the Nature piece

[Benford]

I liked the Rohn piece in 19 Jan Nature. Alas, it seems couched rather narrowly:
"No matter how realistically crafted these fantasy scientists and their world are, or how closely they parallel actual science culture, it will not be a scene that you and I could easily encounter were we to walk into a research institute. Lab lit, on the other hand, portrays scientists as they really are, plying their trade in the real world."
Really? I think science fiction (sf, not "scifi"--a media term) abounds in good depictions of scientists.
Of course much of it is off world or far future, but whole books have considered "hard" sf and its origins, exemplars, successes. There's much to discuss here, indeed.

[Beatrice]

Welcome to the forums!

I agree that there are wonderfully depicted scientist characters in SF. I noticed that recently LabLit.com changed the format of its list and now there is a separate section for SF with good scientist characters. There aren't enough books in it yet though - perhaps they are still accumulating names, as it has only been there for a week. A good move, that, but will take a lot of work to set to rights.

I do see that there is a difference between lab lit and SF though. When you read a book like 'Mendel's Dwarf' (which I adore) you know you are reading something that really could be happening in a lab right now on this planet! The author is restricted to reality, but there is a pleasure in restriction: think of the sonnet form of poetry, where within a set number of lines and syllables you have the freedom to say anything. This is deeply exciting. Whereas with SF you have a different pleasure, in exploring impossible things from millions of angles. Also deeply exciting, but in a compeltely different way.

There is a place for both but they are NOT the same thing...IMHO.

[The Prof]

Choked on my morning tea this morning: Gregory Benford by any chance?? Goodness me, great to see you here if so.

Lab lit, on the other hand, portrays scientists as they really are.

I'm afraid I agree that this part of the party line is not fair to science fiction's cast of characters. Perhaps our esteemed Editor can consider modifying this aspect? I'd agree with the other half, though:

plying their trade in the real world.

I suspect this is the crux, as Beatrice says. I am a bench scientist and I get a thrill from seeing people like me in places like where I work. Depressing thought: perhaps non-scientists are not as turned on by same?

[Editor]

Thank you, Gregory, and welcome to the forums.

Fot those of you who are interested, my piece in Nature can be read here (subscription only, alas):

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 9269a.html

Your concerns about genre have, as you suspected, touched on a slippery and shifting point that we have been struggling with intensely here at Editorial, mostly because of a number of very intelligent and insightful blog criticisms on various science fiction forums. We in no way want to imply that great scientist characters don't pop up all the time in science fiction (a genre on which I was weaned and addicted from age five) - this is why we have created the 'crossover' section in the List and, as you can tell, have a long way to go in filling it; there must be hundreds of examples, and even now the nominations are pouring in.

The issue at hand is the unreal setting in which these scientists act. In some ways it shouldn't matter, but to many, it does. Science fiction is a joy to me and millions of others, but it does not appeal to everyone. I have friends I've literally begged to read one of my favorite science fiction books, such as 'To Say Nothing Of The Dog', but they flat-out refuse: 'Sorry, I can't read science fiction. Time travel? No thanks.' Science fiction can rarely aspire to prizes like the Booker, Pulitzer, Nobel, Orange, Whitbread, but has to have its own - Hugos and Nebulas; its titles are not as often featured as serious literary pieces for discussion and debate in forums like TLS, LRB or NYRB; its specimens are relegated to special sections in the backs of bookshops, not routinely displayed with fanfare on tables in the front. This does not mean the books are not worthy; only that the genre is associated with something that makes these things not happen. I don't know what it is, but I suspect it is the reason why Iain Banks has created an entirely different persona (and drops his initial) when he writes quote-unquote 'serious literature'. I'd like to ask him someday whose idea this was, his own or his PR people. It was a stroke of marketing genius in my opinion.

Lab Lit is in many ways is nothing like science fiction; it doesn't have to be quote-unquote 'serious literature', but it does feature scientists doing normal things in a normal world, just as thousands of other books feature doctors mucking around in hospitals, office workers mucking around in offices, teachers mucking around in schools, detectives mucking around in police stations. Most people would not say, in picking up a book like 'White Noise' by Don Delillo: 'Sorry, I can't read books about a literature professor in a university. Undergraduates? No thanks.' But somehow, the word 'science' or 'scientist', seen on a back cover, seems to trigger an aversion in the human psyche - of course it is probably partly the science itself, but it could also be ambiguity - 'Isn't this science fiction? I don't like science fiction. Better put it down.' I am deeply interested in this. Of course it is all speculation, but I suspect that distinguishing Lab lit from science fiction could eliminate some variables and help us to focus on other ways to raise these books into the awareness of the public. Science fiction is way ahead of Lab lit in terms of sales and popularity. I advocate learning from successes and failures in SF marketing: the importance of banding together, but also the importance of trying also the cleave to the mainstream. Perhaps this is an impossible task.

[Paul T]

I think this is a semantic argument but that is not to say that words are not important and semantics are not meaningless. When it comes to enjoyment, it matters little what the publisher calls the book or what part of the shop you had to go to find it. But will you find that book if it's not where you think it is? Will you stumble on a new author if her book is not in the shelves you normally browse in? Willis is a grat example. If more people knew about her I'm convinced she'd be a household name, because she's great. But outside of F&SF she is obscure.

I guess, like all things, things can be superficial, but superficial things can still make a difference. Marketing is superficial compared to content - but it does have an effect!

[Octavia]

I think it would be a good idea to have a crossover section in the List for books that are not science fiction but are not lab lit either. There are examples of books in other genres that have well sketched scientist charactersm, Lewis Wolpert's essay brought up a good example, Middlemarch (not lab lit, not SF, I guess you'd call it 'Classic literature'. And BTW, I think AS Byatt's Whistling Woman would belong in that new category, not in lab lit proper, sorry to be picky!). Will be a lot of work but there must already be reference books on this topic!

[La Vita]

Yes I believe we are all on the same side here, no? It is good to see real scientists in fiction no matter what it is being called by the book sellers. Important not to exclude anyone with this names and to embrace all of the good scientist caracters we see in the novels!

[Gregory Benford]

Contrasting lablit and science fiction misses that sf is not a predictive genre but a diagnostic one. A Paul Gisler quotation (Centauri Dreams) seems apropos here:

"Anyone skimming older science fiction can see that it is possible to date many stories solely by noting their preoccupations. It is no surprise that a world embarking upon unlocking the atom should be filled with pulp magazines obsessing over that theme, or that a society learning about computers should find itself described in a sub-genre called cyberpunk, where virtual realities reign and outlaw technologies consume the lives of streetwise adolescents. That there have been relatively few recent stories about interstellar probes—and many about, say, gender shifting and sexual identity—tells us something about our own preoccupations, and perhaps about how far we have drifted from the exploration of outer, as opposed to inner, space as our regnant goal."

Demanding that realism be contemporary or historical, in our age especially, is like driving fast and hard down a highway and using only your rearview mirror, not the windshield.

[Freddie]

This is a good point. It is important to look forward. But most lab lit on the list is not set in the past. And I think literature can also be grounded in reality and be 'timeless' (set in a recognisable but unspecified time much like the present) and yet forward-looking at the same time. I think all modern literature is grappling with the issues of the day. Terrorism crops up all the time in modern lit now, for example. Novels about scientists don't have to be in the future to grapple with up and coming issues. Biotech comes up a lot now in lab lit, fears about genetic modification and gene therapy. Allegra's new lab lit novel coming out in February, INTUITIONS, is dealing with scientific fraud (apt, post Hwang scandal). Carl Djerassi's plays are focussing more on reproductive technology and all the human ramifications that can result.

But being set in a far future, a really unrecognisable place, can put off some readers. I, for example, prefer to read about things set in my own time and space - I can relate better - I can suspend disbelief. I relish in thinking 'what if' about something very close to my world - but wildly different. It is hard to describe why. It is just personal taste I suppose.

But I think Gregory is arguing that lab lit is inferior to science fiction. This is fine, and I'm sure loads of people would agree, but I don't think he can convince me that they are the same genre. That they HAVE to be the same. Because science fiction doesn't have to have scientists in it. It can be essentially a tale of anyone in an "otherly" place or time. Whereas lab lit is about scientists. At least this is the impression I draw from the essays. And these latter might reach a different audience, one who like me doesn't want too much "otherlyness" but is keen to know what science and scientists are like and to watch them at play in a fictional, fairly realistic setting.

[Editor]

Thanks first off for all the great discussion. I want to note here that all these definitions of lab lit that we've been thrashing over are mostly meant to be a useful framework and not at all 'narrow' - ultimately defining the genre is mostly just to help inform the List and to think about scientists in literature in a fresh way. Freddie has hit on an important difference between science fiction and lab lit, though - the presence or absence of scientists. A book like 'Dune', for example, we can all agree is science fiction, but it's not about scientists. And a book like 'Cantor's Dilemma' or 'Mendel's Dwarf' we can all agree is not in the same genre as 'Dune' and has more in common with a piece of (for lack of a better adjective!) 'normal' literature of the sort penned by Phillip Roth or Martin Amis. So they definitely are not the same genre. (Maybe 'scientist fiction' would have been a better name than 'lab lit'!)

And Gregory's 'Timescape' is a bit of both - science fiction with great lab- littish scientists. A Venn diagram, perhaps? I suppose it is all semantics, but it's stimulating to think about classifications all the same.

I think the realism and timelessness are important characteristics of what I call 'lab lit' - and for the reasons Freddie mentioned, I far prefer my lab lit to be set in the present day and to not dwell on historical scientists or events. But I wholly agree with F. that setting a book roughly in the present/familiar is not the same as looking backwards. Fiction is fiction because it is made-up; 'realism' is only an artifice, not a constraint. It's a puzzle: what completely new story we create using familiar elements? In a way it's more of a challenge to keep it realistic. The art is in making something familiar seem fresh and original.

[wheetabox]

A great novel will resonate no matter when it was written, ya know, 'the classics'. Timelessness is what can make a piece universal. If things are too way-out-there it can backfire and in 50 years time seem terribly quaint and naive; some of the classic SF feels that way to me - Bradbury, Azimov. Whereas Dickins, Austen et al still feel fresh.

Not thought about it this way before...

[Cat person]

I have a problem with the thesis that only SF is 'diagnostic'. I think someone else said this above, probably better than I could, but all fiction reflects the time in which is was written, and the BEST fiction still resonates 10, 50, 100, 200 years later!! Some SF written in the Fifties still sounds good and modern, and some sound like absolute clanging anachronisms. But you can say the same thing about mysteries, dramas, humour - it either ages well or it doesn't.

Also if you read Bill Hanage's article on speculative fiction up on LabLit.com at the moment, his thesis is that ironically, SF can to be fairly parochial and humdrum when it comes to the human condition.

Even historical fiction, which I rather like, can be far sweeping and progressive - just because the settings are old doesn't mean the ideas are. I think to say only SF looks forward is selling all the other genres short!! And can be misleading because perhaps all SF isn't actually performing that function.

[Andy Sawyer]

Contrasting lablit and science fiction misses that sf is not a predictive genre but a diagnostic one.
[snip]
Demanding that realism be contemporary or historical, in our age especially, is like driving fast and hard down a highway and using only your rearview mirror, not the windshield.

That's a good point, and I'd add that much literature about science "becomes" science fiction anyway if there's an element of speculation in it. It doesn't *have* to -- a character in a novel may simply be a scientist who doesn't conform to the white-coated madman stereotype, a reference to a scientific concept may have actually been researched rather than made up to sound good. But any dramatisation of the future effects of a technology, or the use of this speculation to discuss contemporary issues, sounds an awful lot like sf to me. An earlier post mentioned people saying that they didn't like science fiction. Sf exists because people like us point to it. Maybe we should keep quiet about it.

Or have I just argued myself out of a job?

[Hanneke D]

I don't understand how anyone can think that lab lit and sci-fi are the same thing! Scientists just doing normal things in the normal word, their profession, as the geneticist in 'Long for this world' worrying about his patient and his familiy in present-day Seattle. How on earth can this be compared to Dune or Ringworld or Pride of Chanur or thousands of other books like that, many of which have no scientists in them at all? I can't understand the argument that lab lit is just part of SF. Just because SF has appropriated the word 'science' doesn't mean all tales with scientists are related enough to group in with that!

And by the way this does not mean I don't like sci-fi, because I *love* it. I just don't think it can make a claim on 'Long for this world' or a lot of other books the editors have collected in their list on the site. I think it's appropriate to call it something different, but if you don't want to keep making more categories, then lab lit has a lot more in common with regular literature (what you find in bookshops in the shelves labelled 'general fiction') than with sci-fi!

[Andy Sawyer]

I don't understand how anyone can think that lab lit and sci-fi are the same thing! Scientists just doing normal things in the normal word, their profession, as the geneticist in 'Long for this world' worrying about his patient and his familiy in present-day Seattle. How on earth can this be compared to Dune or Ringworld or Pride of Chanur or thousands of other books like that, many of which have no scientists in them at all? I can't understand the argument that lab lit is just part of SF. Just because SF has appropriated the word 'science' doesn't mean all tales with scientists are related enough to group in with that!

I don't think the argument is that they are the "same thing". But they are different *aspects* of one thing, which is the literary discussion of science using different techniques. In one you're speculating about the effects of science, posing the question "What if?" In the other, you're concerned with representation of science *as it is". Where the crossover happens is that the second category can, (though not always), be included in the first. A science fiction novel is always in some way speculating about the science in its broadest terms but it may or may not include an accurate representation of a scientist. In other words, we could read a crime novel and get some idea how we think about crime, or how crime acts as a metaphor for other anxieties about society, but we wouldn't necessarily go to a crime novel for an accurate description of day-to-day life in a police station, although many crime writers DO pride themselves on their accuracy. A novel about the psychology of a character who is a police officer would almost certainly be a better novel if what it says about being a police officer is accurate even though the focus of the story itself has nothing at all to do with crime. If it does start to focus on crime, the novel (whatever else it is) starts to approach the territory of a crime novel.