Isaac Asimov was never a good writer, George Lucas is a terrible director and script writer, and the first page of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a pain. Before the reader thinks I am having a bad hair day, please note that I will eventually say good things about them all. I’ll get to that.
Asimov had earned a popularity that broke the 1,000-nerd barrier and became one of the biggest science fiction authors ever. Not without a reason, sci-fi is considered by many to be a form of subliterature, and I wonder if Asimov had contributed significantly on that direction. I must have read more than a hundred of his stories already, which I appreciate indeed – but each one of them has something that, as well-illustrated by a friend of mine, works like a tiny hand that sprouts from the book towards the reader’s face to give him a good ol’ slap. I am talking about dreadful literary fragilities, a poor rhetoric that is predictable and transparent, and not in a good way, and all that is disguised by Asimov’s unrivalled imagination, which is enriched by his knowledge on physics, chemistry, astronomy et cetera that allows him to write fascinating stuff about space and time.
In my humble opinion of a non-writer, what makes a good writer is not only being able to tell a story well (‘story’ having here the widest of meanings); a good writer must be invisible, to use Yoshi Oida’s term when referring to actors who are so skilful in their art that they disappear on stage, leaving only their characters for us to see. Asimov has great insights, ideas that are really astonishing within the universe he created, but he is never invisible in the text. Through physical descriptions of his characters or comments they make, the bad writer reveals himself – Asimov is there, in every paragraph, occupying a space that should be occupied by the story only and explaining the reader through the literary means of the lowest level something that the reader either already knows, or should discover in a more interesting way. An example: A scientist suggests a colleague how they can escape impending death with the help of a robot (Asimov’s robots are by far his best characters, perhaps for requiring less from the author in the creation of a psychological profile). His explanation involves describing certain chemical phenomena in technical terms, creating a blatant contrast with the writing style so far. What does Asimov do to solve this structural problem? The scientist concludes his speech, “College chem, you know.” The ironic reaction from the reader comes next, realising how educational was the explanation. What makes Asimov’s face to be printed in full colour over the text is an implausible dialog that fell like an anvil from the sky to give the reader – not the scientist #2, more familiar with chemistry and physics than the Rabbi is with the Torah – a piece of information that is critical for the conflict they are stuck in. In another passage in the same story (Runaround) one of the characters assumes the reader’s likely reaction by saying ironically, “Look, this is all very educational, but would you mind changing the subject?”
As for George Lucas, he broke the 1,000-nerd barrier and went a long way beyond. “The Phantom Menace” sums up Lucas’ best and worst – a director who is always visible in automated performances (compare Liam Neeson as Lucas’ Qui-Gon Jinn with Spielberg’s Oskar Schindler) and in dialogs that could have been written by a not very brilliant teenager. He himself admitted on TV not being “very good with dialogs,” which is more or less like a formula one driver admitting not being really good with gear shifts.
I have seen the whole series and I still remember the huge hand-painted boards in front of the theatre with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia, in the now extinct Cine Guarani in Porto Alegre (What? Me old?). What took me to the theatre all six times, and what will take me for three times more if there is the controversial sequel for the saga, is le merveilleux that one would look for in the 18th-Century French opera and that can be found today in the Star Wars series, and this merit – offering us not only impossible dialogs, but impossible worlds with creatures from a magic universe – is all Lucas’.
In the first page of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the novel that became Blade Runner) Philip K. Dick shows up blinking like a pink neon light at every line, more than Asimov and Lucas put together. The characters seem to make an effort to contextualise the reader and give away information that, again, we either already have, or do not need now and could find later on in a better context.
I will get back to this when I finish the book. I am on my way.
