George Slusser is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of California in Riverside (UCR, CA, U.S.A.), Ph.D., Comparative Literature (Harvard University), the first Curator (Emeritus) of the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction &Fantasy Utopian and Horror Literature (UCR, CA, U.S.A. – the world’s biggest SF collection), Harvard Traveling Fellow, Fulbright Lecturer, Coordinator of twenty three Eaton SF Conferences, Author of numerous books, studies and articles in the science fiction studies domain.
An Interview with: Professor George Slusser – Eaton science fiction collection’s Curator Emeritus
Dear Prof. George Slusser, thank you for accepting this interview! Kindly tell us about the circumstances of the SF collection’s curator position offered to you at the University of California in Riverside in 1979?
In the 1960s, UC Riverside library acquired a collection of science fiction and fantasy materials. It was purchased from J. Lloyd Eaton, a San Francisco physician and fan, and contained some 4,000 hardback books, from 1900 to 1950. There were a number of rare books in this collection, and it offered a solid base for a future SF collection. The collection was buried in the library basement for 12 years, gathering dust. I was alerted as to its existence by several people, notably Mike Burgess, future editor of Borgo Press. We had a visionary librarian at the time, Eleanor Montague, who accepted to fund a conference on SF in 1979; if it was successful, she would consider bringing the collection out of obscurity and building it. I had a superb team–Gregory Benford, Eric Rabkin, Mark Rose–and the First Eaton Conference was a huge success, the essays published in an academic press, and the tradition underway that was to last 25 years. Eleanor decided to build the collection. I signed on as curator. It was a second job, and at first there was no pay. But over 25 years I managed to grow the collection from 4000 to some 135,000 hard and paperback books, in some 24 languages. It was the library and not my academic colleagues who supported this collection. In fact, many academics were actively hostile to it. But soon it, like today’s banks, was “too big to fail,” and UCR had to accept it.
Were you a science fiction fan ? Has science fiction any literary relevance?
I was not a fan in the formal sense (conventions, fanzines, etc). I was however, as teen ager, an avid reader of SF. I chose to study English Literature at UC Berkeley, and Comparative Literature at Harvard. This was in the 1960s and 1970s, and science fiction did not exist within those hallowed halls.
This leads to the second half of your question. If you mean by “literature” high realism, then SF is seen as trash. In late 18th century England, critic Samuel Johnson rejected all forms of “fantasy” (including the budding literature of moon travel and future times and places) as unworthy of consideration. Thus began the “great tradition,” the realistic novel as “novel proper.” SF has never recovered from this stigma. In the US, the literary situation was different. Nineteenth century romanticism produced frontier adventures, and Whitman’s call for a “passage to more than India.” The archetypal American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a “boys book.” It is easy to see SF carrying this grand tradition into the 20th century. Science fiction in the US is not only relevant, but highly significant, perhaps the reason why it is now, at the beginning of the 21st century, a dominant cultural form. This is becoming a world-wide phenomenon, resisted only by those who feel it violates their sacred cultural canons. And, by anybody’s standard, SF has produced some very fine narrative works.
Why should a scholar be interested by science fiction? Isn’t it the “realm of ephemeral literature” or “a very minor literary world”?
Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of stories and novels, written in many languages and national cultures, is not something “ephemeral.” What we identify as science fiction today has been developing over centuries in Western culture, and today flourishes as the literary form that (re: Asimov’s famous definition) recounts the impact of scientific and technological advancement on human beings. This is a major literary world. For the defenders of the canon, it remains the proverbial 400-pound gorilla in the room.
Why did you accept a position that could have had jeopardized your career?
I rapidly realized that what I was trained to do was not very interesting. I wrote a dissertation on the artist in Diderot, Balzac and Hoffmann, but at the time could not see where this kind of work was leading. To make matters worse, American academia was invaded by French theoreticians, which opened the door to “le derridisme a l’americaine,” a lot of neo-scholasticism and amateur politics. I wanted to get my hands on something concrete, a large body of texts and a vast cultural vision. When science fiction came along, I jumped on it. I have absolutely no regrets, it has been a lot of fun. After all, how many scholars have the opportunity to create a huge research repository, to help put an entire genre on the map.
