{"id":1059,"date":"2008-09-08T07:45:42","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T11:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2008-09-07T12:26:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T16:26:31","slug":"sfanglophilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=1059","title":{"rendered":"Sfanglophilia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Or– why North American fans need to read more SF from the U.K.)<\/p>\n

For some time Chip has been asking me for opinion pieces for the blog. Since, according to the equitable distribution laws of our state, intellectual property is shared equally within a marriage, please feel free to harangue her mercilessly over the views expressed in the following article. In grand sfeditorial tradition I will be making arrogant, unsupportable generalizations, expressing value judgments based on woefully incomplete data, and will ramble off-topic repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Why should North American fans pay more attention to recent SF from the U.K.? Because, on average, over the last 15 years, it’s been better than its New World cousin. (See? Fearless leap into arrogant generalization, based on subjective criteria.)<\/em> By the mid-nineties North American SF was becoming moribund, recursive, and complacent. There were a few pretty, shiny objects in the landslide of cloned mediocrity, but modern marketing techniques and the rise of the book superstores were pushing North American SF into a safely predictable niche. (I feel vaguely guilty including Canadian SF here, since it might be arguable that Canadian SF has steadily improved over the last fifteen years, but — whatthefuck — Canadians are<\/strong> North Americans, and they’re used to being unjustly whacked for the indiscretions of their southern neighbors and, besides, if you toss Mexican SF on the pile, it all averages out to support my point.)<\/em> While publishing science fiction in the U.S. was marginally profitable, the market for serial high fantasy in North America was bottomless, and the Empress of Hogwarts (who is, admittedly, a U.K. writer)<\/em> was about to unleash the full, explosive hegemony of YA fiction and its corollary full-cycle algernonification of genre fiction, ironically confirming one of the more controversial genre statements of the late Tom Disch. (Actually, I admire the stated role of YA fiction as a gateway drug that should lead to serious heavy book use. I just think that the purchase of YA fiction by readers over twenty-one years of age should be criminalized, and suitable, meaningful penalties applied to booksellers who don’t card their clientele.)<\/em> At about this time in the U.K. the concatenation of innovative, established specific writers (notice the homage to Britain’s last genre literary movement)<\/em>, fledgling, hit-or-miss authors who suddenly started smacking home runs (substitute the equivalent cricket metaphor)<\/em>, newer, unknown but talented writers, and a publishing industry and reading public less inclined to marginalize adult SF (when I visited the U.K. in 2005, I noticed promotional posters for Iain M. Banks’ THE ALGEBRAIST at every tube station I passed through in London. Orbit [an imprint of Times Warner U.K.] had spent actual money promoting a SF title in traditional mainstream fashion to real people!)<\/em> created the conditions necessary for a kind of critical mass that has produced an ongoing SF renaissance in the U.K. (Hyperbole is our friend)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

North American SF writers tend to initiate genre literary movements ending in ” -punk.” (The exception being the very narrow, but high tonnage, movement we like to call “Neal Stephenson.”)<\/em> Their counterparts in the U.K. seem to prefer the prefix “new-.” The New Wave that erupted from the U.K. in the 1960s had, and continues to have, some impact on the larger genre. (If you don’t know what the New Wave was — stop — back slowly away from this blog, go immediately to Amazon and purchase a copy of Judith Merrill’s fine 1968 New Wave sampler anthology ENGLAND SWINGS SF<\/em> [as of this writing there are 23 copies available, starting at $1.00]. Read this book from cover to cover, scratch your head perplexedly, mumble a pithy critical analysis in stream-of-consciousness format, and then return to finish reading this post).<\/em> The current SF renaissance in the U.K. includes, but is certainly not limited to, the New Space Opera movement and the self-proclaimed New Weird. If you’re not familiar with New Space Opera and the New Weird, then you probably weren’t familiar with the New Wave, and you probably didn’t do your reading assignment as outlined above, so, as an example of editorial largesse, brief synopses follow. (Everybody else can skip forward to the author recommendations.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not sure that I’ve seen a slam-dunk, comprehensive definition of New Space Opera from any source, including the editors of anthologies devoted to the movement, but there are a few givens. In NSO, the innocent (or guilty) pleasures of the pulp\/golden age space opera (frequently including honored tropes like Big Dumb Objects and deep space pyrotechnics)<\/em> are revived as real literature<\/strong> (as much as any adult SF not <\/strong>written by Gene Wolfe or M. John Harrison can be called such) <\/em>with complex plotting and finely drawn characters. But NSO isn’t just Eliza Doolittle in a skintight black pressure suit. Most writers of New Space Opera have peered into the Strossian punchbowl and made peace of some kind with The Singularity and\/or post human transcendence (even if only by describing why it didn’t, or won’t, occur in their milieu)<\/em>, and this single accession to contemporary techspec does make for dramatic changes in the tone and direction of modern space opera when compared to its stylistically challenged prototype. While there are a handful of contemporary North American SF writers who have done work in this category (like Dan Simmons, or Scott Westerfield before he was entirely seduced by Darth YA)<\/em>, the overwhelming majority of its practitioners write in the U.K.<\/p>\n

