Ian Swenson .com

I’ve read only four more books since Catch-22, and I’ll try to review them here shortly. But a recent trend has emerged for my reading tastes, and I’ve been branching out more than I have before. I used to read strictly fantasy novels, and by the large they were not of a notably high caliber.

My first “real” books contained the standards like Where the Red Ferns Grows and The Call of the Wild, but they also included fantasy novels like Narnia and a few of Stephen King’s fantasy novels. When I grew a little older and discovered the D&D multiverse I began reading anything Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms that I could get my hands on. Raistlin and Drizzt shaped the type of literature (and you can call it that) that I enjoyed.

In the last few years I emerged from my shell, thanks in part to the royal hacks that are (were?) Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind — both authors that began fantastically and then squeezed their cash cows for every ounce of penny-milk, leaving us loyal readers in the lurch.

I’ve since sought new avenues of entertainment. I went to the classics, much maligned by me at school (Gatsby and Eyre have nothing on Raistlin and Drizzt). But I located Orwell and Dante and learned to love them. I’ve read light fantasy like Gaiman, acting a scofflaw to my earlier tastes. I even dabbled in Sci-Fi, and that is what has sparked this line of thought.

I recently (as in last night) began Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep. So far I’m really enjoying the plot, but it has brought to the surface several issues about what I value in my reading. Fantasy is very easy to digest for me, largely because of my long history with it. But it also comes down to the fact that it’s very easy to understand. Fantasy is mostly based on our own medieval past. Thus, even with different races, characters, and histories, it’s easy to piece together based on my knowledge of Pre-Modern Europe.

Then it comes down to a matter of operational rules. What can happen, what the characters are capable of, and where the story can take us are all subject to the author’s and ultimately our imaginations. These are tempered and controlled in fantasy via “magic.” Magic allows the author and us to bend and break rules to allow the story to unfold. I generally have no problem following the leaps, since they are an established part of the genre and are simply accepted. Watching/Reading “Harry Potter and the Title of Such-and-Such,” we don’t ask how Harry is able to use his wand to defeat the baddies, we accept it as a matter of course.

This is where the crux of my issue with Sci-Fi is. Instead of the backgrounds being based on our history, our modern history is (sometimes not) the basis for its background. There is rarely a concrete basis for the order of the universe. Delving into the first chapters of a Sci-Fi book, the reader (me) must sort out where human history fits in. Is their history based on ours? Does it ignore it? Do these humans (almost always humans) come from Earth? These are minor issues, but are sometimes not resolved. Parallel universes are the norm in Sci-Fi, and are to be again accepted as a matter of course.

My bigger problem comes in with the rules issue. Instead of “magic” we have “technology.” Since Sci-Fi tech is based on the real world whether the story is based on modern history, I sometimes have a conflict. When the author tries to be too real but still take the technology to either its realistic end or its plot-necessary end, it requires from the reader leaps in logic. Unlike magic which isn’t based on logic, technology is.

If an author just handwaves technology, then it’s usually not a problem; it’s more like magic in that case. The best example for this is Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m sure everyone’s seen at least one episode of ST:TNG, and many (if not most) contain a similar conflict resolution technique: magic! That’s right, if the Klingons have figured out a way to penetrate your shields and you only have minutes before you’re destroyed, then use an ionic pulse to disable theirs and use your photon torpedo to destroy them first. That’s also known as magic! It’s all based on phony technology (at least now it is) and serves to advance the plot in the direction required but without loosening the tension first. I’m familiar with that technique as fantasy uses it all the time.

My problem is more when Sci-Fi builds on believable technology and then has a hard time (or deigns not to) explaining it. In the Vinge book I’m reading currently, ultra-light speed travel is possible (with implications of tens of thousands of lys possible in only years time), but only in the outer part of the galaxy. The closer toward the galactic black hole one is, the slower their vessels can travel. That’s why we now on Earth can’t beat light speed; we’re too close to the middle. That I can accept, except for the fact it wasn’t truly explained until eighty pages in or so. Far more difficult to understand is the economic system built on information exchange. Vinge tries to differentiate between servers, mainframes, archives, and their ilk. Only to me they’re synonyms and I’m having trouble grasping what the big deal is.

I’m trying not to shift the blame onto Vinge. I’ve had the same problem with Moorcock and Card (although Card’s worlds don’t get complex until deeper into his books). They try to explain to us their magic in words we can understand. But those words conjure analogs to modern equipment and ruin the “magical” qualities the authors are imbuing them with. I’m only 20% done with Vinge, and I don’t understand a large part of how his universe works. Perhaps he’s just withholding it, only to reveal the innerworkings later, but for now it’s mildly frustrating me and my enjoyment ebbs.

Perhaps that’s why I’ll probably always stick with fantasy as my standard. It’s authors don’t have to strain too much to get me to understand, and I can then work on understanding the characters and their plots and machinations instead of first trying to understand the underlying rules under which they operate.