I Blame The Sea (To The Lighthouse)

I've obviously been aware of Virginia Woolf for quite some time; she's one of those figures who turns up a lot in commentary and popular culture and all the time she does she symbolises something that isn't actually herself and so you end up with a distorted idea of her that, like all received wisdom, seems perfectly reasonable until you start to pick it apart. I first became aware of her as an interesting figure in her own right, as a person rather than as a symbol, when I visited Sissinghurst about a year and a half ago. Since then I've been slow at discovering her as a writer too, but I'm enjoying it immensely.

In case you don't know the story, Sissinghurst's most famous resident was the gardener, writer and aristocrat Vita Sackville-West and Vita was one of Virginia Woolf's close friends and confidantes. Virginia was also, quite clearly, in love with Vita. There's more to the story, I'm probably not best placed to tell it, but at Sissinghurst they have some of their correspondence on display reading it just really caught me. The first book of Woolf's that I read was Orlando, soon after Sissinghurst because it completes the story started by the correspondence that they hold there. It is, without a doubt, the most incredible, extended love letter I have ever read, transformed into a work of art.

One of the things that you know about Virginia Woolf is that she writes impenetrable, self-absorbed and ultimately pointless novels - modernism for modernism's sake. You probably also know that her writing is so rarified and difficult that it's only read to make the reader look better and not for anything like actual pleasure. Knowing these things is what put me off even looking at her books for years - even the non-fiction, which I was already interested in politically, I put off reading because I imagined that I knew what it would say, but that it would say it in a really complicated manner.

The thing is, that's all wrong, or at least, it's only very loosely based in fact. While not easy, and formally innovative for both artistic and political reasons, she isn't a particularly difficult writer in the grand scheme of things and if you've made it through some of the turgid, dickwaving prose that makes up a lot of modern British literary fiction that you shouldn't have any real trouble. (I probably haven't read enough of it to comment but I do find that the general standard of modern British literary fiction - that is, work who's main point is the writing itself, as opposed to the story - to be particularly dire and saturated in white male sexual neuroses; especially depressing as there is so much interesting writing going on right now in genre and, for want of a better word, 'world' fiction.)

What's true is that she often writes about personal situations, turning them into something universal, but then so do a lot of men and no-one is claiming that they are impenetrable. To The Lighthouse, which I've just read, is a very personal story, transformed by someone who genuinely understands what the point of using form as a part of narrative is about, rather than just playing with it like a toy to show off your skills. It's a slow book to read, but that's what its supposed to be - and once you find the rhythm of the text and realise that sometimes getting lost is a part of the way the novel works it isn't a difficult one at all.

So cast off what you know and try to read it just for the pleasure of reading. Don't worry how long it takes, don't worry what anyone thinks about you, or what you think about your own reading level. Take breaks in between chapters (I read most of the Sherlock Holmes short stories concurrently) or shut yourself away and devour it in one weekend. Do whatever, but if you are interested in reading books for their language then you should give her her a go.

(I Blame The Sea is the name of Emily Horne's occasional photography blog, which you should follow.)

And... relax! (Lightborn)

I feel a lot better after getting all that off my chest. So, let's get on to some more straightforward recommendations.

Tricia Sullivan is a writer who is always worth reading; frankly, even her lesser books have more going for them than a lot of sci-fi writers' entire back catalogue.

Lightborn is Sullivan's most recent book and one of her most accomplished as well. I'm not sure that it's quite my favourite, but maybe that's for another post. It is probably the most accessible thing she has written, starting as it does with a fairly standard-seeming apocalypse event triggered by some undefined weirdness. It's not until much later that you get a full understanding of what the Shine - the Lightborn of the title - actually is, but that's ok. I like a book that is confidant enough in it's setting to let you discover it as you go along, otherwise you end up with too much 'as you know, your father, the king,' and everything gets rather stilted.

