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Tag Archives: John Clute

Roots and Branches

04 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by Paul Kincaid in books, history of ideas, science fiction

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Ben Jonson, Brian Aldiss, Francis Bacon, Francis Godwin, Henry Wessells, John Clute, Joseph Hall, Margaret Cavendish, Samuel Gott, Thomas More

Yesterday evening, I began dipping into A Conversation Larger than the Universe by Henry Wessells, a very personal history of science fiction, or, more broadly, of fantastika. It’s a wonderful book, engagingly written and delightfully illustrated, with just the right level of idiosyncracy to convince you that you are engaging in a long conversation with someone who is widely informed but also has his own distinctive views and tastes. It’s a lovely book, I recommend it strongly.

But I have one small niggle, set off by an almost throw-away remark. He comments, aligning himself with Brian Aldiss and John Clute on this, that fantastika had its roots in the Gothic.

No!

This is something that Aldiss began peddling when he started to claim that Frankenstein was the first work of sf. He very carefully worded his definition of science fiction in order to make this case. His definition has long been superceded, but you still see the claim about Frankenstein being trotted out. Most recently, given that Frankenstein was first published exactly 200 years ago, I’m seeing people suddenly announcing that science fiction is now 200 years old. Nonsense!

And Clute’s claim, in Pardon This Intrusion, that fantastika began with the French Revolution is part of the same thing. (I remember arguing in a review of that book that the French Revolution wasn’t the start of anything, but the end point of a process, the delegitimizing of a particular form of aristocratic rule, that began over 100 years earlier with the execution of Charles I. If Clute said that fantastika began with the English Revolution I might be slightly more inclined to agree with him.)

Let’s take fantastika as catch-all term for a variety of non-realist literatures that include science fiction, fantasy, horror, probably postmodernism and a few other less readily identifiable forms. To say that they began in the Gothic, that their roots lie there, is just plain wrong. It would, I think, be more accurate to say that the Gothic was when the various branches of fantastika began to sprout out from the trunk. That’s not the whole story, of course. Postmodernism is a form of the fantastic that only began be a distinctive form in the last half-century or so (and, to make the arboreal analogy more complex than it needs to be, was possibly grafted on to the root stock from elsewhere). In other words, I’m saying that the Gothic was when the separate elements of fantastika began to take on their separate and distinctive forms, but it was not when they were born.

To say that a branch is born when it separates out from the tree trunk is nonsense, trunk and branch are of one substance, and that’s what I feel about the various elements of fantastika.

The trunk itself, when science fiction and satire and horror and fantasy were all inextricably united, probably grew during that radical reimagining of our place in the world that was the renaissance and the reformation. But the roots reach back much further, to medieval legends of Cockayne and Christian symbolism and ancient Greek novels and all sorts of other places. Fantastika is a world tree, its roots possibly reach back to the very beginnings of human consciousness. But its emergence into the light, its rise above ground into a shape that we can recognise today, happened long before the rather petty little upset in literary history that was the Gothic.

All of which is an expression of my ongoing distress at a rather pernicious view of literary history that Aldiss foisted on the sf critical community. But to say that science fiction only began with the Gothic is to dismiss a whole string of earlier work that was essential to the making of sf:

The first Utopia – Thomas More 1516
The first anti-utopia – Mundus Alter et Idem, Joseph Hall, 1605
The first aliens – Newes from the new world discover’d in the Moone, Ben Jonson, 1620
The first scientific society – New Atlantis, Francis Bacon, 1627
The first mechanical voyage to the moon – The man in the moone, Francis Godwin, 1638
The first novel set in the future – Nova Solyma, Samuel Gott, 1648
The first parallel world (with distinct postmodern elements) – The Blazing World, Margaret Cavendish, 1666 (Aldiss dismisses Cavendish as unreadable, she is not.)

And so on. I would hate to say that any of these was the first science fiction work, but collectively they constitute an active and engaging science fiction long before the Gothic came along.

