What is science fiction, anyway? Are either the genre or that question even relevant to any but the nerds?

Listening to Aimee Bender, David Sandner and Mark von Schlegell read excerpts of their works before discussing those very issues at a Claire Phillips-moderated symposium at Skylight Books inspired sci-fi readers Emily Henry and Deborah Stokol to "discuss the discussion" (on Gchat, a communication line that until quite recently would have better fit the sci-fi novel than it would everyday life).

Deborah Stokol: Hi there.

Emily Henry: Well hello.

DS: Would you say that last week's sci-fi symposium told you anything... about anything?

EH: Well, I had never heard the term "slipstream" before. But I like it. Claire Phillips defined it as "science fiction that breaks into other genres."

DS: I read about it as a sort of faster-than-light form of travel, a "warp speed." But I don't know, referring to that and to science fiction as "SF" (which I tend to associate with a city) rather than to ideas in more accessible or blanket terms kind of turned me off. The symposium felt like I was in one of those stultifying undergrad psych PowerPoint presentations that analyze societal tendencies without explaining what they really mean.

EH: I think it would have been better for them to have defined the terms more clearly instead of slipping into geek mode. 

DS: I know. But I didn't even feel like it was "geek mode" either. It was disjointed. Four people spoke, but no one seemed to be saying anything. They read the (very good) excerpts--but not in a way with which people could engage. They seemed to be mumbling to themselves.

EH: I agree. For example, a member of the audience asked specifically: "What differentiates sci fi from other modes of fiction?" His question went unanswered.

DS: Maybe that was "too clear cut," too much something all of us would have been interested in hearing about!

EH: Exactly. But I think we need to deal with questions like that in order to understand the purpose of holding symposiums!

DS: Yes! I felt like they didn't touch much on sci fi books or the genre itself. Moreover, reading an academic paper on Kant and the sublime out loud is:
 
1. generally hard to follow
2. specifically hard to follow as it pertains to sci fi
 
It does pertain to sci fi, but not in a way that can simply be taken neither at face value nor for granted.

EH: I loved the reference though, comparing science fiction to the quest for the sublime.

DS: Science fiction can definitely be linked to the sublime--that thing we know we can't know but know anyway. Something that involves awe-inspiring elements.

EH: Or that we want to know but at the same time are afraid of knowing, which is what makes it so attractive.

DS: Yes, but is that what makes it sci fi, or is sci fi the containment of narrative that regards all those things?

EH: Well on a very basic level, what is sci fi?

DS: I would say sci fi is simply the placeholder, the container. It's whatever's within those books that deals with and approaches those things.

EH: Actually, what makes it sci fi--on a very basic level, and I mean getting back to the birth of the genre--is science.

DS: True.

EH: We shouldn't forget that.

DS: But then there's the whole fantasy crossover.

EH: Still, I think some elements must remain true, like futurism.

DS: Or time travel.

EH: Aliens.

DS: Spaceships.

EH: Other worlds and other species.

DS: ...those terms or ideas that science uses that sci fi borrows for explanation and legitimacy purposes like "tesseract" or "space-time continuum" or even evolution...(as it comes up, in, say, X-Men).

EH: Yes, but not so much anymore. I always think of those terms as cheap now. They're cheap plot devices that can excuse anything.

DS: True, but I guess that's why I relate to the older sci fi from the '60s and '70s. Then again, those books place way too much emphasis on Cold War concerning nuclear annihilation.

EH: Yes. Definitely need to drop the Cold War.

DS: Ha. Going back to those terms, though. They do have that sort of "we sound informed" nature to them, huh?

EH: I think it's about time sci fi had something else, other than nuclear power, to focus on. That's what I like about Frank Herbert's Dune series. It's very basic. The sole power, which controls the universe, is water.

DS: Well, call me traditional, but when sci fi's good, it's good because it has excellent storytelling and touching characters from which I can learn or with which I can identify.

EH: Yes, a must.

DS: That's what I've always liked about Madeleine L'engle. Or from the creative storytelling perspective, Ray Bradbury. Or even Anne McCraffrey (though she's a bit more on the tawdry side). When it's too much about gadgets, you've lost me.

EH: Yes, it can get a bit overwhelming when writers rely too much on their "ideas" and not enough on their evocation of those ideas through characters.

DS: Right. You don't want to see them as mere vehicles or just props who can interact with mechanical things that don't exist in our world. It's just playing with "Man's" ability to mess with nature enough that magic's possible.

