The Secret History of Science Fiction
Authors: James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel
Publisher: Tachyon
ISBN-13: 9781892391933
ISBN: 1892391937
Rating: 6/10
There are anthologies, and ‘anthologies’. The Secret History of Science Fiction is the latter. As such books go there is hardly anything to recommend against it, at least at first. A crop of crème de la crème authors both mainstream and not. Expert commentary from the editors and a book cover that is equal parts mysterious and alluring. Yet to ape a phrase from Top Chef, it’s all in the presentation. To put it kindly, The Secret History is long on presentation, but too much of a good thing can kill a dish-and it certainly is the case with this tome.
The book begins with a simple (if counterfactual) premise. Suppose that Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow won the Nebula award in 1971. It did one better than that in real life, actually (no one can argue against a Pulitzer). But, oh, how erudite, how refined, how cultured sci-fi would be if it had. If the attitude strikes one as elitist, that’s because it is. But it’s more than just attitude that makes The Secret History more than inaccessible to all but the most pedantic academics and wannabe writers.
Dwelling on ideas such as structure, tone, setting, etc-themes that would be familiar to any student of post-modern or post-post modern literature-story by story, the editors make a case for science fiction as mainstream lit. It is a debatable issue, and one any cultural studies professor interested in the genre would do well to visit and revisit time and time again. But as a mode of introducing a given story, it’s a killer. Never mind that the whole Gravity’s Rainbow -winning-the-SFWA-thing was Michael Chabon’s idea in the first place.
Besides taking an innocent thought experiment of one of my favorite authors and turning it into an academic exercise, they managed to cherry pick his and a few others writer’s quotes and make them out to be pretentious hacks rather than the esteemed writers they are (Chabon’s reference to Stephen King as ‘the Last Master of the Plotted Short Story’ springs to mind-surely he’s not the only one, and if he is, I weep for humanity).
Fiction, like memory or nostalgia, is all subjective, and I say that as one of its fervent disciples. But it’s not just the editors’ elitist attitude or their cavalier handling of flesh and blood people that is bothering about this anthology. It’s their attitude towards the most important critics of all, the readers that is most galling. By not labeling the pages (I had a tough time knowing which story I was reading, or whether it was over), and sticking the page #’s at the bottom instead of the top where people can see them, they appear to be sticking their fingers in readers’ eyes, as if to say, we’re smarter than you. This sort of skin-deep, knee jerk response is reminiscent of a young, haughty, wannabe intellectual who throws around sixteen dollar words casually when three dollar ones would do. Strunk and White would certainly not approve.
Lord knows I don’t. And I was one of those haughty, wannabe intellectuals!
This is a good fit for academia, but that’s about it.
John Winn - Staff Writer
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