Noor Michael: "Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: Short, Powerful Bursts of SF"

Dear Michael Damian and Lynne Thomas: Short, Powerful Bursts of SF

By

Noor Michael

Classic stories such as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, lead most people beginning to read SF to believe that it takes time and, more importantly, patience, to enjoy SF properly. The first month of this class has taught me to believe otherwise. Personally, I have no patience for reading, but decided that Speculative Fiction was the most likely genre to keep my attention. The class began with various short stories, sampling many popular authors. Some examples of the works were Frederick Pohl’s “Day Million”, Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”, and E. M. Forester’s The Machine Stops. I particularly enjoyed this portion of the course not only because the stories could be read in one sitting, but because they allowed for a quick escape from reality, and immediate satisfaction. What’s more fitting in our fast paced world than fast paced literature?

In my free-time, or more accurately, procrastination-time, I find myself browsing YouTube videos more often than not. On the contrary, I don’t watch movies very often, only doing so as a social event. This accurately correlates to my preferences in SF. Short stories keep my mind active, and allow me to finish reading an entire story before semantic satiation kicks in, and I begin reading words without meaning, and need to take a break. At a deeper level, short stories generally focus on one main conflict, and have a specific purpose. For example, “The Cold Equations” deals with utilitarian ethics, and how, in the grand scheme of things, all lives are equal. Analyzing these stories is also more feasible, because of the physically shorter amount of text being analyzed, and the focus on fewer topics. Certain writers also take more creative freedom when writing short stories, such as William Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic”, which effectively demonstrates how bizarre science fiction can be. The short story format increases the apparent punch of the fantastic elements of the world, even though, in the long run, the story has a lesser impact on the reader.

SF is such a wide genre that the majority of readers (I’d like to meet the outliers) have strong opinions on both ends of the spectrum about particular stories, and stick with their favorite types of stories. Short stories can serve as a taste-test for new types of SF, be it alternate history, cyberpunk, or even scientific romance. Even if you don’t like a story initially, it is generally worth finishing it, instead of giving up halfway through. This makes short stories especially practical for English classes, because students will be motivated to finish stories they didn’t enjoy to begin with, increasing the likelihood for students to read in the first place. This persistence to finish a story could cause some SF readers to learn to like new categories of SF, and expand one’s background. Short stories are also easier to recommend to friends, or in general, other SF readers, resulting in more discussions about a larger variety of literature. Also, even after finishing, if you still hate the story, it wasn’t much of a time commitment in the first place.

On a darker note, many people don’t take SF seriously. They regard it as literature for kids and geeks. Short stories have a similar stigma about them. They are for readers without patience, and for people that don’t have the intellectual capacity to read a full-fledged book. For people with this mindset towards SF, short stories may serve as a way to introduce them to the genre. Due the short time commitment, one can convince them to read the story in the first place. At first, they may enjoy the genre ironically, because it’s children’s literature after all. After a while, this irony serves as a way of making this new type of literature palatable, and results in these readers who were initially opposed to SF to genuinely enjoy the genre.

Short stories serve as SF’s most powerful weapon. With this, they can penetrate the ranks of the masses and spread the genre. Short stories may be good, but to enjoy a more involved story, and generate deeper discussion, longer SF stories are necessary. Also, many of the classics are long, and having read at least some of those is a must for any self-proclaimed SF enthusiast. Short stories are an effective gateway drug into the addictive world of science fiction.