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Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
Acclaimed author and critic Hal Duncan turns his analytic eye towards the development and current state of speculative fiction in American and English writing in the pages of Rhapsody. Duncan's trademark wry humor and suffer-no-fools approach to critiquing the genre will make this book more than a resource for students of the field--anyone who enjoys reading tales of the fantastical and strange can find Duncan's insight worthwhile to read agan and again.
282 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2014
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38 people want to read
About the author
Hal Duncan
77 books132 followersHal Duncan is the author of Vellum, which was a finalist for both the William H. Crawford Award and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. He is a member of the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle. He lives in the West End of Glasgow.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 11, 2020
A remarkably thorough, painstakingly detailed, but frequently exhausting and overwritten examination and analysis of SF (both as science fiction and Duncan's preferred designation "strange fiction") as a genre: its past, present, and future.
Duncan is passionate about his subject, clearly widely read, and armed with a bristling array of analytical and semantic tools (I swear if I never read the terms "boulomaic" "deontic" and "alethic" again it will still be far too soon) which he sometimes uses to bludgeon both his argument and the reader into submission. Other times he's quite playful and imaginative, envisioning the history of SF through the image of a restaurant (the SF Café) whose clientele and menu evolve radically over time, sometimes much to the regulars dismay. Even here though, he tends towards heavy-handedness and a seeming inability to make his point in a concise fashion (the endless "boogers/burgers" bit). I'll admit that as I reached the final fifty pages I just began to skim as there didn't seem to be anything new introduced and I grew tired of being beaten over the head by the same point again and again and again.
As to his argument, it really doesn't seem to amount to much beyond positing that SF should be a broad genre (no demurral from me there), that gatekeeping is bad no matter who the gatekeeper is (again total agreement), and that non-genre readers low opinion of SF (in any of its many forms) is hurtful but doesn't really matter anyway and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke (um...OK). In the end it just seemed like an awful lot of angst for very little argument.
Duncan is passionate about his subject, clearly widely read, and armed with a bristling array of analytical and semantic tools (I swear if I never read the terms "boulomaic" "deontic" and "alethic" again it will still be far too soon) which he sometimes uses to bludgeon both his argument and the reader into submission. Other times he's quite playful and imaginative, envisioning the history of SF through the image of a restaurant (the SF Café) whose clientele and menu evolve radically over time, sometimes much to the regulars dismay. Even here though, he tends towards heavy-handedness and a seeming inability to make his point in a concise fashion (the endless "boogers/burgers" bit). I'll admit that as I reached the final fifty pages I just began to skim as there didn't seem to be anything new introduced and I grew tired of being beaten over the head by the same point again and again and again.
As to his argument, it really doesn't seem to amount to much beyond positing that SF should be a broad genre (no demurral from me there), that gatekeeping is bad no matter who the gatekeeper is (again total agreement), and that non-genre readers low opinion of SF (in any of its many forms) is hurtful but doesn't really matter anyway and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke (um...OK). In the end it just seemed like an awful lot of angst for very little argument.
January 4, 2015
Everything you ever wanted to know about SF/fantasy/horror/literary fiction, but were afraid to ask. This is one of the most exciting and challenging books on genre criticism that I have ever read.
It joins such classics as The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine by Samuel R. Delany, Trillion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction by Darko Suvin and Reading by Starlight by Damien Broderick.
Indeed, Hal Duncan dedicates this book to Delany and Thomas Disch; one of his particular achievements here is to make heavyweight theorists like Suvin and Delany understandable and relevant, which is no mean feat.
What I loved about this book is that it is both a rigorous analysis of the development of SF criticism, as well as a fascinating debate about the relevance of genre fiction, and the distinction between SF and the Sci-FI of Hollywood.
Here Duncan wears multiple hats as writer, fan and reader. He is not afraid to skewer various sacred cows along the way towards his goal of explicating a broader fiction of the fantastic, strange fiction, that eschews any labels or genre definitions.
Rhapsody is also extremely well written. Duncan uses the central conceit of the SF Café, located in the less salubrious areas of the city of New Sodom, downtown from the more upmarket and favoured Bistro de Critique. Here old timers and young bucks kvetch and argue fine points.
I stepped through the doors of the SF Café with a borrowed copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot in my hand, expecting to find more of the same, only to find Philip K. Dick sitting at a table, obsessing over Gnostic demiurges and ersatz realities, Robert A. Heinlein across from him, spouting libertarian aphorisms but paying for Dick’s coffee. The talk at that table was as much philosophy as science, as much monsters and messiahs as spaceships and simulacra. Palmer Eldritch and Valentine Michael Smith fought, like Zoroastrian deities, over my soul.
