Abstract
This is the second chapter which demonstrates how literary postmodernism is developed practically, concentrating on genre fiction. Focusing on ontology, questions of being and subjectivity, it looks at historical and canonical examples of science fiction to demonstrate how postmodern forms of SF fit within the genre. Consequently, the chapter argues that it is possible to have both modernist and postmodernist fiction with an ontological dominant, thus such a dominant cannot function as a definition of literary postmodernism. This is done through looking at canonical examples of classical, modernist, late modernist and postmodernist science fiction, and how those stories function structurally. It also demonstrates that chronology is not a sufficient means to present the history of science fiction, as structural elements are also at play.
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- 1.
This is roughly the approach of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003), in which SF is broken down chronologically, and then race and gender (and others) are treated later as sub-genres. It is also the fundamental structure that Bruce Sterling alludes to in his definition of cyberpunk in the preface to the Mirrorshades anthology (1986). See also: Aldiss (1986); Roberts (2000); Seed (2005).
- 2.
Postcyberpunk represents, like postmodernism, a chronological bind whose boundary with cyberpunk is not always clear. Most often it is marked by its chronology, after the Bruce Sterling-defined cyberpunk period ended, or by its optimistic look toward the future opposed to the more bleak perspective found in traditional cyberpunk. “Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique [as cyberpunk], but features different characters, settings, and, most importantly, makes fundamentally different assumptions about the future. Far from being alienated loners, postcyberpunk characters are frequently integral members of society (i.e., they have jobs). They live in futures that are not necessarily dystopic (indeed, they are often suffused with an optimism that ranges from cautious to exuberant), but their everyday lives are still impacted by rapid technological change and an omnipresent computerized infrastructure” (Person 1999).
- 3.
I will use reader as a convention for both the reader (for fiction) and audience (for film), simply for the sake of convenience. My approach to film in this study will be to treat film as text and focus more on the narrative than on the filmic elements at work.
- 4.
Darko Suvin, in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, defines a novum as “a totalizing phenomenon of relationship deviating from the author’s and implied reader’s norm of reality” (64) and contends it is a (if not the) defining characteristic of science fiction.
- 5.
If one considers this novel as part of the Canopus in Argos series as a whole (this is the second volume of that series) rather than as a stand-alone novel, and considers that each of the texts in Canopus presents its story from a different perspective, taken as a whole they constitute a vastly different approach, ontologically. For example, the first novel, Shikasta (1979), offers multiple races of beings co-existing on a single world, which is caught in a Manichean struggle between good (Canopus) and evil (Sirius). Shikasta plays with its multiple perspectives, which provides a strict contrast to the linearity of Marriages. “If Shikasta triumphs through a pluralism of styles and attitudes, its sequel, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980), succeeds on an altogether different basis. Where Shikasta is all turmoil and variation, Marriages is all calm and unity” (Draine 1983, 144). Thus, the classical approach can only be considered if reading the narrative alone, and absent the broader picture associated with the Canopus series or the author/reader relationship.
- 6.
The stories often collected in the three volumes of the Foundation trilogy were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction starting in 1941. The first story published in the collected edition, however, was not written until the other stories were completed. It was, in fact, written “at the request of Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press who was the original publisher of the Trilogy” (Patrouch 1974, 63). Thus, for the sake of this study, the first story, “The Psychohistorians” will be considered at the time of its creation (1950) rather than where it fits chronologically in the narrative (first in the series).
- 7.
It convinced Paul Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. “The only logical conclusion is an inescapable one: in the Director’s Cut, Rick Deckard is a replicant” (1996, 364).
- 8.
Francavilla argues that it is Deckard’s replicant characteristics (even if he is human) that make him difficult to immediately identify with, even if he is the clear protagonist of the film. “One of the reasons audiences may have found it hard to identify with the character of Deckard is first, that he is a cold-blooded killer, and second, that he is initially and throughout most of the film a dull, dreary, mechanical, unemotional man” (Francavilla 12).
- 9.
This then becomes a Deleuzean radicle or tipless root, driving the structure of consciousness of Blade Runner. There are answers here, so we are operating in a structure with hierarchy and perspective.
- 10.
The transmedia whole of the Matrix franchise could be seen as part of this universe, and thus all part of the single ‘text’ for the purposes of this book, which will, however, only discuss the three films.
- 11.
The Sharons are the generic name for the Number Eights (the eighth of the 12 human-like cylons). There are two specific Sharons delineated in the series, Lt. Sharon ‘Boomer’ Valerii and Sharon ‘Athena’ Agathon, which I will specifically refer to by their call-signs, Boomer and Athena. Athena, a call-sign this individual only receives later in the series, retains the memories from Boomer’s experience on Galactica, so the identity process is known to her in her relationship with Helo on Caprica later in the first season. Some scholars distinguish the two characters as Galactica-Boomer and Caprica-Boomer, or simply Boomer and Sharon.
- 12.
Moore refers to Athena simply as Sharon.
- 13.
Although one could read this metaphor as postethnic, following David Hollinger (1995), I find that reading in this SF context misreads the application of technology. While it is probably also a postethnic, and indeed as I argue elsewhere, postgender, universe, this particular encounter and situation are more aptly read as posthuman, dealing with the problems of eliding technology and humanity, and our inevitable joining in the future (thus the end of both cyborgs and humans in this context).
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Stephan, M. (2019). What World Is This? Who Am I (in It)?: The Structure of the Ontological Formation in Science Fiction. In: Defining Literary Postmodernism for the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15693-0_6
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