Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2008. Print.
Csicsery-Ronay describes the structure and purpose of his book when he writes, “I believe that SF can be treated as a particular, recognizable mode of thought and art. But rather than a programlike set of exclusive rules and required devices, this mode is a constellation of diverse intellectual and emotional interests and responses that are particularly active in an age of restless technological transformation. I consider seven such categories to be the most attractive and formative of science-fictionality. These are the ‘seven beauties’ of my title: fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade” (5).
According to the author, the technological “Singularity” (as theorized by futurists such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil) embodies all seven beauties. I elaborate his claim briefly here simply to sketch out for the reader what he means with each of the beauties. The Singularity creates its own science-fictional neologisms, such as “mind downloading” and “Singularitarian” (fictive neology). The Singularity itself is a novum, and it generates multiple novel imaginative devices such as intelligent nano-machines with profound material implications (fictive novums). Singulartarians imagine what it will be like to be a Singularitarian, and these speculative futures come with their own quasi-mythic rationalizations that exist in a complicated relationship with “real” scientific epistemologies (future history and imaginary science). With its promises about the exponential growth of computational technologies, super-intelligent machines, postbiological entities, and human-machine hybrids, the Singularity exemplifies the science fictional sublime and grotesque. The Singularity also powerfully embodies the Technologiade, which Csicsery-Ronay defines as the “the epic struggle surrounding the transformation of the cosmos into a technological regime” (217). Ray Kurzweil, in fact, imagines that humans are destined to travel into the cosmos in order to convert “dumb matter” into computational intelligence.
According to the author, the technological “Singularity” (as theorized by futurists such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil) embodies all seven beauties. I elaborate his claim briefly here simply to sketch out for the reader what he means with each of the beauties. The Singularity creates its own science-fictional neologisms, such as “mind downloading” and “Singularitarian” (fictive neology). The Singularity itself is a novum, and it generates multiple novel imaginative devices such as intelligent nano-machines with profound material implications (fictive novums). Singulartarians imagine what it will be like to be a Singularitarian, and these speculative futures come with their own quasi-mythic rationalizations that exist in a complicated relationship with “real” scientific epistemologies (future history and imaginary science). With its promises about the exponential growth of computational technologies, super-intelligent machines, postbiological entities, and human-machine hybrids, the Singularity exemplifies the science fictional sublime and grotesque. The Singularity also powerfully embodies the Technologiade, which Csicsery-Ronay defines as the “the epic struggle surrounding the transformation of the cosmos into a technological regime” (217). Ray Kurzweil, in fact, imagines that humans are destined to travel into the cosmos in order to convert “dumb matter” into computational intelligence.
Csicsery-Ronay avoids generating a “programlike set of exclusive rules and required devices,” and in doing so differentiates his project from a scholar such as Darko Suvin. In defining sf as the “literature of cognitive estrangement,” Suvin perhaps creates too restrictive a boundary around the genre. His conception of “cognition” is particularly problematic, as it ultimately seems to demand that SF narratives adhere to scientific epistemology. “Cognition” so defined limits our ability to understand the various ways in which sf texts play with the scientific worldviews from which they draw imaginative resources.
Csicsery-Ronay, especially in his chapter on “Imaginary Science,” offers a much more robust discussion of the complicated relationship that sf has with science: “Much of sf’s appeal is that it rationalizes highly romantic and fantastic stories by means of scientific ideas. But it is just as true that much of SF, maybe even most of it, has little or no ‘cognitive’ value as Suvin uses the term. SF does not necessarily help readers to become more rational, or to transcend ideology by recognizing the true state of things. It is cognitive in another sense. It engages the worldview of scientific materialism and supplements it with quasi-mythic narrative to make models relevant to cultures on the ground” (116). In other words, sf mediates between an “science as a regulated discipline and a chaotic combinatory popular discourse” (115). SF and scientific ideas are “embedded in an enormous, living, fuzzy patchwork of beliefs, cognitive adaptations to momentous material changes brought on the application of technoscience to daily life” (117). Whereas for Suvin sf requires a novum and sf authors create cognitive estrangement by embedding the novum within a scientifically-plausible narrative world, for Csicsery-Ronay the novum is only one of seven distinctive features of the genre.
