Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions Read Online Free PDF Page B

fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of those metaphors, so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
    Ursula K. Le Guin
     
    Fables and fabrications, fabulation and formulation, fictions of science, soul and spectacle—ultimately all of these SFs can be seen as placing different limitations on the n ature of the conceit and its relationship to the story, where it is sourced from, how it is developed through the fabric of the story or novel. In a wider sense then all these SFs can be considered, insofar as they use the technique of the conceit , as different types of strictured fantasia. It is simply that the particular strictures vary depending on what type of fantasia you happen to be writing.
    This would be the SF of Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and of other such Alternate History novels, anything from The Plot Against America to Guns of the South . It would be the SF also of China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and of other such Alternate Society or Alternate Biology novels (to coin even more new terms). It would be the SF of Zelazny’s Roadmarks , of Silverberg’s The Book of Skulls , of Moorcock’s Cornelius Quartet . All of these can be included under the catch-all of SF not simply because they are sold as such, not simply because we have thrown our hands up and said, “So Fuck?” but because they are strictured fantasia, fantastic fiction restricted by certain constraints.
    Of course, in reality all fantastic fiction is restricted by some constraint or other. To call this SF by the name strictured fantasia is simply to say that it is fantasia. Whether it is therefore fantasy is another question.
     
[T]he idea that a magazine like Astounding , or Analog as it’s now called, has anything to do with the sciences is ludicrous. You have only to pick up a journal like Nature , say, or any scientific journal, and you can see that science belongs in a completely different world.
    J.G. Ballard
     
    It is the strictures that create the risks of failure, of limitations; this is the n ature of strictures. All of these SFs have their own language, are their own language. The specialised “lexicon” and “narrative grammar” of scientific fancy may become vulgar and crude, lacking in the nuances required to render character effectively. That of scientific and scientistic fabrication may become too highly developed on the other, an impenetrable geek-speak jargon spawned of maths and physics. That of scientific fabulation may seem foreign, incomprehensible and inapplicable in everyday life. That of soul fiction, spectaculist fabrication and symbolic formulation may seem mere sensationalism, emotive but superficial, empty of any real relevance. At the end of the day, the general public often don’t know the language and may well not want to know the language. The confusion of tongues only makes it harder for them to learn.
    SF is a single grand tower of strictured fantasia that has arisen over the de cades, but it is a Tower of Babel that has fallen, as the next definition, the penultimate definition, admits.
     

Synthetic Flux
     
Science fiction is the prophetic…the apocalyptic literature of our partic ular and culminating epoch of crisis.
    Gerald Heard
     
    This SF is a stramash of dialectics in continual thesis, antithesis and synth esis. It is a discourse of syllogisms and grenades. It is field of forms in constant flux, of fusion and fission. It is formulae and explosions. It is sublime trash, sacred excrement, holy shit. It is the flux sprayed from the arse of pulp and transubstantiated to gold in an