DS: Also, I tend to enjoy the more fairy-tale aspects of the genre...after all, in book stores it is the sci fi/fantasy section.

EH: Does that include Lord of the Rings?

DS: YES. Or things Arthurian.

EH: Interesting.... I think we can safely say that there is no science in LOTR. Or is there?

DS: No there isn't. But again, that's what I mean. Science fiction--the name itself--may be, in my book, obsolete. Unless you view science as something magical (as I do).

EH: But does magic count as science? Magic is either completely scientific or completely anti-scientific.

DS: In this context? It's science used in a way unfamiliar, and perhaps impossible enough to make it more "magical" than nitty-gritty, 19th-c. Darwinian science. Think about Einstein's discussion of time and the way he says time functions and moves. Both the discussion and the content of what he's discussing are pretty magical. Science is a religion for some, as is science fiction for others.

EH: Well, I think "magic" is just science in its "future" incarnation. I mean, if you think about it, the idea of a light bulb would have seemed magical in Medieval times. (Or, as in the movie Hocus Pocus, when the boy uses his lighter to scare the witches.)

DS: Ha! There you go. We take these things for granted. Or think about what we were talking about the other day regarding communication fever and subsequent breakdown and about how it relates to science: Two people sitting next to each other, typing at laptops. I once worked at a place where people were IMing at/with each other while...next to each other.

EH: That is disgusting.

DS: Yes. But it happens all the time. Revolting it may be, but true as well.

EH: Isn't that actually inefficient?

DS: Yes, it's inefficient and creepy, but also a "miracle" of science and something at which H.G. Wells would have marveled.

EH: Like, say, creating an entire virtual realm in which we live our lives now? Is that science? I mean, why? Why join an online community when you can join a real one? We should be talking about how science fiction works from the perspective of experience, not creation.

Whose writing did you like the best?

DS: I liked Aimee Bender's because she was telling a story and enunciating its telling. I could follow it and react to it on an amused, personal level.

EH: You know... I didn't like Mark Von Schlegell's because he was too abstract. I couldn't "see" the story, which I think is completely necessary for sci fi. I mean, you need to enter a WORLD.

DS: You do, and Aimee constructed one for us, albeit a tiny one. It was sweet and entertaining, magical, weird and random. The others simply didactically discussed worlds that they observed from some sort of sociological standpoint. I just didn't connect with what they were saying, and they're great writers, just maybe not the most enthralling Sci Fi writers or "read out loud" critics.

EH: I think you're being a tad too critical. I mean, I just think the symposium wasn't set up to answer specific questions as it should have been. It was trying to do too much at once.

DS: You're right. I'm not trying to be harsh. I guess I just didn't know what to expect and I didn't know what the take-away was either. But I spoke to Sandner afterwards and he seemed very nice, and I liked his work in general and what he was saying in it. I was touched to see those Sci Fi-reading faces out there in the audience.

EH: But why not just focus the symposium on the most compelling part? Which I think was the point that "Sci Fi is uninhibited fun for writers." We're talking about total imagination-immersion.

DS: Yes, imagination immersion - that's what any book should do, even one concerning math, even science. 

EH: How about a symposium on this: FUN. I think Aimee has a LOT of fun when she writes and it shines through her work.

DS: Yes, she writes with a lot of verve. The scenarios are so completely imaginative and the characters are bizarre and endearing.

EH: You've got to lose yourself. She definitely believes in "letting yourself go" with the flow of your imagination.

DS: Oh yes, it shouldn't be self-conscious, or that will show too. "Trying too hard" -- that's so difficult to let go of, writing for your audience. I love that she doesn't seem to do that anyway. But what about those who engage in a painful writing process but the result is still fun. Or do you think that's impossible?

EH: Margaret Atwood: The only way to write well is to write as if no-one is going to read it (approx). It's amazing the difference between someone who "maps" out a story and someone who just sits down and swims.

DS: But it's amazingly true, and Margaret Atwood, what a great example of someone (though she doesn't consider herself a Sci Fi writer) who weaves Sci Fi elements into her books.

EH: By the way, I asked Aimee afterwards if she wrote that piece all in one sitting and she did. The first draft, at least. But a complete story, nonetheless

DS: She did?! I will try not to think of that when I next have to write, or I will stonewall myself.

Then again, truth be told, I can't think of doing a short story any other way.

EH: I know a lot of people who write like that, because it helps avoid that self-consciousness that stops story flow.

DS: If you stop, you lose momentum. And hopefully you've figured out the general trajectory in advance, because if you reread it, you may erase everything. I've spent entire afternoons pressing backspace.

