Trial Essay SF

While a genre is characterised by texts with common elements, these texts offer diverse
perspectives that are significant to an understanding of that genre and its popularity. To what
extent does this statement reflect your study of this module?

Genre is an intertextual concept, providing an inherently constructed framework within which

cultural productions with “family resemblances” are composed and interpreted. Science fiction
epitomises this notion, as composers continually reappropriate common elements of previous sci-fi
to catalyse introspection on perpetually shifting contextual paradigms. Ursula Le Guin’s 1968
novel The Left Hand of Darkness and Alfonso Cuaron’s 2004 film Children of Men both divulge from
the focus on ‘hard’ science that has characterised many SF texts in their examination of the
sociological ramifications of scientific developments, reflecting the social upheaval of the Cold War
era and post 9/11 media culture and capitalism. Similarly, Michael Swanwick’s 2001 post-cyberpunk
short story The Dog Said Bow-Wow directly opposes the dystopic tone of its cyberpunk
predecessors, as the ubiquity of technology in the 1990s dissipated fears regarding its potential.
While these three texts subvert the style and content that characterised preceding SF texts, Dean
Parisot’s 1997 film Galaxy Quest draws attention to the framework of SF itself through parody,
elucidating the reliance of genre on the ‘cultural capital’ of audiences. Despite consciously
subverting the conventions of preceding SF, all four texts stimulate engagement and reflection on
the issues that define their composer’s distinct cultural contexts through cognitive estrangement,
and thus retain an enduring value.

Left Hand constitutes part of the New Wave movement of SF that sought to reinvigorate stagnant
genre structures and deconstruct the traditional interpretation of SF as ‘low art’. New Wave authors
consciously reacted against hard science, emphasising the power of language and narrative depth in
creating complex imagined worlds that resonate more potently with reality. Le Guin’s metaphorical
description of facts as “no more solid, coherent, round and real than pearls are”, introduces a
thoroughly postmodern sense of subjectivity absent in previous SF. Indeed, the novel’s entire
structure reflects Le Guin’s postmodern context, constructed as a heterogeneous pastiche of stylistic
modes, with the inclusion of myths and varying perspectives rejecting linear narratives characteristic
of the Golden Age. The most prominent manifestation of this shift towards valuing language is the
Gethenians’ culturally ingrained obfuscation of language through “shifgrethor”, alluding to the
postmodern conception of language as a filter through which relative truths are interpreted. The
resulting “conversational duels” strongly evoke the political unrest of the Cold War climate. More
broadly, Le Guin’s lexicon is integral to the plot and the overarching destabilisation of rigid gender
categories, subverting its primarily expository use in preceding Golden Age texts. Ai’s tendency to
assign gendered characteristics in a hierarchical way reflecting humanity’s struggle to “separate the
innate differences from the learned ones”. Initially, Ai perceives Gethenians as men, except when
their actions are incongruous with his expectations, commenting that “it was perhaps [Estraven’s]
soft supple femininity that I disliked”. However, Ai’s experiences with Estraven on the ice gradually
facilitate his ideological evolution, ultimately viewing humans as “strange animals of two different
species”. This negative perception of duality is antithetical to the perspective of the Investigator,
whose inability to abandon his preconceptions of gender highlights the “fallibility of the supposed
neutrality of the scientific eye” (Bertek). Thus, by explicitly responding to previous “hard” science
fiction through its focus on language and narrative complexity as a vehicle for social
commentary, Left Hand exemplifies both the intertextual and permeable nature of genre.

Children of Men forms part of the “New Bad Future” (Glass) subgenre of SF, which envisions
rampant social decay with a strong focus on moral and political discourses, directly subverting the
nuclear apocalyptic fiction that has permeated SF since World War II. Similar to Left Hand, Children
of Men is valued for its use of cognitive estrangement as a medium to interrogate its composer’s
turbulent social milieu, with Cuaron echoing Le Guin in commenting that his film was “more about
referencing reality” than "about imagining and being creative”. A substantial amount of the
expository information is delineated by omnipresent audio-visual media, with references to “the
siege of Seattle” and “the deportation of illegal immigrants” in the opening scene introducing a
familiar rhetoric of emergency. This immediately creates a verisimilitude that is accentuated by the
extensive of long takes and handheld shooting, constructing an unmediated reality absent in
twentieth century SF. The character of Theo parallels Genly Ai in his role as an identificatory nexus
for the viewer, however, the camera repeatedly breaks away from Theo to explore the dystopian
setting, dismantling the SF convention of the protagonist as the boundary of the narrative. This
hyperrealistic camera indirectly associates infertility with capitalist excess, whilst also suggesting
Britain’s survival was a result of its xenophobic militaristic policies, echoing the anti-immigration
paranoia that saturates modern politics. As an overt indictment of this, the hope of humanity rests
with an immigrant, Kee, criticising the paradoxical nature of neoliberal economics in abolishing
barriers to capital whilst simultaneously constructing physical boundaries to prevent the flow of
people across borders. Thus, by adopting a thoroughly political stance on current issues, Children of
Men demonstrates “New Bad Future’s” evolution beyond nuclear apocalyptic concerns, illustrating
genre’s intertextual nature.

