Carola Cox remix of photos by Bertil Jonsson and Axel Bonniot

How to Read SF Classics – Context for the Excluded Reader

by Jean Asselin, Editor-In-Chief

[‘SF Classics’: Works that made experts’ lists due to their importance – broadly defined.]

Reading SF classics can be a challenge when you’re… I’d concatenate vowels but “not a cis Caucasian male” is simpler. Progress since the 1926 birth of the dedicated SF venue notwithstanding, such readings require prior adjustments to one’s mindset.

One barrier is the art that – ahem – graces some speculative fiction covers. As one author quipped, “Fantasy is elves in spandex; Science Fiction is tits and ray-guns.” Exhibit A: thousands of easy to find covers. A more insidious barrier is contents. That fiction is never written in a vacuum does not save some classics from raising eyebrows. Exhibit B: the award-winning Ringworld, one of my favorite novels, with immense scope in space and time, characters who must tap their brains to get out of the trouble their curiosity begat, and sheer imagination. (There be spoilers hence!)

To explore an artifact encountered in deep space, an alien – non-humanoid but with a soprano voice that would rush a saintly human to confession – recruits: Louis Wu, a man who’s seen and done it all; an alien from the war-like Kzin species; and Teela Brown, a young woman whose selection is unrelated to being a new lover to Louis, also the spitting image of a former flame of his. Uninterested at first, she joins after falling for Louis. Females of his species being non-sentient, the Kzin figures that Teela’s function is relief for Louis’ sexual tension. She ultimately leaves the group for a rapier-wielding barbarian. Louis later meets Prill, the other woman of consequence to the story, a former crew on starships whose high male-to-female ratio leads Louis to deduce – correctly – that her function was the world’s oldest profession.

Now, to describe Ringworld as I did is unfair. Niven spins a great yarn (pun intended for those who read it), steers readers with awe-inspiring steps and intriguing twists, and pulls it together in a final payoff, with Teela and Prill truly integral to the plot – the group can neither get there without the one nor back without the other. Yet Ringworld is also of its time, 1970, when befuddled men asked openly of women “What do they want?” as they perused certain magazines ‘for the articles’, at time when women in bunny-eared, cotton-tailed, cleavage-friendly outfits waited on patrons in certain exclusive clubs. While being of its time doesn’t excuse a flaw even when a great many works of the same period exhibit the same, it does contextualize it.

Many circumstances present when literary classics were written no longer apply either; they may not have been the raison d’être for the novels of Austen, Zola, or Tolstoy, but it does inform their reading. Among other critics, literary theorists point out that novels once thought universal in their concerns favor white, able-bodied, heterosexual men from European, capitalist, colonial empires that bled dry the lands they appropriated.

One relevant difference that sets SF apart is this: a novel set in 1800 England and written by someone living then and there is naturally imbued with its context because the details of time and place is what makes a story immersive. Likewise, a story written now and set in the present reflects the circumstances of today’s world. A novel set in 2800 and light-years away, however, must by definition make the real-life surroundings it was born from vanish in favor of the imagined world built for the story and for the same reason of immersion. That is not to say the original context can’t be deduced: SF is a label under which a thorny issue, say racism, can be foisted on those who would reject a perspective that differs from their own were it presented openly.

A more traditional story context that lies far beyond living memory, such as the Italian Renaissance, is easier to accept at face value; one much closer to living memory, for example how WWII ended in the Pacific, is knottier as readers will readily apply current values to a context that was, in fact, quite different. SF is particularly vulnerable to this effect because the absent context of its creation – hidden by the verisimilitude of circumstances known to be imagined – is also a void into which readers can even more easily project their own values.

Yet, if classics of Literature capital “L” are read today for their value, we should expect no less of science fiction. To see the value in classic SF works, it behooves today’s reader to remain aware of disconnects between the past they were written in and the future they are set in, one we rightly expect to be more enlightened but may not read that way. Note that ‘classic’ is a loose term casting a wide net, whereas ‘canon’ requires stating parameters – novelty, influence, craft, inclusiveness – and the more usefully one of these elements narrows the field, the less likely it is to satisfy all others. Superb in inventiveness, Ringworld’s gender inequality is all the more stunning today.

Whichever ‘–ism’ one may suffer under or want to explore, a quick search will uncover resources dedicated to it, multiple websites, communities large enough to harbor science fiction readers who will at a minimum make known what stories to avoid, or better yet know how to successfully navigate around potential triggers from classic SF stories, whether by framing its original context or by other means.

In the meantime, an exercise: reverse gender roles on the fly as you read Ringworld, or even scribble them in as a friend once did to another Hugo-winning novel. Now the point of view character is Louise Wu, the recruiter alien has a baritone voice to weaken women’s knees, any Kzin who travels space is female (like the lion-like Hani in Cherry’s award-nominated The Pride of Chanur), the youngin’ is Timmy Brown, the sex worker a gigolo named Thrill. See how/if the reversal alters the overall storyline and informs the gender roles’ acceptance.