|
COPYRIGHT 2005 Caddo Gap Press
Trying to file a missing person's report did not go well:
Police: Well sir, did your wife indicate she might be going away?
Me: She did mention something about it.
Police: Did she say where she might be going?
Me: Only that I probably wouldn't be following her.
Police: What did you take that to mean?
Me: That it's the middle of the semester and I'd be working.
Police: Do you want us to find her?
Me: Well, I want to find out where she went ...
Police: That's not what we asked ... besides you'll have to wait in line ...
--Excerpt from "Chicken Soup for the Left Behind"
In one of the greatest science fiction stories not yet published, "Chicken Soup for the Left Behind," strange occurrences are taking place in a small university town in the coastal South. A portion of the local population has simply disappeared, the sky has turned an unnatural shade of orange-gray, and the usual humidity has become an unceasing drizzle. Sightings of oversized mutant alligators on major thoroughfares occur regularly. The narrator, a befuddled faculty member of the English department whose wife is among those who have disappeared, is trying to unravel the mystery by analyzing what he thinks are prophetic warnings encoded within elaborate parables in his students' essays. Meanwhile, the faculty retreat more and more often to their small club to get drunk, gossip about their students' increasingly puzzling behaviors, speculate upon the weirdness of it all, and take uneasy comfort in reassuring each other it's just all part of academic life.
This story hasn't been published because we don't quite know where to put it. As academics we want to be sure the journal is reputable and refereed. However, as storytellers we want it in the right place for an interested readership. Should we send it to a science fiction publication? Or is the story really a slipstream tale of alternate realities? With its sky, creatures, and omens, maybe it qualifies as contemporary fantasy? But it also takes on weighty issues of religion, culture, education, and politics; perhaps the Paris Review might see it as parody. What we are trying to do is find a literary home for such a work of "interstitial fiction" (Hartman, 2001), a medium for communicating our ideas to those who might want to read and discuss them. We realize that it would ultimately be considered a genre piece, but which genre and why?
Relationships I wish I could get my cell phone to work. --Excerpt from "Chicken Soup for the Left Behind: A Readers' Introduction"
As currently understood in composition theory, genre can be characterized by conventions in textual form and substance (Freedman & Medway, 1994) although such identifiable similarities merely represent surface characteristics that suggest a deeper, socially constructed space for undertaking meaningful communication within discourse communities (Miller, 1984). Unfortunately, textual genres, if identified as such, can also be hierarchically positioned in terms of sociocultural power and cultural capital, in the same way that discourse communities themselves experience such positioning (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995). Manifestations and understandings of genres can be positioned as unequal in social, political, and economic power in relation to others, whereby ability to comprehend and craft such differing genres signifies membership in discourse communities that may also be regarded as more or less powerful, depending on one's perspective. After all, any high school teacher teaching root words recognizes genre from the Latin and Greek that also gives us words like "genocide" and "gentile" (Chabon, 2004). Literature that is typically classified as belonging to the genre of "science fiction" has frequently been positioned within academic communities as bearing a stigma of lesser value in relation to other forms of literary discourse (Spinrad, 1990). While such stigmas do not usually matter to casual readers, they unfortunately do matter to educators, especially teachers working in the current test-driven academic climate. Interestingly, it is acceptable for high school teachers to teach Frankenstein, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse Five, or The Handmaid's Tale; such works are often found on reading lists for college-bound students or as preparation for the AP examination in English literature, and therefore useful as currency in negotiating further academic success. It is not expected that teachers teach Stranger in a Strange Land, The Disposessed, or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, however. Why the difference? Perhaps it is because "mainstream" writers of fiction from Mary Shelley to Don DeLillo, Donald Barthelme, Margaret Atwood, Mark Helprin, and Thomas Pynchon do not write mere "science fiction. " Atwood even refutes the notion that A Handmaid's Tale, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is science fiction:
... it certainly isn't science fiction. Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. That isn't this book at all. The Handmaid's Tale is speculative fiction in the genre of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written not as science fiction but as an extrapolation of life in 1948. So, too, The Handmaid's Tale is a slight twist on the society we have now. (Reader's Companion, Interview, para. 2)
Nonetheless, her most recent novel, Oryx and Crake, is set in a post-apocalyptic future full of bioengineering mayhem and is marketed in current issues of Asimov's Science Fiction, a well-known science fiction pulp magazine. Chabon (2004) noted that these "serious" writers have derived a certain pleasure from plying their trade in this "noman's land" between genre that is a mingling of tribute, parody, mockery and analysis. Suzanne Demarin (2004) in an essay titled, "Required Reading: Feminist Sci-Fi and Post-Millennial Curriculum," says of science fiction, "... certain ideas circulate around the center and boundaries of the category; science fiction is not a pure genre but borrows liberally from other literary forms to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar" (p 53). A case in point is Mark Helprin's story, "House of Ruth," a story of a Hasidic Jewish teenage boy, a survivor of the Holocaust, who is sent by God to save the "New York Yenkees" and specifically "Mickey Mentle." Helprin combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, religious spiritualism, in a rather mainstream time and setting. This story can easily be classified in any of four genres.
In this article, we are interested in exploring what is meant by science fiction, or SF--the term preferred by its writers and readers-- as a genre. What can students and teachers gain from reading (and writing) science fiction? We want to examine science fiction's potential for fostering critical literacy and creative thinking in classrooms where notions of genre are problematized and the school literature curriculum can shed its modernist "glory days" traditions.
The Difficulty with Definition
Dear Professor,
I know freshman essays don't begin as letters, but this one does. Aren't boundaries silly? You spoke in class about how important it is that we know our audience. Well, you are my audience, so why not appeal to you directly? I know I am still not on your class roll as you have pointed out, but there are other "rolls" that I am on. We are all frightened by what is going on outside our walls. You told us your wife is missing. I think, though I saw her recently somewhere. She said she didn't miss you. Why is that, Professor?
Our topic was to write about a time when we were truly frightened,...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