What had been the science fiction status within the american academic world in the ‘60s? What had been the science fiction status at the american general societal level? And today?
It didn’t exist for the American academic in the 1960s. In many ways, it still doesn’t. A recent edition (2005) of the Heath Anthology of American Literature contains every conceivable form of literature–slave narratives, bird songs, rap lyrics. But NOT A SINGLE WORK OF SCIENCE FICTION. For these folks, it’s bug eyed aliens and “sci-fi.” Yet science fiction icons and themes dominate American written and visual culture today. Somebody’s out of step with reality.
Did you start your curator’s activity with a strategy or you just adapt to the existing situation?
I had a strategy in mind. And I did have allies in the library, who found funds to buy books, even when academics sought to block purchases. Librarians love books, and SF had a lot of them, with interesting covers and formats. In a sense SF publishing contains the entire history of the book in the 20th century, and I recreated this history on the shelves of Eaton. What I did is called “collection development,” and Eaton became a prime example of this. Of course, I had to adapt to personnel changes, unenlightened head librarians and such. But this is par for the course for any bootstraps operation within an established bureaucracy. Sometimes it felt we were running an underground operation. But I won a couple of large grants that allowed us to catalog huge amounts of material, and we were on our way.
How did you succeed to transform the Eaton SF Collection in the world’s biggest?
By silence, exile and cunning. We gradually acquired several massive collections from private parties–an example is the Douglas Menville collection of SF paperbacks, some 30,000 books in mint condition, which the collector had to sell because the foundations of his house were sinking under the weight of the books. Other collections were outright gifts. We are lucky to be located in the greater Los Angeles area, where collectors abound. Our collections of pulp magazines (nearly complete and in mint condition) was a gift. Gradually, through the conference, I made contacts with collectors and writers. This way I was able to target choice materials–an example is the Terry Carr fanzine collection, a veritable roadmap to the fanzine jungle (there are hundreds of thousands of these publications, how to know which ones are significant? Terry Carr’s collection let us set parameters. I was not trained as a librarian, but certainly learned to be one.
And the concept of the SF research center just popped up?
It didn’t pop up. It was the fruit of 25 years of Eaton conferences. Nor is it functional today in a way which I find effective. I have been pushing for years for a multi-linguistic approach to SF, and feel this aspect has been abandoned for an anglophone approach. It was through graduate students from different countries (comparative literature students) that I did some of my best collecting. I had students in the Soviet Union, Israel, East Germany and other unlikely places in the 1980s buying books for me (we would give them several hundred dollars and they would buy on the black market, or find book dealers, etc). Eaton is unique for its “foreign” language holdings. Any center should have been built around this vision. Nul n’est prophete dans son pays.
Is any difference between Fantastika (la litterature du fantastique) and Fantasy?
This is a big question. The French fantastique is presented by Tzvetan Todorov as a precisely defined literary form, that developed in the 19th century, whose distinguishing feature is “hesitation” between two possible interpretations of the phenomenon at hand–the étrange (rational science explains the phenomenon) and the merveilleux (the phenomenon belongs to a different order of reality, outside the laws of known science). Fantasy (from phantasein–to figure in the mind) is a more general category. Wordsworth distinguished “imagination” from “fancy.” These terms have much the same relation one to the other as SF and fantasy today: the former reaching outside the mind to new visions, the latter arranging and rearranging the “furniture” of the mind within that mind. At its best, fantasy exchanges worlds for our own; at its worst it cultivates escapism.
When and how did you have the idea to organize the yearly Eaton SF conferences?
