Big Brother's Big Shoes

There’s a graveyard in the publishing world that’s full of authorized sequels and companion novels to famous works. Neither Scarlett nor Rhett Butler’s People are talked about decades following their release or in as fond terms as Gone With The Wind. Return to Wuthering Heights seems to have existed just to cash in on Emily Brontë’s original. The less said about the sequel to Catcher In The Rye, the better.

(Image via Goodreads)

In that context, it seems foolhardy for an author to try and tackle a novel like George Orwell’s 1984, a book that is often ranked among the most important works of fiction in the 20th Century. Few novels have altered the dictionary as often and as profoundly; from doublethink and the memory hole, to Big Brother and the unperson. Moreover, every dystopian novel published in the past 75 years has been compared — often unfavourably — to this Orwellian classic.

Foolhardy or not, Sandra Newman was authorized by the Orwell estate to craft a novel set in the world of 1984.

You have to respect Sandra Newman’s ambition and, in our opinion, accomplishment. For the most part the resulting novel Julia meets the lofty standard to which it aspires.

This success can probably be attributed not to a slavish lockstep with the original, but rather to the fact that Newman’s evident affection for 1984 is tempered with a clear-eyed critical analysis of it.

This is more than an adaptation or retelling — it’s a companion piece that has something worthwhile to say.

As progressive as he was on matters pertaining to class and culture, and as observant as he was in the ways in which freedom could be subverted, Orwell neglected issues of gender equity. Notably in 1984, there are only two female characters, neither of whom is depicted as having agency or given any sort of interior development.

Multiple hit reality TV shows 
have been inspired by 1984,
the BBC has adapted it to radio
on six occasions, it's even been
made into a musical twice.
(Image via Guardian.co.uk)

Retelling the same narrative as Orwell did, but presenting it from the perspective of Julia, Newman recasts 1984’s protagonist Winston Smith as a self-absorbed brocialist who is willfully ignorant of much that goes on in the lives of those around him.

Newman imbues her protagonist with sly wit and an understated charm; her descriptions of working at the Ministry of Truth reveal how humour can be used as a coping mechanism for those living in totalitarian regimes. Julia is a warmer, happier person than the melancholic Winston Smith (whose nickname readers learn was ‘Old Misery’), despite having endured worse hardships.

Although it follows most of the same narrative beats, Julia is almost twice as long as Orwell’s original. This can leave the story dragging at places, but for the most part the extra length is used well, taking readers on a tour of proletarian districts, inner-party sanctums, and the wider world.

Julia is a more courageous character than Winston, and leans into the little rebellions that can make life more tolerable in a totalitarian state. Consequently, the story loses some of the bleakness that makes 1984 such a powerful novel. Perhaps this is the cost of storytelling that needs to present readers with a reflective mirror, and one that must recognize the jagged path of social progress that’s unfolded in the decades between 1984 and Julia.

In addition to being true to Orwell’s most famous work, Julia has a 21st-century perspective that might appeal more to readers under the age of 50. Those reading 1984 today may not have a visceral sense of the brooding and malign shadow the Soviet Union under Stalin cast across the globe when the book was published. As such, Newman’s take on totalitarianism — replete with subtle references to modern-day political issues — are likely to make the original more accessible to current generations.

The Orwell estate rejected Bowie's
request to make a musical based
on 1984. What other works have
been lost due to long copyright?
(Image via Rolling Stone)

In most jurisdictions (such as Canada and the United Kingdom), 1984 is already in the public domain, so anyone could have penned their own retelling in those countries — though not in the United States. But Julia came about at the express request of the Orwell estate, who invited Sandra Newman to write this book. We wonder what Newman might have done differently with Orwell’s vision if she had not been operating under the auspices of the rights holders. Likewise, what other versions might be out there ready to be created once Orwell’s book enters the public domain in the United States?

One can see why the heirs to Orwell’s intellectual property selected Newman, who is no stranger to genre fiction, having written about time travel and various apocalypses. But her work has been the type of science fiction that mysteriously ends up in the “fiction and literature” shelves of most bookstores, rather than being placed next to books with rocket ships and aliens on their covers.

