Why Modern SF Writers Should Read Sir Fred Hoyle's SF

[james_davis_nicoll]

From a FLed post of mine:

I can't recall if I did my canned "why modern SF writers should go look at Sir Fred's SF" rant at Farthing but I meant to.

Although the science is often dated (or in the case of Into Deepest Space, hopelessly incorrect to begin with) and his prose often clunky, Hoyle had some strengths of the sort I think can be lifted seamlessly by modern authors. He didn't feel the need to make the universes that his characters lived in comfortable or humanocentric, which gives a wonderful sense of scale in a number of them.

In those books where humans share a universe with other intelligences, we are never at the top of the scale. Compared to the Black Cloud, our entire planet's ecosystem is almost insignificant save as a curiousity. In Into Deepest Space, we are galactic pests, on the level of kudzu or purple loosestrife, and certainly not comparable to the Yela (who in turn are eclipsed by more advanced species of a nature quite foreign to us). In Inferno, there are benevolent beings of tremendous power but communication is never attempted and might well be pointless.

I would probably avoid particular style of infodump that he used in at least one book. I like my hard science fiction but a page of mathematics may not be the best way to clue the reader in as to what is happened.

I am open to suggestions for other minor SF authors who can be useful ore for modern writers.

Comments

OK, then -- how can it be done?

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

Hi, James.

You wrote: I would probably avoid [a] particular style of infodump that he used in at least one book. I like my hard science fiction but a page of mathematics may not be the best way to clue the reader in as to what is happened.

OK -- then, how?

Assuming an author is writing hard SF, and either has the necessary education, or at least has done the requisite, relevant research, it seems to me there are really only about two or three ways or imparting the science to readers -- a thing that (since you are writing hard SF) you probably have to do since [1] it likely is necessary to the advancement of your plot and [2] it is not necessarily likely that your readers will be familiar with it.

The first is the Hoylesque core-dump for readers to wade through. This is like splashing a bucket of dog vomit on the side-walk and asking (or, worse, insisting) that readers stroll through it.

The second is to have lame dialogue where conveniently-stupid-character asks conveniently-knowledgeable-character painfully lame questions, or their equivalent ("Oh, but Dr. Z, can a actually Klystron do that?") as a stand in for the uninformed reader. This is condescending to the intelligence even of the science-ignorant reader, who may well pack in the suspension of disbelief right there, on the grounds that the characters (whatever their redeeming attributes) just got unbelievably [sic] lame.

The third is an accompanying foreword or afterword, a mini-essay if you will.
This is distracting, and risks giving your plot away.

What else is there? If nothing, then you risk either ugliness (1), lameness (2), or plot-spoilers and distraction (3).

What do you think?

Re: OK, then -- how can it be done?

[(Anonymous)]

>What else is there?

Prose!

> you risk either ugliness (1), lameness (2), or plot-spoilers and distraction (3)

Good writers seem to avoid (1) and (3), and interesting writers avoid (2). If you can find a good interesting writer, you're all set!

Timothy Ferris recently did an op-ed piece for the New York Times about the Voyager 1 & 2 probes. Centauri Dreams' blog pointed out the poetry of Ferris' conclusion: "And 358,000 years will elapse before Voyager 2 approaches the bright star Sirius. Out there, our concepts of velocity become provincial. The stars are moving, too, in gigantic orbits around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Voyager, a toy boat on this dark sea, will not so much approach Sirius as watch it sail by, bobbing in its mighty wake."

Re: OK, then -- how can it be done?

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

Well, you can write a breezy, entertaining-in-its-own-right piece of exposition that manages to get across all of the needed facts and still fits in with the overall narrative style of the piece in general. (Neal Stephenson occasionally succeeds at this...)

Or you could have a couple of characters who it absolutely makes sense for one of them to be the Professor and the other to be the Turnip on the subject in question, and write some crisp and entertaining-in-its-own-right dialog between them. Sometimes you can manage to slip exposition in sideways using two knowledgable characters who disagree with one another.

You can always go with afterwords, as in Watts, I guess, without spoiling anything.

Or you can just not explain a single thing, anywhere, leaving the good science entirely in the underwater portion of the iceberg..

Re: OK, then -- how can it be done?

[daev.livejournal.com]

The first is the Hoylesque core-dump for readers to wade through. This is like splashing a bucket of dog vomit on the side-walk and asking (or, worse, insisting) that readers stroll through it.

You're assuming that the reaction of SF readers to a page of mathematical explanation is comparable to a pedestrian's reaction to dog vomit, that is, it revolts pretty much everyone. (Except other dogs!)

I don't feel that way. I first got into reading SF as a kid because I already loved reading pop science, like Dr. Asimov's books. I considered the two genres to be variants of the same basic idea. I like explanations of science, so long as they're not badly written, and I don't recall Fred Hoyle's lecturing style as any clunkier than the rest of his storytelling prose.

Scientific explanations are as much a basic part of this SF reader's expectations as hypothetical futures and dilating doors.

In fact, I've been increasingly irritated at SF writers for not infodumping when readers get confused. The only thing that's worse is when the author does stop the story to explain, and when I get to the end, I still don't understand! (Consider Part II of Darwinia, frex...)

Re: OK, then -- how can it be done?

[yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

The classic compromise is that rather than a stupid character to which everything must be explained, you have an intelligent character who for plot purposes has to *learn*.

As the character is standing in for the reader, the distinction is very important indeed..

Re: Thanks!

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

I'd like to thank you all for your very interesting replies to my deliberately over-snarky inquiry.

I guess it all comes down (as you've all pointed out) to showing respect for your reader.

Cheers,

TSM

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Lloyd Biggle, for writers who'd like their science fiction to have a bit more culture in it...

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Definitely! The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets for example.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember enjoying October the First is too late, and I read most of his other books, but they didn't really stick either in terms of plots/characters or as influences.

With Fred Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, Judith Merrill, Cordwainer Smith, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Eric Frank Russell, James Schmitz etc. all writing at the same time, Hoyle just wasn't in the same league.

[(Anonymous)]

But for some reason he was beloved by the Science Fiction Book Club, and as a result you can still find hardcovers of everything he ever wrote, really cheap, at library book sales! He didn't seem to be very popular otherwise -- who knows what the SFBC logic was?

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Emphatically disagree. A couple of those authors you list have been dead to me for years (not a hard thing to be, actually.) True, he's not to everyone's taste. But, there's this ill-definable something about certain books or certain writers, a certain kind of mood or atmosphere if you will, that I find enormously appealing. Hoyle's got it, in spades.