Science Fiction, Canonization, Marginalization, and the Academy

191 Pages·2002·10.2 MB·English

by  Gary Westfahl

S
cience Fiction,
Canonization,
Marginalization,
and the Academy
Recent Titles in Contributions to the
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Back in the Spaceship Again: Juvenile Science Fiction Series Since 1945
Karen Sands and Marietta Frank
Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth
Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, editors
Space and Beyond: The Frontier Theme in Science Fiction
Gary Westfahl, editor
Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science
Damien Broderick
Science Fiction, Children's Literature, and Popular Culture: Coming of Age in Fantasyland
Gary Westfahl
Kurt Vonnegut: Images and Representations
Marc Leeds and Peter J. Reed, editors
Science and Destabilization in the Modern American Gothic: Lovecraft, Matheson, and
King
David A. Oakes
J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth
George Clark and Daniel Timmons, editors
Rewriting the Women of Camelot: Arthurian Popular Fiction and Feminism
Ann F Howey
Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War
M. Keith Booker
S
cience Fiction,
Canonization,
Marginalization,
and the Academy
Edited by
Gary Westfahl and George Slusser
Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Number 97
Donald Palumbo, Series Adviser
Greenwood Press
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Science fiction, canonization, marginalization, and the academy / edited by Gary
Westfahl and George Slusser.
p. cm.—(Contributions to the study of science fiction and fantasy, ISSN 0193-6875;
no. 97)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-32064-0 (alk. paper)
1. Science fiction, American—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 2. Science fiction,
English—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 3. Science fiction—Study and teaching
(Higher) 4. Canon (Literature) I. Westfahl, Gary. II. Slusser, George Edgar. III. Series.
PS374.S35 S3325 2002
813'.0876209—dc21 2001042330
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2002 by Gary Westfahl and George Slusser
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001042330
ISBN: 0-313-32064-0
ISSN: 0193-6875
First published in 2002
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport,CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
@T
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1. Introduction: Masters of the Literary Universe
Gary Westfahl 1
Part I. Overviews: Science Fiction and the Academy
2. Literary Gatekeepers and the Fabril Tradition
Tom Shippey 7
3. Seven Types of Chopped Liver: My Adventures in the Genre Wars
Frank McConnell 25
4. The Things Women Don't Say
Susan Kray 37
5. Why the Academy Is Afraid of Dragons: The Suppression of the
Marvelous in Theories of the Fantastic
Jonathan Langford 51
Part II. Mechanisms of Canonization
6. The Arthur C. Clarke Award and Its Reception in Britain
Edward James 67
7. Popes or Tropes: Defining the Grails of Science Fiction
Joseph D. Miller 79
VI Contents
8. Science Fiction Eye and the Rebellion against Recursion
Stephen P. Brown 89
9. Authorities, Canons, and Scholarship: The Role of Academic Journals
Arthur B. Evans 95
Part III. Case Studies in Marginalization
10. Multiculturalism and the Cultural Dynamics of Classic American
Science Fiction
George Slusser 103
11. Science Fiction in the Academies of History and Literature; Or,
History and the Use of Science Fiction
Farah Mendlesohn 119
12. (E)raced Visions: Women of Color and Science Fiction in the
United States
Elyce Rae Helford 127
13. Hard Magic, Soft Science: The Marginalization of Kevin J.
Anderson and Doug Beason's Assemblers of Infinity and Bruce
Boston's Stained Glass Rain
Howard V. Hendrix 139
14. White Men Can't. . . : (De)centering Authority and Jacking into
Phallic Economies in William Gibson's Count Zero
Joseph Childers, Townsend Carr, and Regna Meenk 151
Bibliography of Works Related to Science Fiction, Canonization,
and Marginalization 161
Index 171
About the Contributors 181
Acknowledgments
We first wish to recognize all of the individuals who assisted in the creation and
development of this volume, including Karen Bellinfante, Sidney Berger, Gladys
Murphy, Sheryl Lewis, Darian Daries, Susan Korn, Karen Orchard, Eric S. Rabkin,
Henry Snyder, and our anonymous peer reviewers. We also wish to thank Donald
E. Palumbo and George F. Butler of Greenwood Press for their help in getting this
volume into print, as well as our capable copyeditor Lynne Goetz. In response to
a request for assistance, a number of distant colleagues provided suggestions for the
bibliography, including Rene Beaulieu, John Boston, Steve Holland, Todd Mason,
Jess Nevins, David Pringle, Robert Silverberg, Andy Sawyer, Gordon Van Gelder,
Jeff VanderMeer, and Bud Webster. We finally would like to thank other friends,
family members, and colleagues too numerous to name who provided needed
support and encouragement during the preparation of this volume.
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Chapter 1
Introduction:
Masters of the Literary Universe
Gary Westfahl
Since the words "author" and "authority" derive from the same Latin root {augere,
to make to grow), it is only natural for some authors and unsophisticated readers to
regard authors as the major forces controlling literature. After all, according to this
view, authors are the ones who create and shape their traditions and their works, and
so they should be regarded as the definitive arbiters of the meaning and the value
of their works.
Yet members of the academy see matters differently. From their perspective, it
is trained critics, not authors, who are best qualified to delineate literary traditions
and to read, evaluate, and interpret literary texts. And, since they are the ones who
largely determine the authors and works that stay in print, receive continuing
attention, and are taught in school curricula, scholars and critics do exercise
eventual, if not immediate, control over literature, deciding that certain texts and
genres should be enshrined or "canonized" as fit subjects for research and
pedagogy, while other texts and genres should be "marginalized," exiled from
literary scholarship and literature classes.
Of course, their hegemony does not emerge from an amicable consensus; rather,
critics constantly dispute which works and writers should be included in the canon
of officially sanctioned texts, and which ones should be excluded from that
pantheon. Traditionalists insist that time-honored talents should maintain a central
position in literary study, while insurgents champion a number of previously
marginalized figures under the aegis of feminism, postmodernism, multiculturalism,
gay and lesbian studies, or popular culture. Debates may ostensibly be based on
aesthetics, but they are inextricably linked to ideological and personal concerns that
can devolve into purely political questions: who in the community of scholars gets
to decide what is literature and what is not literature? Each group claims the power
to answer the question and challenges the judgments of rival factions.
The thesis of this volume is that the literature of science fiction offers unusually
fertile grounds for an examination of these continuing processes of literary
canonization and marginalization. For science fiction has been one major bone of