Stories for Chip (31 page)

³
. A range of reactions can be found in the March 2006 archive of Locus Online's letter column. Numerous blogs also featured discussed Itzkoff's review, including Matt Cheney's The Mumpsimus (“Dave Itzkoff's Inner Child Is Not Happy,” March 5, 2006), which parses Itkoff's implicit assumptions and tone (and which Itzkoff himself alluded to in a later column).

⁴
. Ray Davis's response to Lethem's piece (“Things Are Tough All Over”) focuses on another aspect of Lethem's argument, viz., that SF has become less conducive to the production of “Great Books” than it was previously, while, conversely, since the 1970s, the mainstream has become more hospitable to Great Books. Davis notes that Lethem misses the point that Delany has often made, that what Lethem calls “the mainstream” is as much a genre as SF is. In Lethem's essay, Davis argues, “the mainstream” is “that place where all can be judged by their writerly merits rather than (as in SF) by nostalgic prejudices… .I agree with Lethem that the SF genre's markets provide limited freedom for production of Great Books, and that the strictures continue to tighten. I regretfully disagree that an equivalent number of Great Books will appear in mainstream fiction markets as they disappear from a fading SF genre, any more than (to switch media) an equivalent number of Great TV Movies showed up to offset the loss of Great B Pictures.”

⁵
. See Michael Swanwick's “A User's Guide to the Postmoderns,” which defended John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, Connie Willis, and others against the attacks of Bruce Sterling's “VincentOmniaveritas.”

⁶
. On November 1, 2006, as a writer participating in a reading of work from
ParaSpheres: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction
at the University of California at San Diego, I found myself included in a discussion of “New Wave Fabulism.” During the Q&A following our reading, Anna Joy Springer, who had organized the reading, said that “so much of the work we need” is getting “thrown away into the genres.” (The UCSD library owns an audio cassette recording of the event, including the Q&A.) Ken Keegan, the editor of
ParaSpheres
, writes in an essay at the end of the volume, “There are really at least three different kinds of fiction: genre, literary (in its realistic, character-based sense), and a third type of fiction that really has no commonly accepted name, which does have cultural meaning and artistic value and therefore does not fit well in the escapist formula genres, but which has non-realistic elements and settings that exclude it from the category of literary fiction.” (633) After a rather convoluted discussion about various labels, Keegan concludes “By presenting this fiction as neither literary nor genre, but rather as something else, we are avoiding the pitfalls of claiming literary status for these works.” (637) And yet: during the Q&A at UCSD, Keegan suggested that “New Wave Fabulist” work “transcends” genre.

⁷
. The scale of “hardness” has purportedly to do with “scientific” accuracy and level of scientific detail, but, as feminist critics point out, is chiefly concerned with whether the author is male, the narrative casts the hero as a can-do, by-his-bootstraps booster of technology, and excludes narratives that challenge naturalized social relations and conventions. Although some fans have tried to argue that only “hard SF” qualifies as SF at all, it is more typical for writers, fans, and critics to see “hard SF” as at the core of the genre and “soft” SF as on the margins. (Not, of course, that many people agree about what is relatively “hard” and what is relatively “soft.”) In 1989, for instance, in an inflammatory essay titled “The Rape of Science Fiction,” Charles Platt blamed “the so-called New Wave” for initiating the softening (and thus weakening) SF with the result that in the 1970s “a new soft science fiction emerged, largely written by women: Joan Vinge, Vonda McIntyre, Ursula LeGuin, Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, Carol Emshwiller. Their concern for human values was admirable, but they eroded science fiction's one great strength that had distinguished it from all other fantastic literature: its implicit claim that events described could actually come true.”(46)

⁸
. According to the head-note in the reprint of the interview in
Silent Interviews
, the text of the interview “began as an interview conducted and recorded by Takayuki Tatsumi at Lunacon, in Croton, New York, in April 1998.” Delany then “rewrote the transcription over the next month” and it was published in
Science Fiction Eye
vol. 1, no.3.

⁹
. Since Delany corrected and amplified some of his answers after the interview had been completed, it is impossible to be certain that Delany in fact made the assertion that feminist SF had influenced cyberpunk which Tatsumi then ignored, but Delany's colloquial rejoinder, “Well, again, you're indulging in that same cyberpunk nervousness” suggests that he did. My conversation with Delany immediately following my presentation of an earlier version of this paper at the Delany Symposium confirmed my impression. Delany remarked that his coming up with the conceit of the illegitimate family relations during the interview was a pleasure to remember, since it was, he said, one of those wonderful, rare instances of
esprit d'escalier
.

¹⁰
. In his “Forward” to
Microcosmic God
, Delany contrasts the notion (clearly held by Argyll Sturgeon) that the author of works of high (canonical) literature is the “Good Physician” while the author of the pulp genres is a “scamp” to the extent that s/he does not put much effort into writing, or a “criminal” to the extent that s/he does. As long as the SF genre continues to be tagged with the characterization of “garbage” and “trash,” it can't very well conceive of itself in terms of legitimate paternal lineages and the Law.

¹¹
. Josh Lukin has suggested to me the Telemachian trope of a younger man seeking out and ultimately making his peace with an older mentor over the discredited body of a woman and being inducted into the patriarchy (a trope which Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's
Between Men
reveals is ubiquitous in canonical (high) literature), may be what Tatsumi was pursuing in his questions to Delany about lineage. But the Telemachian trope, of course, is by no means ubiquitous in SF as it is in canonical literature.