The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction attempts to provide a plurality of theoretical approaches to sf. The author suggests that sf can contain all or none of the seven cognitive and emotional tendencies. The text is successful in presenting an open-ended array of genre-specific features and exploring their function through close readings of many sf texts. However, Csicsery-Ronay can move through territory very quickly, and sometimes his insights leave the reader desiring more elaboration. For example, at the end of his chapter on “Imaginary Science,” he attempts to argue that popular literary theorists (Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, etc.) can be read as “master pataphysicians and literary hoaxsters,” whose work can be interpreted as “literary hoax-games that infiltrate the reality discourse of technoscience, and provide that discourse’s own literary fictions into the open” (144). I found this segment quite interesting, as one of my main goals for the study is to identity areas where sf operates as a cognitive or emotional mode not exclusively bound to literary texts (including sf narratives presented in film, video games, comics, etc). In other words, does sf represent a cognitive tendency or rhetorical performance that can occur not just in art but in theory, in corporate advertising, political rhetoric, or scientific discourse itself? The author’s claim that the big theorists are in fact “science-fictional ironists” warrants further consideration. Is this a facile intellectual leap, a move to legitimize sf within scholarly discourse? Or might this be a legitimate (but underdeveloped in Csicsery-Ronay’s text) way of exploring the critical power and function of sf?
The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction attempts to provide a plurality of theoretical approaches to sf. The author suggests that sf can contain all or none of the seven cognitive and emotional tendencies. The text is successful in presenting an open-ended array of genre-specific features and exploring their function through close readings of many sf texts. However, Csicsery-Ronay can move through territory very quickly, and sometimes his insights leave the reader desiring more elaboration. For example, at the end of his chapter on “Imaginary Science,” he attempts to argue that popular literary theorists (Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, etc.) can be read as “master pataphysicians and literary hoaxsters,” whose work can be interpreted as “literary hoax-games that infiltrate the reality discourse of technoscience, and provide that discourse’s own literary fictions into the open” (144). I found this segment quite interesting, as one of my main goals for the study is to identity areas where sf operates as a cognitive or emotional mode not exclusively bound to literary texts (including sf narratives presented in film, video games, comics, etc). In other words, does sf represent a cognitive tendency or rhetorical performance that can occur not just in art but in theory, in corporate advertising, political rhetoric, or scientific discourse itself? The author’s claim that the big theorists are in fact “science-fictional ironists” warrants further consideration. Is this a facile intellectual leap, a move to legitimize sf within scholarly discourse? Or might this be a legitimate (but underdeveloped in Csicsery-Ronay’s text) way of exploring the critical power and function of sf?
Joe,
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Suvin is that he clearly sees the "novum" as something more than an "extrapolation" of a particular SF technology. For Suvin, drawing on Ernst Bloch's theories of utopia, SF is a political mode and as such works to create a "novum" of social-political dimensions. I don't find this unproblematic, but we can see the problems with this author's modeling his SF on Kurzweil's thought when we think through posthumanism.
That said, I think that to a certain extent CR's characterization of theory as "pataphysics" is right on. There is a good book that we read in Ulmer's course by Christian Bok called "pataphysics" or something like that, that we used in conjunction with Baudrillard, who also is, in a way, much more a pataphysician than Lacan, Derrida, or Foucault. Indeed, I would not speak of pataphysics and Derrida in the same moment.
That said, there is one thinker who has explicitly connected his work to science fiction: that is Gilles Deleuze. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze writes "A book of philosophy should be in part a very particular species of detective novel, in part a kind of science fiction." Following Deleuze, Steven Shaviro's book Connected, or What is means to Live in a Networked Society, suggests that he does theory as a kind of science fiction: "It is not an empirical study but rather a speculative exercise in cultural theory. As such it is a work of science fiction in a way that I hope is consonant with both Deleuze and Freedman."
The question for me is-- in a biopolitical and technoscientific age, can we still think the "political" dimensions of Science Fiction apart from the actual representations of TECHNOLOGIES that appear in the novels -- like it seems Suvin wants to maintain by connectedd Science Fiction with political utopia. Its not that SF ceases to be political, but, as Thacker writes, that SF as a mode has been appropriated by Technoscience -- our science as become Science Fiction and so, while Suvin (and others) are right, I think, that SF is not critical if it remains a mode of prediction (that is, what "might" be --what we might create as far as technologies go -- and by the way, this is why I find it problematic to model SF theory on someone like Kurzweil, since his whole project is tied into prediction, as if he were a prophet) -- tying SF to social/political utopia is problematic because technoscience has already appropriated its rhetoric.
I think I'd like to read some of this book, as I think this is the same guy that wrote that great piece on Haraway and Baudrillard. . ..
-Jake
Thanks for the detailed response, Jake. I realize now that I might have poorly represented CR by refracting his theories through the Singularity - he only mentions this at the end of his book, in what he calls an "unscientific postscript." I think he would agree with your point about SF-rhetoric being appropriated by technoscience; he's also very critical of Kurzweil's claims. My main purpose in mentioning CR's thoughts on the seven beauties and the Singularity was to illustrate what he means with each of them as defining features of the genre.
DeleteI think the important contribution that CR makes is to open up other investigate/critical possibilities for SF. He certainly respects Suvin's work - but I think he wants to position the "novum" as one element among several genre-defining SF traits.