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The science fiction ghetto may be breaking up, but signs of the ghetto mentality still lurk among us: those who have possessed science fiction for so long that they consider her their own look upon any glance at a larger audience as proof of infidelity. A basic distrust of strangers, particularly those who use a different language, and a possessiveness about ghetto culture breed fear of those who would integrate ghetto dwellers and their arts into the general culture, and nourish an inner conviction that separatism might be best after all.
Our insecurity, our feelings of inferiority, make us suspicious of overtures from outside. Our history and our natures render us incapable of enjoying booms without dreading busts. We are, let us face it, a bit paranoid.
Professor Philip Klass (who teaches science fiction at Pennsylvania State University and writes it— alas; too infrequently these days— under the name of William Tenn) has compared science fiction with jazz, and I have a vision of science fiction as a prescient jazz musician playing piano in a turn-of-the-century New Orleans cat house. As his fingers rock over the keys, he is saying to himself: “Look at that s.o.b. sitting over there in the corner taking notes. Pretty soon he’s gonna start a band in Kansas City or Chicago and make real money while I’m still sitting here collecting nickels and dimes, and then some dudes what never saw New Orleans are gonna make fortunes writing this stuff—writing! you don’t write jazz, you just play it—and guys in white shirts and black ties are gonna perform it in those big, fancy New York halls, and kids are gonna study it in schools—and hell! that ain’t gonna be jazz!”
Maybe not, and maybe it ain’t gonna be science fiction, but events march on as surely as the tides roll in, and nothing we do is going to change that fact. We might, of course, be able to control the nature of those events or the path of the tides.
The ghetto “us-against-them” attitude, which gave science fiction fandom its strength and science fiction writers their feelings of brotherhood, erupts today in concern about the teaching of science fiction, such as the Editorial in the June 1974 issue of Analog.
First let me throw away the first half of the Editorial. I don’t wish to defend science fiction in movies or on television, which I have personal reasons to think is terrible. One may count on the fingers of three hands the movies which are both good movies and good science fiction. Motion pictures and television are committee efforts controlled by money, which is always conservative, and by people who know nothing about science fiction and care less. The wonder is not that there is not more art in the visual media but that there is any at all.
At the same time we should admit that science fiction publishers have been almost as guilty. The movies and television have turned off potential readers of SF—but so has SF. The monster movies of the Fifties turned people away saying, “If that is SF I don’t want any more,” but so did the BEM covers of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. The only meaningful part of science fiction is the story and if the reader can fight his way through all the obstacles to reach it, he either will like it or he won’t.
Second, I don’t want to defend science fiction teaching, since no one has sufficient information about it to either praise or condemn. Nor is this a defense of academic criticism, to which Sturgeon’s Law applies fully as much as to science fiction. What I hope to do is bring a little perspective to the discussion of science fiction teaching, and what I wish to discuss are two issues raised by the June Editorial: the qualifications of science fiction teachers and the effect of the teaching of science fiction upon potential new readers.
I’ll grant immediately the Editorial’s assumption that most science fiction teachers do not know enough about science fiction—not as much, certainly, as you and I, nor perhaps as much as your average reader. Let me grant also that they are not going to teach their science fiction courses the way we would teach them; probably we will not agree with their approaches, their tastes, their conclusions, and their results. But this would be true of any courses that you and I might teach. I know that Harlan Ellison, who is a vocal critic of science fiction teaching, -would not like my historical approach to the field, and I suspect that I would not approve of all his judgments about what is important.
Joanna Russ, Phil Klass, Jack Williamson, and I—science fiction writers and English teachers all-have different ideas about what a course in science fiction ought to be. Who is right, and who is to say which of us is right, or if any of us are right, or if we are not all right?
Every new discipline goes through a period of experimentation and discovery. Every new discipline begins with no qualified teachers. African Studies was a product of the Sixties: no qualified teachers. Popular culture courses are no older than ten or fifteen years, and American Studies is not much older. Anthropology split away from sociology after World War Two in many universities, and departments of journalism, which originated in the early part of this century, became schools about the same time.
Schools of Business date back to the Twenties, most of them, and began with no qualified teachers. Schools of Education came about the turn of the century .“. . We can simplify the whole historical discussion by pointing out that departments originated when Eliot (of the famous five-foot shelf) introduced the elective system into Harvard when he became president in 1869. At that time, incidentally, the high school was virtually nonexistent (500) and compulsory primary education was just beginning to gain momentum across the nation.
And there were no qualified teachers.
