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Rationalizing Genius: Ideological Strategies in the American Science Fiction Short Story
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224 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1989
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November 24, 2013
In this book, Huntington undertakes to reveal the underlying ideologies common in science fiction literature. To do this, he focusses on the stories that were published in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1, accepting this as a "selection of certifiably popular stories" that can represent the genre. Those stories were all originally published between 1934 and 1963, so roughly speaking one might say this is a sample of "golden age" science fiction.
As noted by the title, Huntington's major interest is in the "ideological strategies" to be found in SF. That is, what cultural values do these stories speak to; what attitudes to they show? What do these stories say about the SF subculture that gave rise to them and made them popular? Basically, this book tries to take the genre of science fiction and put it on an analyst's couch.
The results are not flattering to science fiction. In Huntington's opinion, Fritz Leiber's "Coming Attraction" and Damon Knight's "The Country of the Kind" show that "it is the very powerlessness and marginality of women in these [stories'] societies that is stimulating to men," while Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" "shows how this powerlessness can stimulate sadistic anger." And Fredric Brown's "Arena" "expresses xenophobic rage, but masked as rational deduction and tolerance." And so on. It almost goes without saying that many SF fans will disagree with at least some of Huntington's readings of these stories. But on the other hand, few would argue against his view that power fantasies, usually centered around notions of genius, are a common theme in SF. Personally, I found all of Huntington's analyses to be highly interesting, even when I would have preferred that he present them as one possible reading of a story, rather than the One True Reading.
The book doesn't look at each of the titles found in the Hall of Fame anthology in order. Rather it hops around from story to story as needed to examine a series of themes. The themes that interest Huntington can be seen in a partial list of the book's chapter titles:
3: The Myth of Genius: The Fantasy of Unpolitical Power
4: An Economy of Reason: The Motives of the Technocratic Hero
5: Reason and Love: Women and Technocracy
6: Feeling the Unthinkable: Imagining Aliens and Monsters
7: History, Politics, and the Future
Perhaps more than a work of science fiction studies, this book has strong connections with other scholarly studies of popular fiction as a cultural phenomenon, such as John Cawelti's Adventure, Mystery, and Romance (which is referred to often), Janice Radway's Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (which is discussed at some length), and Thomas Roberts' An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction. But readers who are strictly interested in science fiction will find much of value here. I was particularly struck by Huntington's comments on Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit," which I'll finish up this review by quoting:
"This is an important moment in the history of the form. [It] is a story that is meaningful only in relation to the genre's past. It has little, if any, of the explicit idea content that so distinguishes the earlier work in the form.
[...]
"In part the loss of narrative innocence leads to a self-reflectiveness that, for all its increased sophistication, is devoid of the explicitly Utopian element that has up until now defined the form. The maturation, if you will, has taught the form how to be evasive, how to avoid embarrassing itself. The concern with irony is a movement toward psychology."
As noted by the title, Huntington's major interest is in the "ideological strategies" to be found in SF. That is, what cultural values do these stories speak to; what attitudes to they show? What do these stories say about the SF subculture that gave rise to them and made them popular? Basically, this book tries to take the genre of science fiction and put it on an analyst's couch.
The results are not flattering to science fiction. In Huntington's opinion, Fritz Leiber's "Coming Attraction" and Damon Knight's "The Country of the Kind" show that "it is the very powerlessness and marginality of women in these [stories'] societies that is stimulating to men," while Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" "shows how this powerlessness can stimulate sadistic anger." And Fredric Brown's "Arena" "expresses xenophobic rage, but masked as rational deduction and tolerance." And so on. It almost goes without saying that many SF fans will disagree with at least some of Huntington's readings of these stories. But on the other hand, few would argue against his view that power fantasies, usually centered around notions of genius, are a common theme in SF. Personally, I found all of Huntington's analyses to be highly interesting, even when I would have preferred that he present them as one possible reading of a story, rather than the One True Reading.
The book doesn't look at each of the titles found in the Hall of Fame anthology in order. Rather it hops around from story to story as needed to examine a series of themes. The themes that interest Huntington can be seen in a partial list of the book's chapter titles:
3: The Myth of Genius: The Fantasy of Unpolitical Power
4: An Economy of Reason: The Motives of the Technocratic Hero
5: Reason and Love: Women and Technocracy
6: Feeling the Unthinkable: Imagining Aliens and Monsters
7: History, Politics, and the Future
Perhaps more than a work of science fiction studies, this book has strong connections with other scholarly studies of popular fiction as a cultural phenomenon, such as John Cawelti's Adventure, Mystery, and Romance (which is referred to often), Janice Radway's Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (which is discussed at some length), and Thomas Roberts' An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction. But readers who are strictly interested in science fiction will find much of value here. I was particularly struck by Huntington's comments on Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit," which I'll finish up this review by quoting:
"This is an important moment in the history of the form. [It] is a story that is meaningful only in relation to the genre's past. It has little, if any, of the explicit idea content that so distinguishes the earlier work in the form.
[...]
"In part the loss of narrative innocence leads to a self-reflectiveness that, for all its increased sophistication, is devoid of the explicitly Utopian element that has up until now defined the form. The maturation, if you will, has taught the form how to be evasive, how to avoid embarrassing itself. The concern with irony is a movement toward psychology."
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