Sullivan specialises in ideas-heavy stories, where maybe the science is a bit more fluid than a hard-SF purist might like. However, the basic technology is always plausible, even if far-fetched and, crucially, consistent - there's no handwaving or conveniently forgetting/discovering new abilities as the story demands it. Just don't expect it to be an easy ride - you'll have to pay attention the whole way through, but that attention will be rewarded by a piece of work that will keep you thinking long after finishing it.

Lightborn, like a lot of Sullivan's work, is in part about the conflict between the self and, for want of a better word, society: the great connected mass of people that aren't you - about what one loses by going too far into either concept. It is also modern feminist sci-fi at its best, strongly delineating female experiences of the world alongside male ones and not asking that they should be valid, just knowing that they are. These two themes play together to their mutual nourishment and are integral to the story but aren't overstated when not relevant. This makes it a good jumping in point to the rest of her work, where those and other themes are sometimes more explicitly dealt with and discussed within the text.

There's not much more I can say that wouldn't just get into giving-the-plot-away territory, but I will say this. Lightborn could almost be just another post-apocalypse adventure-survival story, and if you like that sort of thing then you won't be disappointed. It's just that it's better than that, because this time it actually explains what the apocalypse was. And why we shouldn't just view it as a convenient reset button on all of our old responsibilities.

I Don't Really Talk to my Family Right Now (Part 2) (Fremder)

Previously we looked at why Science Fiction shares nothing with the wussy, unmanly genre of the Family Saga. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get the time to put across my theory that the Kitchen Sink Drama is actually a form of science fiction, because it is all about the relationship between people and technology, and the way in which technology changes and shapes people's lives. Basically, that's the theory there.

I'm guessing that any Hard SF purist who might be reading this will now be telling the screen that I am wrong, because kitchen sinks, and indeed the whole agricultural/domestic set-up, haven't been cutting edge science for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and the whole thrust of most of those books is about the people rather than the machines. The thing is, they should really be agreeing with me, because talking about current tech is about as hard as SF can get; there's little chance you're going to get the possibilities wrong when the tech is literally as old as houses.

(Also, although only tangentially related, everyone should read Rachel's Machine, by Martin Wagner and then get back to me. This is your homework.)

The big thing is, even the best Hard SF is as much about the people as it is about the machines - in fact, most of the SF that I can think of that is mainly about the machines is actually pretty soft, scientifically speaking; Terminator and The Matrix are parables, not predictions. Even Foundation, one of the dreariest things I've ever read, is all about the people and their reaction to living in a profoundly deterministic universe. Rather than detailing the process of quantifying the determinism itself, or even arguing the necessity of the philosophy behind the determinist assumption, it is just stated - in the first book at least, that some very clever people worked it out. In other words, a wizard did it.

So, as I said in the first part of this double-post, scratch the surface and a lot of sci-fi is really just about people; their relationships to each other and the way those relationships are affected by, enabled by or predicated by technology. Without the people you often end up losing the fiction element - off it goes there as a discrete energy packet - and unless you are writing about something you have really fully researched then the new quantum state you are most likely to find yourself having settled into is going to be futurism, rather than reference, and no-one in their right mind wants to end up there.

Sometimes people write about the way in which groups of related people interact, which is how you know it is definitely not a Family Saga, and sometimes they write about how mainly two people interact, which is how you know it is most definitely not a soppy romance novel for girls.

Fremder, by Russell Hoban is one of those books. Sort of. I can't really say much without giving away what happens in it, but it is an awful lot about love, and about how love interacts with technology, and about how love can be exploited by people who think that they have the best interests of the world at heart. It's a beautiful little book with a pleasingly classic kind of dystopia - think 1984 or A Clockwork Orange. It's also, as was How to Live Safely... about the kind of people who do science, without having or needing to have any meaningful relationship to current scientific thinking.

In conclusion: if men can write stories (and be accepted and acclaimed) within the sci-fi umbrella, that would outside of it be considered part of a more denigrated, female, genre; 1) Why the hell do we denigrate those genres anyway? 2) What could possibly stop a woman-as-she-is (any woman, the platonic woman), and not as-you-think-she-ought-to-be from being able to write something that could meaningfully be classified as sci-fi? 3) When will many of my fellow science fiction fans grow up?

