Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-02T00:10:26.605Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - In the File Drawer Labeled “Science Fiction”: Genre after the Age of the Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2023

Robert T. Tally Jr
Affiliation:
Texas State University, San Marcos
Get access

Summary

In “Science Fiction,” a 1965 essay later included in his Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, Kurt Vonnegut complained of having been unjustly labeled a science-fiction writer. He said that reviewers had placed his work in that generic category primarily because machines featured so prominently in his first book, Player Piano, although Vonnegut himself insisted that the novel was based loosely on the real persons, places, and events he witnessed while working at a General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York, in the early 1950s. True, Player Piano included some extrapolations from then-current technology, and it was set in the near future; as noted in the foreword, it was “not a book about what is, but about what could be.” That distinction itself might be enough to move one’s writings from the genre of literary realism to that of science fiction, but then the postwar period in which Player Piano appeared was time when, in the United States especially, people were very much concerned with the nation’s possibilities, not merely its quotidian realities. Hence, one might argue that the theme of the book was quite timely indeed. But the question is not so much whether a sort of realism or a more speculative form was better suited to capture the spirit of the age; rather, for Vonnegut, the question was whether one form of writing could be taken seriously at all. In his essay, Vonnegut lamented that, by referring to his work as science fiction, literary critics had consigned it to a category which would assure that it could not be viewed or valued as literature. “I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer label ‘science fiction’ ever since,” Vonnegut declared, “and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”

The humorous, thoroughly Vonnegutian comment reveals his anxieties about being pigeon-holed as a genre writer, and he goes on to concede that, in most science fiction he knows, the actual writing is pretty bad. However, in the same essay, he predicted that so-called science fiction would become increasingly part of the mainstream as more writers incorporated the effects of technology into their literary fiction.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Critical Situation
Vexed Perspectives in Postmodern Literary Studies
, pp. 71 - 86
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×