Josh Kleinman: "Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: Curiosity Killed the Cat . . . But Not the SFF Reader"

Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Tomas:

 Curiosity Killed the Cat…But Not the SFF Reader

By

Joshua Kleinman

Humans are obsessed with stories. Open up any story, any book, and see how we as a species are amazingly consumed by narrative. Stories like “Hansel and Gretel,” “Alice and Wonderland,” and “Rumpelstiltskin” show how the stories we tell have desensitized us to the strangest and eeriest of plotlines. In The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall argues that the escapist nature of fiction grabs the attention our innately curious minds. I, an active consumer of speculative fiction, have no choice but to agree. Science fiction and fantasy are the trademarks of escapism that I have come to love and the genres that I read. But why am I, a science-oriented student, so in love with a genre that relies on the most absurd and impossible of scenarios?

Speculative fiction is a canvas. It’s the bizarre and the wondrous, the comforting and the worrisome, the near and the far. In “Toward a Definition of Science Fiction,” James Gunn argues that “fantasy takes place in a world in which the rules of everyday experience do not apply, and science fiction in the world of everyday experience extended.” When we read The Hobbit and “The Cold Equations” we become completely different readers immersed in strikingly different scenarios. As we travel with Bilbo across the forests of Middle Earth, we function solely on the assumptions of fantasy. However, as we fly with Gerry and his stowaway girl, we are forced to ask valid scientific questions. The world is a canvas for authors of SFF. Tolkien, Godwin, Zelazny, and Three Brothers Grimm each paint a world that is unique in space and time. Perhaps it’s the liberty—this creativity—that appeals to me the most. Perhaps it’s my “creative, scientific mind” as an IMSA student that predisposes me to a love for alternate and malleable reality (or fantasy, for that matter).

Joy Ralph, author of The Internet Review of Science Fiction, says that “Science Fiction is a natural genre to encourage critical thinking, because […] you are forced to begin to solve the mystery of how the situation being described differs from normal expectations.” Like Ralph, I have always been innately curious. As a child I watched numerous documentaries, conducted at-home experiments with common kitchen ingredients, and consumed Mysteries of the E.R. and Dr. G Medical Examiner as regular TV programming in Kindergarten (I guess that’s why I’ve always wanted to be a doctor). Curiosity and cognition are a part of who I am.

In an interview with Positive Psychology News Daily, professor of psychology Todd Kashdan asserts that curiosity “appears to be a fundamental motive in facilitating industry and creativity.” Writers of SFF are, too, innately curious. In Starmont Reader’s Guide 2: Roger Zelazny, Carl Yoke shares how SF writer Roger Zelazny “is insatiably curious, [and that] his appetite for knowledge drives his reading.”

The characters of SFF are just like me. Take, for example, Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros. The main character doubts the existence of a rhinoceros-unicorn, but begins to question reality when he finds a rhinoceros resting at his fireplace. “‘How—how did you get in here?’ in a small, faraway voice.’” We can only imagine the courage one needs to ask this question and elicit a communicable response. In H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour out of Space, scientists and townspeople probe into the properties and question the source of a disappearing, havoc-wreaking meteorite. For better or for worse, I see my own curiosity in these innately inquisitive characters. Like Gottesman and the scientists, it’s my love for complexity—my love for the unknown—that brings me to SFF time and time again.  

Though my innate curiosity and (at least a desire for) creativity predispose me to avid readership of SFF, it’s my overarching outlook that has ultimately shaped my reading choices. It’s true—I’m a pessimist—and I don’t like happy endings. I never really enjoyed those Disney-distorted fairy tales or the Pixar-produced pick-me-ups Science fiction as a genre is much more aligned with my glass-half-empty point of view. My favorite work in science fiction is Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, a tale of humanity’s surreal and sobering attempts to colonize Mars.

SFF is a genre that engages my intrinsic curiosity. Books are canvases, and characters are pawns in the most otherworldly of stories. Though I cannot speak for everyone, speculative fiction is a genre that appeals to my tendencies as a math and science student. It appeals to my creativity, pessimism, and overall desire for challenge.