The framework that Duncan assembles in this book to both discuss and classify SF is largely based on Delany’s essay ‘About 5,750 Words’. Duncan argues that strange fictions can only be understood in terms of their particular aesthetic modalities:
Coulda, woulda, shoulda—the words in use here are markers of modality, judgements written into the text. As the earlier references to epistemic modality might suggest, such judgements come in more hues than just the judgement of possibility. There is: epistemic modality, judgement of fact; alethic modality, judgement of possibility; deontic modality, judgement of duty; and boulomaic modality, judgement of desire/dread.
If this sounds overly complicated, fear not: Duncan explains at length, and with great finesse. He uses easy-to-understand text fragments throughout, which he then proceeds to break down and analyse according to their specific modality. Duncan is also a voracious reader of SF, and his prodigious knowledge of the genre is amply on display here.
Duncan himself is a proponent of the so-called New Weird, with such books as Vellum and Ink, and his recent collection Scruffians! Stories of Better Sodomites. Yes, Duncan is unabashedly, and transgressively, queer, and brings a lot of the same anarchic energy and offbeat humour of his books to his critical writing.
As a final note: Towards the end, Duncan discusses Bruce Sterling’s concept of ‘slipstream’ fiction as well as ‘infernokrusher’, the spoof SF literary movement curated by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. He adds, in passing: “On a hot summer day, about a thousand years ago, it seems, when I was sixteen years old, my brother stepped out into the path of a Ford Capri. Death is full of surprises.”
The final quote, fittingly, brings us back to Delany:
the crescent sun is high, the moon low;
life is not for the faint-hearted;
so why the fuck should art be?
I was completely blown over by this book. It is definitely one of the most important non-fiction SF books of recent times, and deserves to be read by anybody with any sort of abiding interest in genre fiction.
It joins such classics as The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine by Samuel R. Delany, Trillion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction by Darko Suvin and Reading by Starlight by Damien Broderick.
Indeed, Hal Duncan dedicates this book to Delany and Thomas Disch; one of his particular achievements here is to make heavyweight theorists like Suvin and Delany understandable and relevant, which is no mean feat.
What I loved about this book is that it is both a rigorous analysis of the development of SF criticism, as well as a fascinating debate about the relevance of genre fiction, and the distinction between SF and the Sci-FI of Hollywood.
Here Duncan wears multiple hats as writer, fan and reader. He is not afraid to skewer various sacred cows along the way towards his goal of explicating a broader fiction of the fantastic, strange fiction, that eschews any labels or genre definitions.
Rhapsody is also extremely well written. Duncan uses the central conceit of the SF Café, located in the less salubrious areas of the city of New Sodom, downtown from the more upmarket and favoured Bistro de Critique. Here old timers and young bucks kvetch and argue fine points.
I stepped through the doors of the SF Café with a borrowed copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot in my hand, expecting to find more of the same, only to find Philip K. Dick sitting at a table, obsessing over Gnostic demiurges and ersatz realities, Robert A. Heinlein across from him, spouting libertarian aphorisms but paying for Dick’s coffee. The talk at that table was as much philosophy as science, as much monsters and messiahs as spaceships and simulacra. Palmer Eldritch and Valentine Michael Smith fought, like Zoroastrian deities, over my soul.
The framework that Duncan assembles in this book to both discuss and classify SF is largely based on Delany’s essay ‘About 5,750 Words’. Duncan argues that strange fictions can only be understood in terms of their particular aesthetic modalities:
Coulda, woulda, shoulda—the words in use here are markers of modality, judgements written into the text. As the earlier references to epistemic modality might suggest, such judgements come in more hues than just the judgement of possibility. There is: epistemic modality, judgement of fact; alethic modality, judgement of possibility; deontic modality, judgement of duty; and boulomaic modality, judgement of desire/dread.
If this sounds overly complicated, fear not: Duncan explains at length, and with great finesse. He uses easy-to-understand text fragments throughout, which he then proceeds to break down and analyse according to their specific modality. Duncan is also a voracious reader of SF, and his prodigious knowledge of the genre is amply on display here.
Duncan himself is a proponent of the so-called New Weird, with such books as Vellum and Ink, and his recent collection Scruffians! Stories of Better Sodomites. Yes, Duncan is unabashedly, and transgressively, queer, and brings a lot of the same anarchic energy and offbeat humour of his books to his critical writing.
