Seventy Two Letters

[yagathai]

So people love Ted Chiang's work, and that's fine. I have certainly enjoyed those of his stories that I have read, including his 2000 Sidewise-winning short Seventy Two Letters (available free online, linked from his Wikipedia article). That being said, I re-read it recently and it struck me as... well, very Michael Crichtony (or sideways-Crichtony, as the case may be). There's an excellent speculative premise*, extrapolated brilliantly, draped over a skeleton of a plot and populated with paper-thin stock characters spouting what is at times painfully wooden dialogue.

I think that the first time I read I was too caught up in the "gee-whiz!" to notice, but now that I look at it again... once you get past the gee-whiz, and dig beneath the delicious alternate history crust... there just isn't much there.

One school of criticism says that in order for a genre fiction to be any good, it still has to be good even after you strip away the genre elements. Crap with ray guns or unicorns bolted on (or ray guns AND unicorns bolted on) is still crap, or so proponents of that school claim, and the only thing worse is ray guns or unicorns with crap bolted on. I like to call that a "LOOK HOW COOL MY DRAGONS ARE!" story, though today you might replace dragons with vampires.

Seventy Two Words fails on that level rather spectacularly, as it is most definitely a great speculative hook with some perfunctory story attached. Despite that, I still like it a lot.

Here's the question: can something still be a good science fiction story if it's excellent science fiction, but a terrible story? In other words, is it possible that Chiang's dragon in this story is SO FUCKING COOL!!! that it can make up for all the story's deficiencies?

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*What if the physical sciences sprang from gnostic/kabbalistic sorcery instead of alchemy? What if the name of the thing really was the thing?

You know, now that I think of it I wish someone (me, for example) had brought this story up at the "Is Darwin Too Good For SF" panel at ReaderCon this year, since it excellently postulates an extremely non-Darwinian model of evolution.

Comments

[addienfaemne.livejournal.com]

"Can something still be a good science fiction story if it's excellent science fiction, but a terrible story?"

No. Conventions of a genre may be trappings for a story, but at the heart of any fictive work is story. A bad story is a bad story - period.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

What's so wrong with the occasional schlocky book for fun? If I can enjoy a story that, without the ray guns, is no fun, I still enjoyed it if the ray guns are cool enough. Enjoyable work isn't necessarily the most advanced, critically acclaimed art on the planet. Sometimes totally cool FX in a movie is enough, if the script isn't a total failure. Same goes for books.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Chiang is hardly scholocky fun reading.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Non schlocky fun? Or just not fun?

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

It's Very Serious Fiction. Which is why it bothers when you notice that the characters are paper thin and the idea is all.

Have you rally never read Chiang?

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Never ever. But I don't mind idea-porn, if the prose is decent.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

It certainly is. I like him--just not when he tries to hang a story on emotion, because it's not his strong suit.

I am an unrepentant fan of the dude himself, however.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Ah well. Perhaps he'll get better at it.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

http://web.archive.org/web/20010802144026/http://www.tor.com/72ltrs.html

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

if you take the space ships and jawas out of star wars, what do you have left?

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

A really whiny-ass farm boy.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Take him out too. And Leia. The whole thing should just be a Han And Chewie Road Movie.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

I can totally get behind this.

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

"left hand turn, chewie"

[elsewhereangel.livejournal.com]

I would watch that.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

A bog-standard farmboy-turned-warrior-hero story bolted on to an unrepentant Akira Kurosawa remake?

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

exactly. does that answer your question?

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

No? I mean, Star Wars is fun, but I don't know if I could call it good. Alien vs Predator is fun too, but it ain't winning no Oscars, you know?

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

star wars won like seven oscars dude. and if you count the franchise? you could sink a ship by loading statues on it. GEORGE LUCAS OWNS A SOLID GOLD ISLAND WHERE THE BEACH SAND IS MADE OF TINY DIAMONDS (which are like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue.)

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

Something is coming for you.

LOOK OUT!

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

is it Return of the Jedi Lea?

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

No, it's modern-day Carrie Fisher:

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Though I like Ted's work fine and think he is a superb human who I adore, I have always had this trouble with his work. Whenever, like, human emotions hinge anything in the story, it all falls apart, and it's really doesn't deal with anything deeper than the idea itself.

Which is likely why he's hailed as the crown prince of SF.

[the-corbie.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'd need to reread the story in question, but I find this interesting because I had the opposite reaction to 'The Story Of Your Life', where I didn't care much for the Big SF Idea but was rather touched by the human story. I thought the attempt to meld the two rather failed in that case, though. And I am a sucker for a parent/child love story, of course.

(Thinking about it further, I suppose I would agree with your criticism in regard to 'Understand', which definitely doesn't work without the hook.)

But I don't know. Sometimes a story can be just a vehicle for a cool idea, and that's OK IMO. That's not just true of genre fiction, either.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

Well, the link to the story is in my post. Read away! ;)

[the-corbie.livejournal.com]

I'm at work right now, but I'll have a look at home. On my old-fashioned paper copy. ;)

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

Luddite.

[grumpymonkey.livejournal.com]

In all cases the story has to be at least a workman-like example of storytelling or it's not doing it's job. Sure it can be a little cliche, the characters can be similar to ones we've met in a dozen other books, but the story itself has to keep my interest.

Now, if it's a short story, the tale itself can be even more plain if it's being used to illustrate a neat idea or wonderful character. If I had a great idea for a new Gizmo and wanted to do something with it... but had no grand novella/novel framework for it, I might throw it in a short story as an exercise. If that story came out pretty good, I'd say it worked.

Longer pieces of fiction, novellas and novels, NEED a good story. If I'm going to sit through 100+ pages of someone's writing, the actual story has to compel. Sure you can hide some deficiencies behind snazzy writing styles. Certainly your gizmos, special monsters or whacky situations can help add some interest to wishy-washy prose. BUt if you have a crap-ass story, I'm the novelty of your genre will NOT hide it entirely. Rayguns, unicorns and dark-skinned grue under the bed can only distract me from an author's lack of talent for so long.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

So what do you think of Chiang's story, that I linked to?