I hate writing introductions.
I never read them myself, except perhaps after I have read the book: sometimes I like a piece of work enough to want to know more about how/why it came to be; some less loving times, I simply want to find out what justification the author might have had. For those of you who share my prejudice against prejudgements (and therefore are not reading this), I have provided an afterword with my post-editing joys, judgements and (of course) justifications.
One function a foreword can fulfill. For those of you intrigued by title, cover, by-line, back cover and sub-title, but still uncertain, this opening will compose one further essay at getting you to buy/borrow/read the book itself. To that end I offer, not the usual advance gloss, but a form of descriptive glossary.
Tesseracts. A cube is a three-dimensional square. A tesseract is a four-dimensional cube. Since the human eye and brain normally perceive, at most, three dimensions, the tesseract on the cover looks like any other flat-surface representation of a cube. The easiest way to visualize the added dimension is to imagine the cube in motion through time (one possible fourth dimension). Or you might conceive of an extra dimension in space by remembering that the volume of that cube-shape on the cover is arrived at by multiplying the square on one side by one side of the square—so multiply the cube by one side again, and recognize that the "inside" of the tesseract is enormously more capacious than the outside (as we see it). It is only deceptively easier to opt instead for an additional semantic or symbolic dimension, in which the visible spaces and/or events of "solid reality" acquire a Jarry-esque paraphysical enhancement of meaning.
Canadian is both harder and easier to explain. Nobody knows what it is even supposed to be, let far-out-alone what it actually is. In this case, the word specifies that the selections in this book were 'all written in Canada by human beings who make their homes here—all of whom, as it happens, are either Canadian citizens or landed immigrants.
Science fiction is easier than Canadian only because it is possible at least to say what it's not. (For starters, it is not necessarily either fiction or anything to do with science.) As for what it is—
Long ago, and in another country, I sometimes used to stay up till the dawn (not, as mature successful writers do, only for deadlines, sex and taxes, but) in heated discussion and debate in the company of fellow-seekers after science fiction fame and fortune. More often than I'd care to try and count, the topic on the table as the street-lights went out was yet another attempt to agree on a definition of science fiction. Then someone would say, "I may not know what it is, but I know it when I read it!" And we'd make another pot of coffee.
Now, nodding over dawn coffee (with my deadline) I am inspired to set forth a composite of some forty-five years of approximations.
So-called "science fiction" is speculative or extrapolative literature (or sometimes visual art or music) dealing in some way with the idea of change—most often changing human responses to the altered, or shifting, environment of some alternative reality. Most often, simply, "future fiction."
The key words are change, environment, alternative.
If it does not deal with change, it is not science fiction. If the human conflict, problem, or experience is not integrally related to some external environmental stimulus (which might be simply the process of change) it is not science fiction. Unless the environment posited is not in some way other than the familiar assumptions of here-and-now (or past) reality, then it is not science fiction.
Given all these qualifications, it will still not be science fiction, unless the approach to it is either speculative or extrapolative, or both. Definitions aside, the genre demands that every piece in its domain be based on either What ... or If this goes on. . . .
Well, then, go on
If you do, look me up at the end of the book.
JUDITH MERRIL
Toronto July 1985