¹²
. Molly is an important character in Gibson's
Neuromancer
. Unlike most female characters in pre-cyberpunk noir, Molly may be a babe, but her role is to kick ass rather than using her sexual wiles to lure men to their doom. Her current occupation in the novel is security-for-hire. She is not only hard as nails, but has also had retractable claws implanted in place of her fingernails. Besides her retractable claws, Molly also has permanent mirrored shades, which makes her very, very cool. We are told she acquired her expensive special features by working as a “meat puppet”—a prostitute whose consciousness is taken over by a program, leaving her with no memory afterwards of the uses to which her body had been put.

Works Cited

Cheney, Matt. “Dave Itzkoff's Inner Child Is Not Happy.” The Mumpsimus: displaced thoughts on misplaced literatures. March 5, 2006. <
http://mumpsiumus.blogspot.com/2006/03/dave-itzkoffs-inner-child-is-not-happy.html
>

Clute, John. “Science Fiction from 1980 to the present.” In Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, eds.
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.64-78.

Davis, Ray. “Things Are Tough All Over.” (1998) <
http://www.pseudopodium.org/kokonino/jlvls.html
>

Delany, Samuel R.
About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters & Five Interviews.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.

______. “An Exhortation to SF Scholars.”
New York Review of Science Fiction
13,1 (Sept: 2000). Originally appeared in SFRA Review #247.

______. “Forward: Theodore Sturgeon.” In Paul Williams, ed.
Microcosmic God: Vol.II: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon
. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995.

______. “The Politics of Paralitery Criticism.” In
Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts & The Politics of the Paraliterary
. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1999

______.
Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics.
Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

DeNiro, Alan. “The Dream of the Unified Field.” Fantastic Metropolis, February 15, 2003. <
http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/unified/
>

Duchamp, L. Timmel. “For a Genealogy of Feminist SF: Reflections on Women, Feminism, and Science Fiction, 1818-1950.” In
The Grand Conversation: Essays
. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2004, pp. 1-20.

Erickson, Steve. “Samuel R. Delany: A Conversation.”
Black Clock
1 (March 2004): 71-85. Reprinted in Samuel R. Delany,
About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters & Five Interviews
. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.

Gomoll, Jeanne. “An Open Letter to Joanna Russ.”
Aurora
Vol.10, No. 1 (Winter 1986/1987).

Itzkoff, Dave. “It's All Geek to Me”
New York Times Book Review
. March 5, 2006.

______. “Science Fiction for the Ages.”
New York Times Book Review
. March 5, 2006.

James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn, eds.
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Keegan, Ken. “Why Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories in an Anthology Named
ParaSpheres
?” In Rusty Morrison and Ken Keegan, eds.
ParaSpheres
: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction. Omnidawn Publishing. Richland, CA. 2006. Larbalestier, Justine. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

Lethem, Jonathan. “Why Can't We All Just Live Together? A Vision of Genre Paradise Lost.”
The New York Review of Science Fiction
. Vol. 11, No. 1 (September 1998). An expanded version of “Close Encounters: The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction” that appeared earlier that year in
The Village Voice
.

Mendlesohn, Farah J.. “Introduction: Reading Science Fiction.” In Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, eds.,
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 1-12.

Platt, Charles. “The Rape of Science Fiction.”
Science Fiction Eye
. Vol.1, Issue 5 (July 1989): 44-49.

Swanwick, Michael. “A User's Guide to the Postmodern” in
The Postmodern Archipelago: Two Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy
. Tachyon Publications. San Francisco. 1997

Tatsumi, Takayuki. “Science Fiction and Criticism: The Diacritics Interview.” In Delany,
Silent Interviews
:
On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics
. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994, pp.186-229.

______. “Some Real Mothers…: the SF Eye Interview.” In Delany,
Silent Interviews
:
On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics
. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994, pp.164-185.

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Junot Díaz

Nilda was my brother's girlfriend.

This is how all these stories begin.

She was Dominican, from here, and had super-long hair, like those Pentecostal girls, and a chest you wouldn't believe—I'm talking world-class. Rafa would sneak her down into our basement bedroom after our mother went to bed and do her to whatever was on the radio right then. The two of them had to let me stay, because if my mother heard me upstairs on the couch everybody's ass would have been fried. And since I wasn't about to spend my night out in the bushes this is how it was.

Rafa didn't make no noise, just a low something that resembled breathing. Nilda was the one. She seemed to be trying to hold back from crying the whole time. It was crazy hearing her like that. The Nilda I'd grown up with was one of the quietest girls you'd ever meet. She let her hair wall away her face and read “The New Mutants,” and the only time she looked straight at anything was when she looked out a window.

But that was before she'd gotten that chest, before that slash of black hair had gone from something to pull on the bus to something to stroke in the dark. The new Nilda wore stretch pants and Iron Maiden shirts; she had already run away from her mother's and ended up at a group home; she'd already slept with Toño and Nestor and Little Anthony from Parkwood, older guys. She crashed over at our apartment a lot because she hated her moms, who was the neighborhood borracha. In the morning she slipped out before my mother woke up and found her. Waited for heads at the bus stop, fronted like she'd come from her own place, same clothes as the day before and greasy hair so everybody thought her a skank. Waited for my brother and didn't talk to anybody and nobody talked to her, because she'd always been one of those quiet, semi-retarded girls who you couldn't talk to without being dragged into a whirlpool of dumb stories. If Rafa decided that he wasn't going to school then she'd wait near our apartment until my mother left for work. Sometimes Rafa let her in right away. Sometimes he slept late and she'd wait across the street, building letters out of pebbles until she saw him crossing the living room.

She had big stupid lips and a sad moonface and the driest skin. Always rubbing lotion on it and cursing the moreno father who'd given it to her.