poetic in its simplicity and wonder, from Richard Matheson.

Actually, the term "speculative fiction" was coined by Heinlein in 1941.

But the term I was thinking of, coined by Gernsback, was "scientifiction." That wasn't the term I wanted, but I got them confused.

Oddly enough, I suspect Heinlein wanted to make a special claim for SF with that coinage, to separate what he does from fiction and literary literature, what later believers would come to refer to as "mundane" literature. I think this defensiveness reflect something fairly common in the field at the time - what was essentially a ghetto mentality for a budding genre.

The big advocate for "speculative fiction" was Judy Merril among the editors, and Delany and Panshin for the theorists. For these guys, the term was an attempt to reformulate SF as a broader stream that can accommodate other sources, and can thereby partake of a broader legitimacy.

Obviously, Gernsback wanted people to imagine that what appeared in Amazing was close to science, and whatever weight that that conferred, and not the wild ranting of strange types like Ron Hubbard, Van Vogt and Lovecraft.

By the way, Albireo, since you appear to have a fairly fast-and-tried approach to what is and what isn't, what do you think of Cordwainer Smith?

Disclaimer: Not Know-It-All, just Well-Read.

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Oddly enough, I suspect Heinlein wanted to make a special claim for SF with that coinage, to separate what he does from fiction and literary literature, what later believers would come to refer to as "mundane" literature. I think this defensiveness reflect something fairly common in the field at the time - what was essentially a ghetto mentality for a budding genre.

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That snobbishness still exists. I was rejected by a grad-school creative-writing program this year for the reason that my writing sample was SF, and that my statement of purpose discussed my intention to become an SF writer. (In fact, my writing sample was not SF at all, but was merely set in 2029 for the sake of putting space between current cultural trends and those in my novel.)

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By the way, Albireo, since you appear to have a fairly fast-and-tried approach to what is and what isn't, what do you think of Cordwainer Smith?

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Actually, I don't really have a "fast-and-true" rule about SF, and my classifications might seem utterly arbitrary to other people. With the movie list, it actually wasn't too hard to do, but I wanted to explain my criteria. To me, there really are very few great purely SF movies (I'm sure you also noticed that very few of them have a major "action" component in them as well, which is where I think most "science-fiction" movies fail: in the replacement of thoughtfulness with guys shooting funny-looking guns.)

To address the Cordwainer Smith question: I'm actually not that familiar with him. I read Norstrilia many years ago, when I was 10 or 12, and may have been too young to appreciate it. I know him by reputation more than by having read much of his work (and most of his stuff is short stories; I tend, for whatever reason, to read more novels than short fiction). So I'm not qualified to judge him.

Albireo,

Why not apply to places that accept SF as a legitimate kind of writing and SF writing as a legitimate career move (a foolhardy one, but one nonetheless). Clarion has a credible record for generating SF writers who publish and win awards within the field. SFWA is another place that can steer you to SF/Speculative fiction writing programs and resources.

My question re Cordwainer Smith was my attempt to gauge how large your SF mansion is, if it can at least in theory contain his body of work. I sense that your canon may be actually retrograde to the faith of our fathers. Not as far back as 1941, but maybe a stream that flows out of the forehead of RH Heinlein, and not as odd of a mutant child as the "speculative fiction" promulgated by the Delany, Panshin and Merril.

Altogether beside the point, Sturgeon, Dick and Smith are three (3) writers I consider to be true originals, and only within the canon and paradigm of SF would they have been able to find their true voice and calling. Needless to say, none of 'em got rich off of it, at least not in their lifetimes.

Incidentally, the resident SF Know-It-Alls here at Metacritic are LinnTate, who prefers the shorter stuff, and myself, who is antagonist to any forms of drift, the longer.


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I would be curious to know just how many, if any, academic programs are friendly to students who are interested in the academic study of SF. Clarion has struggled for funding in recent years. Plus, it's a workshop rather than a formal degree program, which is great for finding your way as a working writer rather than finding for a career in academia.

DePauw in Greencastle, Indiana publishes Science Fiction Studies. I have two friends who teach there and I believe the school is funding a project to develop new translations of Verne, but it's a very small, liberal arts school. Indiana University has a buried treasure in the form of a professor named Tom Foster. I took one of his classes and he was nothing short of an inspiration in terms of an academic approach to the genre.

Does Samuel Delany still teach at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst?

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Incidentally, the resident SF Know-It-Alls here at Metacritic are LinnTate, who prefers the shorter stuff, and myself, who is antagonist to any forms of drift, the longer.

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I don't know about Know-It-All, but I cannot help but notice that with Albireo's arrival, I am now outnumbered in my preference for short fiction.

