Guest Editor's Preface

Abstract

GUEST EDITOR'S PREFACE The days are happily longgonewhen science fiction(SF) novelshad to be publishedwith an apologetic reference on theircovers to 'whatisunhappily knownas "science fiction"', aswas thecasewith the I950SPenguineditionsof John Wyndham'sworks.'Now no justification isneeded; Wyndham's novelsare currently appearing in thePenguin Modern Classics series. More isinvolvedin thisdevelopmentthan thecanonizationof an important author. Over recent decades SF hasmoved fromthe marginsof our culturetoa positionof central ity. The American novelist ThomasM. Disch has argued that SF's 'basicreper tory of images-rocket shipsand robots, aliensand dinosaurs are standard itemsin thefantasy life of anypreschooler'and that SF 'hascome topermeate our cultureinways both trivial and/or profound,obvious and/or insidious'.2 Ronald Reagan's promotionof theStarWars defencesystem was an obvious example,butonlyone ofmany. The notionof thealien-the themeof thiscollection isas old as theSF genre itself. As IstvanCsicsery-Ronayshows in thelead essay,thealien isan extension or shadowof thehuman,an imageof difference thatisoftenintro duced intonarrativestospeculateon thenatureand limits of thehuman.Again and again SF narrativesshade intothehorrorgenre. H. G.Wells's exploration of vivisection, The IslandofDoctor Moreau,was originally planned as a gothic noveland thenreshapedintoan earlyexampleofwhatwas tobecome a stock SF theme:theexperimentthatgoeswrong.The proximity between SF and horror has led the novelist Brian Aldiss to argue that the two genres have evolved intandem,emerginginone seminal work Frankenstein.3 One of the most persistent depictionsof thealien,one that probablygrows outof fears of demonicpossession,istheconversion of a humanbody intoan unwitting carrierof another lifeform. The travesty birthscene fromthe1979 RidileyScottmovie Alien isone of the most famousexamples.The spaceship JNostromo becomes 'infected' bya carnivorous creaturecarriedinthebodyof the crewmember Kane. Alan Dean Foster'snovelizationdescribes thegradual emergenceof thecreature: A red stain had appeared on Kane's tunic. It spread rapidly,became a broad, uneven bloody smear across his lower chest [... .] His shirtsplit like the skinof amelon, peeled I This statement may have been written byWyndham himself to distinguish his writing from then contem porary American SE 2 Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams ourStuff IsMade of.How ScienceFiction Conquered the World (New York: Free Press, I998), pp. I, II. 3 Brian W Aldiss, Billion Year Spree: The History of ScienceFiction (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, I973). In I986 his history was re-titled Trillion rear Spree. vi Guest Editor's Preface back on both sides as a small head the size of aman's fist punched outward. Itwrithed and twisted likea snake's. The tinyskullwas mostly all teeth,sharp and red-stained.4 This description graphicallyillustrates thenegativedepictionof thealienwith thesingle physicalfeature ofpredation. The creature becomesmanifestthrough an eventthat violatesnotonly Kane's bodybutour senseof biologicalorder; it is melodramaticallydistantfrom humanity, being carriedfrom deep space.By contrast, BryanAppleyard, inhis 2005 survey volumeAliens: WhyThey AreHere, isat pains to show indetailhow thealien has become a ubiquitous feature of contemporarylife. Carefullydistinguishing hisaccount from paranoid stories of alienabduction,he insists:'this book isabout real aliens, who they are andwhat they want. By aliens Imean intelligent, non-humanbeings.Such a beingmay be a machine or an organism'.5 Regardless ofwhat we think ofAppleyard's openness toextraterrestrial lifeforms, hisdomestication of thealienby showing thefrequency of its manifestations, whether through advanced robotics, UFO cover-ups, or implantsurgery, suggeststhatthespeculationsof science fiction have amore directbearingon contemporarylifethan we had supposed. The essays in thepresentvolumebear eloquent testimony to thecomplete inadequacyof approachingSF as a seriesofpredictions about thefuture. Much more profitably, itcan be read as a seriesof thought experimentsspeculating about thenatureof categoriesandpatternsthat we takefor grantedinour lives. For thisreason theAmerican author Samuel Delany has applied the term 'subjunctivity' to theSF narrativemode.6 It is a mode thatquestions and explores,evenexaminingsucha basic conceptas normality. Inhis essayon this topic George Slusserhas used thepluralistic expression'paranormality' to trace narratives of mental phenomena through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Writers such as Maupassant and Bulwer-Lyttonpartly explored dimensionsof perception,partlypowers likethatof telekinesis. At theheartof Slusser'sdiscussionliesindividuality -the issueofwhether itremainspossible tobelieve in a singular, discreteself. During the I950Sand I96oswriters like Cordwainer Smith speculatedon thepossibility of isolatingidentity as brain tapeor imprint, and one obvious aspectof cyberpunkSF is itsexplorationof theinterface betweenorganismandmachine. Science fiction repeatedly positionsitselfinrelationtodevelopmentsin the sciences thathave particularimplications forour understanding of humanity. The developmentof evolutionarytheory, forinstance, gave SF an impetusin 4 Alan Dean Foster, The Complete Alien Omnibus (London: Warner, I994), p. I37. Foster isa well-established SF novelist in his own right. 5 Bryan Appleyard, Aliens: Why TheyAre Here (London: Simon & Schuster...