stoutfellow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stoutfellow) wrote2006-06-27 06:58 pm
stoutfellow) wrote2006-06-27 06:58 pm
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A Puzzlement
A day or so ago, I decided to reread Joan Vinge's "Snow Queen" trilogy - The Snow Queen, World's End, and The Summer Queen. That decision brought to mind something I'd read in John Clute's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - something which puzzled me when I first read it and puzzles me still.
The article on Vinge was written by Peter Nicholls; the item in question, describing the first book of the series, is as follows.
This is an essay in anthropology
Well, no, it isn't; first and foremost, it's a novel. It may have some didactic content, but it should primarily be judged as a work of art, not as a treatise. (Would Nicholls call The Time Machine an essay on socialism? He'd be closer - but still not very close - to the truth in doing so, I would judge.)
much of it founded in the pseudo-scientific anthropology of Robert Graves
All right, let's take it as given that the society Vinge describes closely resembles that described by Graves; also, that Graves' claims concerning such a society (or societies) have been refuted. (I haven't read Graves, even in synopsis, so I don't know precisely what those claims were.) What of it? The analogy given seems to mean that Graves made certain general assertions, which have turned out to be false. But I can't see any generalization Graves could have made whose falsity would imply that no such society could ever exist - especially since the society Vinge is describing is revealed, in the book, to have been deliberately designed to protect certain secrets and systems. Even if (a claim which sounds excessive to me) no such society could have emerged spontaneously, who is to say that one couldn't have been constructed?
As for the rest - why shouldn't a chemistry graduate write a story based on the phlogiston theory? Could a universe be conceived of in which the phlogiston theory was correct? (Okay, maybe that shades more towards fantasy than SF, but Stableford himself has written stories about vampires and werewolves, so that cuts little ice.) Bob Shaw wrote a story in which the value of pi was four; would our hypothetical chemist be doing anything more outrageous?
Am I missing something? Is there anyone reading this who has actually read The White Goddess, and can make sense of Nicholls' and Stableford's complaint for me?
The article on Vinge was written by Peter Nicholls; the item in question, describing the first book of the series, is as follows.
Although the title and some of the plot come from Andersen, this is an essay in anthropology, much of it founded in the pseudo-scientific anthropology of Robert GRAVES in The White Goddess (1947 US), which Brian M. STABLEFORD argued in a review "is rather like a chemistry graduate writing a story whose plot hinges on the phlogiston theory".This charge bothers me on several levels, detailed under the cut.
This is an essay in anthropology
Well, no, it isn't; first and foremost, it's a novel. It may have some didactic content, but it should primarily be judged as a work of art, not as a treatise. (Would Nicholls call The Time Machine an essay on socialism? He'd be closer - but still not very close - to the truth in doing so, I would judge.)
much of it founded in the pseudo-scientific anthropology of Robert Graves
All right, let's take it as given that the society Vinge describes closely resembles that described by Graves; also, that Graves' claims concerning such a society (or societies) have been refuted. (I haven't read Graves, even in synopsis, so I don't know precisely what those claims were.) What of it? The analogy given seems to mean that Graves made certain general assertions, which have turned out to be false. But I can't see any generalization Graves could have made whose falsity would imply that no such society could ever exist - especially since the society Vinge is describing is revealed, in the book, to have been deliberately designed to protect certain secrets and systems. Even if (a claim which sounds excessive to me) no such society could have emerged spontaneously, who is to say that one couldn't have been constructed?
As for the rest - why shouldn't a chemistry graduate write a story based on the phlogiston theory? Could a universe be conceived of in which the phlogiston theory was correct? (Okay, maybe that shades more towards fantasy than SF, but Stableford himself has written stories about vampires and werewolves, so that cuts little ice.) Bob Shaw wrote a story in which the value of pi was four; would our hypothetical chemist be doing anything more outrageous?
Am I missing something? Is there anyone reading this who has actually read The White Goddess, and can make sense of Nicholls' and Stableford's complaint for me?