Science Fiction Art?

I’ve been thinking about what makes art science fictional. A couple of years ago this image of a marine iguana’s foot, taken by photographer Sebastãio Salgado, was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association’s Best Artwork Award:

What makes this image eligible for a science fiction art award? It’s a photograph of an animal from the Galapagos islands. If there’s anything science fictional about it, it can’t be the literal content of the photo. It must be in what the viewer of the photo brings to it. At least one viewer saw this picture as science fiction art and nominated it as such.

I got to thinking about what viewers bring to art, and in particular what I as a science fiction reader and fan bring to certain works of art, after seeing some of Ah Xian’s sculptures at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. All of the sculptures on display were busts of human heads made out of materials and in patterns associated with interior decor and domestic design. Many were porcelain and decorated with traditional patterns that get used for tableware. Others were made of lacquered wood in the same kind of style as some furniture. Here are some examples:


I found these busts striking and beautiful, and I instantly associated them in my head with various bits of imagery I’d picked up from reading science fiction. In particular, the floral patterns on many of the china busts brought to mind the flower imagery of Jeff Noon’s sf novel Pollen. The busts also brought to mind Philip K. Dick’s short story “Colony” in which the native entities on an alien planet mimic the furniture and everyday objects that human colonists have brought with them. I also found myself thinking about the protagonist of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination a.k.a. Tiger, Tiger, who is marked by extensive facial tattoos.

I felt that these associations contributed to how I ended up responding to the artworks, what kind of interpretations I took from them, what they ended up meaning to me.

The associations with Pollen meant that I ended up thinking of the busts as being people who were literally made out of flowers (as one character in Pollen eventually is) or porcelain or lacquered wood. That brought up thoughts about embodiment and identity. Seeing the busts as people who were literally embodied as tableware or furniture made me think about what our interior decor means to us, how the environments we live in become extensions of our bodies and part of our identities.

The “Colony” association meant that I began thinking about the busts in terms of domestic camouflage. The designs on them became a mask for the person underneath. Were the busts saying that the factors of presumed good taste and class and tradition that dictate how people decorate their homes might be a sort of civilised veneer or camouflage, allowing people to fit into each other’s homes and societies without ever standing out too much or being noticed? Were they about learning to blend in by choosing the right kind of home furnishings and the right kind of surface decoration?

Or perhaps they were about expressing one’s own emotions, while being marked by one’s life situation and experiences? The character of Gully Foyle in The Stars My Destination has his face tattooed against his will after being marooned in space and captured by the descendants of a shipwrecked space crew. His life experiences literally mark him. Even when he attempts to get the tattoo removed, some invisible skin damage remains that only becomes visible when he flushes with emotion. Maybe the designs on Ah Xian’s busts are also supposed to be recognised as specific to places and times and traditions. Maybe the designs mark the geographical and temporal cultures of the people who are marked by them. And maybe they also allow the expression of emotion - using the patterns and symbols available for such in expression in specific contexts.

I’m not saying these busts are science fictional or should be considered science fiction artworks. But I did like thinking about what they might mean when considered in a science fictional context.

Matter

Like everyone else, I have an advance copy of the new Banks Culture novel Matter, due out February 2008 (though unlike them it’s because I’m in bookselling, not because I’m a high-profile blogger). I haven’t actually read any Banks before (okay, well, one short story, but no novels). I’ve heard that it’s not necessary to read his Culture novels in any particular order so decided I might as well give this one a go, but before I get properly stuck in does anyone have any strong opinions on whether I can dive straight into the latest or whether I should go back and start with one of the earlier ones?

Beowulf

Before going to see Beowulf I read Blake Gopnik’s article about it in the Sydney Morning Herald. Having now seen the film I can say that I thoroughly agree with this paragraph in particular:

Beowulf, the poem, is more about darkling silhouettes than three-dimensional anything. Where the movie aims for a powerful digital glow, the poem is entirely twilit. Where Zemeckis gives a crystal-clear vision of a world of striking lights and shadows, in the poem it’s the vision itself that is dark and troubled. Everything about the poem is clouded in mystery, from its diction to its imagery to its mix of pagan and Christian ideals. The movie, on the other hand, believes in keeping every little hair, drop of blood and plot detail in perfect focus, leaving nothing to a viewer’s imperfect imagination.

Unlike Gopnik, I haven’t read Beowulf in the original, but I did fall in love with the Charles Keeping illustrations of the story that went alongside Kevin Crossley-Holland’s translation for children. They too were mostly darkling silhouettes, which scared me so much as a child that I could barely turn the pages for fear of accidentally touching them. Here’s Keeping’s version of Grendel’s mother:

What a difference from naked golden CGI Angelina Jolie! And while I’m on the subject of the film’s interpretation of Grendel’s mother, can I just say how weirded out I was by her high-heel footedness? It reminded me instantly of Julie Rrap’s digital art work Overstepping, which I’d seen at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art a week or two earlier:

In the context of the Julie Rrap exhibition the image of high-heeled feet was really rather disturbing, bringing up all kinds of questions about female bodies and how they are viewed and inhabited in our society. To see such a similar image so shortly after, in a context that did not seem to be inviting similar questions was worrying to say the least.

