UND Provost Eric Link lectures on what science fiction is and what defines it as a literary genre
How does a person with an interest, a drive and a passion for a subject that is often thought about as just aliens, spaceships and ray guns become a teacher and scholar of the field?
When it comes to the genre of science fiction, Eric Link, UNDs provost and vice president for academic affairs, is a living answer to that question. Last week during his Randy Rasmussen Memorial Lecture at the Chester Fritz Library, Link outlined how he turned his interest in science fiction into an area of expertise on which he now teaches, writes and lectures.
In some ways, I owe my career in literature to science fiction, Link explained. I was not a big literature fan growing up. I was not an English major as an undergraduate, but I was always that guy in junior high school who had the science fiction or fantasy novel and always read it in study hall.
The main topic of Links lecture was on how science fiction film and literature are impacted by contemporary techno-philosophical ideas, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the technological singularity hypothesis. But the 50 people attending the lecture and dozens participating online also learned about the path he took to turn a childhood interest into an important aspect of his academic career.
Link is not only a scholar of science fiction (SF), but also a self-professed fan with a fondness for SF-related art, movies and SF and fantasy computer games, such as Skyrim and Fallout. Growing up, he was also a weekend player of the fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons.
As evidence of his self-proclaimed nerd status, Link gave attendees a glimpse of his Live long and prosper socks featuring the likeness of the late Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock on the TV series Star Trek.
However, Link discovered early on that turning his interest into a key part of his academic career wouldnt be easy.
During my graduate program, I had not worked on science fiction, and I was never encouraged to work on science fiction, Link said.
I was told I would not get a job if I worked on science fiction, and that was fine, he continued. I accepted it. I actually worked in 19th century American literary naturalism, and I love that, too.
After earning his doctorate in American literature from Purdue University, Link took his first tenure-track position at a university where he proposed teaching a course on science fiction, which had never been taught there. He recalled how the proposal was received by the departments faculty.
He was told, We dont do that here.
While Link accepted the defeat, he remained annoyingly persistent about teaching a science fiction course.
I kept bringing it back, semester after semester, he said. Eventually, they caved, more just to make me go away. By about my third or fourth year, I finally had a science fiction course to teach. The course filled, and Ive been teaching it ever since. The students love it.
Much of Links talk was devoted to explaining how science fiction uniquely differs from other genres of literature. For example, someone reading the phrase her world exploded in a Jane Austen novel would know it was a metaphor related to a traumatic event and the ensuing catastrophe it caused.
But in the movie Star Wars, Princess Leias home planet, Alderaan, did literally explode when blasted by the Empires Death Star.
When youre reading a science fiction novel, you cannot immediately jump to the metaphorical interpretation, Link explained.
Link discussed the idea of subjunctivity as described by the science fiction author and theorist Samuel Delany, who explained how the experience of reading SF is different from reading journalism, naturalistic fiction or fantasy . Delany said journalism speaks to things that happened; naturalistic fiction depicts things that could have happened; and fantasy shows things that could never happen.
Fantasy could never be, was not, will not be, Link noted. It can be entertaining; it can be great literature, but its completely unfamiliar.
In contrast, Link said Delany saw science fiction as leaning in the direction of extrapolating a future condition.
Heres what we know about current science and what would happen if we extrapolated future conditions based on what we know, he explained. Thats an interesting distinction, and its been quite influential in the (science fiction) field.
According to Link, Delany is suggesting that theres something about reading science fiction that forces us into a condition of estrangement.
We are de-familiarized from the world were reading about, whether in a small degree or a large degree, he said. We are asked, as a reader, to make sense of the rules of that estranged world.
Theres some intellectual work that is triggered by this confrontation with the strange that causes the interesting and dynamic reading of a science fiction tale.
While many might loosely identify science fiction as being about ray guns, aliens and spaceships, Link said there are eight categories into which most works can be placed in terms of their narrative, structure and convention. They are:
Link shared the idea of Sturgeons Law, the notion that as with almost any form of art perhaps 90 percent of whats produced in the realm of science fiction isnt necessarily masterful or timeless. However, there are authors who could be considered geniuses in the field, such as Gene Wolfe, author of The Book of the New Sun and Ursula Le Guin, who wrote The Left Hand of Darkness.
Link compared Wolfe to Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, describing Wolfes work as long and very challenging, but also as a brilliant masterpiece that explores a future world in which the sun is dying.
As Link concluded his lecture, it was clear hed come a long way from being the high school student forced to read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
It was nearly the death of me, he joked. I just couldnt take it. I had no intention at all of going into literature as a career.
But here he is.
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On becoming a science fiction expert - UND Today - University of North Dakota