Science fiction author hits out at Booker judges
Kim Stanley Robinson, one of science fiction's contemporary greats, accuses the Booker prize judges of ignorance
Alison Flood in guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009
Kim Stanley Robinson, one of science fiction's contemporary greats, accuses the Booker prize judges of ignorance
Alison Flood in guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009
Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the greatest science fiction authors writing today, has hit out at the literary establishment, accusing the Man Booker judges of "ignorance" in neglecting science fiction, which he called "the best British literature of our time".
The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and author of the bestselling Mars trilogy, Robinson attacked the Booker for rewarding "what usually turn out to be historical novels". Five are shortlisted for this year's prize, from Hilary Mantel's retelling of the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, to AS Byatt's The Children's Book, set at the turn of the 20th century.
"[Historical novelists] tend to do the same things the modernists did in smaller ways," Robinson said in an article for the New Scientist, published today. "A good new novel about the first world war, for instance, is still not going to tell us more than Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford. More importantly, these novels are not about now in the way science fiction is."
He believes this year's prize should go to Adam Roberts's science fiction comedy, Yellow Blue Tibia, which didn't even make the longlist. In 2005, when John Banville took the Booker for The Sea, he believes that Geoff Ryman's Air should have won; in 2004 – when Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty won – it should have gone to Gwyneth Jones's Life, and in 1997, the year of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Signs of Life by M John Harrison should have triumphed.
"Speaking as an outsider from California and as a science fiction writer I see these very brilliant writers doing excellent work who are never in the running at all, for no reason except their genre and who their publishers are – the so-called club members. It just needs to be said," he said today. "The Booker prize is so big, the way it shapes public consciousness of what is going on in British literature, but the avant garde, the leading edge, is being ignored or shut out of the process entirely."
According to Robinson the ghettoisation of science fiction is a comparatively recent phenomenon. He pointed to a little known letter written by Virginia Woolf to the science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, after he had sent her a copy of his novel Star Maker. "I don't suppose that I have understood more than a small part – all the same I have understood enough to be greatly interested, and elated too, since sometimes it seems to me that you are grasping ideas that I have tried to express, much more fumblingly, in fiction," wrote Woolf. "But you have gone much further and I can't help envying you – as one does those who reach what one has aimed at."
Read the rest of Flood's piece at The Guardian online.
3 comments:
I totally agree - I've maintained for many many years, that the *best* writing of all is done within the scific/fantasy genres (including so-called 'children's' and YA categories.)
I was amused by ignorant academic comment (from Wellington) about some of the stories in my last published s.s anthology - and heartened by readers' comments who picked up on the ongoing conversation.
I don't see how anyone can do their chosen genre justice by levying an attack at another..."[historical fiction is] not about now in the way science fiction is"... so we cannot learn anything from what has passed then, but must imagine the future for insight? Now that is ignorance. Using the past as a metaphor for the now is no different from using the future as a metaphor for the now. To use Robinson's argument against him, there is no point sci-fi writers trying to better H.G.Wells, for eg. I don't have a grudge against sci-fi but it seems to be the case that writers of it do it more of a disservice in their vehement, often blinkered, defence of it. And, come on, who doesn't want to win the Booker? Let's have sci-fi on the list and see what happens. There are some valid points to Robinson's otherwise unabashed rant against the establishment. It is a real shame that for all their insight and intelligence the sci-fi writers don't utilise their gifts to approach the Booker issue with more stealth.
I agree with Rachel that much of the content of this comment is inaccurate. I could certainly tell a story of 1899 England that is as much about the modern Globalised World as one set in 2099.
By the same token, the science fiction traditon spans at least as ambitious ground in language, imagery, and theme as any other literary genre. The effort of researching and re-imagining the past is surely no less than recreating the trends of "now", or asking "what if?" in some provocative way.
As a writer of what some consider to be sci-fi or fantasy, I prefer to believe it is not blind prejudice that excludes such genres from literary accolades. Rather that, when it comes to the Booker, excelling within your genre is not usually enough.
The Booker tends to celebrates works that go into the author to create an identifiably human tale. It is authentic. Not just on an intellectual level, but an emotional level. This, to me, is "the Booker genre". The judges comparatively less deserving works from within this stable over masterpieces from outside.
The genre of "Sci-fi" has a big picture vision that sets it some distance from the Booker's search for intimate connection. This does not of itself preclude genred or epic tales from consideration. The God of Small Things is as alien and arcane and wondrous as anything in science fiction. Roy built her own language, her own tropes. But it stayed human - identifiably authored - enough for me to go with it, even though I didn't get it all the way. Same with, say, Margaret Atwood. Every true work of ambition must be sure to leave the reader something to hang on to as it flies off to its own imagined realm.
This is an area where science fiction and fantasy have traditionally struggled. Yes, the writers Robinson referenced are very good. Two are personal favourites - but I would not turn to them as exemplars of character, and their stories use tropes in a manner that may alienate readers from outside the genre.
So while there is a whiff of prejudice against these genres on the Booker winners list; and that stigma is hurtful to every writer using the language and trappings of genre; I do believe that many sci-fi novels simply lack what the judges are looking for. Being a master of your genre is not enough.
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