What I’m saying is, there’s a need to see the whole tree rather than just concentrate on the branches

Reprint: John Clute

20 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Paul Kincaid in Uncategorized

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Arthur C Clarke, Dave Garnett, David Langford, Edward James, Farah Mendlesohn, Garry Kilworth, Gene Wolfe, George Hay, Iain Banks, John Clute, John Grant, John Radford, Judith Clute, Ken MacLeod, Lisa Tuttle, m john harrison, Mary Gentle, Maurice Goldsmith, Mike Moir, Neil Gaiman, Northrop Frye, Pamela Zoline, Pat Cadigan, Peter Nicholls, Scott Bradfield, Thomas M. Disch, William Gibson

This Appreciation of John Clute was published in the Loncon 3 Programme Book, where he was, of course, Guest of Honour: Continue reading →

Reprint: Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne

01 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Paul Kincaid in science fiction

≈ 2 Comments

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Damon Knight, Gene Wolfe, John Clute, R.A. Lafferty

This is another of my In Short columns. It appeared in Vector 275, Spring 2014. Continue reading →

Reprint: Exogamy

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Paul Kincaid in science fiction

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Alex Raymond, Arthur C Clarke, Claude Veillot, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edmond Hamilton, Gardner Dozois, George T. Chesney, Gregory Benford, Gwyneth Jones, H. Beam Piper, H.G. Wells, Harry Turtledove, Ian McDonald, Jack Finney, Jack Williamson, John Clute, John Collier, Octavia Butler, Peter Hoeg, Philip Francis Nowlan, Roger Zelazny, Thomas M. Disch

This column from my Cognitive Mapping series, which first appeared in Vector 202, November-December 1998, might well be seen as a companion to the column on Aliens, looking at another aspect of our enduring fascination with the other. Continue reading →

Analysis

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by Paul Kincaid in science fiction

≈ 6 Comments

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Christopher Priest, Connie Willis, David Hartwell, James Morrow, John Banville, John Clute, Kathryn Cramer, Kathryn Morrow, Pamela Zoline, Simon R. Green, Tom Godwin, Tony Daniel, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vernor Vinge, Wyn Wachhorst, Yevgeny Zamiatin

I had always planned to end my run of daily posts on this blog on my birthday, but illness meant shifting it a day earlier.

I had a couple of things in mind when I started this exercise back at the beginning of August. The first and simplest reason was that I have, over the years, produced an awful lot of material that has only ever appeared in print media. So I thought it would be useful, for my purposes as much as anything, to start putting in online. It’s a start only. I’ve now put online a reasonable if random selection of reviews, articles, columns and interviews that have appeared in Vector, New York Review of Science Fiction, Foundation, various fanzines and convention publications over the last 14 years. It’s not everything from that period by any means, and I’ll periodically put up others over the next weeks and months, I just don’t intend to do it on such an intensive basis. As for earlier material: I’d like to do the same for that, but in those cases it will require scanning or retyping the pieces, and at the moment I have far too many other things on my mind.

The second reason was to revitalise the blog. I’ve never been systematic in putting pieces up here. At times, months can pass between posts. My intentions for the blog have always been low-key, but I had never intended such neglect. So I thought this would give me a regular pattern of posting for a while, with other reprintings waiting in the wings to sustain a more regular presence. And that worked, rather better than expected. Regular traffic on the blog has increased (a side effect, but welcome), and it has also inspired more original pieces from me than I think I’ve managed in any similar period for a long time.

So far, so good, therefore. But then … Continue reading →

The State of the Culture

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Paul Kincaid in science fiction

≈ 9 Comments

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Constant Niewenhuy, David Haddock, David Smith, George Orwell, Greg Pickersgill, Iain Banks, Jim Clarke, Joe Norman, John Clute, John Fowles, Jude Roberts, Ken MacLeod, m john harrison, Martyn Colebrook, Moira Martingale, Nic Clear, Nick Hubble, Robert Duggan, Tony Keen, Ursula K. Le Guin

I spent Wednesday at the one-day symposium on Iain Banks’s Culture novels held at Brunel University.