As I said above, it was the way to launch the collection, and to bring together scholars, writers, scientists, people from all around the country (and ultimately world) to discuss a new form of literature. In a sense, these conferences, all tightly focused on central themes and forms of the genre) allow us to build–organically–a poetics of science fiction, and to create an academic discipline where none existed before.
What had been the feedback at UCR management level and at the general american academic level concerning the Eaton SF conference’s launching?
Except for the librarians, and for a few enlightened academic colleagues, notably the great comparatist Jean-Pierre Barricelli, UCR “management” generally ignored its existence. Because we networked, the conference needed little money to run. We remained “invisible” to UCR administration people until very recently. The new head of Special Collections, Melissa Conway, had a lot to do with influencing opinions at the level of deans and chancellors. But that has occurred only very recently. On the national and international level, recognition gradually snowballed. In the 1980s and 1990s we were doing joint Eaton Conferences with the Sorbonne, the University of Neuchatel, University of Leeds, Imperial College in London. UCR remained generally indifferent.
What about the results of the Eaton conferences?
As stated above, we produced a solid body of academic material, and in a sense laid the groundwork of “science fiction studies.” Also, because we nurtured graduate students and young scholars, we gave people the opportunity to publish, thus to achieve recognition and, in a number of cases, get teaching jobs.
Science Fiction : writing, publishing, study, and research. One critic said that even without anymore SF writing, the mechanism will continue to produce research, what is your opinion ? Are science fiction studies necessary?
This critic is probably correct, the academic machine grinds on, even when there is no longer grist for the mill. Many SF writers in fact have felt from the start that “science fiction studies” are not necessary. For example, the scholarly review Science-Fiction Studies, because it began with a certain idea of what science fiction should be, focused attention of a few choice writers (usually writers like Ursula Le Guin who essentially wrote for academics, or a writer like Philip K. Dick, certainly talented but perhaps marginal to the genre). From this, a sort of canon grew, which excluded other talented writers. Today academic journals are doing the same thing, often on blatently political grounds. Writers like David Brin, Gregory Benford, Robert A. Heinlein are rejected on “politically correct” grounds. The whole mechanism seems to turn on empty, emphasizing a divide between writers who must sell to make a living, and ivory tower intellectuals who look down from olympian heights on anything “commercial.” We tried to be more catholic in our Eaton approach to criticism. We had writers and articulate people from other fields than academic (science, medicine) writing criticism. It was a “big tent.”
You are a Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature. Who had studied under your coordination?
I have had lots of people work with me at the PhD level. Because of Eaton, these were mostly from other institutions. I have often been asked by other universities to serve on PhD committees for SF students. I directed theses in Comp Lit on other topics than science fiction. Among people who have become stars in the SF field, I worked with Howard Hendrix and Gary Westfahl
You had teached and wrote and you’re continuing to write. What are you’re main areas of interests?
Science and literature, and the international origins of science fiction as a genre. I have completed this year two book manuscripts: one titled Science Fiction: The Origins and Fortunes of a World Literature; the other titled The Left Hand of Reason: The Science Fiction of Continental Rationalism. The second deals primarily with that “other science fiction,” the French tradition. France and French rationalism contributed so many things to the origin of science fiction, yet remain virtually unknown to anglophone readers (and to the French as well). It remains an “occluded genre.”
What are your main published works?
I’ve published some 33 books (written and/or edited) and well over 100 substantial articles. Most recently I’ve collaborated with my partner Daniele Chatelain on two translation/critical editions forWesleyan University Press. One brings to light, through translation and over 100 pages of essays and notes, Balzac’s early work The Centenarian (1822, four years after Frankenstein). If science is the criterion, this is the first SF novel. The other is a translation of three works by J.H.Rosny, whom we argue is the creator of “hard” or scientific SF. These have gotten a lot of attention in the critical press. It was said that, through the lens of science and science fiction, we renewed Balzac studies. Also, my book Gregory Benford: The Scientist as Writer is appearing this winter with U Illinois Press. I also have forthcoming, with Slavic scholar Gary Kern, a book on the science fiction of the Strugatsky brothers, Stalkers of the Infinite, e-book and paperback, with Xenos Press. I’ve got several other projects on science and literature underway.
