The late Terry Pratchett (a creator whom I need to read more of) once made the case that to capture the more evident features as a species, anthropologists were wrong to designate us as Homo sapiens, the wise man. “In reality,” he said, “We are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”
In essence, I’m tempted to say he got this pretty much right – the ability to create fictional worlds, people, and tell stories seems to be a uniquely human trait. Whereas other animals can problem-solve, strategise, love, care, and communicate just as we can, none of them use these traits to envisage or illustrate something fictional, crafted wholesale from the mind. For anyone concerned about the future of our species and how we might develop in the coming millennia, considering this side of ourselves is instructive…but it also has a more mundane side, which I’m going to cover here today.
Our species’ narrative abilities are nothing mystical – they are human, very human. And whilst this means our species is worthy of some acclaim just for doing what it does so well, it also means that with any writer or creator, the personal tastes in fiction of that individual is going to come through in all too human way. Even the most lauded works will have their detractors, and the difference in taste between reader and writer is again, all too human.
In regards to this, I want to talk specifically about Kim Stanley Robinson, an American science fiction author, who has absolutely defined my experience of hard science fiction. The amount of detail in the science and technical, practical background of every relevant plot device, whether it’s a generation ship in Aurora or hollowed-out asteroids doubling as transport and living space in 2312, he makes sure almost every inch of his world is covered in plausibility and the excitement for what such technologies might even bring in the real world. I am no hater of soft science fiction, but it is hard not to admire the sheer amount of research that some will put in just to make a work of fiction make sense. Maybe, one day, with enough caffeine, I’d be able to do that to that level too.
Of course, this is where subjective taste comes in – some people might enjoy the intrigue of speculative fiction without all the technical blurbs of how it all works, and find such a long-winded commitment kind of tedious (and, in the case of Robinson, even his shorter books look quite suitable as bludgeoning weapons). It’s not a mindset I necessarily understand, because I’ll want any speculative fiction to have some working system behind it even if such a system doesn’t necessarily make sense in the real world of applied science. Like, how does a lightsaber work? Through particular crystals combined with the craftsmanship that forges a hilt. Pfft, good enough for me! How do you travel such vast distances in space in a matter of hours or days? There are these things called hyperdrives and the occasional Infinite Improbability Drive. Cool, that’ll do!
But what if this long-winded explanatory power of Robinson is used on something other than details of how his world works? Will I enjoy it as much then? Will others enjoy it more? Well, we’ll get to that in a bit…
Another point in Robinson’s favour for me is the conscientiousness with which he explores certain topics. Not content to just write about potential technological changes we might see in the future, he recognises that any such change will necessarily have a social impact. His social science fiction is made especially relevant when he turns his conscientious and scientifically literate hand to one of the most pressing matters facing our species today – the climate crisis, and what political, social, and technological changes are needed to minimize its damage. This is the primary focus of his latest novel The Ministry for the Future, which I have reviewed more fully on Goodreads, and will be providing a link for at the end of this post.
Having read a few of his works before getting to this one, I feel I have discovered a pattern in how he writes which may as well be his creator’s fingerprints – his very personal, human side coming through in his writing. And whilst this can be a very good thing – his writing about the climate crisis and people coming together to help resolve it is clearly moved by his compassion and concern for the future of us and our planet – other effects of this which are noticeable are either more neutral, or ones I don’t necessarily care for.
A neutral example – the frequent occurrence of romance between men and women where the woman is several years older, maybe a decade or two in some cases. Not a problem at all, but very noticeable as a matter of taste for Robinson, especially when the age gap is directly referenced despite it having no overall bearing on the plot. Does this mean I’ve been given an unmistakable insight into the mind of the author? I think those assumptions are best avoided, but it is an example of adding something unnecessary to a story just for taste, giving it a human, rather than mechanistic feel.
But then we get Robinson’s obsession with detail in areas that aren’t technical background, and, I’m not going to lie…I do find that tedious. Recreational activities for characters are common (mostly G-rated, by the way), and that’s perfectly fine. Knowing what your characters enjoy is a way of giving them depth – but do I need every detail of it? Scenes with certain characters will often go on for pages and pages just detailing them walking somewhere, or the joy they get out of their work, or joining in some celebration somewhere and describing everything they pass. This comes across as padding, but one has to question why – as far as I know, Robinson is not bound to a certain minimum word count, and the books would probably be lengthy enough without a lot of these scenes. One can only conclude he generally enjoys this, and maybe he considers it a form of immersion.
But here’s the issue – characters make for immersion just as much as the scene, and whilst Robinson’s characters are usually serviceable, they are far from the most interesting I’ve ever seen. To make matters worse, so many of the long, tedious, micro-describing comes from the perspective of characters who don’t play major roles, and in many cases, particularly with Ministry, are not even given names and may (difficult to tell when they’re anonymous) only be present for that one scene, though in the review I go into more detail on one nameless individual who clearly is present for quite a bit of it.
It seems like a strange thing to relegate named characters to more static roles than this, but in the case of Ministry, it does make some semblance of sense. The plot is about a global crisis, after all, and whilst the actions of the members of the eponymous ministry are important, so are those of individuals, masses, ordinary people, many of whom you will never know the name of. It reflects a lot of how change, progress, and development is made in the real world – the nameless, faceless many are as human as anyone else and as important to how things will unfold in the next few decades are beyond, and perhaps Robinson felt it was his duty to reflect that.
I suppose this is my conundrum as someone who has a huge preference for character-driven storytelling, but also recognises the innovation of literary techniques, and the potential need to sacrifice interesting characters for the sake of using those techniques. It was a similar feeling to when I read The Handmaid’s Tale – Offred is a fairly boring, static protagonist because it reflects how downtrodden and dehumanized she’s been as her rights and liberties have been stripped away. It’s clever and it makes sense – but she’s still boring and static. I suppose in this book’s defence, it isn’t nearly as long as Robinson’s average work.
But contrary to the fashionable misanthropy of a lot of modern discourse, I say Robinson’s status and nature as a human being is not a crime. And by writing books about the future that might divide audiences on style, he’s reflecting a very important truth – humans, flawed, fantastic, and both are going to be fellow travelers on this planet for decades to come. And, in my own development as a flawed human writer, one thought in particular has always persisted – let’s make the most of that.
My review for The Ministry for the Future can be found here.
Toby Martin (the wastrel?) 