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Science Fiction vs Fantasy: The First Bout

It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized that some of my favorite episodes of Star Trek were written by some of the best science fiction writers of the time. Now that I think about it the word that comes to mind is ‘duh’.

Case in point is Harlan Ellison. In 1967 he wrote a short story titled ‘I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream’. I was so impressed with the descriptive, even graphic imagery of that work that I used an excerpt of the story in an oral interpretation class presentation in 1977. A few months ago when I was moving yet again into another abode, I happened upon a paperback collection of short stories that included Ellison's masterpiece. I read it with the fresh eyes of having matured and having forgotten much of the story. The only passage that I remembered, much to my credit, was the passage that I had used in the oral interpretation course. It still gives me the same intense feeling after all the intervening years. It is that focused and clear in its intensity. I strive to write a few paragraphs that can even begin to approach that level of near perfection in the conveyance of emotion and sensation through the written word.

Before college I had a meager desire and a small appetite to read. I had difficulties reading. I had dyslexia before it was a popular affliction or even recognized. My mother had it worse than I did, like that is a small consolation.

Somewhere during the fourth grade I was so embarassed with my poor reading skills that I forced myself to learn how to read. When I was home and all weekend long I sat down and read a dictionary. I memorized words. I learned how sentences were constructed from the way that definitions were presented in the dictionary. As I taught myself I learned how to read word patterns instead or individual words sounded out syllable-by-syllable as I had previously been taught.

What I discovered was that certain words tend to be used together in English sentences. The result of that fundamental realization was that after a year of my new, self-taught approach I could read about 500 to 600 words per minute.

By the time I had reached college I read very well. I still faltered whenever I was reading aloud but over time I had improved to the point that it was almost excusable as I was hardly worse than anyone else. However, when I was reading silently I could consume text with a voracious appetite, eventually apporaching 800 words per minute.

To that point I had merely sampled the works of the obligatory Science Fiction masters: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Delaney, LeGuin, and Herbert. I had some idea of what they had written but I wass seriously a novice int he genre.

When I began college I read Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Player Piano. It was a required book for a Computer Technology and Mankind course I had to take. Back then I still believed in coincidences. While I was in the process of reading Vonnegut's book, I met a young lady name Denise. We were a thing for about two or three weeks. I took her to see the movie adaptation of Slaughterhouse 5, another of Vonneguts books. I had been too young to see the movie when it was originally in the theaters so it was nice that my dormitory had obtained it for a special showing, albeit on a relatively flat sheet draped between two stanchions. The combination of those two influences hooked me. I read everything that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had written up to that time.

I even read his son Mark’s fascinating book, Eden Express about his ordeal with schizophrenia.

At that time I felt that science fiction was the wide open plain for creative expression. Since then I have learned that it is the subject not the genre that truly matters in literature. I also know that I may have to wrestle with some critics in the future over that assertion but I wholeheartedly beleive it and can presuade even the most belligerant that I am right.

At some point in the past I started to write and some, maybe a tenth of what I have written fits into a sci-fi categorization but almost nothing else does. There is a good bit of fantasy that is perhaps 40 percent of what I have done. So by my own estimates between science fiction and fantasy it is merely half of my body of work. What is the remainder?

I call it neo-realism. It is a fictionalization of my experiences, and the experiences of others that were shared with me. At least half of my writing is just that. Word by word measures may differ but I really and honestly believe that only about ten percent of what I have ever written is science fiction and combined science fiction and fanatasy is maybe 50 percent of the body of my written work.

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posted by Unknown @ 11:15 PM