Off Cuts
Why the Iraq Crisis is on

All texts copyright Farah Mendlesohn

The following was a response to an argument on a number of sf and fantasy mailing lists about what it was and was not ok to discuss. It was the height of the pre-war crisis over “intervention” in Iraq and tempers were fraying.

On Topic.

The past month has seen a number of kerfuffles on the lists to which I subscribe. That’s nothing new, I know, but unusually the fuss has been about the same issue each time. Off topic postings, and whether the Iraq crisis (and what Bush and Blair are going to do about it) is a legitimate subject for an sf or fantasy list.

Now, to make my position clear, I’m not automatically in favour of widening the remit of any particular group. I’m an academic, and while I’m quite happy for my teaching union to pass a resolution opposing sanctions which prevent pencils reaching the school children of Iraq (apparently the lead can be used to manufacture WMDs) , because it is an educational issue, I get pretty uncomfortable when the union meeting passes a resolution about supporting striking fruit farmers in Nicaragua. It just doesn’t seem to be the business of my union unless you believe a teaching union can be in the vanguard of a revolution.

Of the three lists I’ve seen disturbed by the current situation all are sf and fantasy communities: one is a drink and meeting list, one has a political agenda, and the other claims to be just about books. On all three, people started posting their feelings about the war. The problems seem to have started because of the perception of some members that an anti-war position was being assumed. Looking back, I think these people were correct. But instead of arguing back, and probably because people felt intimidated by the vociferous posts of the likes of me (a Quaker via militant Jewish Socialism) individuals started to protest about off-topic posting.

The different lists came to different conclusions, but it made me think whether it is possible to have off topic posting on a science fiction list.

Science fiction is a macro-literature. It is concerned with the way the universe works, whether that is astro-physics, chemical interactions, the economics of capitalism or how to sew a shirt so it doesn’t fall off. It is interested in what we do and how we do things, about the changes in the world and about ideas and their power. Fantasy is also a macro literature, concerned with origins, and with endings, with the rise and fall of great powers, and how to saddle a horse, but it is also a literature of morality. Where sf argues with the universe about what it is doing wrong, fantasy likes to make judgements about the way it should be and assumes there is some kind of justice (and put like that I suddenly have this image of Sf as Elijah and Fantasy as Jesus).

But those statements render sf and fantasy intensely ideological. In both cases they say, “we can change things, we just have to be interested enough.” Western thought tends to take that attitude for granted, but large parts of the world (of a range of faiths including some Christians) prefer to believe in fate, in a world ordained by God which it would be heresy to change.

They also say “we can understand it all” whether in a “how can it work” kind of way, or a “this is the way it should be” kind of way. This is radically different to lit fic, which approaches these issues in a “how does it feel kind of way”. Talking with a student about her creative writing project this week, I realised that it isn’t that lit fic begins with character (as its proponents often claim) but that lit fic can pretend it doesn’t world build, because it is using a shared Bible, established by the great Author. This means that its authors can pretend the macro-context doesn’t exist (until a Marxist/feminist/post colonial critic comes along and disabuses them), and while there are many who do engage with the world, far more don’t.

But sf writers don’t have that luxury. Unless writing in a shared world, that Bible has to be built up from scratch each time, and that is an intensely political act. Consider Louise Marley’s The Maquisard (2002), which offers a nice, well-meaning liberal view of the world that desperately wants to improve matters, but with a Bible that assumes non-white people are incapable of helping themselves and a completely ahistorical understanding of oppression. If I didn’t bring a political critique to this book, I would have to tell you it was a rattling good read in the tradition of Heinlein. It is impossible to evaluate this book without going “off-topic”. Consider Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, which must have infuriated those concerned to maintain the purity of sf. Can you imagine discussing it without reference to the US invasion of Vietnam?

One division I know people may make is that I have discussed the above in direct relation to specific books. Can we then draw a dividing line? Political analysis of books is ok, political analysis of current events without reference to sf is not? I’m not convinced. To do so would be to accept that literature and society are essentially separate, that the creative act is somehow pure. As readers we exist in a political context. Even “neutrality” is a political position, “the centre ground” even more so. We bring to our interpretation of the books we read the political issues that shape us. We bring to the books we read the world we live in. I reacted against Kim Stanley Robinson’s Years of Rice and Salt because its portrayal of Islam bears no relationship to the multiplicities of manifestations of that faith that I see in the University where I teach. I spent quite a lot of time on one of the three lists talking directly about what I have learned from my students, long after we had stopped discussing the book. The book generated the “off-topic” political conversation.

It is important that we don’t take for granted that everyone on a list will agree with us, and equally important that we don’t take on contentious topics simply to annoy, but as long as sf is about building believable worlds, I have a very hard time coming up with any issue that could be considered “off topic”.