Tony Lu: "Dear Chuck Wendig: The Greatest Genre of Fiction"

Dear Chuck Wendig: The Greatest Genre of Fiction

by Tony Lu

"Science fiction is not about the future; it uses the future as a narrative convention to present significant distortions of the present," writes Samuel Delany in "Some Presumptuous Approaches to Science Fiction." To me, this aspect of the genre, the blending of the scientific possibilities of the future and the societal aspects of the present, is its greatest. Through sci-fi, we are exposed to technological marvels such as time travel and worm holes, but are confronted with their ethical implications: If we use time travel to correct our mistakes, how will that affect the lives of others? How far will its effects propagate? Sci-fi embodies the best of both what interests me and what troubles me: the science of the future and its potentially radical effects on society.

Pat Cadigan's short story "Pretty Boy Crossover" is a prime example of this kind of sci-fi. While it was described by my classmates as "angsty" and "uneventful," I see it as packed full of deep questions about the effects of technology. Set in a culture where nightclubs are the most popular form of entertainment, teenagers vie for becoming a fabled "Pretty Boy," a digitization of their personalities that apparently enjoys eternal youth. However, this is implied to be a form of corporate exploitation, as "Pretty Boys" are studied for "breakthroughs in thought" and used for advertising. This prompts the protagonist to ponder his opportunity to become one. As he remarks, we would be reduced to a "blip on a chip," wiped from existence as soon as somebody erases the data that constitutes us. Yet, I wonder, wouldn't it still be worth it? To abandon our bodies and never age and become the center of everyone's attention is an opportunity offered to few. Cadigan makes it difficult for us and the protagonist to either accept or reject this opportunity, and trying to answer such questions is something I relish about sci-fi.

Occasionally, rather than asking penetrating questions, sci-fi simply horrifies me with what can arise from science. As a physics buff, the wonders in our universe that technology on Earth cannot possibly expose us to, such as black holes and neutron stars, fascinate me. Poul Anderson's "Kyrie" blends these scientific ideas with a more fictional aspect, telepathy, and presents us with a disturbing implication of this combination. In the story, Eloise, a telepath, is a member of a crew sent to investigate the aftermath of a supernova. However, her companion is sucked into a black hole left by the dying star. By the laws of general relativity, in his reference frame, he dies quickly, but in Eloise's reference frame, she observes him fall into the black hole across an infinite span of time. The result? She is left to hear his dying thoughts for the rest of her life. Sci-fi's ability to turn something that interests me into something that horrifies me is, to me, perhaps the genre's greatest aspect.

Lastly, I sometimes encounter sci-fi's most cutting quality, in which it simply forces us to accept the disturbing aspects of the future. Frederik Pohl's "Day Million" is a short story that acknowledges, and even criticizes, our discomfort with those aspects. After shoving the story's version of the future in our faces, where humans make love digitally with aliens and sexual pleasure is purely a technological affair, Pohl taunts, "Oh, I can see you now, you eaters of charcoal-broiled steak, scratching an incipient bunion with one hand and holding this story with the other, while the stereo plays d'Indyor Monk. You don't believe a word of it, do you?" Just as our current society may appear utterly outrageous to Attila the Hun, so will, as Pohl argues, the society of the future appear to us. He thus shows us another wonderful aspect of sci-fi: that it can give us an outlandish, troubling view of the future rather than a pleasant one.

Despite showing me that the future may not be to my liking, sci-fi, as Pohl implies, may only cause this discomfort because of our own biases: Perhaps we cannot bring ourselves to accept radically different gender norms and societal mores. However, the aspects of the genre I cherish will always be there: the exploration of special relativity and time travel in an ethical rather than scientific context, and the brazen presentation of future societies that defy our expectations. Since these are qualities I will find nowhere else, sci-fi will always hold a special place in my heart.