Oh, and speaking of Delany, he certainly belongs on your list of "true originals, and only within the canon and paradigm of SF would they have been able to find their true voice and calling. Needless to say, none of 'em got rich off of it, at least not in their lifetimes."

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LinnTate,

Actually, I'm just sorta surprise at how hide bound Albireo's department is. Creative writing fer God’s sake!

Maybe he should just seek a more edgy program. UC Irvine is currently the darling of creative programs, due in part to the likes of Geoffrey Wolff, Michael Chabon, Aimee Bender and Alice Sebold. Much of the product seemed to be informed, if not influenced, by magical realism.

Of course, my attitude is: if your intent is to write, write. Let those who can't, well, let 'em teach. I'm not convinced that someone "educated" in SF necessarily makes good SF writers. Some have elected to bring their discipline to SF, like Zelaszny, Bendford and Sheffield. Some have moved into academia and tacitly beyond the ken of the field. The critique of classical music can be applied here: academic music is stultifying homogenized and bland. I wouldn't wish the same on SF.

LinnTate, I choose those three (3) because I think they are in some way "primitives", or represent some kinda "primitive sensibility" unlike any other. Sturgeon, an emotional mysticism that veers into religiosity and gothic, Dick, paranoia and the little guy, and Smith, his treated schizoid fugues and love of things Chinese and poetry.

Sure, I could add Jack Vance or RA Lafferty, but then I gotta add Ballard, and so on and so forth.

Besides, Vance is a successful mystery writer, and Ballard a memoirist. Delany could've been a black homosexual Kerouac; imagine if he wrote States of Desire! Think Einstein Intersection and Tides of Lust. LeGuin could've written her way into the New Yorker and countless literary journals as an American Calvino.

So I'll stay true to my three (3).


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This message has been edited. Last edited by: wong828,

Actually, wong and LinnTate, the scenario behind my application to my present university is a little more... I dunno, pragmatic? My wife got a teaching position here and the chance to get her Ph.D at the same time. I really didn't have much chance to look elsewhere. Rather than simply choosing another writing program after being rejected here, I was forced to choose either a different field in the university I'm attending, or spending the next few years away from my wife and daughter.

What frosts me isn't just that the creative-writing department here turned its collective nose up at me and spurned me like a rabid dog because I write (*gasp!* *heresy!*) science fiction. (There may well have been other, unelaborated-upon reasons.) It's also the fact that the novel I excerpted for my writing sample isn't even SF, which tells me that they never even read my portfolio for consideration, beyond the statement of purpose-- which, I suppose, must have been indictment enough. In fact, the novel fits nicely under the now-trendy genre heading magical realism, which would have probably paved my entrance to the program with gold had anyone on the committee bothered to read said writing sample. (That's not why I used that sample; it just happened to be my farthest-reaching and most-adventurous piece of writing.)

Incidentally, my undergraduate professors warned me that being accepted to many grad schools would be tough given the rampant bias against genre fiction (it's not just SF or fantasy that are spurned, although they tend to get treated more poorly than historical fiction or even romance). I attribute much of this bias (rightly or wrongly) to the fact that most of the grad-school programs I've investigated (and the committee that judged applicants here) are dominated by poets rather than fiction writers; much of my experience with academic poets leads me to the conclusion that they're nothing but a bunch of cliquish, arrogant, preening, drugged-out, ex-hippie/pseudo-Beat, trend-worshipping, nose-in-the-air vermin who are among the worst parasites ever to have sucked grant money from the NEA or infested the rotting carcass of academia. (And that despite the fact that I've had much more success as a poet than as a fiction writer.) So why did I delve into my interest in SF, if I'd been warned not to? 1) because I refuse to misrepresent myself; I'm not going to pretend to be a "New Yorker"-style writer, or even to give a sh*t about those who are, and 2) because there is an SF specialist in the Lit department here, which made me hopeful that the creative-writing department would at least be somewhat open-minded. Unfortunately, he's not on the creative-writing committees.

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My question re Cordwainer Smith was my attempt to gauge how large your SF mansion is, if it can at least in theory contain his body of work. I sense that your canon may be actually retrograde to the faith of our fathers. Not as far back as 1941, but maybe a stream that flows out of the forehead of RH Heinlein, and not as odd of a mutant child as the "speculative fiction" promulgated by the Delany, Panshin and Merril.

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I think you'd be surprised-- I much prefer Delany, Panshin, Sturgeon, and the "New Wavers" to Heinlein and many of the "Golden Age" writers. I'm actually very open-minded about SF-- that may not be reflected in the movie list I generated, but the scope of SF movies isn't very wide; it's easier for me to say that "this movie is/isn't SF" than to make the same comment about novels or short stories. (I consider Heinlein and Delany to have much more in common than 2001 and Star Wars.) As a print genre, SF has well outgrown its childhood; SF films, however, are still largely trapped in an infancy of peurility, cliché, and bad science.