I’m aware I’ve just been throwing out random associations here, so I’ll just come out and say it. I didn’t like the film much. There was no visual mystery to it, no art or poetry. And I found the physical renderings of various characters problematic, perhaps even a bit disturbing. Grendel’s mother was one, obviously, but I also found myself feeling pretty uncomfortable with what they’d done to Ray Winstone as Beowulf. Rrap’s art works are in part, I think, a comment on the modern media and the images of bodies we are exposed to through those media. If Rrap’s art is the comment, then Beowulf is a component of what is being commented on. Ray Winstone as an actor is perfectly capable of playing a real bear of a hero. He has enough charisma for it. But in Beowulf he’s been entirely airbrushed over. If, as Niall suggests, Beowulf is “a film about manly men doing manly things” then what does it say about our society’s views on men that they need to be slim and muscled and apparently also waxed to be the manly hero?

Further Thoughts on the Our Island Home Podcast

I’ve had a couple of further thoughts to do with the podcast discussion of the ‘Our Island Home’ panel from Conflux. At one point chair Russell Kirkpatrick, who I gather is a writer from New Zealand, talked about his experience of attending a Melbourne convention and being somewhat thrown by seeing a fan there wearing a t-shirt that said ‘I am not a writer’ on the front of it. From what he was saying, it sounded as if that t-shirt made him feel like some Australian fans thought there was something wrong with being a writer and that made it harder for him to connect with some of the people he met at that con. I also get the impression that there’s a certain amount of tension between people in Australian fandom who write and people who don’t, and that as an outsider I probably don’t understand the nuances of the writer/non-writer dynamics yet.

One thing I like about fandom and conventions is that it is possible to hang out in the bar chatting with your favourite author (often discovering that they are just as much a fan as you are). I like that there’s a healthy mix of writers and readers and fans and critics and editors and publishers and booksellers in fandom and at conventions. It makes for a variety of different perspectives and some good discussions.

From a distance, I have got the impression that Australian fandom has a disproportionately high number of writers in the mix, and I suppose I have been concerned about how this will affect the overall feel of Australian fandom and cons. To be honest, I’ve been a bit worried that someone like me, who is purely a reader and fan, might be considered a bit of a nobody when surrounded by so many authors. I suspect that worry is where the ‘I am not a writer’ t-shirt comes from. Though personally I would much rather have a ‘Reader and Fan’ t-shirt. I would much rather define myself by what I am than by what I am not, and besides, I think a ‘Reader and Fan’ t-shirt may give a better impression to those Australian fans and con-attendees out there who are writers. After all, readers complement writers, and fans complement them ever better. There’s nothing wrong with being a writer, just as there’s nothing wrong with being a reader. The more we celebrate all roles in fandom the less defensive we all need to be about how our particular role stacks up against everyone else’s.

Our Island Home Podcast

Just finished listening to the podcast of the ‘Our Island Home - Australia from the outside’ panel from Conflux. Several mentions of Tim Tams, which is entirely justified given that they came out on top in the International Battle of the Biscuits taste test at the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. I was introduced to the concept of a Tim Tam Slam the other week and heartily approve, though I think my technique needs some work.

The panel discussion was split into three sections: the first focussing on Australia as a country, the second focussing on Australian writing, the third focussing on Australian fandom. I was particularly interested by Russell Kirkpatrick’s characterisation of the regional nature of Australian fandom at one point during the final third of the panel. He broadly categorised Perth fandom as the party fandom, Canberra as being full of writers, Melbourne as being full of fanzine and sercon fans, and Sydney as being somewhat dysfunctional fandom-wise. From his descriptions, it sounds like I ended up in the wrong Australian city and would have done better from a fannish point of view to have landed up in Melbourne. Mind you, he also commented that a lot of Australian fandom these days exists online, and here I am. :) (I’m thinking the podcast of the panel on blogging might be the next one to listen to.)

Russell also passed on a message from the editors of British fanzine Banana Wings during the panel, telling the Australian audience that they were lovely and friendly but didn’t write enough letters of comment. Which reminds me that the new issue of Banana Wings arrived by air mail yesterday so I have a fanzine to read and letters of comment to write.

Red Spikes

So, last week I promised some thoughts on Red Spikes, which I’ve been slow to write up, mainly because I’m having trouble articulating them. Fortunately, John Clute reviewed the collection, and quite possibly articulated things for me. Only possibly, though, because I’m not entirely sure I understand him properly (don’t think I ever really do, in fact).

