Now, I would like to proffer a brief articulation of a "genre" that I think is thriving, and that will constitute the bedrock of postmodern "fiction."
“A new species of philosopher is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free of danger. As I unriddle them, insofar as they allow themselves to be unriddled—for it belongs to their nature to want to remain riddles at some point—these philosophers of the future may have a right—it might also be a wrong—to be called attempters.”
Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil
“A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once.”
Derrida, Margins of Philosophy
I should apologize to any reader of this essay, for it may sound in the dismellifluous tones of poorly written love poetry; a bit of verse from one who for some time has not been in love, and then on a sunny spring morning, stumbled into the love of his dreams in a bookstore. Until recently I had read little fantasy and less science fiction (though the reader may forgive this, perhaps the author can never forgive himself), spending the plurality of my intellectual journeys in the realms of philosophy and literature—two disciplines which to the minds of many have reached their ends.
Or so it was thought.
To my mind, science fiction and fantasy represent the ideal space in which to pose, examine, and grapple with the dominant philosophical, literary, and cultural issues of our epoch (and a fortiori of those to come), and the ideal place to mix the rich, heterogeneous literary and philosophical materials bequeathed to us postmoderns from our opulent history, something other inherited literary forms are too ossified and hidebound to tolerate within their rigorously delimited boundaries and perhaps tacit, but no less rigid set of tastes. I might add, parenthetically, that while at first glance describing any genre as “hidebound,” “ossified,” and “rigid” might seem abusive, I use such terms to accent an historical inevitability: that in time, all things become sedimented—that rigidity and sedimentation are inevitable historical effects. Finally, throughout the essay I perhaps sacrifice some precision, since I do not distinguish between science fiction and fantasy, but use the term singularly. Below I hope to elaborate, in the space provided, on what I see as the virtues of science fiction and fantasy; ultimately, the five virtues of science fiction and fantasy are what make it so dear to me as a “philosopher” after (temporally and stylistically) Plato and Nietzsche: as a dreamer, as one who has awoken in a dream and yet must go on dreaming.
I would like to dwell, if only momentarily, on the formal aspects of the heading “science fiction,” and to explain why I am enamored of the name itself (indeed, it constitutes the first reason why science fiction and fantasy is important to me) and why it is so palpably postmodern. The term “science fiction” would appear as an untenable notion in any age but our own, since such a pronounced contradiction would be labeled shameful and logically silly, rather than exciting and liberating. (No doubt, the name has clearly been in existence for some time, but it is only in our current age that we are best positioned to fully appreciate it.) But it is precisely this ludic contradiction that makes the genre exciting, makes it a literary advance. The way it presents its name is inextricably linked with the way it uniquely opens up its space within which its ideas can be considered. One hears echoes of the ancient quarrel between philosophy (science) and poetry (fiction), which used to be mutually exclusive, but now the two are allowed to thoughtfully and bountifully dwell in each others presence. What does this dwelling of opposites mean, artistically? that science fiction and fantasy is a new space for intellectuals to dwell in; one particularly hospitable to “homeless” thinkers with heterogeneous histories—all of us who live in postmodernity. Departing from these formal ruminations, I would next like to consider the genre’s second virtue: its implications for style.
Science fiction and fantasy constitute a hair-raising stylistic step forward, one perhaps as difficult as first treading Zelazny’s Pattern. Whereas fiction, poetry, and philosophy can only consider, for example, gender, race, and sexuality in a stylistically mundane manner (in a fashion that is literally human, all-too-human), science fiction and fantasy neatly ornament these postmodern topoi. One encounters uncanny combinations of the real and the fantastic: lesbian elven priestesses, racist, atheist gully dwarves, drug abusing wizards, and self-loathing computers. Additionally, while genres like philosophy, poetry, and the novel all have diverse voices, each voice nevertheless has identifiable traits that are singularly philosophic, poetic, or fictive. The space of science fiction and fantasy however, is pliant enough to comfortably accommodate heterogeneous voices. Science fiction and fantasy can blend all of these voices (philosophic, poetic, scholastic, etc.) simultaneously in one space, and in fact invites the use of a plurality of voices, which makes it the postmodern genre par excellence, and a wonderful, free, and new space to be writing (and reading) in. We postmoderns, existing late in history, have seen a great deal; but we have not seen (or heard) things sited in the context of science fiction and fantasy, and that is something to be excited about.
Related to science fiction and fantasy’s stylistic virtue is its potent allegorical virtue. Dante, in a halcyon passage of the Convivio defined the allegorical sense of literature as “a truth hidden beneath a beautiful fiction.” Science fiction and fantasy, creates a space for a new kind of “beautiful fiction” with fantastic elements equal in strength to the fables of the poets of antiquity, which while fabulous, nevertheless can be simultaneously understood as provocative critiques by the poets of the ages they inhabited. In a similar fashion, science fiction and fantasy is able to question the current epoch and maintain its fictive charm, avoiding simple argumentation, or excoriating polemic. Thus, though one need not read science fiction and fantasy with any social critique in mind, the genre nevertheless offers an exceptional place for mercurial penseurs to conduct a veiled critique of an immediate epoch. The genre is capacious enough to ponder the present through the fantastic but by no means is its sole focus “the present.”
Current fiction bends its discourse largely towards the representation of reality, and one is reminded of Plato’s rebuke of such art—that one might simply carry a mirror around and thus perfectly represent reality. Science fiction and fantasy however, seem to be philosophoteron, that is, more philosophical, in its focus on the fantastic—on wonder; Plato, in fact, says that “Philosophy begins in wonder.” I would think such a motto is written over the door of every science fiction and fantasy author. Science fiction and fantasy richly contemplate time travel, alternate histories, parallel universes, unique species and unique worlds, the role and impact of government, technology, philosophy, and art in the future—both near and far, far away. Science fiction and fantasy thus seem to be closer in spirit with philosophic thought experiments than with representations that seek solely to capture the essence of the present “reality.”
The final reason why science fiction and fantasy is so dear to me is perhaps one that scholars often take for granted: science fiction and fantasy tells good stories. The adventures of Drizzt Do’Urden, Ender’s Game, the Wheel of Time series, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, The Black Company, the Revelation Space series, The Amber Chronicles, and more recently, the First Law Trilogy and Cyberabad Days, are all, au fond, good stories—much the same way that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Voltaire’s Candide, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Tasso’s Orlando Furioso, Lucian’s True Story, and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and any one of Plato’s myths are. These are stories with indelible, robust characters and thick, vivid plots; stories that, in often lambent language, nimbly contemplate the human condition, and rather than serve merely as “an amulet against the ennui” (to borrow a phrase from Keats), these stories leave the reader rewardingly perplexed.
Finally, In an epoch where we are seemingly endlessly ensnared in “the now,” in a sort of presentomania, where celebrity infatuation, 24-hour cable news cycles, and “reality” TV dominate the media landscape, I find that it is science fiction and fantasy that serves as a space which is distant and philosophical enough to critically examine the “now,” the present which has become hyperpresent; said another way, it is science fiction and fantasy that places the “now” and the “real” in question, and is the space which is distant and philosophical enough to look beyond the “now,” to look to tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