So—science fiction teaching is going to go through the same process of accumulating experience and exchanging ideas and improving it- self, and will never reach a stage where either the qualifications of the teachers or their agreement about subject matter will equal those in the sciences. The humanities have no objective measurements, no duplicatable experiments; they aim at increasing sensitivity, improving the ability to read with understanding, and providing the breadth and depth of intellectual experience which will en-courage the making of wise choices.
They don’t always succeed.
In the humanities, each teacher chooses his own texts and his own approach to the subject; each does what he can, in the best way he can. Professional organizations do not exist to determine qualifications—such determinations are made at the college or departmental level by the teacher’s peers and sometimes his students—but to provide means of communicating among teachers and scholars in the field. In the early stages of the development of a discipline, professional organizations collect and observe and provide a central point for people to gather and discuss what they are doing, much as Milford in the Fifties and SFWA in the Sixties did for science fiction writers.
Moreover, teachers of science fiction are not just in English but in history, sociology, engineering, political science, anthropology, religion, philosophy, chemistry, physics, and many more disciplines, no doubt.
Science fiction teaching will develop its own criteria, its own canon, its own tools, and we can agree on this—it behooves those of us who have vested interests in its welfare to contribute our ideas and see that they are heard. Many of us, therefore, are active in the Science Fiction Research Association, attend scholarly meetings, lecture there and at other colleges, prepare histories and texts, write articles, and provide other materials useful in teaching, such as the lecture films about science fiction, featuring science fiction writers and •editors, that we have-been producing at the University of Kansas.
Many experienced writers and editors in the field have been supplying teaching materials and guidance. Robert Silverberg’s “Mirror of Infinity,” with critical essays by science fiction writers, has sold well, as has Harry Harrison’s “The Light Fantastic” and his high school anthology (with Carol Pugner) “A Science Fiction Reader.” Jack Williamson has written his study of the early work of H.G. Wells, Brian Aldiss, his “Billion Year Spree,“ Donald Wollheim, his ”The Universe Makers.1“ Reginald Bretnor brought together the contributions of fifteen science fiction writers in his ”Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow“; and Frank Herbert has his name on an anthology for the academic market (along with three collaborators), entitled ”Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow…“ Harlan Ellison has announced that he is collaborating on another science fiction text. My history of science fiction, ”Alternate Worlds,“ will be out in the spring of 1975.
True, other texts unsanctified by the name and ideas of a science fiction writer are proliferating. Many of them do not share our viewpoints—even those we have in common—and some of them clearly are using science fiction for their own ends. But who among us is not?
There is even a “Cliffs Notes” on science fiction, which some automatically would call the ultimate rape of science fiction by the academic world, but, as a matter of fact, the author, an L. David Allen at the University of Nebraska, put together a useful book with some illuminating concepts and some insightful analyses.
Many SF authors and editors have bemoaned the effect of academic criticism on science fiction. The dead hand of academic criticism will kill science fiction just as it killed poetry and the mainstream novel, they say. I think we can dispose of this bugbear easily. If science fiction has any vitality, criticism won’t kill it. Far one thing, few people read academic criticism—certainly not the readers of science fiction—and so long as writers do not accept the‘ critics as final arbiters, they might even learn something about why they do what they do and why it works.
Science fiction traditionally has been concerned with the what, seldom the why. We have known, as readers and writers, that science fiction was different, but our explanations of the reactions have been unsatisfying. Periodically critics have sprung up among us and done us good by providing unifying theories, but their work has been-limited and sporadic and seldom linked to the complete body of literature, of criticism, and of psychological experience. For a long time science fiction writers have needed literary feedback, criticism from sophisticated critics; now we well may get it. Not that we’ll like it, not that much of it will not be dull and some of it unintelligent or even unintelligible, but we should not reject it outright—there are wise and intelligent literary judges outside our ranks and we can profit from their judgments. But we should not take it, nor ourselves, too seriously.
Finally, the feeling among SF people that the boom comes just before the bust: we have seen it happen before and our apprehensions overwhelm us when we see a boom approaching. There must be something wrong with it, and there must be something wrong with all those classes in science fiction being taught in colleges and universities, in high schools and junior high schools, and even in primary schools. The kids will be turned off.
Let us grant that good teaching, enthusiastic teaching, will turn on more students to, science fiction than bad teaching, incompetent teaching, dull teaching. But this is true of any subject, and the level of teaching is never as high as it ought to be. A good teacher can make learning the times table exciting, and-a bad teacher can turn science fiction into pedantry.
But is this true? Most of what is read in high schools is cherished for its historic importance; much of it is valuable, much of it is difficult, and much of it is dull. A good teacher can make it meaningful, can demonstrate its relevance, can even make it exciting, but he must be good.