Is science fiction an american invention?
As I said, SF is the product a number of cultures as they react in specific ways to the paradigm shifts brought about by the development of science. There is the Cartesian paradigm, the Evolutionary Paradigm, and in American SF the Emersonian Paradigm. It seems to me that science fiction flourished in America because this Emersonian vision is both dynamic and open-ended, thus better able to negotiate scientific discoveries that impact the so-called “human condition.” Emerson’s vision of center-circumference and power and form, a dynamic focused on the individual monad, seems marvelously adaptable to the advent of visual and electronic media, which is the principal venue of SF today. It’s not an American “invention,” but as Emerson says, we have built a better mousetrap.
The intellectual life must be brought down to the lowest common denominator, the consumers?
American culture has always flourished, and created art, in the matrix of consumerism. The great jazz of the 1950s moved silently among jazz clubs during the dull Eisenhower 1950s. The same is true for Hollywood cinema. The great directors became greater because they had to struggle against studio bosses. The artistic phoenix springs from consumerist soil. Science fiction is no exception. It moved in its own circles, where writers in order to live have to sell books. Editors and publishing houses are an integral part of the creative picture. where creative editors like Terry Carr and David Hartwell moved the genre in significant directions. European intellectuals tend to think of artistic creation from the top down, and often see theory preceding practice. You create “schools” of literature, or cultural tzars orient and subsidize writer’s guilds. In the past, American culture has grown very nicely from the soil of consumerism. Whether this is still the case is doubtful, given the insipid nature of commerialized music and literature today.
Is the american science fiction the world’s best or it has the best marketing strategy relying on global popular culture consumerism?
I don’t know about the “world’s best.” But it is possibly the most dynamic and capable of transformation. I have a great appreciation for the American SF of the Golden Age. During the 1940s and 1950s, when writers like Heinlein and Bradbury were producing masterpieces of literature, there was no marketing machine for SF. Nor was its audience “consumerist” in any way. Granted we know how to market culture. But the result is increasingly disastrous. Bad special effects movies. Rap music, insipid pop singers, a stream of garbage. But in what is for me the great “classic” period of SF, it was a literary movement like any other. It had its own serious (sercon) critics in semi-pro and professional magazines. It had discriminating readers, from varied walks of life.
In your opinion what are the world’s best science fiction writers and why?
I was surprised, when I read some of your other interviews with American SF scholars, that when asked what SF writers they liked or thought best, they named Borges, Calvino and other writers I would not categorize as SF writers, nor hold up as paradigms for the genre. For yes, there is a science fiction genre, with identifiable parameters, themes, forms, modes of operation. For whatever reason (academic “respectability”, political correctness) the writers of the American Golden Age are rarely mentioned. Nor even are Verne and Wells. Nor Stapledon and Rosny. This is not an American hegemony by any means. I would put all of the above on my list. But I would also put Heinlein, Asimov, Sturgeon, Bradbury, Blish, Silverberg, Bear, Brin, Benford–the classic American writers and their “progeny.” Science fiction is all about science, and the way scientific concepts of the world interact with conventional belief systems. All the writers mentioned above, and innumerable others, have this “scientific focus” in diverse ways. They are not playing mind-games with the universe, but are, as Benford says, “playing with the net up.” So when we say “best” writers, I use as criterion, rather than literary “excellence,” adherence to the forms and conventions of the genre.
What about the rest of the world’s science fiction, what deserves to be read, what’s your opinion?
All of it. Here, in the US, the focus (academics and fans alike) in on English language writings. This is perhaps understandable for a culture that feels everybody else should speak English, and makes little effort to learn other languages. I am fascinated by other national forms of SF, and how other cultures react to scientific “advancement.” French-language SF for instance is a genuinely alternate tradition, but is known here only to a handful of readers. Marginalized by its own culture, it has few adherents in France itself, though the way it operates is central to the Cartesian vision that shapes it. I have had the same experience with Russian SF and the Strugatskys. I wish I could read Chinese, as my graduate students tell me SF is flourishing there. There ultimately will be no way to understand how SF has evolved without putting together its world profile.
