Mundane versus hard SF (and why Rudy Rucker kicks arse)
01/12/2007 . Source: Jonathan McCalmont 
Jonathan McCalmont of SFdiplomat fame has just received the September and October 2007 issues of the New York Review of Science Fiction and he must say, he is starting to really enjoy it. Interestingly, less so for the reviews (which are often of books he hasn't read or heard of) and more for the longer critical pieces and the occasional acts of genre politics. In particular, I adored Rudy Rucker's scathing attack on the Mundane SF movement in which he suggests that some of the Clarion students might well have decided to go mundane as a result of the following train of thought:
"I've always wanted to write like Henry James or John Updike or Jane Austen - Don't you just adore Jane Austen? But frankly, it's so hard to break into mainstream writing that I figured I'd try a genre first. And then I thought, why not be a science fiction writer! Only, then, when I start looking at scifi a little bit, I find out that a lot of it is written by nutty loners, and it's full of science and crazy ideas, and it's not like Jane Austen or John Updike at all. So I'm thinking, why not get rid of all the weird icky science and write stories about people's emotions and about the kinds of problems you read about in the newspapers?"
He then goes on to describe Mundane SF as being an act of capitulation to the ruling class's media propaganda and suggests that many of Mundane SF's strictures are arbitrary as well as suggestive of a failure to understand part of what SF does adding :
"A Mundane SF writer of the year 1000 might want us to write only about alchemy, the black plague, and the papacy."
I think the only word to describe this is "Ouch" with light undertones of "Rudy Rucker kicks arse!"
Part of what seems to motivate the Mundane SF movement is the desire to move away from SF as escapist wish-fulfilment and to place it on a more serious and responsible footing. As a result, Geoff Ryman et al. try their best to cut out all of the more aspirational elements of traditional SF... the tropes which, if believed to be plausible possible futures, might push us to worry less about the world we inhabit because who cares if we pollute the air and use up all the raw materials because hey, we'll all be jetting about the Galaxy in starships soon enough.
Eagle-eyed SF historians will note the similarity here with the fight that once raged between the defenders of traditional Campbellian SF and the New Wave boys who believed that they had bigger fish to fry.
The root of Rucker and Ryman's differences of opinion is the weird relationship that SF has with scientific verisimilitude. If you look back over the history of SF through post-cyberpunk and cyberpunk to New Wave to the endless stories of blokes with capes and swords fighting racial stereotypes onboard garish spaceships you'll find almost infinite diversity of approach and philosophy pinned together by a desire to use language and ideas that are scientifically plausible. Back in the 1950's, this desire for authenticity seemed to derive from the desire to be respectable. In 1950's America, the scientist was King and anyone who could sound like a scientist would immediately be listened to more carefully than someone who sounded like a filthy beatnik. Since then, social attitudes to science have waxed and waned from the space age of the 1960's to the high-tide of postmodernism in the 1990's and the idea that science is just white man's magic.
Mundane SF is not only about matching SF to real scientific thought, it's also about taking on board the scientific world view; the data-based visions of the future, the desire to speak truth rather than easily digested comforting platitudes. As far as literary movements go, it is cool, controlled and is a reaction to a society and media that steadfastly refuse to listen properly to scientists. Anyone familiar with Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science blog will know that the media is full of examples of people dropping some scientific language into a discussion and then running away in all kinds of directions that are in no way justified by the science.
Just look at the recent media stories about the causes of cancer. A literature review study is released, taking all the previous studies of what causes cancer and condenses them into a set of guidelines including being as thin as possible without being underweight, the media respond by telling us THIS is how we should live our lives. A couple of weeks later and a new study appears telling us that actually, being a little overweight is healthy. The media respond again by telling us that THIS is how we should live our lives. The truth of the matter is that the first study is based on a load of different studies that suggest one thing, and then a new study appears that suggests something different.
In the long run, the first study might be proved correct and as it draws on more evidence it should be taken as correct but it's equally possible that more data might emerge supporting the health benefits of being slightly overweight. It's a complicated issue to work out what the conflict between these studies mean but the media presented them as though they were both true.
Mundane SF is the scientifically literate person's reaction to such a refusal to think like a scientist. Rucker is quite correct that FTL might be possible or that the missing mass in the universe might be consciousness but these aren't likely given current scientific thinking, which supports the worldview that Mundane SF is trying to push.
If the point of SF is, as the Mundanistas suggest, the realistic portrayal of the future, then accepting the Mundane SF manifesto is the obvious step forward for the genre. However, SF need not be about the realistic portrayal of the future.
One of the more interesting quirks of literary fate is that relatively few pieces of Hard SF are mundane. Peter Watts' Blindsight features vampires and highly intelligent non-conscious aliens. Stephen Baxter's XeeLee cycle features aliens, FTL and pretty much everything expressly forbidden by the Mundane SF manifesto. And yet these works are Hard SF.
In many non-genre circles, Hard SF is seen as the touchstone for scientific correctness. Indeed, in roleplaying circles, "Hard SF" does not refer to a particular literary tradition but rather the need for everything in a particular game to be strictly scientifically plausible. The reason for the disconnect between Mundane SF and Hard SF is that the two movements represent different aesthetics within science itself.
Science is frequently seen as being in the business of inductive reasoning. Induction is the process of seeing lots of x's that are F's and inferring that all x's are F's. This is the side of science that is data-driven and concerned mostly with generating empirical mathematical models that describe how the universe works. It is the realm of what the philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen described as empirical adequacy. Many people argue that this is all science should ever be... generating models of the world that fit the data. However, this is not all that goes on inside physics departments across the world.
Once you move away from the raw data, you frequently move into the more mathematical and philosophical realms where people try to look beyond the raw and strictly correct data and attempt to explain what is going on in the universe. This is where we enter into abductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning is also known as "inference to the best explanation". When you consider a mathematical model, there might be several competing explanations as to why the universe works the way it does. In order to choose between these different models you use all of these surprisingly subjective yardsticks such as simplicity, strength and beauty.
Simplicity is perhaps the best known yardstick as it is covered by Occam's Razor, the idea that you should not multiply epicycles and that given the choice between two theories, the theory that posits the existence of less things is probably the correct one. Strength is another interesting yardstick, as it does not mean scope but rather depth. For example, "God Did It" is an explanation that can be applied to everything but because it does not describe the processes of how or why God did it, it is deemed to be an explanation that lacks strength. What is interesting about these yardsticks is that they are completely unquantifiable and subjective... there's no way that two scientists and philosophers can disagree over which theory is the most simple and have the matter resolved conclusively in favour of one or the other. Though to be fair, some inroads have been made into formalising the process, particularly people working in the Artificial Intelligence sector.
Mudane SF is fuelled by the aspects of science that are all about empirical adequacy. It's about only saying things that are strictly likely to be true.
Hard SF, on the other hand, is fuelled by the parts of the scientific process that are all about the beauty of a scientific concept. Hard SF is about picking up a scientific idea and playing with it purely for the pleasure of thinking about the universe in that way. It is about scientific thought unfettered by the need to be careful and to weigh up the possibilities rationally. It is the scientist as artist rather than the scientist as train-spotter.
Jonathan McCalmont
© Jonathan McCalmont 2007
Jonathan McCalmont didn't so much hit 30 as plough into it at high speed. He lives in Central London in a shoebox with an attractive post-code and enjoys rock music, TV, film and books as long as they're new and different. You can catch up with him at his excellent blog www.SFdiplomat.net |
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