In 1941, Wilson Tucker coined the term “space opera” to describe the “the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn”. Sixty-nine years later, space opera is still going strong. Not only that, it’s often seen as the defining form of science fiction. It might even be the most successful form of science fiction.

Because it is science fiction.

So you can’t have “space opera versus science fiction“. That would be like, well, like “Londoners versus Brits”. Or “Brie versus cheese”.

That’s because science fiction is not defined by its trappings. Peter F Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy is set in an interstellar federation. It is generally considered to be space opera. Ursula K Le Guin’s Hainish novels and stories are set in… an interstellar federation. They are not considered to be space opera. Iain M Banks’s Culture novels feature spaceships; Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity features a spaceship. The former are space opera, the latter is a defining example of hard sf.

To confuse sf with its trappings is one thing. To then consider space opera a different genre entirely, though it possesses the same trappings as sf, is another. And to subsequently claim that science fiction – but not space opera – requires science, real science, is… nonsense.

Are stories featuring time travel not science fiction? What about faster-than-light travel? Aliens? Artificial Intelligence? Are stories featuring gravity, planets, stars, orbits, computers… not space opera, then?

If you’re going to write science fiction, I would respectfully suggest it helps to know what it is. Or isn’t.

In 1930, Hugo Gernsback wrote, “Not only is science fiction an idea of tremendous import, but it is to be an important factor in making the world a better place to live in, through educating the public to the possibilities of science and the influence of science on life which, even today, are not appreciated by the man on the street.”

I’ve never subscribed to the view that science fiction should be didactic or predictive. To me, sf is a literary mode – not a teaching tool, not futurism. Yes, any science in a sf text needs to be accurate and rigorous, but it’s only there to enable the plot.

But.

Given some of the outright bollocks being perpetuated by the right in both the US and UK, I have to wonder if it’s time science fiction should play a didactic role. In the US, the education boards of some states are planning to remove all references to evolution from school textbooks. In the UK, some national newspapers repeatedly publish pieces claiming Anthropogenic Global Warming is nothing more than a conspiracy by a handful of scientists desperate for funding. (And just look at the outright lies perpetrated by far-right web sites such as the Conservapedia.)

Scientific conversation is being swamped by right-wing politics. The right does not believe in the politics of debate, but the politics of exclusion. They’re not presenting an alternative view, they’re telling you that their view is the correct one. Despite all evidence to the contrary. And they insist their view is correct because their view is the one that perpetuates their privilege. The right is oligarchic and its politics exist solely to maintain that oligarchy.

This is reflected to some extent in genre fiction. The rational worldview at the core of science fiction is disappearing from the shelves of book shops. Those shelves are now dominated by fantasy novels. And the politics of fantasy tends to the oligarchic and autocratic – all those empires and kingdoms, all those Peasant Heroes and Dark Lords. Mind you, much space opera and military sf is no different – and in many ways no less rational than fantasy. Perhaps this has been partly driven by media sf, which has been chiefly fantastical since 1977.

I put this down to a confusion over sf tropes. They’re not the be-all and end-all of the genre. They’re not setting. They exist to enable the plot. Incorporate them solely as background, as a pandering to the current desire for immersion in secondary worlds and… well, doesn’t that lead to readers turning their back on this world?

When Geoff Ryman founded the Mundane SF Movement in 2002, I saw it only as a bunch of sf writers throwing the best toys out of science fiction’s pram. When Jetse de Vries called for sf to be optimistic in 2008, I didn’t really understand as, to me, the genre was neither pessimistic nor optimistic.

But it occurred to me recently that these two attempts to change how science fiction thinks about itself are themselves symptomatic of the erosion of the scientific worldview in the public arena. By excluding the more fanciful, the more fantastical, tropes in sf, Mundane SF forces writers and readers to engage with known science and a scientific view of the world. And optimistic fiction, by focusing on “possible roads to a better tomorrow”, acknowledges that situations exist now which require solutions. It forces us to look at those situations, to examine the world and not rely on a two-thousand-year-old fantasy novel, or the opinions of the scientifically-ignorant, for our worldview.

I’m not suggesting all sf writers should immediately start writing their twenty-first versions of Ralph 124C 41+. Nor that all fantasy writers must immediately cease and desist, and write optimistic Mundane sf instead. What I am saying is, that as readers and writers of genre fiction, we should perhaps begin to question how the public perception of our world is formed, and refuse to perpetuate the same lies and inaccuracies. We must examine our world more rigorously, we must examine the worlds we create more rigorously.

I’m horrified by the thought of an entire generation thinking there must be a god because they cannot conceive of any other way for the Earth, or humanity, to have come about. I’m frightened that the nations of this planet will not work together to prevent the climate from crashing because they believe it will never happen. I’m scared that the world is turning into a place in which orthodoxy dominates all media. I don’t want to live in a world in which I am told what to think.

And yes, there have even been a few science fiction novels written about that very situation.

Recently, I’ve been working on a near-future sf short story. For this story, I needed the name and location of a small town in central Asia. The plot required that the inhabitants of this town belong to a sufficiently small ethnic group for their origin to be identified by their genes. And the town had to be remote enough for no one to notice if its population disappeared pretty much overnight.

