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Sep. 9th, 2021 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarHaving just finished John Brunner's "The World Swappers", I find a certain thesis of mine vindicated yet again: namely, science fiction, at least of this era (1959) is better served by the short story than the novel. I swear, give me a short-story anthology with about a dozen works by a dozen authors, I'm never disappointed. Give me a full-length novel by any one of those same authors, I almost always am. Time and again, I've been blown away by the short works of Isaac Asimov or William Tenn or Edmund Hamilton, only to pick up the novels and go "meh".
(There are exceptions of course. "Childhood's End", and "Fahrenheit 451", needless to say - though the later is so atypical, and so monumental, it seems unfair to include it).
I have a theory about why this might be the case, which I doubt is very original, but not often articulated all the same. If science fiction is the literature of ideas, ideas are better served by the short-story. The hundred-metre dash, or the quick left jab. The literary equivalent of taking a shot. The focus of the story is the Idea, which is delivered quickly and efficiently for maximum impact. When done really well, the reader is left surprised, shocked and awed. The novel tends to dilute the Idea and stretch it out to diminished returns. Ideas which seemed clever after five pages often seem naff after two hundred.
There is a reason why Science Fiction (and maybe Horror) seem to be the only areas of literature where short fiction survives.
"The World Builders" aptly contributes to this overall impression - not a bad book so much as a headscratcher. In it, I recognized a tendency that I notice in a lot of fiction from the period that goes something like this: a grand Masterplan (for good or evil intent is not entirely clear)is afoot which seems to depend on entirely predictable patterns of human behaviour, which, by and large, exist mainly in the author's imagination. The most famous other examples would be Herberts Dune and Asimov's Foundation books: unassailable classics which left me rather cold.
Possibly I'm just not bright enough to follow such deep intricacies of backstory, but I usually have a devil of time figuring what these Masterplans actually are. I rarely find them convincing, even in states of space-operatic suspended disbelief, because deep down I just don't believe human nature is either that predictable or malleable.
"The World Builders" is mercifully less arcane than others - near as I can tell, some elite secret society is preparing humanity for First Contact through media manipulation. And social engineering, via manipulation of corporate capitalism. I think. The long term goal is peaceful coexistence (albeit from a position of strength), so I suppose I can get behind it, but damned if I know how it was supposed to work.
Like so many writers, Brunner seems to be writing a thesis more than a story, at the cost of plot (muddy) and character (generic, forgettable). Among other quibbles, I wondered whether capturing the alien space-ship was really the best way to establish contact. Or why the Masterplanners felt it was so necessary to recruit some young woman as an agent, knowing it would get her abducted and tortured by the bad guys, when she largely disappears from the plot, and plays no role in it later on.
All this said, I mentioned it wasn't a bad book, and I meant it. The prose style was not awful. And it did get me thinking. About the implications of the scenario. About how such a world might feel and look like. About how such a scenario might play itself out. About how I might have done it differently. It tickled the imagination, it made me speculate. Which is largely the point of this sort of fiction, isn't it?
(There are exceptions of course. "Childhood's End", and "Fahrenheit 451", needless to say - though the later is so atypical, and so monumental, it seems unfair to include it).
I have a theory about why this might be the case, which I doubt is very original, but not often articulated all the same. If science fiction is the literature of ideas, ideas are better served by the short-story. The hundred-metre dash, or the quick left jab. The literary equivalent of taking a shot. The focus of the story is the Idea, which is delivered quickly and efficiently for maximum impact. When done really well, the reader is left surprised, shocked and awed. The novel tends to dilute the Idea and stretch it out to diminished returns. Ideas which seemed clever after five pages often seem naff after two hundred.
There is a reason why Science Fiction (and maybe Horror) seem to be the only areas of literature where short fiction survives.
"The World Builders" aptly contributes to this overall impression - not a bad book so much as a headscratcher. In it, I recognized a tendency that I notice in a lot of fiction from the period that goes something like this: a grand Masterplan (for good or evil intent is not entirely clear)is afoot which seems to depend on entirely predictable patterns of human behaviour, which, by and large, exist mainly in the author's imagination. The most famous other examples would be Herberts Dune and Asimov's Foundation books: unassailable classics which left me rather cold.
Possibly I'm just not bright enough to follow such deep intricacies of backstory, but I usually have a devil of time figuring what these Masterplans actually are. I rarely find them convincing, even in states of space-operatic suspended disbelief, because deep down I just don't believe human nature is either that predictable or malleable.
"The World Builders" is mercifully less arcane than others - near as I can tell, some elite secret society is preparing humanity for First Contact through media manipulation. And social engineering, via manipulation of corporate capitalism. I think. The long term goal is peaceful coexistence (albeit from a position of strength), so I suppose I can get behind it, but damned if I know how it was supposed to work.
Like so many writers, Brunner seems to be writing a thesis more than a story, at the cost of plot (muddy) and character (generic, forgettable). Among other quibbles, I wondered whether capturing the alien space-ship was really the best way to establish contact. Or why the Masterplanners felt it was so necessary to recruit some young woman as an agent, knowing it would get her abducted and tortured by the bad guys, when she largely disappears from the plot, and plays no role in it later on.
All this said, I mentioned it wasn't a bad book, and I meant it. The prose style was not awful. And it did get me thinking. About the implications of the scenario. About how such a world might feel and look like. About how such a scenario might play itself out. About how I might have done it differently. It tickled the imagination, it made me speculate. Which is largely the point of this sort of fiction, isn't it?