The New Weird is harder to define because its writers (most of whom object to being classified at all)<\/em> and fans want it to be harder to define. It’s almost easier to discuss what it’s not. It’s not<\/em> slipstream (at this point, if you don’t know what slipstream fiction is, you may wish to consider formally filing a change in your genre affiliation)<\/em>. It is<\/em> influenced by the New Wave, but it’s generally not postmodern in execution.\u00a0 It is not<\/em> related to High Fantasy (or consolatory fantasy — i.e. the kind of fantasy that makes China Mieville “want to puke”)<\/em> in any respect — no elves, dragons, or castles, and it bristles at being included in any discussion of more traditional fantasy.\u00a0 NW work usually includes some dark, even horrific, elements, and can be political in overt or symbolic fashion. It is fantastic in the pure sense and frequently surreal. The novel most commonly pointed to as the poster child for this movement is PERDIDO STREET STATION by China Mieville.\u00a0 Other authors who occasionally complain about being included in this category are Steph Swainston, Jeff VanderMeer (American), Hal Duncan, and a retrofitted M. John Harrison.<\/p>\n

There are dozens of innovative, talented specfic writers currently working in the U.K. of whom many North American SF readers are either unaware, or only peripherally aware. Some have been published for decades, and others only recently. Some are involved with NSO or the New Weird, and many are not. One of the very few positive aspects of globalism in the publishing industry is the recent trend towards the eventual distribution of most successful U.K. titles to the North American markets. Sometimes the titles even receive promotion. In 2005 I attended Interaction Worldcon in Glasgow. The five novels nominated for the Hugo that year were all titles originating in the U.K. (This fact alone should convince Americans to read more Brit SF)<\/em>. Of those five titles, three had been released in the U.S. prior to Worldcon, and two had not. Susanna York’s JONATHON STRANGE & DR NORRELL had been published in the U.S. and had been promoted very heavily (for a specfic title) in the States. Roughly half of the attendees of that Worldcon were Americans, and STRANGE\/NORRELL won the award that year (surprise!) — because it was the only title that most American voters had read. This bothered me deeply because one of the nominees that had not been released in the U.S., prior to Interaction, was Ian McDonald’s RIVER OF GODS, one of the best genre novels written this century<\/em>, but hardly anyone in the States had either heard of it or read it. The U.K. authors I’m recommending here are all currently working writers with relatively new titles available<\/em><\/strong>. There are a number of U.K. writers I’ve read but am not recommending here because of quality or relevance issues — or because I just don’t like them. I’m not including any authors so well known that their work has become canonical, even in North America. Nor am I including any writers who have received British chivalry honours, like Brian Aldiss O.B.E. (I always want to add “Wan Kinobe” after that)<\/em>, because they already have shiny medals and don’t need praise from commoners.<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED WRITERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each week (hopefully) I will post an overview of one of the following writers, in alphabetical order, beginning next week.<\/p>\n