Michael Swanwick’s 2001 post-cyberpunk (PCP) short story The Dog Said Bow-Wow captures the
subgenre’s divergence from the “radical hard SF” (Sterling) of cyberpunk. PCP emerged as a direct
response to the technological paranoia of cyberpunk, as the movement from the mass mediated
technology of the 1980s towards the decentralisation of the Internet in the 1990s bridged the gap
between the post-human and the global, dissipating anxieties about the negative potential of
technology. The Dog captures this in its humorous mood, “pushing cyberpunk to the edge of
absurdity” (Kelly) while maintaining its extrapolative nature. In the opening scene, Darger comments
that Surplus the dog “must have had a hundred physical adaptations to allow him to walk upright”,
elucidating the dissolution of the boundary between nature and capital that emerged from the
patent of genetic developments. In fact, the story was published in the same year that the Human
Genome Project reached completion, accentuated by Swanwick’s juxtaposition of “the glorious
beauty of Lake Champlain” and “the gene mills of Winooski”. Both Darger and Surplus are
characterised as members of the middle class, exemplifying how fears over ‘cyberspace’ are
disregarded by the struggle for a meaningful existence within a futuristic world where viable
alternatives to capitalism have been dismissed. Surplus’ rhetorical question in “how shall we divide
up the spoils of this enterprise” underlines this movement away from the hedonistic anti-heroes and
street setting of cyberpunk towards a focus on the struggle for a purposeful existence. The ultimate
failure of the protagonist’s scam is disregarded through Darger’s dismissive comment that “for every
city that burns, another beckons”, affirming Kessel’s view that “in PCP stories, human values are not
imprinted on the fabric of the universe” because what it means to be human is always negotiable.
Thus, by “rewiring” cyberpunk’s technological paranoia, The Dog illustrates how science fiction
remains relevant by reappropriating previous SF to correspond with dynamic social contexts.

By consciously drawing attention to the tropes of SF, Galaxy Quest simultaneously subverts and
affirms these conventions, exemplifying genre’s intertextual nature. Parisot’s explicit parody of Star
Trek’s formulaic sotyrlines and stock characters accords with Worton’s comment that “the writer is a
reader of texts before s/he is a creator of texts. Thus, for audiences, situating Galaxy Quest within
the genre becomes an “active process of constructing meaning” (Knight), particularly as Parisot
progresses into the ‘real world’ of the film. Here, Alexander’s reminiscent remark that “I was an
actor once”, criticises the historical perception of sci-fi as ‘low-art’, whilst simultaneously alluding to
Leonard Nimoy’s struggle to separate himself from ‘Spock’. By making these metafictional
connections, Galaxy Quest demonstrates how science fiction evolves not only by subverting generic
assumptions but due to its role as “barometer of social and cultural concerns” (Lichter). In particular,
the film’s supports 1990s third wave feminism by ridiculing the ‘damsel in distress’ trope of Golden
Age space opera through Gwen’s awareness of Tawny Madison’s hypersexualised nature in her self-
reflexive comment “nothing I ever did affected the plot”. The film also values the Digital Information
Age and the associated democratisation of knowledge in creating a multi-directional, fan-driven
discourse, supporting Chandler’s view of genre as “a triangular relationship between the text, its
producers and its interpreters”. Initially, the film adheres to the traditional view of SF fans as
parasitic through the slow pan across the unnaturally costumed convention fans and Gwen’s
hyperbole “They’re going to start eating each other out there”. This consuming passion is replicated
by the Thermians, who misinterpret the show as “historical documents”, and are unable to
distinguish between reality and fiction. However, while Galaxy Quest satirises science fiction fans, it
also pays overt homage to the dynamic relationship between producers and consumers, as the fans’
specialised plans are used to resolve the primary conflict of the use of the “Omega 13”. The resulting
feeling of collaboration parallels the sense of community that has defined the genre since the
prescient SF of Campbell’s Amazing Stories. Hence, by creatively reappropriating aspects of
preceding SF to correspond with the 1990s context, Galaxy Quest demonstrates genre’s intertextual
nature.

Clearly, science fiction epitomises genre’s intertextual and fluid nature, as each text builds on
common elements of the genre, yet ultimately offers a fresh perspective on humanity. This organic
process of evolution is why science fiction is considered the ‘literature of change’ and will continue
to be valued.