I’ve always taken it as a given that science fiction requires at least one central science-fictional conceit. In other words, if you remove the sf furniture, and your story does not change… well, then it’s not science fiction. It’s “skiffy”. And skiffy is bad.

I don’t remember where I picked this up from, although I think it’s common parlance in British sf fandom. Wikipedia is no help – it describes “skiffy” as a “deliberate humorous misspelling or mispronunciation of the controversial term ‘sci-fi'”. No mention of skiffy as a description of a story (or its shortcomings). The Turkey City Lexicon, however, calls it the “Just-Like Fallacy” – a “SF story which thinly adapts the trappings of a standard pulp adventure setting”.

To my mind, Wilson Tucker’s original definition of space opera as “the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn” was in part a dig at the sort of stories I know as skiffy. Certainly, Galaxy magazine’s later pendant to the term – a series of ads featuring Bat Durston, under the banner “You won’t find it in this Galaxy” – were pretty clear as to what they thought was bad sf. Their example was a western in space – a well-known and much-derided form of bad science fiction.

However, a recent discussion on a forum has made me question this given.

I still think it holds true – I can’t see the point in making a story science fiction if all you’re doing is slapping a thin coat of rocketships-&-rayguns paint on it. But how relevant is an insistence on a science-fictional conceit in a post-Star Wars genre? That film was little more than a hodge-podge of story archetypes dragged by the scruff of their necks into a space opera setting.

David Weber has done something similar with his Honor Harrington series. His heroine is Nelson in Space – even down to losing an eye and having an adulterous affair. The People’s Republic of Haven is Revolutionary France – the chief villain is even called Rob S Pierre! Where’s the central science-fictional conceit in the Honor Harrington series? What is it about the series’ story-arc that means it can only take place in the Honorverse? There are plenty of science-fictional ideas in the books, from Weber’s take on faster-than-light travel, the weaponry used by the various warships, the… er, well, the furniture, basically. The Honor Harrington novels are very successful. Yet they aren’t that much different from Bat Durston. True, a female admiral could never have existed during the Napoleonic Wars, but turn Honor Harrington into Horatio Harrington, the Warshawski sail into a canvas sail… and you have essentially the same story.

So… is the genre nothing more than its furniture? Is that all sf readers really need for a story to meet their definition of science fiction?

Not even death metal - to wit...

"Demilich hold true to the melodic tradition of Finnish metal by merging the heavy metal tradition of rich tonal space liberated by abstract conceptions of harmony with death metal, layering their ideas into songs where complexity silhouettes but does not illustrate an overall thematic space via postmodernist metastructuralism."

From a review of the album Nespithe by Demilich on the American Nihilist Underground Society's web site.

“One of the most common critical mechanisms of hard-line fandom is the rationalisation of shabby prose as ‘entertainment'”. Discuss.

From a review of Anne McCaffrey’s Restoree written in 1969 by M John Harrison, and collected in Parietal Games: Critical Writings by and on M John Harrison, edited by Mark Bould and Michelle Reid. It may be worth noting that Restoree was apparently still in print as late as 1999…

Here’s another death metal cover of a pop song. It’s by ZX Spectrum, a Latvian death metal band. Yes, that’s really what they’re called. The song is ‘Sleeping in my Car’, originally a hit for Swedish pop-rock duo Roxette in 1994. Listen and, er, enjoy…

Here are a couple of true stories I’ve been told I should put on my blog. And as I don’t like to disappoint my public…

Interview Technique
A few years ago, I worked for an ISP. At one point, management decided to put together a new team to work on the next generation platform. So they placed ads on the web site, contacted a bunch of recruitment agencies, and waited for the applications to roll in. Which they did. I ended up interviewing several of the candidates. One of these candidates – call him Ed… It’s his real name; there’s none of that “names have been changed to protect the innocent” here since no one is innocent.

Anyway, I interviewed Ed. And during the course of this interview, the subject turned to degree courses.

“I have no respect for anyone with a degree in Business Studies,” Ed told me. “Er, you don’t have one, do you?”

“I’m afraid so,” I replied.

We didn’t offer Ed the position – for a number of reasons, none of which were related to his remark in the interview.

One year later, I was down the pub with Craig, who had also worked at the ISP. Like me, he’d since left their employ. Some colleagues of Craig’s entered the pub. One of them was Ed. He didn’t recognise me – mind you, it had been twelve months since the interview. After around thirty minutes, Ed turned to me and asked me how I knew Craig.

“I used to work with him,” I replied, and named the ISP.

“I went for an interview there,” Ed said. “But some twat wouldn’t give me a job because I told him his degree was crap.”

“That was me,” I said.

Shared Cultural References
Before the ISP mentioned above, I worked in the Middle East. In Abu Dhabi, to be precise, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. My last job there was for a national oil company, and I worked in the Training & Development department, managing an application used in competency development. One day, I was talking to Vanik (Iraqi/Armenian), when Mohammed (Palestinian) poked his head into Vanik’s office.

“You have spoken to Saeed?” Mohammed asked Vanik.

“Yes. I saw him earlier. He said he’d finish it by one o’clock.”

Mohammed frowned. “He just told me he had not started it.”

The two began to argue about whether or not Saeed had actually started his assigned task, or would complete it in time. It was a good ten minutes before they realised they were actually talking about different people called Saeed.

“Well, you know what they say,” I said. “There’s two Saeeds to every story.”

Apparently, it’s funnier if you’re English…

I’m terrible at Christmas shopping. I went into town yesterday to buy two presents: a book and a DVD. And ended up coming back with more purchases for myself than presents.

In Waterstone’s, I bought the paperback I’d picked out as a present… and then bought myself two books. While browsing, I spotted The Muqaddimah by ibn Khaldun – one of the great mediaeval Arabic books mentioned in The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature – and couldn’t resist buying it. I also picked up The Middle East by Bernard Lewis because I wanted to put the classical Arabic literature I’d read about in historical context.

In HMV, I bought the DVD I’d picked out as a present… but couldn’t resist Fortunes of War, the 1987 BBC adaptation of Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy (see below). I’ve now watched the first two episodes and… Kenneth Brannagh as Guy Pringle and Emma Thompson as Harriet Pringle are pretty much as I’d imagined them. But the other characters don’t really fit the mental images I’d built up when reading the book. This is not all that uncommon when watching a film or television adaptation of a book you’ve read – David Lynch’s Dune anyone? But it does take some getting used to. And then there are the chunks missing from the plot – Fortunes of War is based on both The Balkan Trilogy and its sequel, The Levant Trilogy. That’s a lot to get through in six hour-long episodes. Well, a book per episode, in fact. Anyway, four episodes to go – Um, just thought: I may have to read The Levant Trilogy before I can watch the last three episodes… Damn.