I was explaining my dilemma to a friend, and he said, “Why don’t you just make one up?”

Fifteen years ago, I’d have had no choice. The town would have to be invented. And if my invented details were a little implausible, it’s extremely unlikely anyone would ever notice.

Now, I can use the Web. I can go hunting in Wikipedia, or on Google Maps. Not to mention using online translation tools to read web sites in other languages. I can find a real town to use in my story. And, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to find photographs taken in that town. So when the protagonist of my story visits it, I’ll be able to describe the town as it actually is.

I explained this to my friend, and he said, “You could still make one up.”

Well, yes. I could. But that’s not the point. Science fiction is not about making it up as you go along. If I invent an alien planet, that planet is still subject to the laws of physics – so no breathable atmospheres at 1013.25 millibars on a planet with the same density as Earth but half the diameter. If I set a story on a moon of Saturn (as I have done), then I want it to be as close as possible to the real life moon of Saturn. I have in the past searched the NASA web site for artists’ impressions of Saturn’s moons – just to learn the angle at which Saturn’s rings will appear to a person stood on the surface of a particular moon.

And yet probably no one would ever notice if I got it wrong. The same is true for that central Asian town. Who actually cares if it’s real or not?

I do.

It’s important to me that the details of a story are right at every level. Even if it’s fantasy. Or space opera. And I now have a powerful tool on my desk which allows me to get the details right: the Web.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have some research to do…

Here’s cause for optimism…. Well not, really.

You don’t expect accuracy, or much in the way of truth, from a newspaper, least of all a conservative one. But you’d at least hope that the science correspondent actually knew something about science. Clearly this wasn’t considered necessary for the Daily Telegraph. As this headline on their web site, 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved, shows. I mean, that’s not only wrong, it’s deliberately perverse.

If there’s a planet earth created by public perception, by the distorted information and misinformation fed to people by various media, by history, by opinion – a sort of semiosphere of smoke and mirrors… then honesty compels us not to write about that world. Science fiction writers are not journalists, true; but if journalists no longer document reality, someone has to. Science fiction may be the best tool for the job.

Why doesn’t science fiction write about shiny happy futures? Why is it all doom and gloom? In these troubled times, shouldn’t the genre be focusing on what’s right, what’s good, what we can make better?

Well, no.

It’s all very well writing about gleaming futures full of food pills and jetcars, as if – like in William Gibson’s ‘The Gernsback Continuum’ – doing so would dream it into being. It’s all very well positing a future in a science fiction short story in which today’s problems no longer exist. It’s all very well showing how, in a sf text, today’s problems could be solved.

But isn’t that irresponsible?

The world is as it is; it is in many respects how we have made it. If science fiction is to have relevance, this is something it must acknowledge. It is something it must discuss. Just because in a novel a real world regime is overthrown in 2020 AD… it doesn’t mean that novel can’t discuss the moral choices made by the leaders of that regime.

Science fiction can, perhaps, show what might be the effects in one hundred years of decisions taken now – for example, which do we protect: profits or the environment? What are the consequences of choosing one over the other? Why do some people privilege themselves – i.e., profits – over everyone else – i.e., the environment? And should we let them be the ones making the decisions?

Science fiction is not about prediction. It is no longer primarily didactic. But that does not mean it cannot inform. And more than that, it can inform on the important issues. Racial survival. Human rights. The impact of new sciences and technologies. Economics. Politics. Morality. Philosophy.

Writing about a bunch of geeks killing a bunch of gooks with ever more awesome weaponry is cowardice. It’s a failure to engage with the real world. The problem is not that nations are at war, it’s that nations go to war. The latter is fit for speculation, the former is not.

If it is possible to write optimistic science fiction, then it can only be by focusing on the quotidian, by writing fictions which are intensely personal, which look for small everyday victories, which ignore the big questions. Some might call that a failure of imagination.

Science fiction doesn’t need to be optimistic, it needs to be honest.

My last post seems to have caused a bit of a fuss, with responses, agreements and commentary appearing in a surprisingly huge number of different places. At last count, it was about 22 separate blogs and sites. It was the Great August Bank Holiday Blog Storm.

I was amused by the various “facts” about me which appeared in some of the comment threads. I’m apparently a kid, who has read none of the classics. I’m also a published author, who is trying to promote his own books, or is jealous of classic writers’ success.

For the record, I’ve been reading science fiction for about 30 years (so not a kid, then), and that includes most of the classics. I didn’t write Don’t Look Back in Awe to boost sales of my own book or short stories. That would be difficult because I’ve not been published yet – although I do have an agent, John Jarrold, and I have sold some short fiction.

You know what they say about assumptions: they make you look like a complete idiot.

Ah well. Debate is good. Or so I’m told.

I think my favourite comment from the whole affair was the incredulous bleat of some fan who couldn’t understand why Foundation was out-of-date as it’s set 20,000 years in the future…

Here, however, is a topic which follows on quite nicely from the aforementioned infamous post: what do I actually want science fiction to be?

