#161 Cognitive shock: five concepts to enhance your science fiction reading

Rather than looking at a specific work of classic SF, this episode takes a wider view. It's my personal introduction to five concepts which I think can help enhance your science fiction reading, to boost your understanding and appreciation. Most of these concepts are highly specific to SF, and represent aspects of what makes it a unique genre with its own particular traditions and effects.

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Transcript

Since science fiction emerged as a distinct genre in the first half of the 20th century, a large body of scholarship has built up around it. Exploring classic SF does not mean having to read academic papers, though - using the Science Fiction Encyclopedia (SFE) is a way to better appreciate the genre's history, techniques, and the development of its overarching structure, the so-called “megatext”. 

If we think of science fiction as a destination, then the SFE is the most valuable travel guide you could have. While a guide is not essential, the SFE offers some tips that can enhance your understanding and enjoyment.

What follows is a brief introduction - leaning heavily on the SFE and on the critic Darko Suvin - to five useful concepts in SF analysis: the novum, cognitive estrangement, the sense of wonder, conceptual breakthrough, and the slingshot ending. Each one is illustrated with examples from novels mostly previously covered on this site. Some of the terms may be familiar, others less so, and they are far from comprehensive. Think of these as suggested starting points for a deeper exploration of SF and its unique territory.

Novum

From the Latin for “new thing”, the novum is a critical aspect of science fiction. Pioneered by the Yugoslav-born scholar Darko Suvin, the term refers to a distinctive element in a story which differentiates a particular fictional world from our own. Often, the novum is a new scientific discovery or invention, which produces a significant break with the prior situation. The early years of SF as a commercial genre (i.e. the 1920s to 1940s) were rife with “gadget stories”, in which a more or less fanciful invention changes the world. 

This model survived, and has been revisited many times. Bob Shaw’s novel A Wreath of Stars (1976), has a clear example of a gadget novum. This is the magniluct lens, a light-amplifying technology which has a number of applications which alter society, including the fields of mining and - most significantly for the plot - astronomy. 

There need not be only one novum; in The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham there are two. One is the triffids themselves, a unique carnivorous plant with industrial applications. The other is a mysterious orbital event which blinds almost everyone in Britain. It is the interaction of the two novums which drives the plot; triffids can only become a dire threat to society once most people cannot see them coming. Other examples of frequently used novums include time travel, human cloning, faster than light travel, mutation, and teleportation.

These ideas may be discussed more familiarly as examples of “tropes”. This is tied up with the gradual corruption and expansion of that literary term, and with the lazy marketing of contemporary SF which reduces books to mere lists of familiar plot mechanics and situations. Thinking about a story in terms of novums instead can help root it not in commercial terms, but in the living history of SF as a genre.

Cognitive estrangement

This term was also coined by Darko Suvin, who argued that cognitive estrangement is a critical element which makes science fiction unique, and separates it from other forms of literature. The idea is based in part on the work of Russian formalist thinkers working in the early 20th century, and especially their notion of ostranenie or “defamiliarisation”. 

Suvin saw cognitive estrangement as an effect on readers which SF writers seek to achieve. It is closely linked with the idea of the novum. A good science fiction story should impart a sense of strangeness onto the reader, using literary technique to craft a world or scenario which is in some way critically different to our own. 

Sometimes, this crucial break with our understood order of things can be summed up in a brief sentence. A famous example of this is in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which at one point states “the king was pregnant”. In just four words, Le Guin deftly creates a powerful sense of oddness, and sets up the strong theme of gender which permeates this groundbreaking book. The famous opening line of the cyberpunk classic Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson also deals in cognitive estrangement: “the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

It is often argued that even the most fanciful scenarios in science fiction are best understood as a reflection of our own world, and our own times. The intoxicating feeling of cognitive estrangement, the sense of being plunged into a new world, serves in part to invite probing comparisons with our own. However, a dramatically different setting is no precondition for this effect. In J. G. Ballard’s Crash (1973), contemporary London is made to seem deeply strange because it is shown to us from the warped perspectives of a group of profoundly damaged individuals with a dangerous fetish for the grim spectacle of the car crash.

Sense of wonder

The “sense of wonder” is one of the most-discussed notions in classic science fiction, to the extent that it is viewed by some as a dated cliché. For his part, Suvin described it as a “superannuated slogan [...] due for a deserved retirement…” The idea has endured, though, despite these widespread misgivings. Simply put, it refers to an effect that SF writers seek to achieve, often by the deployment of lyrical invocations of foundational concepts in science, particularly to do with vast reaches of space and time. 