As for my preference for longer fiction over shorter works, it probably has something to do with the fact that I prefer writing novels to writing short stories... which is likely a function of my long-windedness....

#1. My favorite novel is "One Hundred Years of Solitude", written almost 40 years ago, and if it didn't start the "magical realism" genre, it must have been close to its apex.

#2. Working around your signiicant other and your children may be the most-difficult and the most-satisfying thing you ever do.

#3. Anyone who lists Fripp's "Believe it or Not Quote" should be more prepared for "reality" than anyone who hasn't.

#4. Keep talking to us because we are on your side, and even if we're full-of-it, we might be less full-of-it than those bozos who will lose their jobs soon enough, for being full-of-it.

#5. We love you and your family.

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Incidentally, my undergraduate professors warned me that being accepted to many grad schools would be tough given the rampant bias against genre fiction (it's not just SF or fantasy that are spurned, although they tend to get treated more poorly than historical fiction or even romance).

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I wonder how much that attitude in itself contributes to the lack of "academic" genre writing. Perhaps if universities were more open to developing programs for all types of writing styles, then the quality of said genres might improve!

Incidentally, although much sci-fi/fantasy/historical fiction may not be so "literary," I find a lot of what I have read to be based on an impressive foundation of research and knowledge about history/religion/culture/anthropology etc. A lot of the authors I have enjoyed tend to be scholars, especially of history and I wonder what the effect on their writing would have been had they also had the opportunity to do a post-graduate writing program.

I think there is interest in sci-fi in the academia, but it tends not to be in the writing programs, I think. You're right in that creative writing programs tend to focus on poetry ... I wonder why?

Albireo,

Hahaha, I guess my original take on your theoretical orientation was predicated on your remark:

“True SF is forward-looking; it doesn't have to be "futuristic," but it has to address a "what if" question and have that question at its core.”

You have to admit that sounds rather “instrumental” and possesses a doctrinaire utilitarian heart that would’ve pleased no less than John W. Campbell. For a moment I thought you were a part of a new cohort engaged in counter-revolution to pay us back for our sins and excesses.

1. The Fearful Design

If the New Wave of the Dangerous Visions era was revolution, what followed was success and its undoing. On the one hand, the new faith was embraced by the mass culture in a big way thru the medium of television and film - just at that point of confluence of technology and vast capital. Both Ballard and Baudrillard were prescient and correct: the consumerist appetite for spectacle is vast, and SF, like much of modern popular culture, was consumed by it. SF’s success in the marketplace, both print and visual media, also dissolved the “ghetto” community that was SF. By opening its founding values to something more cosmopolitan, much like the Catholic world after Vatican II, there was apostasy and general falling away of the faith.

It’s interesting to go thru Gardner Dozois’ Annual summation thru the years and note how the voices of that New Wave era have gone silent. In mainstream literary culture, writers write till they die, their voices increasing with the power and authority of maturity. Where is it in SF? Oddly, Ballard and Aldiss turned to autobiography, and both successful and nuanced ones at that. Perhaps that works better in the British literary environment, one both more open and less driven by market pressure. Certainly, Robert Silverberg have written at length about the pressure to continue his Lord Valentine saga, presumably at the expense of more thoughtful and more far ranging works. There is of course no way to tell. Until he does. Or they do.

Granted, we are a genre literature, but do we have anything comparable say, for example, to suspense fiction, to the “entertainments” of Graham Greene, your Le Carre’s Karla books, or a Joseph Kanon’s Los Alamo.

You will notice that after the era between Ellison first Dangerous Visions and waiting for the second, not much happen (except for the sheer number of female practitioners, and a corresponding proportion in science fantasy and straight fantasy) until William Gibson’s Neuromancer inaugurated the cyberpunk era. There was a variation called steampunk. A gene science period. A Mars period. And more recently, a new and improved “new space opera”. Yet if you look closely, the tropes of contemporary SF is remarkably like the tropes and ideas of SF in the late 50s and 60s, now better written and artful with sophisticated devices and formal designs.

Where are the mature works?

2. At Play In The Vineyard

“Most of the grad-school programs I've investigated (and the committee that judged applicants here) are dominated by poets rather than fiction writers; much of my experience with academic poets leads me to the conclusion that they're nothing but a bunch of cliquish, arrogant, preening, drugged-out, ex-hippie/pseudo-Beat, trend-worshipping, nose-in-the-air vermin who are among the worst parasites ever to have sucked grant money from the NEA or infested the rotting carcass of academia.”