For the record, the question of when I will grow up is not going to be asked, or indeed answered here.

I Don't Really Talk to my Family Right Now (Part 1) (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)

There is some discussion going on right now about women's place in sci-fi. This happens every now and then (spoiler: women should have just as much presence/access as men. Second spoiler: They don't. Third spoiler: some people don't think that this is a problem) and one of the attitudes it draws out is that old classic biological (now with added, zeitgeisty, neurological) determinism. The argument, paraphrased, is that women are just different to men, and they like books about feelings and love and relationships whereas men like books about technology and science and war. And that's why women don't read sci-fi, and so why sci-fi shouldn't bother to try to cater to women, except those few who have broken their own programming enough to appreciate all the seriousness and introspection.

This is such horseshit I almost don't know where to begin, although I'm going to let the implicit assumptions that, say, romance novels and family sagas are less important than science fiction novels be dealt with by the people that read them; not because I agree with the assumption but because I don't read those genres so I can't really claim any expertise. Really though, 'speculative' fiction needs to get over itself, it's only one way of doing things and the sly one-upmanship it plays with other genres is not to its credit. (See als:o: sci-fi writers claiming that they write literature, not SF.)

One big problem is that the idea that men are the default and women the exception is so deep-seated that entire discussions can happen within it and no-one spots that any argument they make is automatically meaningless. It would be very tempting to start trying to list the women who write technical/military sci-fi, or the women who can list the specs of more Star Trek ships than I can, but because they are being viewed in a context of exception each one only ever proves the existence of herself. Crucially, it also doesn't challenge this central assumption. So lets look a bit more closely at this impossibly masculine genre full of the hard, introverted study of facts. And Star Wars.

We'll look at some male writers this time*, because if men are biologically pre-determined to think differently to women (spoiler: they aren't, in any way that is meaningful to this discussion), and if they don't even need to break their programming in order to get let into the serious business of the sci-fi club (co-founder: M Shelley) then why would they want to write about girly things like emotions and the way people relate to one another?

Because if it turns out that men, with no ostensible barriers to distribution (Playboy, anyone?) or questions about legitimacy in their way, are perfectly happy and capable of writing - in genre - at this more womanly end of the spectrum (albeit with more of a focus on boobs), then, while it doesn't actually disprove the men-as-default assumption (one could argue men can do anything, women only some things, if one was a cretin) it does at least highlight that the assumption is there and that it therefore needs to be taken into account when we are having this argument.

There are, it's true, important differences between genres - that's why they are classed as different genres - and sci-fi differs from, say family sagas in that it focuses on the relationships between people and their environment where their environment is exemplified as technology, whereas the latter focuses on the relationships between people and their environment where their environment is exemplified as the family unit. What I really loved about How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is that it sees clearly what this means.

How to Live Safely... is science fiction. It says so in the title, and repeatedly throughout the book. It has a spaceship and time travel and jokes about the Death Star. More importantly it is genuinely about the way in which people interact with technology and allow it to shape their lives - and in fact about a certain breed of introspection that allows people to concentrate their relationships with technology to the detriment of their relationships with people.

It isn't about science, or real scientists, or any of that hard SF stuff, it just uses those as props to tell a story about a family. It also uses the sci-fi milieu - something which a lot of its readers will likely be very well versed in - to tease out some of the complexities and experiences of life as an immigrant from an agricultural country into a post-industrial one, which is a situation most people in the west would not be immediately able to relate to. Maybe I found that more poignant as a second generation immigrant myself, but I think it's worth reading - if you already have the grounding in sci-fi, because it explains it very well.

And that's it for now - but I will continue with the second part of this post and another recommendation as soon as I get it together enough to write another nine hundred words on the subject.

*That's not to say that I won't be recommending and talking about sci-fi written by women in the future, just that for the sake of this point I'll be looking at some of that written by men.