In, this desert of irrelevance, a science fiction story cannot help but stand out like a refreshing oasis of story and significance; a bad teacher must work hard to make it dull. Generally the teachers of SF courses are not the bad teachers.
The ones who volunteer to teach such courses may not be as knowledgeable as we would like them but they are, I suspect, enthusiastic, open, and experimental. A bad teacher would rather teach what he has always taught.
One more encouraging aspect-science fiction usually is an elective, fulfilling no requirements. Science fiction courses have achieved their popularity in high schools as part of senior (now junior or even sophomore) English electives: students ask for such courses. They are not being required to read Asimov and Bradbury in the way they are required to read Shakespeare and Dickens. Some students choose science fiction as the least of evils, perhaps, but it may be assumed of them that they never would have come to science fiction at all if it were not offered at their school; some of them, inevitably, will get turned on.
Let us look at the numbers involved. Science fiction, Phil Klass has said, is the mass literature of the very few. Traditionally science fiction has attracted several hundred thousand regular readers and perhaps an equal number of casual readers; these figures have not changed much since Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories in 1926, I suspect. At least the circulations of the leading SF magazines have remained relatively constant: Amazing printed about 150,000 copies in its early years, Analog now, about 180,000. Most of the booms we have come to dread have been in publishing, not in readership, Until now.
The number of paperback titles published and bought—though in smaller print runs than in the Fifties—is evidence of a substantial in, crease in the casual readership of SF, primarily among young people; and if we do not include in our understanding of “regular” the reading of magazines, perhaps of regular readers as well. They are a paperback generation; they do not, I am sorry to say, read magazines. Out of 150 students surveyed in my class a couple of years ago, only 12 bought as many as one magazine a month, compared with 74 who bought at least one paperback each month.
The reasons for this are speculative and need not concern us here. Perhaps all readers should come to science fiction as we came to it—as a glad and personal discovery. But let me point out that in my class of 150 students, only 39 had what they defined as considerable experience with science fiction compare with 51 who had some, 52 who had slight, and 6 who had none.
Across the nation 500 college and university courses may deal with science fiction in one way or the other; if the classes average 30 students each, some 15,000 students are being exposed to science fiction. Of these, probably 10,000 were not regular readers of science fiction before entering their classes. “ In high schools, readership experience with science fiction must be even less. If there are 500 college courses, there must be 3,000 high school courses averaging 30 students each (both figures are conservative); and that means 90,000 students exposed to science fiction every year, of whom perhaps 70,000 are coming to science fiction for the first time. A minimum of 80,000 new readers are being recruited. At this rate the readership of science fiction stands to grow rapidly in the years ahead.
If—I can hear the skeptics say— the students are not turned off. Aside from my conviction that students exposed to science fiction in the classroom will find it so attractive, so fascinating, that they will be turned on rather than off, I can offer two experiences in support of the notion that they are not being turned off. I did a follow-up study on my class two years ago—the returns were smaller; it was optional and the end of the semester—because I too was curious about the effect of the class on readership. Two students reported that their interest in science fiction had been decreased, 25 that it had been increased, and 11 that it had not affected their interest (perhaps because it already was as high as it could go). Twenty said they expected to read more science fiction, 2, less, and 19, about the same.
The second experience was more recent. In a trip to Auburn University, I was asked to visit a class in which science fiction was being used by an assistant instructor (a graduate student) to teach freshman composition. Aha! I thought. Here is the classic test. If science fiction could survive this, it could survive anything.
I asked the students what they thought of the readings. One of them, an attractive freshman named Leah, said, “I didn’t understand some of it.” (It turned out that what she mostly didn’t understand was an excerpt from Loren Eiseley’s “The Unexpected Universe” and perhaps J.G. Ballard’s “Terminal Beach.”)
I asked what she thought about the course, and she said she didn’t like to write a term paper about something she didn’t understand.
“Ah,” I said, “then will you be reading any more science fiction?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I really enjoyed it.”
It is the Leahs of the world, who never would have come to science fiction on their own, who have been exposed to it in high school or college, who find it enjoyable, who restore our faith in science fiction to overcome the handicaps of garish covers, miserable movies, terrible television, and even the teaching of science fiction.
The story’s the thing. Sure, let us work to improve the teaching of science fiction. But only the stories can turn people on, and only the stories can turn them off. If the standards of science fiction remain high, if they continue to be raised even higher, if the writers, at least in part, broaden the appeal of their work so that it can be read and enjoyed by Leah and her friends, then we need not worry about the growing future audience for science fiction.