I want it to be… a toolbox.

I want science fiction to be seen as a set of tools that writers – of whatever stripe – can use to tell a story. Action-adventure, “literary fiction”, thriller, satire, romance… it doesn’t matter. Sf is called a genre, but it’s characterised by its furniture. Thrillers aren’t. Romances aren’t. They have their conventions, yes; but their setting doesn’t actually define them.

I’m not saying we should throw away the label “science fiction”, or remove the marketing category and hide all the sf books in amongst the general fiction. Nor am I saying we should stop thinking of ourselves as sf readers or fans.

But as writers and commentators, I would like to see the tools of science fiction be recognised as tools of writing. Good science fiction, after all, still has to be good fiction. Too many people seem to forget that. They focus on the idea as paramount. Foregrounding the idea is not an excuse for bad writing.

Science fiction should be good writing using the tools of the genre. It should be judged as writing which happens to use the tools of the genre. It gets no special dispensation because it’s science fiction, because it has this great big flashing idea going bang in your face.

If you look at a lot of modern sf, then you can sort of see this approach in action. Not just the military action-adventure of David Weber and Jack Campbell, fighting various historical wars with spaceships. But also in excellent novels such as Richard Morgan’s Black Man, which uses the tools of science fiction to hoist a near-future thriller into a position where it can ask the sort of questions, and make the kind of commentary, we demand of good science fiction. And that we often can’t get, in fact, from other genres.

I’m going to leave this here for now. I suspect it needs more thought – if only to determine whether or not I’m reinventing some kind of wheel. Or pointing out something that’s bleeding obvious.

Here we go again. I’ve complained before about the undeserving admiration given to many science fiction novels and short stories of earlier decades. Such reverence frequently results in fans recommending these works to people wanting to try the genre. And that’s not a good thing. Readers new to the genre are not served well by recommendations to read Isaac Asimov, EE ‘Doc’ Smith, Robert Heinlein, or the like. Such fiction is no longer relevant, is often written with sensibilities offensive to modern readers, usually has painfully bad prose, and is mostly hard to find because it’s out of print. A better recommendation would be a current author – such as Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, Kim Stanley Robinson, Gwyneth Jones, Tricia Sullivan, Justina Robson, Jaine Fenn, and so on.

I can hear howls of outrage across the tinterweb.

And so I say again: holding up Foundation or Second Stage Lensman as good introductions to sf will no longer wash. They’re historical documents. In those days, science fiction was a different place; they did things differently. And many “classics” of those days do not fare well when compared to modern works.

I recently reread ‘Nightfall’ by Isaac Asimov, in the anthology A Science Fiction Omnibus. ‘Nightfall’ was first published in the September 1941 issue of Astounding Stories. In the story, the world of Lagash has six suns, and only ever experiences darkness once every 2,049 years. A group of astronomers have calculated that a “night” is imminent, and realise it’s the cause of their cyclical history.

I vaguely recall first reading the story when I was around eleven or twelve. I’ve long been aware of its status as a “classic”, of its reputation as one of Asimov’s best stories. So I was surprised on my recent reread to discover that it’s, well, it’s pretty bad. Asimov’s prose was clunky at best, and it’s not his best in ‘Nightfall’. The world-building is lacklustre and slipshod – characters have names like Sheerin 501 and Beenay 25, and that’s it. In all other respects, it could be set in 1940s USA. The ending – the darkness and resulting panic – is given away on the first page. Much of the “idea” is explained in conversation by the cast. The narration even pulls out of the story at one point, destroying the compact with the reader (ignore the bad grammar, a sentence fragment wodged onto a sentence with a semi-colon):

“Not Earth’s feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye; Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster.”

By all criteria, ‘Nightfall’ fails as a good short story. And yet it’s still regarded as a classic. Some people will even suggest it’s a good example of science fiction. Rubbish. It’s built around a single, not very interesting idea – a world has never seen darkness… and then it gets dark. Wow. There’s a comment on the boom-bust nature of civilisations in there, but it’s pretty much thrown away. Asimov uses it in much more detail some ten years later in Foundation, anyway.

In part, this harkens back to my earlier post about the primacy of idea in science fiction. ‘Nightfall’ contains a very obvious idea and it appears to me that many think the sheer in-your-face nature of it overrides all the story’s faults. Which should not be the case. A story should be considered a classic for a number of reasons – continuing relevance, good writing, originality (in ideas and/or deployment), rigour (of world-building, of story), meaning, impact upon the genre, impact upon the reader…

Shining the spotlight upon idea leaves all else in darkness (seems an appropriate metaphor for a piece citing ‘Nightfall’). In fact, the more an idea or trope is used, the more polished it becomes, and so the higher its albedo.

The howling is becoming deafening now, so I’ll finish by saying I don’t think we should refuse to read old classic works, but we must recognise that they’re historical documents. And add that caveat to any such recommendations or commentary. Further, modern sf readers shouldn’t need to be aware of everything which has gone before, but modern sf writers certainly ought to.