EH: Well, sometimes there is no trajectory. You start from a point, and you run with it. Even you don't know where it will go

DS: True, but that in itself is a style.

EH: Sometimes stories like that are more reflective of your own writing process than you think.

DS: That's quite grand isn't it (or neurotic).

EH: But it's a writer's neurosis. So it belongs to a very unique sort of person -- we "watchers," who watch ourselves and the world more closely than is comfortable.

DS: Watchers? Or those possessing a thousand voices in their heads? Some folks call that CRAZY. 

It's uncomfortable, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

EH: Me either. It's too much fun. Even when it's painful.

DS: (Often) But hey. Quite mainly fun. Taking part in the world in a very vivid way.

EH: I liked the quote about "new" Sci Fi being writing that "makes you feel very strange." That resonated with me, and all the authors I like.... those who transform normality into strangeness.

DS: Ha. MUCH better than when they said "science fiction is dead."

Normality is strange. I also liked the idea that it's no longer high art versus low art. It's all coalesced into a "no holds barred" sort of product.

EH: I like the idea... but I don't know if it's true. I think David Foster Wallace was trying to maintain "high art." He described his work as "high art"-- art that makes the reader work hard for her pleasures. I believe that there is still a need for that art. Perhaps even more so now that the Internet is "flattening culture" (as Andrew Keen would say.)

DS: In a small way that's sometimes true, no? It lends you expand. But. For example, the Internet now lets you read about Fear and Trembling. So on the surface, there would seem to be "no point" in reading it. Of course that's not true, but it forces you to operate by the credo "why labor through one work when you can get a bit of all of them on Wikipedia?"

EH: Fiction is an EXPERIENCE. I strongly believe that.

DS: Yes. I don't know what my childhood would have been without it. It's an escape, but not in a disturbing way. You are living in so many worlds; it opens up your entire existence because you're doing so on so many different planes. It just makes your imagination that much more potent.

EH: Well, I'm afraid that we're breeding a new world that is losing its imagination. Maybe science fiction and fantasy will die?

DS: NO.

EH: Well... why use your imagination when there are so many venues for mental stimulation?

DS: NO.

EH: Why not just watch a Youtube video? Why bother "working hard for your art"? Yes, someday there will be a Youtube IN OUR BRAINS.

DS: Well, raise your hand if you've put a book under your pillow and wished you could absorb it in your sleep? Er.....

EH: I mean that there will be no NEW ideas... no thoughts sprung from the abyss. We are losing our ability to imagine.

DS: I'll hook a USB cable into the port on the side of my head. Emily, I will not stand this apocalyptic nonsense.

EH: Aren't you afraid?

DS: I loved that Atlantic Monthly article "Is Google Making us Stupid?" as much as you did, and I do worry... I mean I have less focus when I read, thinking, why read one when I could learn about so many? But I don't believe that will really happen, and the Kindle, crazy as it is, may assure that that hyperactive tendency is refocused into "well I could read the next one in my 'playlist'/'readlist.'"

EH: Why read The Taming of the Shrew, when you can watch 10 Things I Hate About You?

DS: But it's so much the richer for doing both. The first elevates and explains and informs the other. The second makes the first feel cute and current, relateable.

EH: We're building layers upon layers.

DS: They are companions. Nothing has to replace anything else. We can add and add and add (and get ADD).

EH: Someday the bottom layer will be lost. Hot magma, untouchable.

DS: You may be right, but man, I HOPE NOT. Not untouchable -- just a base. You should go there first, not last, or you don't have a prescribed set of rules.

EH: That is true. The canon is more important now than ever. But even there, things slowly get replaced.

DS: That may be true, but others wouldn't agree. I will stand by the historic preservation society or whatever do-gooding group comes to fight this.

EH: But great art is never obsolete; it's universal, enduring.

DS: Exactly. I have to believe that. You can face it when you see it. It speaks for itself.

EH: This conversation took quite a turn.

DS: We expected it would.

EH: But then.... that's natural.

DS: Natural in conversation, and natural when discussing the cosmic and the fictional presentation of the cosmic. Even if it is self-referential, naval-gazing drivel! There's magic in the every day. Isn't that the whole point?

EH: True... you just have to concentrate on the strangeness of it all.

DS: But that symposium was good if only to get us talking about this. We can enjoy the sublime and attempt to know it, but accept that at the end, we never will. And maybe that's ok too. We'll just keep doing our thing.