This sheen of literary credibility may help Julia find readership in the wider world, but that unfortunately may also dissuade some Hugo Award voters from picking it up. Julia may only be the little sister to 1984’s big brother, but amazingly it’s not lesser.

Is that The Canon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

If it’s true that journalism is the first draft of history, then one might also suggest that literary awards 

Bloom's tome offers
the modest subtitle
"The Books and School
of the Ages."
(Image via Wikipedia)

are a first draft of The Canon.

As literary theorists use the term, ‘The Canon’ is a body of art, literature, and cultural works that are of paramount influence.

Slightly more than 30 years ago, the great American educator E.D. Hirsch’s tome Cultural Literacy, prompted a flurry of hand wringing and arguments about the Canon by arguing that there is a set of essential texts that one needs to be at least passingly familiar with in order to appreciate Western culture. A few years later, in the surprise bestseller The Western Canon, literary critic Harold Bloom offered a prescriptive vision of what he considered the great texts that all people should know and have read.

The argument that they were advancing was that since all art is built upon previous works, there’s a base level of knowledge required to fully participate in society — and that abandoning the classics would lead to a coarsening of culture. For example, even when not directly addressing religion, John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath subtly references the plagues of Egypt while describing the dust bowl of the Great Depression. In the Empire Strikes Back,

Alas, poor C3P0, I knew him well.
(Image via http://tesesslee.blogspot.com)

Chewbacca holds up the disembodied head of the android C-3P0 in a manner similar to the way Hamlet held up Yorick’s skull – an allusion that the director has said was deliberate. Both of these works, Hirsch and Bloom would argue, are strengthened by the allusions.

It would be hard to argue against the proposition that our appreciation of these works is completely independent of a base level of cultural literacy, or against the idea that a base level of knowledge helps us enjoy these works more fully.

But I would argue that what Hirsch and Bloom both missed is the degree to which this concept of cultural literacy is a moving target – especially in a culture that is as mercurial, balkanized and full of foment as our own has become over the past 40 years. As Marshall McLuhan predicted, the change in the means of literary production and dissemination can be understood as a driver of this culture. In defense of Bloom and Hirsch, they were writing before the Western world had widespread access to the Internet.

Both of these academics seem to have believed that culture was more monolithic and stagnant than it is. For example, there’s a different set of cultural references that’s required for understanding the genre of SF than there is for mystery fiction, and the canon of 2018 is clearly different than the canon was when Bloom attempted to codify it.

The adoption and repetition of literary metaphors, perhaps to the point of cultural practice, is what

Science fiction provides powerful
metaphors that can be used to advance
a political agenda, or to sell stuff
like Apple computers.
(Image via CultOfMac.com)

gives them power. This elevation secures a position in the Canon. We see this demonstrated when someone refers to people having “taken the Red Pill,” when protesters dress up as Handmaids, and when overt displays of political power are described as “Orwellian” and the year “1984” is used as shorthand for authoritarianism. Being part of the prescriptive Canon infers and reproduces the power of the metaphor and its underlying meaning.

It is worth noting that Harold Bloom’s 1993 list of The Western Canon included only two works that are traditionally categorized as science fiction: Ursula Le Guin’s Hugo Award winner The Left Hand of Darkness and George Orwell’s 1984.

But of Bloom’s list, I would argue the majority of the works cited are less relevant to the broad public – and to a concept of cultural literacy – than the recent Hugo Award winners and popular works of science fiction.

For example, references and allusions to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s 13th century poem Parzival are lost on the broader

Much like his namesake, Parzival in
Ready Player One was searching for
a Holy Grail. Isn't that taking 13th
Century nostalgia too far?
(Image via Variety.com)

public, while Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One protagonist Parzival is familiar to many.

Ready Player One — as has been discussed on this blog previously — explores the limits of cultural literacy by overloading the reader with intertextual references. It is sometimes said that nothing dates faster than the future, but one might suggest that pop cultural references of the moment date at least as quickly.

But the fact that a book so intertextual became a success shows that science fiction has become the lingua franca of modern culture. The power of the Hugo Awards is therefore not insignificant in helping move works from niche audiences towards the mainstream, and from the ephemerality of the moment, to enduring accessibility.