At least, I spent part of the day there. With the best will in the world, Brunel is not an easy place to get to from Folkestone. I had to get the early morning commuter High Speed train, which meant seeing again all those pasty, blurry-eyed, unsmiling faces I used to see every day. From St Pancras, it’s a straightforward trip on the Metropolitan line to Uxbridge (enlivened by Maureen phoning to say that Kate Keen reported swans on the line), but that was when the fun started. The Brunel website suggests it’s a 15-minute walk to the campus, after walking for five minutes I stopped someone to ask the way only to be told it was at least another 20 minutes and I’d be best advised to catch a bus. I’m glad I did, the route was not actually as straightforward as it seemed, I’m sure I would have missed the right turning. And having reached the campus, later than anticipated, I still had to find the venue. The Antonin Artaud building was all I knew. By chance, it was a student open day and there were plenty of student guides about. So I asked one; blank look, never heard of it. I tried another, another blank look, but this one at least had a list on his clipboard. It’s in Zone D, down that way. I went down that way, and lo, eventually found myself in Zone D, and a board listed Antonin Artaud (it just had to be Artaud, didn’t it?) with an arrow pointing left. Only to find another board with an arrow pointing back the way I’d come. Eventually, after following a peculiar zigzag course that I’m sure was far from optimal, I came upon one of those typical fairly featureless university buildings at the other end of a car park, and there, hidden by the trees, I finally saw the name, Antonin Artaud. Continue reading →

Reprint: Mappa Mundi

23 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by Paul Kincaid in books, reviews

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John Clute, Justina Robson, Zadie Smith

Today’s review, of Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson, first appeared in Foundation 84, Spring 2002. Continue reading →

Reprint: Throwing Away the Orthodoxy

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by Paul Kincaid in books

≈ 2 Comments

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Aldous Huxley, Arthur C Clarke, Bob Shaw, Brian Aldiss, Christopher Priest, Ed Bryant, Eric Frank Russell, Eric Rohmer, Gardner Dozois, George Orwell, George R.R. Martin, Graham Greene, Graham Swift, H.G. Wells, Ian McEwan, J.G. Ballard, Jack Dann, Jerry Pournelle, John Clute, John Fowles, John Jarrold, John Sladek, Kazuo Ishiguro, m john harrison, Martin Amis, Olaf Stapledon, Peter Ackroyd, Philip K. Dick, Rebecca West, Richard Cowper, Roz Kaveney, Thomas Huxley, Thomas M. Disch, William Boyd

I’ve written a lot about Chris Priest over the years, and most of it has ended up in What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction or Call And Response, but there is one major piece that hasn’t been reprinted. It is this interview I did with him in 1999, not long after the publication of The Extremes and The Dream Archipelago. The interview was first published in Vector 206, July-August 1999.

THROWING AWAY THE ORTHODOXY
A conversation about sex, innocence and science fiction

Paul Kincaid:  Let’s start at the end. You have just brought out all the Dream Archipelago stories collected in one volume. Why have you gone back to that?

 Christopher Priest:  Well, there’s a bad reason and a good reason.

Let’s have the bad reason. Continue reading →

Reprint: Appleseed

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by Paul Kincaid in books, reviews

≈ 1 Comment

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Gene Wolfe, John Clute, Samuel R. Delany, Stephen Baxter

I included an article about John Clute’s Appleseed in my collection What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, but before that I reviewed the novel for Foundation. It appeared in Foundation 83, Autumn 2001: Continue reading →

Texts and Contexts

21 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by Paul Kincaid in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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Adam Roberts, critical theory, Damien Broderick, Darko Suvin, Francis Godwin, Henry Neville, J.G. Ballard, John Clute, Margaret Cavendish

Back at the beginning of the month I read a book called Speaking with the Dead for review in The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, even though the book has practically nothing to do with science fiction or fantasy. It is devoted to a rather esoteric point of New Historicism (the whole book is built around one sentence in a work by Stephen Greenblatt) and I don’t want to say much more about it here since the review will be appearing in JFA. But I found myself considering one intriguing question in relation to the study of sf prompted by this book: why does so little sf criticism employ the tools of New Historicism? Continue reading →

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Adam Roberts Arthur C. Clarke Award Arthur C Clarke books of the year Brian Aldiss Christopher Priest David Mitchell E.L. Doctorow Frederik Pohl Gene Wolfe George Orwell H.G. Wells Harlan Ellison Helen MacInnes Henry James Iain Banks Ian McEwan Ian Watson Isaac Asimov J.G. Ballard James Tiptree Jr John Banville John Clute John Crowley John W. Campbell Kate Atkinson Keith Roberts Kim Stanley Robinson Lucius Shepard Martin Amis Mary Shelley Maureen Kincaid Speller m john harrison nina allan Patrick Leigh Fermor Philip K. Dick Robert Heinlein Robert Holdstock Robert Silverberg Russell Hoban Samuel R. Delany Stephen Baxter Steve Erickson Thomas M. Disch Thomas More Ursula K. Le Guin William Boyd William Gibson William Shakespeare Winston Churchill

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