In terms of sf in the past (and people should feel free to correct me here) the more commercially successful, the more denigrated sf is because that means it’s “popular.” This has changed over the years and is not necessarily true of current sf in the U.S. and certainly doesn’t reflect the sf tradition in other countries. Willingham omits even an acknowledgement that the sf tradition is vastly different overseas—one not grounded in the much-denigrated pulp tradition—nor does he acknowledge a very different model for performance in Europe. European sf and theatre have their own history and models—ones bearing little relation to those in the U.S. They simply cannot be lumped together.
Other smaller issues with the text concern his cursory knowledge of sf drama and literature. For example, he states that Čapek’s R.U.R. was the first piece of sf to concern itself with mankind’s overreliance on machines (17) makes me think that he didn’t understand what Čapek actually wrote. The robots of the play were organic creations much more akin to what we might consider clones; they weren’t machines. While R.U.R. premiered in 1922, E. M. Forester wrote “The Machine Stops” in 1909, and it directly concerns the ramifications of humanity’s over-reliance on actual machines. While I am the first to admit to the impossibility of having read everything (which does not include David Hartwell’s or John Clute’s knowledge of the genre), there is a surprising lack here of any actual understanding of how the genre works or what it contains. This is but one example of the passing and often incorrect mentions of sf literature in the text.
The mistakes made in the text are in the sweeping conceptual framework concerning theatre and sf literature alike and in the mistaken attempt to create a production manifesto for the construction of sf theatre. The model used is based too much in anti-theatrical bias and an apologetic approach that places theatre firmly beneath literature. Theatre is not some bastard off shoot of literature, nor is it a second-class art form that needs to apologize for its continued existence—nor is it better and above literature. It is simply different, with different needs, construction, and sensibilities.
Theatre has not, has never been, nor will be literature. Nor should it. What is needed is a more current examination of the explosion of truly exceptional sf theatre both here in the U.S. and abroad, an examination that better represents current theatrical practices and narrative construction as well as an examination of how sf narratives operate and have developed. But that is another discussion entirely.
Gah! I need a tequila shot for my intellect just to get that taste out of there.
* * *
Jen Gunnels’s brain cells live despite (or perhaps because of) the tequila.
The Play’s the Thing
August Schulenberg
So, this piece is supposed to be about the “practical issues involved in writing and staging science fiction.” This might seem neither an odd question to ask nor a difficult one to answer. After all, the theatre where I am a creative partner, Flux Theatre Ensemble, has frequently staged plays that might fall under a generous definition of science fiction—six out of our fourteen plays. As a playwright, I’ve written seven full-length plays that might fit comfortably into the genre.
Yet we have not considered ourselves a science fiction theatre company or deliberately set out to stage science fiction plays. I have never thought, “I’m going to write a science fiction play now.” How can I answer a question about the practical issues of staging and writing sf theatre when our relationship to the genre is so unconscious that we just call it theatre? Are the practical issues of sf theatre really just the practical issue of theatre dressed in speculative drag?
Yes and no, and the difference grows out of the media through which we tell our stories. Theatre is both a literal and symbolic act: that human body is really there but pretends to be something else. This places theatre somewhere between the literal magic of film and the symbolic power of a book. The medium of theatre is the human body and the imaginative acts it asks of its audience.
This realization is a simple one, and yet when you possess it fully (as you only sometimes do), it cannot but help but shake you (or at least it does me). The medium of theatre is the human body. What a thrilling, daunting thing. We are such stuff as these dreams are made on, and that means the realm of sf theatre is linked to film and literature but made of fundamentally different stuff.
Our expectations must, therefore, be different. The need for strong storytelling unites book, film, and play; it is the differing materials of the story where things get interesting. A science fiction book is entirely ours to imagine; so much of the joy comes from making our mind’s eye a camera leaping from the interior of our protagonist to the whole of the cosmos and back again in the blink of a sentence. An sf film, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. The camera and the editors do all that work for us; our imaginations have no room within the frame because they’re simply not needed. The joy then comes from imagining the world outside the frame, and this may be why sf films are so powerful at generating fan fiction and costumed world building; the entry point for our imaginations comes outside of the story.
With theatre, then, it is with the human body that our imaginations find their primary point of engagement. SF theatre that tries to conjure the imaginative act of a book or the detailed tell of a film will fail: that is not where its fundamental strength lies. Great sf theatre lives in the power of a real human body reacting in real time to the imaginative pressures of speculative fiction.
Take, for example, Mac Rogers’s The Honeycomb Trilogy. One of the great thrills in each of these three plays is watching an alien mind inhabit a human body. I think of Jason Howard’s magnificent struggle to be human in Advance Man, the surprise of human pleasures shared between Jason and Cotton Wright in Blast Radius, Erin Jerazol’s all-too-human grief in Sovereign. These are moments that could work in a book or film but mean something different when we imagine an alien life in the real body before us.