Clute’s review focuses on the story “Hero Vale” which, along with “Baby Jane”, was also my pick of the collection. There is something special about “Hero Vale”, certainly, but explaining what that is exactly is no mean feat. To describe it Clute invokes the metaphor of the “the glimpse-god in the forest” and I think the notion of glimpsing is apt here. We’re back to worldbuilding again, but this time most of the world that is built is also hidden, with only a few slivers to be glimpsed here and there. With both “Hero Vale” and “Baby Jane” I got the sense almost of eavesdropping on the characters’ experiences, of being invited to step inside their world for a brief period and piggy-back through the story with them until it was time to step back again and leave them to their affairs. It’s not that Lanagan creates a complete world on the page, it’s that she creates a complete world off it, most of which remains unseen but the presence of which can still be felt, in between the bits that are glimpsed.

Maybe it’s because I enjoy this sensation of glimpsing that the story I found least satisfying in the collection was a story that, to me, seemed a little more upfront about its influences than most of the others. “Winkie” was my least favourite of the collection, and I can’t help wondering if this was because my own knowledge of the character of Wee Willy Winkie who partially inspired the story filled in what should have been the unglimpsed portions of the story world, making the story seem flatter and removing some of the mystery from it. I find it interesting that too much knowledge of the source material that inspired “Winkie” could have the same effect (creating a story that doesn’t work optimally for me as a reader) as not having enough knowledge of the source material. What also intrigues me is that Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant have selected precisely the two stories of Lanagan’s from 2006 that don’t quite work for me for their Year’s Best anthology. I wonder if this is because the background knowledge of the material Lanagan has used for inspiration that American’s have is significantly different from the background knowledge I have as a Brit? Or it could just be down to different tastes, obviously. In any case, Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquadt have picked out “Hero Vale” for their Australian Year’s Best, so that anthology is going on the reading list.

Worldbuilding and Philosophical Theories

In Sherwood Smith’s response (hat tip to Justine Larbalestier) to M. John Harrison’s infamous “clomping foot of nerdism” blog post against worldbuilding, she says:

People invent worlds and do their best to make them true. If you can wade through the atrociously bad prose in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, as I had to do to get my German degree, you discover that this guy could (probably should) have been a science fiction writer. That world had very little to do with this one, but he sketched in the key “rules” and then exerted himself to hammer it over this one. Over on the other side, William Penn had a world in mind–Nietzsche–Talleyrand. Women designed worlds, too, but seldom got to impose them on reality: Aphra Behn in her Orinocco was a world builder. Yadda yadda.

It struck me that this is exactly what I liked I about George Berkeley as a philosopher (I wrote my graduate thesis on his philosophy of science). The worldbuilding. Berkeley’s basic premise is his ontology: that the only things that exist are ideas and the minds that perceive them. From this he extrapolates an entire world, with its own epistemology and science. I love that the world he builds is so alien from the one we intuitively inhabit (the one that contains things like trees and houses and cats, not just minds and ideas) while simultaneously also having been tailor made to fit with our experiences of that intuitive world. It didn’t quite fit well enough though, which is why Berkeley has been relegated to the history of philosophy, and why my tutors and colleagues were so scathing of my interest in his work. His theories weren’t true, so why would I want to study them? What I struggled to articulate at the time was that it was because they made such a damn good story.

I always knew that philosophy and science fiction had a lot in common. I developed my interest in philosophy due to having read Philip K. Dick at an impressionable age (I remember standing in the playground at school when I was around 11 trying to figure out where I would turn out to be really if the playground was in fact a delusion). I always knew that science fiction could take philosophical thought experiments and flesh them out into stories, while philosophy could take science fictional scenarios and use them as a conceptual framework for testing theories. But it hadn’t occurred to me that the worldbuilding of fantasy could be the same sort of project as the consistent universal development of philosophical theories. But it makes sense. As Smith says, all of our theories - philosophical, economic, political, psychological, scientific, etc. - are types of worldbuilding that we either hope will fit or try to impose on reality. They’re the stories we tell ourselves to try to make the world make sense. And some of them make damn fine stories indeed.

Reader Responsibilities

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about what responsibilities, if any, I have as a reader. If I do have responsibilities as a reader, to whom are they owed?

Markets
I’ve pondered before over whether I have a responsibility to support certain markets. I am a short fiction reader and love reading fiction in single-author collections, though I do also read original anthologies and year’s best collections from time to time. Since single-author collections and year’s bests collections often assume a model of prior publication of the stories they collect in magazines, do I as a reader have a responsibility to support short fiction magazine markets, even if what I really want to read is not the primary product (though may arguably be a secondary product) of those markets? My feeling at the moment is that I don’t have a particular responsibility to short fiction magazine markets in this instance, hence my lack of magazine subscriptions at present and the large number of short fiction single author collections on my to-be-read stack. I would like to be able to support all kinds of short fiction markets as much as possible, but frankly my current financial situation means I’m not in a position to spend money on publications I don’t intend to read, just for the principle of the thing.