I had the good fortune to be selected as a juried poet by one of the major universities in Texas for one of their festivals. A submission of about half dozen works was invited as a basis for selection.

I should mention that my work is neither confessional in nature or autobiographical, not Sexton or Asbury, but as a matter of choice, someone who is artful and have a variety of voices, my works usually grouped around some central organizing principle or theme with common conventions and formal designs. So from my work, I selected one from a SF triptych (grouped as Industrial Romance), a fairly pornographic piece (from L.A. 4tet), one from an open ended set referred to as “from the Soviet Period”, one that was very Asbury like, and the last, a domestic tone poem that suggests autobiography. All artful, mind you - my one and only exception to the rule of artful is a 512 lines piece called “Todd and His Keeper”, Todd being a garden snail, that looked more like a Ballard “condensed novel”, and way too long to fit under any submission guideline.

In any case, my selection was due to the domestic tone poem. Go figure.


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This message has been edited. Last edited by: wong828,

Ermmm, as fascinating as all of this discussion about SF, academia and writing courses is turning out...

Could I just suggest you guys swap some email addresses and take this somewhere else? Or start up a new thread? I haven't noticed anything in your posts about movies for about a week.

Thanks, Nelson, I agree. This discussion about SF, academia, and writing courses IS turning out to be fascinating.

It's been what, a month since you last weighed in? It's a shame you have to break the silence with kvetching. The neighbors might think you're a grouch.

While the hijack of a thread is rarely productive, a bit of topic drift when the original topic has run its course can lead to interesting discussion. If, however, you're feeling peevish about the direction this thread has gone, contribute something. Well, something substantive, at least.

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: LinnTate,

Well, I kinda expected a negative response, no one likes to be dissed, though I'm a bit surprised that a forum moderator is being so negative. I have been following the thread with a lot of interest (I've had the thread sent to my in-box every week) but didn't feel the need to re-post every week myself. I'm just a bit annoyed that the thread has gone so far off the original concept, something you can't deny. That's hardly kvetching. And making a less than subtle dig at my contributions ("...contribute something. Well, something substantive, at least.") That's just plain rude.

If you expected the response to be negative, Nelson, perhaps you should consider why you were posting a reply expected to engender a negative response in the first place. However, if you take "...something subtantive at least." as a dig at your overall contributions, Nelson, I apologize. It was directed solely at your complaint regarding the current status of the thread.

Not only can I not deny that the thread as drifted from its original subject, I acknowledged that. If you want it to return to a discussion of movies, perhaps leading it back in that direction might be more productive than simply suggesting, "You folks aren't talking about movies. Stop it!" That, Nelson, is kvetching.

Barring flame wars or deliberate attempts to hijack threads, dealing with your annoyance over topic drift is your own responsibility. Online forums are purely participatory exercises. If you don't like the direction things are going, then participate. Steer it another direction yourself.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LinnTate,

Well, I appreciate the clarification. I would have liked to steer the thread back to movies a bit more elegantly, but it's not quite as easy as "Hmm, speaking of domestic tone poems, that reminds me of a scene I like in Silent Running."

So I'll respond to Albireo's post instead, whose first nine (!) nominations are reasonably straight forward, but number ten made me stop in my tracks: Contact. I actually found this movie pretty annoying, although that might be because I found Jodie Foster's character just a bit too noble and saintly, opposed to all those nasty politicians. And I thought the actual issue of contact wasn't really explored very deeply, it ended up being more of a vehicle for a debate about faith and belief in American politics. But I'm happy to be corrected on this one.

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Originally posted by Nelson Muntz:
I would have liked to steer the thread back to movies a bit more elegantly, but it's not quite as easy as "Hmm, speaking of domestic tone poems, that reminds me of a scene I like in Silent Running."

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Why not? It seems to work for wong. (I kid! I kid! I kid because I care!)

I'll be curious to read Albireo's response regarding Contact. I like the film. I like the fact that it placed science at the forefront and went to great pains to get it right (kudos to the underrated Deep Impact for this as well). I agree, though, that the good characters are very, very good and the bad characters are very, very bad to the point of being too two-dimensional.

I also agree that the film is more about the role of faith in American politics, if not human interaction and I think that, too, is one of its strengths. As Ellie's contact explains, her visit is only a first step and a small one at that. I take that to mean that we as a species have some growing to do and dealing with our differences over issues of faith is one of the areas where we will have to grow first before we are ready to deal with intelligences whose differences are much greater and stranger than those that divide us.

But given the fact that my vote on this topic is for the relatively low-key The Day The Earth Stood Still, my affection for Contact should comes as not surprise, nor my affection for the aforementioned Silent Running, even if I do not believe it is aging gracefully.

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