With Flux’s production of DEINDE, the same principle held true. We tried to evoke a feeling of the future without getting bogged down in future-ish gadgets and costumes. We depended on the audience to color in those lines because the focus needed to be on the human experience: how looping into DEINDE changed, little by little, every single aspect of that experience until the characters were, for better and worse, an entirely different thing. Mac’s violence with Bobby and connection to Jenni mean something different when you are in the same room with them, watching real bodies undergo imagined transformations.
When sf plays attempt to equal the imaginative act of a novel or the detailed literalness of a film, they may find a way (I like to believe there are no limits to what stories theatre can tell), but they will lead the audience away from the visceral heart of what theatre does. Begin with the human body in real time: how will your story change what that body means? Then let every staging choice emerge from that, and you will have a truly powerful sf play on your hands. Or, as we call it in Flux, a play.
* * *
August Schulenberg lives in Astoria, New York and is the artistic director for Flux Theatre Ensemble.
200 Significant Science Fiction Books by Women, 1984–2001
David G. Hartwell
For a separate project, I was asked to assemble a list of major books of science fiction written by women over the period 1984 to 2001. I restricted myself to works of science fiction (which eliminates certain works valued by the sf audience but published out of genre or specifically as horror or as fantasy), and novels and single author collections only, not anthologies. This list includes most of the nominees and winners of the major awards during the period but is not limited to them, nor does it include every last one. Every book here appeared on some “best of the year” or award nomination list.
1984
Chanur’s Venture, C. J. Cherryh
Divine Endurance, Gwyneth Jones
Extra(Ordinary) People, Joanna Russ
The Game Beyond, Melissa Scott
&nb
sp; Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin
Voyager in Night, C. J. Cherryh
World’s End, Joan D. Vinge
1985
Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Best of . . ., Marion Zimmer Bradley
Brightness Falls from the Air, James Tiptree, Jr.
Cuckoo’s Egg, C. J. Cherryh
Fire Watch, Connie Willis
Infinity’s Web, Sheila Finch
The Kif Strike Back, C. J. Cherryh
Phoenix in the Ashes, Joan D. Vinge
Trinity and Other Stories, Nancy Kress
1986
Artificial Things, Karen Joy Fowler
Chanur’s Homecoming, C. J. Cherryh
A Door into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski
Dreams of Dark and Light, Tanith Lee
Escape Plans, Gwyneth Jones
The Journal of Nicholas the American, Leigh Kennedy
Tales of the Quintana Roo, James Tiptree, Jr.
Venus of Dreams, Pamela Sargent
Visible Light, C. J. Cherryh
The Warrior’s Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold
1987
After Long Silence, Sherri S. Tepper
Becoming Alien, Rebecca Ore
The Best of . . ., Pamela Sargent
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, Ursula K. Le Guin
Chance and Other Gestures of the Hand of Fate, Nancy Springer
Dawn, Octavia Butler
In Conquest Born, C. S. Friedman
A Mask for the General, Lisa Goldstein
Mindplayers, Pat Cadigan
Night’s Sorceries, Tanith Lee
Adulthood Rites, Octavia Butler
An Alien Light, Nancy Kress
Busy About the Tree of Life, Pamela Zoline
(US title: The Heat Death of the Universe)
Catspaw, Joan D. Vinge
Crown of Stars, James Tiptree, Jr.
Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
Falling Free, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Healer’s War, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
The Hidden Side Of The Moon, Joanna Russ
Hellspark, Janet Kagan
Kairos, Gwyneth Jones
Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Elizabeth Moon
The Silent City, Élisabeth Vonarburg
1989
Being Alien, Rebecca Ore
Borders of Infinity, Lois McMaster Bujold
Children of the Wind, Kate Wilhelm
The City, Not Long After, Pat Murphy
Falcon, Emma Bull
Grass, Sherri S. Tepper
Heritage of Flight, Susan M Schwartz
Imago, Octavia Butler
Patterns, Pat Cadigan
Rimrunners, C. J. Cherryh
1990
Arachne, Lisa Mason
Brain Rose, Nancy Kress
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree, Jr.
