Alternative-Histories and Science Fiction
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Is Michael Chabon's award-winning alternative-history The Yiddish Policemen's Union really science fiction?

Not on your life… but in 2008 it took out three major sci-fi awards for best novel. This website has a policy of accepting popular opinion on what is and isn't science fiction, however, the time has come to speak out.

First off, Chabon is a great writer and YPU is a fine piece of literature. Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a number of "genre-bending" books accepted into the sci-fi family that, under close and diligent scrutiny, are really just-plain-fantasies.

To make matters worse, Chabon's book is just the tip of a very worrying iceberg. The genre seems hell-bent on ignoring truly great sci-fi novels from talented mainstream writers (e.g. Cormac McCarthy's The Road), while at the same time promoting any old dross its favourite sons trot out as science fiction. It is not only time for a change, but the very integrity of the genre is on the line.

Let's get our heads around what differentiates science fiction from fantasy… possibilities versus impossibilities. A 'hard sci-fi' writer is well-versed in ways of science. He/she seizes on plausible scientific theory and extrapolates it to typically intriguing ends. Many of the populists and escapists have little knowledge of science at all. They are normally happy to know that space travel, time-tripping and other scientific speculations are theoretically possible… subsequently providing the basis for a rip-roaringly good yarn.

Fantasy writers, on the other hand, simply make things up. Imagination is their key tool. They have the freedom to create universes where no rules apply, other than those they themselves create. Impossibility is not an issue, as their readers expect pure escapism. Magic and sorcery are commonplace. The boundaries are unlimited.

The line, admittedly, is often blurred. The Star Wars movie franchise has accumulated mega-bucks with a highly implausible science-fictional look and feel. If you had to plop it into one camp or the other, however, it is best placed in the science fiction genre. It is a "science fantasy" that is commonly perceived as sci-fi. HG Wells used to refer to many of his early novels as "scientifical fanatasies". It is hard to argue with the 'look and feel' definition.

Getting back to Chabon, his novel is a 'what if' focussing on Franklin Roosevelt's unrealised proposal to establish a temporary Jewish settlement on the Alaska panhandle in the lead-up to WWII. So where is the science? It didn't happen and the novel is nothing more than a lengthy speculation on where it might have gone. Hardly science fiction… very fantastical. The same can be said of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004) about anti-Semite Charles A Lindbergh managing to beat FDR in the 1940 US presidential election.

So it seems that today just about anything labelled as 'alternative-history' is automatically foist into the science fiction category. Nothing could be further from the truth. Genre critics of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) often argue that a bump on the head is hardly a plausible foundation for time travel. But Twain (i.e. Samuel Clemens) lived well before Einstein and the means of time travel was but a mere adjunct to the real story. Blatant Yankeeism aside, Twain's story is one of technology… and, more specifically, using the past to promote the endless possibilities of the future. Sci-fi through and through.

On the social side, a couple of Twain's contemporaries took the possibilities of a brighter future in astoundingly prophetic directions. Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy catapulted its protagonist into the year 2000 through hypnosis. While the means of time travel were scientifically implausible, the socialist future depicted captured the hearts and minds of countless Americans. In response British artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris wrote News From Nowhere (1890) - one of the greatest naturalist works ever. While neither was strictly an 'alternative-history', both are outstanding examples of extrapolating the social sciences into coherent and highly influential science fictional works.

In short, looking to the future from a socially scientific perspective can definitely be regarded as science fictional. Retreating to the past with little or no scientific explanation is simply fantastical. A host of classic science fiction works find the protagonists going back in time to influence history with technology or contemporary knowledge--including Lest Darkness Fall (1939) by L Sprague de Camp, Bring the Jubilee (1955) by Ward Moore and even Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South (1992). The basic premises may be somewhat fantastical, but in the end the science fictional elements are there for all to see.

The same cannot be said for all established classics of the sub-genre. At the risk of being burned at the stake, Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962) contains very few genuinely science fictional elements. A major award winner in its day, it has since been overtaken by the eminently more science fictional Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) as the novel of choice with PKD fans. As for the movie-makers, even some of Dick's relatively minor short fiction is proving more popular with modern sci-fi audiences.

In recent times the so-called 'genre-benders' have been making it tough to discern the real thing from the pretenders. 'Steampunk' supremo Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates (1983) starts with a conventional time-tripping scientist scenario--but quickly spreads its wings to include fantastical sorcerers, werewolves, famous poets and other oddities. Closer to the sci-fi mark is Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine (1990) featuring primitive Victorian-age computers and Neal Stephenson's ultra-hip Cryptonomicon (1999) about code-cracking and cosmic time connections. Both feature enough techno-brilliance and excitement to qualify as genuine science fiction stunners.

Through no fault of the author's, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) is one of the most recent examples of a topnotch genre writer's work being unjustly pigeonholed as sci-fi. A fantastic alternative history about a world dominated by Islam and Buddhism after plague wipes out Europe in the 14th century, it is nevertheless almost pure speculation with science fictional elements in dire scarcity. Read it by all means, but don't expect sci-fi.

In the past sci-fi has been all too willing to accept all manner of novels under its banner in a search for literary credibility. The genre has long-since moved on from this dilemma. Talented writers regularly make valuable contributions to the genre. Of course, like any other literary classification, there are some who do it very well and others who simply exist.

Alternative-histories in particular should not be automatically lumped in with the sci-fi genre. It is a sub-genre that primarily lends itself to both the fantasy and sci-fi genres. Contemporary critics, publishers and award organisations should take great care when assigning labels to any literature falling under its banner.

Peter Sykes
December 2008