Do you know something about an “exotic considered issue”, for example the romanian science fiction?
I’m not sure what “exotic issue” means. In the final chapter of my book on SF as World Literature, however, I deal at such length with Romanian SF. I do not read Romanian, but do know French, Spanish, Italian, and can draw on Latin (dacia felix). So I have a sense of the language. I was fascinated with the tenacity and wide-ranging knowledge of SF of Romanian critics, many of whom, like Hobana and Cornel Robu, were active under Ceauscescu. I obtained a copy of Bogdan Aldea’s Worlds in the Making, a superb analysis of SF, from a background not just of American and UK SF, but French SF and theories of SF as well. I had copies of the Nemira volumes from the mid 1990s, with their Romanian-English translations back to back Ace Double style–a remarkable attempt to breach the language barrier and make new generation (post 1960) Romanian SF available to the English language reader. I discovered writers like Sebastian Corn and Iulia Anania. I had a sense of a mix (is this the “exotic issue”?) of modern science and deep and violent cosmic myths that remained alive as a sort of alternate “science.” Strange phenomena like Vlad Dracula live on in the future worlds of Romanian SF. My knowledge is superficial, but I see clearly a vibrant tradition that needs to be known.
Do you know Paul Kincaid’s concepts of SF’s exhaustion and decline related to the general western decline? If yes, is such a thing as the gradual US decline as world’s superpower?
Ah yes, the Untergang des Abendlandes. I hardly think we’re there quite yet, and will work quite hard to make sure it doesn’t happen. True, SF has changed a lot in the new millenium. Not all changes do I like (for instance the repeated attacks on Western science by people who have mightily benefited from it). But I don’t see “exhaustion” by any means. There are excellent new writers like Ted Chiang, Charles Stross, Neil Stephenson, Howard Hendrix. Fine novels like Cory Doctorow’s Makers, Paolo Baciagalupi’s The Windup Girl, strong work by Greg Bear and Greg Benford in the classic hard SF vein. There is also an “anglophone” current, typified by Amitav Gosch’s The Calcutta Chromosome. Much of this is a “rewriting” of Western scientific history, and its “undercurrent” of oppression of “unscientific” cultures. It is flying under the banner of SF, and that is fine. One can understand that there are “many sciences” at work today.
In any event, I see vibrant things happening in “SF,” even though the generic label is stretched thin. As for the decline of America’s superpower “status,” I don’t see this in the immediate future. Read Gregory Benford’s and Michael Rose’s blog. All I hope is that the power is used wisely.
In the next decades?
No.
In your opinion has the human species a chance to survive all the next challenges (overpopulation, the resources’ exhaustion, the planet’s climate change, etc.)?
Just as SF is not a literature of prediction, nor can I predict. It is certain however that, if as many claim science and technology has provided the means for creating this mess, only science and technology can offer ways to remedy it. Again, Benford and Rose offer some fascinating solutions.
Do you consider that the western type of intellectual and academic humanist will continue to exist in the future ? What about the future role of the financiers and hard sciences specialists?
The “financiers” need to be muzzled, and we need new economic models that operate on a world-wide basis. Right now we pit system against system. The French blame plant closings on greedy capitalist bosses. What they don’t realize that these “bosses” are the American retiree. The UC Retirement Fund invests in businesses that pay good dividends. The retiree does not realize that when the fund “divests” holdings in a failing factory or business, thousands of people lose their jobs. But again, in the global marketplace, can governments afford to nationalize and sustain with taxpayer money “rust-belt” industries?
The “hard science” people continue to invent and discover. For many of them however, these “makers” find the so-called “humanist academics&