Lunar Activity, Elizabeth Moon
Points of Departure, Pat Murphy
Polar City Blues, Katherine Kerr
Raising the Stones, Sherri S. Tepper
The Silver Kiss, Annette Curtis Klause
The Start of the End of It All and Other Stories, Carol Emshwiller
The Vor Game, Lois McMaster Bujold
Winterlong, Elizabeth Hand
1991
Bone Dance, Emma Bull
Heavy Time, C. J. Cherryh
Mirabile, Janet Kagan
Reef Song, Carol Severance
Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler
Synners, Pat Cadigan
The Ragged World, Judith Moffett
White Queen, Gwyneth Jones
A Woman Of The Iron People, Eleanor Arnason
1992
Æstival Tide, Elizabeth Hand
And the Angels Sing, Kate Wilhelm
China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh
The Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
Hellburner, C. J. Cherryh
Home by the Sea, Pat Cadigan
In the Mother’s Land, Élisabeth Vonarburg
Jaran, Kate Elliott
Lost Futures, Lisa Tuttle
Unwillingly to Earth, Pauline Ashwell
1993
Alien Bootlegger and Other Stories, Rebecca Ore
The Aliens of Earth, Nancy Kress
Ammonite, Nicola Griffith
Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress
Brother Termite, Patricia Anthony
Chimera, Mary Rosenblum
Crash Course, Wihelmina Baird
The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall, Anne McCaffrey
Dirty Work, Pat Cadigan
The Drylands, Mary Rosenblum
Icarus Descending, Elizabeth Hand
Impossible Things, Connie Willis
Mutagenesis, Helen Collins
Rainbow Man, M. J. Engh
Ring of Swords, Eleanor Arnason
Virtual Girl, Amy Thomson
1994
Alien Influences, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Beggars & Choosers, Nancy Kress
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Foreigner, C. J. Cherryh
The Furies, Suzy McKee Charnas
The Girl Who Heard Dragons, Anne McCaffrey
Larque on the Wing, Nancy Springer
Mirror Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold
North Wind, Gwyneth Jones
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
Queen City Jazz, Kathleen Ann Goonan
Summer of Love, Lisa Mason
Trouble and Her Friends, Melissa Scott
1995
Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia Butler
The Color of Distance, Amy Thomson
Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Gaia’s Toys, Rebecca Ore
Invader, C. J. Cherryh
Legacies, Alison Sinclair
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse, Kit Reed
Other Nature, Stephanie Smith
Primary Inversion, Catherine Asaro
Reluctant Voyagers, Élisabeth Vonarburg
Rider at the Gate, C. J. Cherryh
Shadow Man, Melissa Scott
Slow River, Nicola Griffith
1996
Beggars Ride, Nancy Kress
The Bones of Time, Kathleen Ann Goonan
Cetaganda, Lois McMaster Bujold
City of Diamond, Jane Emerson (pseud of Doris Egan)
Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, Lois McMaster Bujold
Inheritor, C. J. Cherryh
Looking for the Mahdi, N. Lee Wood
Mainline, Deborah Christian
Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold
Night Sky Mine, Melissa Scott
Reclamation, Sarah Zettel
Remnant Population, Elizabeth Moon
Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities, Mary Rosenblum
Unlocking the Air and Other Stories, Ursula K. Le Guin
Whiteout, Sage Walker
1997
The Arbitrary Placement of Walls, Martha Soukup
The Dazzle of Day, Molly Gloss
Deception Well, Linda Nagata
An Exchange of Hostages, Susan R. Matthews
Fool’s War, Sarah Zettel
Glimmering, Elizabeth Hand
Mississippi Blues, Kathleen Ann Goonan
Mother Grimm, Catherine Wells
Once a Hero, Elizabeth Moon
Opalite Moon, Denise Vitola
1998
Beaker’s Dozen, Nancy Kress
Beholder’s Eye, Julie Czerneda
Black Glass, Karen Joy Fowler
The Children Star, Joan Slonczewski
Flesh and Gold, Phyllis Gotlieb
Halfway Human, Carolyn Ives Gilman
In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker
Last Summer At Mars Hill, Elizabeth Hand
Mission Child, Maureen McHugh
Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler
Playing God, Sa
rah Zettel
The Shapes of Their Hearts, Melissa Scott
To Say Nothing of The Dog, Connie Willis
Vast, Linda Nagata
1999
The Annunciate, Severna Park
A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
Code Of Conduct, Kristine Smith
The Conqueror’s Child, Suzy McKee Charnas
Precursor, C. J. Cherryh
Promised Land, Pat Cadigan
Silver Screen, Justina Robson
Sky Coyote, Kage Baker
Through Alien Eyes, Amy Thomson
2000
Crescent City Rhapsody, Kathleen Ann Goonan
The Fresco, Sherri S. Tepper
Midnight Robber, Nalo Hopkinson
Murphy’s Gambit, Syne Mitchell
Probability Moon, Nancy Kress
The Quantum Rose, Catherine Asaro
Sea as Mirror, Tess Williams
Sister Emily’s Lightship and Other Stories, Jane Yolen
The Telling, Ursula K. Le Guin
2001
Alien Taste, Wen Spencer
Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones
Defender, C. J. Cherryh
Dervish Is Digital, Pat Cadigan
The Ghost Sister, Liz Williams
In the Company of Others, Julie Czerneda
Limit of Vision, Linda Nagata
Nekropolis, Maureen McHugh
A Paradigm of Earth, Candas Jane Dorsey
Passage, Connie Willis
Probability Sun, Nancy Kress
At the Sign of the Fanlight Window; or, H.P. Lovecraft, Bibliopole
Henry Wessells
A critical fiction, for S.T. Joshi on the occasion of his visit to New York, 3 October 2012.
Typed Letter, signed. One page, on verso of a proof illustration. Undated, but: New York, 1925.
Transcribed:
2 Clarkash-Ton
3,4,5 It is all Cook’s fault. He descended from the mountains to the throne of Mammon
6 a fortnight ago, & dragged yr obdt sarvant to Kennerley’s sale of the Americana
7 library of a Phila. fossil. We bought everything we wnated & I have pass’d the
8 interval in an ecstasy of typing. Cook will print 300 copies of the first catalogue