Poul Anderson’s novel Tau Zero (1970) leans on the concept of time dilation - as outlined in the theory of special relativity - to strive for a sense of wonder. The crew of a starship aim to travel from Earth to the star system Beta Virginis, a distance of about 35 lightyears. They know that during what will be a five-year journey for them, around 33 years will pass on Earth. Anderson pushes this familiar SF concept further, however. Due to an accident, the starship is unable to cease accelerating. Eventually, the crew are travelling so fast, and are exposed to such immense relativistic effects, that entire galaxies and millenia are passing them in the blink of an eye.

Clifford D. Simak achieves a comparable awe-inspiring effect in his novel Ring Around the Sun (1953). His protagonist discovers he has the ability to step into an alternate, parallel Earth. This pristine planet is one of many, all apparently alike in that humans did not evolve on them. The protagonist, and the reader, reacts with wonder at this immensely expanded idea of what “the world” is, and what this discovery implies about the future possibilities for the human race. This can also be seen as an example of a vital SF concept, the conceptual breakthrough.

Conceptual breakthrough

This term was actually coined in the first, print edition of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. A conceptual breakthrough is a moment in a story which represents a profound paradigm shift in the characters’ understanding of their universe. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding is an abiding theme in much of SF. Characters who acquire new insight, a radical new perception, do so through the cognitive shock of a conceptual breakthrough. 

Often, the conceptual breakthrough is worked out through a development connected tightly with the story’s novum. One example is evident in a return to Bob Shaw’s A Wreath of Stars. The protagonist is sent to investigate why miners in Africa using magniluct lenses underground are seeing intangible figures they believe to be ghosts. Eventually, he discovers that an entire planet composed of antineutrinos - which do not interact with ordinary matter and can only be seen using the lenses - exists within the Earth. This jarring clash with prior sureties is a clear conceptual breakthrough.

Another clear case, and one which has been used frequently, occurs when characters discover that their world is not what they believed it to be. In Brian Aldiss’ Non-Stop (1958), the characters figure out a truth which was forgotten generations ago - that the whole of the world known to them is the interior of a starship in deep space. These false or misapprehended realities are a hallmark of Philip K. Dick’s work. In Time Out of Joint (1959), Ragle Gumm realises that his calm 1950s community is an elaborate fake. The year is actually 1998, and Earth and its lunar colonies are at war. 

Slingshot ending

To close, let’s look at a particular type of ending: the slingshot ending. This term was coined by Kim Stanley Robinson in reference to the works of Gene Wolfe, but the technique is not limited to SF and may actually be more common in fantasy. It is a means of closing a story while at the same time opening up tremendous new possibilities - but while these are glimpsed, it is typically up to the reader to imagine their implications. It can be, in its own way, a kind of conceptual breakthrough. 

One example from SF antiquity, well-known in those circles, is the final sentence of A. E. Van Vogt’s novel The Weapon Makers (published 1947, revised 1952): “Here is the race that shall rule the sevagram.” The invented word “sevagram” is one that Van Vogt had not used at any point prior to the final sentence. With one word, he abruptly implies a far greater fate for the human species than previously thought possible, but leaves us to imagine what this could mean. 

A somewhat more recent example is found in Pat Murphy’s debut novel The Shadow Hunter (1982). The main character, Sam, is a neanderthal brought forwards from the deep past to the modern world. In the final chapter, more members of his tribe are brought to join him. In a fairly sudden twist, a matter transmission device - which has previously only been hinted at - is used to propel Sam and his people to a recently discovered Earth-like world in another star system. In a sense this hugely expands the scope of the story, just as it ends - the fate of the tribespeople is ours to imagine.

Slingshot endings are liable to be thought of as merely abrupt by some readers -  and if imperfectly executed this may be all they are. They are also, as the SFE comments, “a daring device, one that commercial publishers may resist”. This is one reason why they are relatively uncommon; but they are a good example of SF’s potential to demand some imaginative effort from the reader.

There are as many perspectives on SF as there are SF readers. Every reading of every book, old or new, adds to a great web of exploration. These five concepts are just a few possible tools to aid your SF journey. Whether these are new to you or not, I’d be interested to hear if you find them useful, and what your favourite examples are.