Invasion of the Genre Snatchers

The last science fiction writer that truly influenced me as a writer is gone. Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006) died earlier this week. Lem was a genre bender who managed to write science fiction and philosophy and comedy – often on the same page. His Ijon Tichy stories were throwbacks to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and satirized politics and culture and science. His Pirx the Pilot stories were hard SF puzzlers that made you work at remembering what was in the last unread chapter of your Grade 12 physics textbook. And The Cyberiad was a work of fiction, satire and philosophy that was to our current sentient robots what Aesop’s Fables was to the Greeks. Ask any robot and they’ll tell you that the only two writers who got it right were Asimov and Lem. Then add to this Solaris, the novel that was made into both Russian and American films. And then there are the works of non-fiction as well as his book reviews of books that haven’t been written yet. Lem like to mess with his genres. Postmodernists called him one of their own, but he insisted he was there before they were and he didn’t like being lumped in with them.

When prodded about his favorite non-European science fiction author, Lem chose another genre-bender, Philip K. Dick. In an essay on Dick, Lem expresses his distaste for the sameness of American science fiction. No one ever accused Lem of being the same as anyone, that’s for sure. But his point about American SF should not be dismissed. Is he right? I don’t want to do a survey of the genre, but let’s just consider a few touchstones.

First of all, science fiction is not the genre of the moment in the U.S. Fantasy is. Whether in books or video games or in films, fantasy has slowly climbed over SF in terms of popularity during the last thirty years and especially with the emergence of The Lord of the Rings on film and the Harry Potter franchise in general. Now, when it comes to genre fiction, I fully support the genres that are the furthest stretch from ho-hum realism. But of horror, SF and fantasy, my least favorite genre is easily fantasy. Too much ‘restoring the order of the cosmos’ for my taste. Much better to have the horrors or the dystopia still in control at the end of the story – just like in real life. (What’s truly scary is that my spell check doesn’t or won’t recognize dystopia as a real word – frightening red lines under the word denying the possibility of its existence.) I mean I cut my teeth on the Alien and Road Warrior series along with Blade Runner and The Terminator – with Deckard unsure of his true identity, Max left alone after his heroic sacrifice, Sarah Connor driving into the storm she knows is coming, and Ripley waking up in film after film in a recurring nightmare she can’t escape from. None of this ring nonsense, or using the force and beating the bad guys. The hobbits of my kind of SF don’t win and the little kid with the wand gets put in a gulag.

What really bugs me, though, is that there’s a lot of unintentional genre-bending going on in North America. And I blame the bookstores. For years, they’ve put SF and fantasy books under the heading Science Fiction and Fantasy or, if they couldn’t afford the extra letters, just under Science Fiction. So a couple of generations of speculative fiction readers have grown up thinking the two genres are one and the same. I was once interested in a woman who leaned forward at that crucial moment when you are deciding upon first meeting someone whether you are going to sleep with them or even marry them (or so I’ve heard), and she said, “Oh, I love Science Fiction too. The Lord of the Rings is one of the best Science Fiction books ever.” Good night and good luck.

In this kind of environment, does SF stand a chance? The Matrix, of course, bailed the genre out for a time. But though I liked it very much, it was always too hip, stylish and smug a story for me. And the hero wins in the end. Dark City showed more promise with a main character who might just be a serial killer, but he can’t remember. Much less Charles Dickens and more Philip K. Dickens. But the vast majority of SF films these days rely on action rather than ideas to drive the plot. V For Vendetta stands as a recent partial exception. There is some style to it and some sidelong commentary at current events, and what young and future anarchist out there could resist the possibility of the British Parliament building being blown up? But the enemy is an unsubtle one – a standard Orwellian dictator backed up by a religious talk show host. Not very challenging targets.

The relative success of V For Vendetta points to the potential eclipsing of regular science fiction books by science fiction graphic novels, one of which spawned this film. And with their emergence (which, as a former comic book reader, I certainly don’t oppose) film has found a natural ally. Both media deal with visuals and this might well mean that the SF movies of the future will be dominated by visuals – even more so than SF films of the past - with the noticeable lack of compelling and challenging ideas. Comic books also have a tendency to create heroes. Notice all the superhero films these days. Will those heroes be of the perpetually triumphant variety, or will they be more like the antihero of The Planet of the Apes pounding his fist in the sand with the crushing realization that mankind has destroyed itself?

The short of it is there are too many optimists out there making the genre of films I used to most enjoy. There are too few truly and deeply negative voices. That is one of the reasons I will miss Lem. His work can’t be summed up by saying, “It’ll all work out in the end if we just put our faith in one man.” He was too skeptical for that. He was too much of a satirist. Perhaps that is why he never received the recognition he felt he deserved from the American SF writing community. Perhaps that’s why there won’t be that many movies based on his work. I think he would be fine with that. And he would understand it too because the dystopia of smiles always wins.