Guest Post by Amy Kathleen Ryan + Giveaway: Signed ARC of Glow

Hi everyone! I fell asleep early last night and I wasn’t able to post this. Sorry for the delay!

It’s finally Friday/Saturday which means that summer classes are over! I’ll be reading Possession, Solstice, Exodus, Zenith, Blood Red Road, Dark Inside (of there’s still time) and maybe some of the books Kai featured!

Science Fiction is your Friend

Take a look at the following list, and try to pick out which of these novels is science fiction:

Utopia, by Sir Thomas More, (published in 1516)

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, (1818)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain (1889)

I’ll come clean. That was a trick question. They’re all science fiction. In the first, a traveler alights on a previously unknown world to find fantastical delights of new technologies and ingenious methods of ruling and controlling the populace. The next is about how a mad scientist goes too far, with disastrous consequences. And the last one tells the story of a time traveler from the future confronting the irrationalism of a bygone age. Some of you might have been thinking, “But those are works of classic literature, not science fiction.” My response would be, “Why can’t they be both?”

It’s a joke among science fiction writers that once sci-fi gets super awesome, the literary establishment reclassifies it as “literature,” as if science fiction couldn’t be literary. Titles like Orwell’s 1984, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Huxley’s Brave New World are appropriated by the stiff-lipped literati with the explanation that, “They’re not about technology.” When someone says this to me, and they say it all the time, I know that I am speaking with a person who has never read serious science fiction. Otherwise, they would know that science fiction is never about technology. Like Austen’s genteel English countryside, like Melville’s threatening gray-dark seas, like Pasternak’s frigid Russian steppes, technology provides the setting for science fiction, and nothing more. Lately people are crazy for fiction about future dystopias like The Hunger Games. Let's not forget, though, that dystopian fiction has always been a subset of science fiction--perhaps the most interesting one. And if we think about our favorite dystopias, when have they ever been about the technologies of oppression that make the stories possible? Never! Dystopian fiction is about how the individual struggles against that oppression. (Perhaps this is why the genre seems to appeal to geeks and nerds.)

If science fiction, (or dystopian fiction) isn’t about technology, then, what is it about? That depends on the writer. For Kurt Vonnegut, science fiction is about the absurdity of having a rational mind in an irrational universe. For Octavia Butler, it’s about the individual struggling for meaning against changing circumstances she is increasingly ill equipped to understand. For Bradbury, it’s about the confusion of holding onto one’s identity against the insane backdrop of an unpredictable world. But ask another reader about these writers and you’ll get a different answer. Like all great fiction, great sci-fi examines the human condition through its own specialized lens.

Well then, is sci-fi character driven, like all great literature? That would be the question of the fiction writer with a freshly acquired MFA diploma tucked under her tweed-bedecked arm. I’ll answer that question when someone can provide me with a satisfactory explanation of what “character driven” means. Does it mean that nothing ever acts upon characters from the outside world? Are there no wars, no random events, no chance encounters in character driven fiction? This would disqualify Leo Tolstoy and Victor Hugo, so that can’t be right. I admit to being purposefully difficult here, but it’s to prove a point. It is true that in science fiction, characters find themselves acted upon by events external to themselves. This is inevitable, because otherwise what would be the point of the rocket ships, the time machines, the alien invaders? But that doesn’t mean that science fiction writers are creating uninteresting, two-dimensional characters. The good writers, like Philip K. Dick, create characters that are morally complex, often unlikeable, and usually much more fascinating than their futuristic backdrops.

Another common complaint about science fiction is that most of it isn’t very good. To this I would counter by paraphrasing science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon: “Of course ninety-percent of science fiction is crap. Ninety-percent of everything is crap.” There are plenty of examples of science fiction that just don’t cut the mustard. They’re silly stories about boring people doing unbelievable things in an unfamiliar setting. But every so often, along comes an Ursula Le Guin or a Doris Lessing to elevate the genre to something sublime. How common are the great writers in mainstream fiction? Not too common either, I’d say.

The best science fiction creates an unfamiliar context in which the writer can explore big ideas about human society and the individual’s place in it. Great science fiction is philosophical, psychological, and political. Think of George Orwell’s 1984 and the way members of his dystopia were being observed by a panoptical infrastructure and manipulated by carefully designed sound-bites. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale created a society that combined many of the indignities suffered by real women all over the globe in order to expose the psychological effect of strict gender roles. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World imagined a milieu where people were so softened by instant gratification that they were incapable of tolerating emotional pain, and so they were equally incapable of experiencing joy. Each of these writers was looking at the changing world around them, recognizing how it was affecting themselves and their fellow human beings, and writing about it. This is the essence of dystopian fiction, the heart of science fiction.

This is why I am proud to call myself a science fiction writer, let the establishment be damned. My humble little novel, Glow, which is book one in the forthcoming Sky Chasers series from St. Martin’s Press, (September 2011) will participate in that under-appreciated science fiction tradition, pitting the individual against a dystopia in a way that reveals something interesting about the society we live in today. Whatever genre I'm writing, I try to be as literary as I can be, and so I hope that at least some people will see my books as "Literary Science Fiction," a term I believe has been sorely lacking in our discourse.  During Dystopian Domination, let's all embrace that poor abused term, science fiction! Let's re-appropriate it for ourselves. Let's appreciate the great works of literature sci-fi has given us! In other words: Geeks of the world unite!!!

Amy Kathleen Ryan is the author of GLOW, book one in THE SKY CHASERS trilogy, (St. Martin’s Press, September 2011) She is also the author of Vibes and Zen and Xander Undone. She lives in Colorado with her family. Visit her website at www.amykathleenryan.com.

Giveaway: Signed ARC of Glow

What if you were bound for a new world, about to pledge your life to someone you'd been promised to since birth, and one unexpected violent attack made survival—not love—the issue?

Out in the murky nebula lurks an unseen enemy: the New Horizon. On its way to populate a distant planet in the wake of Earth's collapse, the ship's crew has been unable to conceive a generation to continue its mission. They need young girls desperately, or their zealous leader's efforts will fail. Onboard their sister ship, the Empyrean, the unsuspecting families don't know an attack is being mounted that could claim the most important among them...

Fifteen-year-old Waverly is part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space; she was born on the Empyrean, and the large farming vessel is all she knows. Her concerns are those of any teenager—until Kieran Alden proposes to her. The handsome captain-to-be has everything Waverly could ever want in a husband, and with the pressure to start having children, everyone is sure he's the best choice. Except for Waverly, who wants more from life than marriage—and is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

But when the Empyrean faces sudden attack by their assumed allies, they quickly find out that the enemies aren't all from the outside.

Glow is the most riveting series debut since The Hunger Games, and promises to thrill and challenge readers of all ages.

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