Stories
I was going to talk about responsibility towards the author of a story here, but I don’t think it’s really the author the particular responsibility I’m thinking of is owed to. I’m thinking about the concept of reading in good faith, and that’s more a responsibility to the story itself, a responsibility to approach it in such a time, place, manner, and frame of mind that will enable me to engage with it most effectively and consequently get the best out of it. One example of this would be to not start reading a story while holding strong preconceptions about what it’s going to be like, because going into a story with expectations that end up not matching up with the reality of the story can make it a lot harder to then genuinely engage with the story on its own terms. I think I, as a reader, have a responsibility to judge a book on what it is and is trying to be, not on what I want it to be or think it should be. In a more practical sense, I also feel I have a responsibility not to attempt to read books in formats or under circumstances which are going to distract me and prevent me fully engaging with the story. And I also reckon I have a responsibility to give a story a second chance if I suspect I might have bounced off it at the first attempt due to my own emotional, physical or mental state at the time, rather than because of anything to do with the story itself (all the books I tried to read during my final year at university had to be reattempted a few years down the line for this reason).

Books
There is some sense in which a reader could be said to bear a responsibility to book themselves, as objects. Personally, I don’t mind a little spine-creasing, a little dog-earing, the general wear-and-tear one would associate with a book having been well-read and well-loved. But I draw the line at folding down the corners of pages and bending the cover back. I also feel a bit funny about writing in margins and other defacements. And if it’s somebody else’s book (as it very often is, my friends and I are always borrowing from and lending books to each other) then I have a definite responsibility to take good care of it and make sure to keep it in the condition I acquired it in as far as is possible. But that comes under the next heading.

Other Readers
Do I have responsibilities to other readers? Apart from taking good care of their books or books they are likely to read (eg. library copies) I don’t think so. I don’t feel I have a responsibility to pass on recommendations of good reads or lend out books to people I think will appreciate them. But I really like doing so nonetheless.

Society at Large
I think I do have broader social responsibilities as a reader, just as I do in all areas of life. Over on Ambling Along the Aqueduct Rachel Swirsky has an excellent post up about the responsibilities an author has when writing about marginal identities. I agree with what she says, and acknowledge that authors have a much wider influence and a correspondingly greater responsibility than readers in these matters, but would add that there is a flip side to her point for writers: the responsibility we all have as readers to check our assumptions as thoughtfully and as frequently as possible. And that includes the responsibility to seek out fiction that may challenge the assumptions we usually make and to learn how to read it without getting all defensive.

Australian Single Author Short Fiction Collections

I’m a short story reader. I was lured into science fiction via short stories. When I was getting to know my girlfriend we kept getting into conversations about things we liked to read (like you do) and whenever she asked me if I’d read anything by a particular author my most frequent response was “I’ve not read any of their novels, but I’ve read their short fiction.” Now when she asks me about an author all I need to do is say “None of their novels” and she’ll follow up immediately with “But you’ve read their short fiction of course.”

There seem to be plenty of Australian short fiction authors and plenty of Australian outlets for short fiction, which pleases me greatly. I’ve only explored the fringes of what’s out there so far and am keen to delve a bit deeper now that I’m likely to have better access to a lot of the small press publications that showcase short fiction here.

I’m trying to decide what to start with. I prefer my short fiction in single author collections if possible. I find anthologies a bit hit and miss, and am not too keen on the magazine format (though I infinitely prefer all paper publications to e-zines). I like the way that with single author collections you can get a feel for a writer’s style and form a picture of their overarching themes and interests. I find that reading an author’s stories back to back often helps give more insight into each of them than reading them separately would, because they often complement each other in a way that anthologised stories only occasionally do and which rarely if ever seems to happen in magazines.

Given my short fiction format preferences, it makes sense to start off with single author collections of Australian short fiction. The ones I’ve read so far have been Kaaron Warren’s The Grinding House and Margo Lanagan’s three collections (I just finished Red Spikes a couple of days ago, thoughts on that to follow later this week). I can currently lay my hands on Garth Nix’s Across The Wall so that’s probably up next. Then I’d like to try some Terry Dowling and there appear to be a bunch of collections to choose from. I’d also like to try Lee Battersby’s Through Soft Air. Not quite sure where to go from there though. Any recommendations for me?

The SF Section

Haha, they’ve let me loose on the sf section! Today I was asked if I would like to manage the science fiction and fantasy section of the book shop, including ordering in stock. *pulls out long mental list of titles that need to be on the shelves* This should be fun!