6 Comments
True enough, Philip K Dick was never much of a literary craftsman. But the scope of his imagination and the kind of mind blowing ideas he came up with kind of render that irrelevant. I delve into this subject further in my review of “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch”, here:
http://robertod.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/the-three-stigmata-of-palmer-eldritch-book-review
Hi Robert, thank you for your comment in my new-born blog. I think your review on The Three Stigmata […] is fascinating and one can see you are passionate about Philip K. Dick. I am going to read your suggestion that he may have been the greatest writer of the 20th Century and that there has not been noteworthy competition under light of your passion then. He has (I tend to refer to great guys in the present) an amazing imagination, no question about it, and that is even more impressive when we remember that his experience with literature was very limited. Thing is, this lack of contact with a broader literary corpus makes both authors and readers believe that they are in contact with the invention of the wheel, when in fact it has been overly re-invented in many ways and places in the world. The Three Stigmata […] was written in the 60’s, when questioning the fabric of reality was in vogue for the first time in mass media thanks to the likes of Timothy Leary (who himself reported on the transcendence of time and space and the suspension of the self), Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception, mind you, is from the 50’s) and Carlos Castañeda, among many others. Castañeda’s work is remarkable precisely by questioning the concepts of reality, dream, hallucination, time, and space. He claimed his books were non-fiction works, but one cannot seriously read them as such, not being something other than fantastic novels on the journey to alternative realities. By the way, all that has been in the core of Buddhism practice for two and a half millennia.
I guess my whole point so far is that I can’t get away with his unremarkable prose basically because what’s left then is old news. That does not make me dislike his work as a visionary and inventor, which I admire to a great extent ¬– I simply fail to consider him a great writer.
The last three paragraphs in your review are really interesting as they deal with the subject of imagination versus creation, things that in Philip K. Dick are separated by a gap of craftsmanship noise. Being an artist myself, I look for aesthetic delight, which can only be brought to life by skilled artists. For that reason, I engage better with works such as Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is powerfully imaginative and, at the same time, beautifully written. William Gibson, to stay in the science fiction territory, is an example of a wicked imagination nicely paired with a terrific writer. I agree with you, Dick is a man of ideas, and his ideas have yielded so many great films like Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly.
I hope I haven’t extended my comment too much. It must have been the coffee!
Have a nice weekend.
Thanks for your comments. It’s one of those things I guess – whether you value ideas more than aesthetics, or vice versa. I think there’s a place for both.
In writers, I tend to value imagination and depth of thought above literary craftsmanship. Ideally, you’d want both in equal measure – a synthesis (unfortunately) that is so rarely achieved.
My favourite writer is probably Dostoevskey, who is (arguably) unsurpassed for philosophical depth. He’s not an especially great stylist. Not that he’s a bad writer – but it’s definitely a case of the originality of his ideas carrying a power beyond any lyrical quality in his writing.
Thanks for the tip on Castenada – I’m not familiar with him at all, but based on what you’ve said here, I’ll be sure to check out some of his books.
See, I want the full monty! But you’re right, that synthesis is rarely achieved. That reminds me of something that my old composition master used to say, “Some artists are the waves, while others are the ships.”
Dostoyevsky is one of those authors to whom I still haven’t given the deserved thought. I’ve read “Crime and Punishment” many years ago and remember being very impressed. Thanks for reminding me of him. I wish I could read Russian though, as I am sure an important bit is lost in translation.
As for Castañeda, I’d start with The Teachings of Don Juan and continue in chronological order.
My goodness you are hard on these poor writers.
Totally agree about Lucas though, and to a lesser extent Asimov. I.A is a fine writer, but you KNOW you’re reading fiction as told by Asimov and it does detract a little from the illusion he’s selling.
That said, I tend to agree with RobertRod– P.K. Dick is possibly the greatest story teller of the 20th century.
P.K. Dick is a master of transforming the reader in to a passive participant of his world. That is no small feat. Yes, you can see P.K. Dick in the words– but I do not think that is an accident. He becomes, in a sense, the Palmer Eldritch character and keeps us living in his story long after the last page has been turned.
P. K. Dick, the greatest storyteller of the 20th Century? Man, I think there is a serious gap in your library.