As a final note: Towards the end, Duncan discusses Bruce Sterling’s concept of ‘slipstream’ fiction as well as ‘infernokrusher’, the spoof SF literary movement curated by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. He adds, in passing: “On a hot summer day, about a thousand years ago, it seems, when I was sixteen years old, my brother stepped out into the path of a Ford Capri. Death is full of surprises.”
The final quote, fittingly, brings us back to Delany:
the crescent sun is high, the moon low;
life is not for the faint-hearted;
so why the fuck should art be?
I was completely blown over by this book. It is definitely one of the most important non-fiction SF books of recent times, and deserves to be read by anybody with any sort of abiding interest in genre fiction.
March 27, 2015
This is a single-minded, passionate analysis (and meditation, since it's not structured as a rigorous argument per se) written by a man who's clearly an enthusiast of the highest order. The overall effect: if the boundaries of genre and the imagination is a topic that fascinates you, you'll get a fair amount of mileage out of this discussion. However, for those who aren't so hung up on this problematic of categorization, this may end up feeling like a long road where the scenery never changes much.
Duncan's writing is friendly and playful, and the arguments in the book are more engaging for it. It falls somewhere between a lecture and a rant -- somewhere between the seminar and the dive bar and the coffee house -- and in the hands of a lesser writer, this might be intolerable, but Duncan always stays close to his point. It may still be abrasive for some readers, if you're looking for neutral or transparent language. For me, it felt frank and authentic.
The argument itself touches upon numerous interesting points. The breakdown of genre into commercial distinctions, idioms, stereotypes, conventions, and competing philosophies and aspirations... this is the book's first serious exploration, and it runs through the rest of the discussion. The association of science fiction with abjection, and the window into the self-negation that this implicates, is another engaging point that might be useful for further study. Those aren't the only two, but they're a good example of Duncan getting his analysis right.
Unfortunately, for such a broad reflection, Duncan's topic itself remains too narrow. I enjoyed it... gave it those three stars... but I couldn't keep myself from thinking: Is this whole book just about the author's insecurities about GENRE? A discussion about coherence of categories, about the elusiveness of authenticity, about the imagination's claim to truth... these are topics that have been handled in more subtle, less obsessive ways.
At times, it feels like Duncan is saying, "We need to escape the straitjackets of genre!" but he himself is stuck cycling through that message, unable to follow his own advice.
It flowed, it kept me thinking closely about its topic, and it had a striking payoff at the end... but it could have been condensed. I'd like to see Duncan writing a wider range of essays, addressing the aesthetic distinctions of his favorite novels, discussing topics in a smaller, tighter, more incisive way. This is a good book, very in-depth and comprehensive, but it doesn't live up to the author's intellectual promise... in its preoccupation with genre, it ends up feeling like admirable but misspent ambition.
Duncan's writing is friendly and playful, and the arguments in the book are more engaging for it. It falls somewhere between a lecture and a rant -- somewhere between the seminar and the dive bar and the coffee house -- and in the hands of a lesser writer, this might be intolerable, but Duncan always stays close to his point. It may still be abrasive for some readers, if you're looking for neutral or transparent language. For me, it felt frank and authentic.
The argument itself touches upon numerous interesting points. The breakdown of genre into commercial distinctions, idioms, stereotypes, conventions, and competing philosophies and aspirations... this is the book's first serious exploration, and it runs through the rest of the discussion. The association of science fiction with abjection, and the window into the self-negation that this implicates, is another engaging point that might be useful for further study. Those aren't the only two, but they're a good example of Duncan getting his analysis right.
Unfortunately, for such a broad reflection, Duncan's topic itself remains too narrow. I enjoyed it... gave it those three stars... but I couldn't keep myself from thinking: Is this whole book just about the author's insecurities about GENRE? A discussion about coherence of categories, about the elusiveness of authenticity, about the imagination's claim to truth... these are topics that have been handled in more subtle, less obsessive ways.
At times, it feels like Duncan is saying, "We need to escape the straitjackets of genre!" but he himself is stuck cycling through that message, unable to follow his own advice.
It flowed, it kept me thinking closely about its topic, and it had a striking payoff at the end... but it could have been condensed. I'd like to see Duncan writing a wider range of essays, addressing the aesthetic distinctions of his favorite novels, discussing topics in a smaller, tighter, more incisive way. This is a good book, very in-depth and comprehensive, but it doesn't live up to the author's intellectual promise... in its preoccupation with genre, it ends up feeling like admirable but misspent ambition.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews