NoWhere Man

WhiIe topographical and topical (i. e. , extrapolative) considerations remain essential to analysis of “hard” and “soft” sf, the primacy of topos in critical discourse has resulted in the neglect or misreading of such visionary, post-utopian writers as Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith. whose work (emphasizing symbolic displacement, not topographical orientation) goes against the grain of sf’s utopian heritage. All good fiction in any of the sf subgenres will be careful partially to defamiliarize the landscape; but visionary sf goes further, insisting upon the utterly inexplicable or singular nature of the hero’s experience (his/her narrative “place”). Such post-utopian heroes as Paul and Virginia in Smith’s “ Alpha Ralpha Boulevard “—a story set at a point in Smith’s future history where “eutopia” has been achieved but rejected—test the limits of the rational and discover its tragic insufficiency. Smith’s stylized language and ruminative (not neatly extrapolated) narrative pacing show his rejection of the functional narrative design of both hard and soft sf, where “heroes” serve to flesh out the topos, serving transparently as incarnations or emblems of an author’s intentions. (Two examples from hard and soft sf respectively are Robert Heinlein’s “Man” in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Ursula LeGuin’s “Ai”—in The Left Hand Of Darkness.) Beginning with discussion of a spectrum of sf approaches to characterization—with hard and soft sf at one extreme and space-opera at the other—this essay situates the post-utopian heroes of Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith at a dramatic and neglected midpoint, arguing that criticism (hampered by its long obsession with topos) has not yet begun to do justice to sr’s visionaries. (CMcG)

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