Sci-Fi as the last bastion of philosophical writing?
I came across a wired article which purports that science fiction is the last genre of fiction which explores the big ideas:
Which brings me to my point. If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.
From where I sit, traditional “literary fiction” has dropped the ball. I studied literature in college, and throughout my twenties I voraciously read contemporary fiction. Then, eight or nine years ago, I found myself getting — well — bored.
Why? I think it’s because I was reading novel after novel about the real world. And there are, at the risk of sounding superweird, only so many ways to describe reality. After I’d read my 189th novel about someone living in a city, working in a basically realistic job and having a realistic relationship and a realistically fraught family, I was like, “OK. Cool. I see how today’s world works.” I also started to feel like I’d been reading the same book over and over again.
Heh. I almost agree, and I’m certainly glad to see science fiction getting its props. It is true that a lot of the general fiction I’ve read lately (whatever that is) is more self-conscious than anything else– the emphasis seems to be on writing a novel about anything, perhaps even just a stylistic exercise, rather than letting a story tell itself in a way that happens to get across a point. But I’d hesitate to say that there aren’t any authors outside of the bounds of science fiction tackling the big issues. One that comes to mind is Percival Everett.
I think the more important issue is how engaging the novels are. Like Thompson says, if you read book after book all written in the same style, you tend to get bored quickly. One of the virtues of science fiction is that each story is intrinsically different from the others: the stories take place in literally different worlds. It takes much more reading to get bored that way.
BTW, am I the only one who thinks the word ‘novel’ carries with it an air of pretension?