We’ve been talking a lot recently about how to understand science fiction as in some ways a “realistic” discourse, even though it seems by definition to be something else; in what ways is SF more real than what we normally think of as realism? What kinds of real-world phenomena (race, immigration, interminable wars, the East, homosexuality) are in some sense only sufficiently thinkable through the lens of SF?
On these questions, here‘s a brief account of a conversation between Margaret Atwood (who we’re not reading in this class, but who I suspect many of you are familiar with) and Ursula K. Le Guin (of “Nine Lives”). The kicker here is that Atwood, despite writing a lot of novels that are wholly recognizable as science fiction, claims not to be writing science fiction, because she wants to distance herself from what she imagines the genre to be. Le Guin, on the other hand, has been a major factor in legitimizing (so to speak) science fiction as not just a popular or escapist mode of cultural production, but a substantive, literary mode. So you could see how they might be at odds on the issue of SF and “realism.”
Octavia Butler’s “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future” weighs in on some similar issues, somewhat provocatively. So does this Maureen McHugh talk on “the anti-SF novel,” which may get to the heart of the conversation we had about China Mountain Zhang and whether/how it is or isn’t SF.