This — at least in part — explains many of the battles surrounding the Hugo Awards over the years. The deeply divisive Hugo Award battle at the Worldcon in Miami in 1977 can in some ways be seen

You don't have to be familiar
with Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring to appreciate
Where Late The Sweet Birds
Sang, but it helps.
(Image via Wikipedia)

as an argument about which was the better book, Man Plus or Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang. But it could also be described as an argument about whether The Science Fiction Canon was closed to new wave environmentalist works. Both works are excellent — but it is worth noting that the more metaphor-laden and timely work won. Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is a work that still resonates with many ecologists and wildlife biologists — Kate Wilhelm’s work, along with Silent Spring, the non-fiction work that inspired it, could be argued to be essential parts of the canon.

These questions of enduring value, of cultural literacy, and of metaphorical weight are ones that should be important to how we as fans think about our Hugo Award ballots. We are writing the first draft of the Canon. It may not be the final word on the matter, but it is an important start of the dialogue.

Retro Hugos 1947 (Part One: Novels)

If there had been Hugo awards presented in 1947, they would have been awarded at Philcon 1.

The fifth and possibly
largest Worldcon to that date
(Image via Worldcon.org)

The fifth Worldcon came to Philadelphia during a time of change and optimism for the city. The local baseball team, the Athletics, was in the process of snapping a multi-decade losing streak. The peace-time economy was providing new opportunities and prosperity to the diverse city. And the Philadelphia Free Library was experiencing an event of high psychokinetic activity that would later become known as the ‘Philadelphia Mass Turbulence of 1947.'

Science Fiction was at a turning point. Herbert George Welles, the titan of the genre, had just died. Up-and-comers of the pulp era were being discharged from the armed forces and returning to writing.

Three major figures in Science Fiction at the time worked at the Philadelphia naval yards: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague DeCamp, all of whom attended the convention.

Post-War Boom

The convention was possibly the biggest to date — the first one since the original Worldcon to break the 200-person mark in attendance.

Left to right, Heinlein, DeCamp and
Asimov in at the Philadelphia Naval
Yards in 1944. (Image via Wikipedia)

There were no Hugo awards presented at Philcon 1, as the awards wouldn’t be introduced for another five years, but it’s interesting to imagine the context in which these awards might have been presented. The awards would have recognized works published the previous year — the first year of post-war publishing.

Twenty-seven-year-old Isaac Asimov had written prolifically during the war, but only had one story up for consideration for the awards that year.  Robert A. Heinlein — in the middle of his second divorce — had turned his attention to political writing, rather than Science Fiction. Several other significant authors who served in the war weren’t able to return to writing until late 1946.

De Camp had only one short story to his name that year. James Blish published no novels that year. Nor did Nelson S. Bond.  Fritz Lieber’s name was not on any dust jacket.

Likely Nominations

Which would have left Hugo nominating committees with a dearth of works to recognize in the long-form categories. It would have been an unusually lopsided ballot, with three real contenders, and one truly outstanding work.  

A classic that is a product
of its time.
(Image via Wikipedia) 

The Skylark of Space was revised and expanded from E.E. Doc Smith’s much earlier short stories, and first saw print as a novel in 1946. It’s a deeply influential book, and was probably the most popular at the time. But it has aged more poorly than many books of the era, possibly betraying its earlier history from pre-John W. Campbell pulp magazines.

Canadian expatriate A.E. Van Vogt had moved to Hollywood in 1946, where he edited together his popular Slan stories into a novel that is an influential classic today. It is hard to imagine that it would have failed to make the Hugo shortlist had there been one, but since it won a Retro Hugo a few years back (for the serialized version in 1941), it is not eligible to be a contender for the 1947 Retro Hugo.

Which leaves Mervyn Peake’s masterpiece Titus Groan as the undisputed frontrunner for the 1947 Retro Hugo. 

Moody Masterpiece

Titus Groan — the first of the Gormenghast novels — is a singularly impressive book. The setting is richly imagined, evocative, moody and alive. The language is complex and nuanced (if a little florid and rococo at times).  The plot is ponderous, but well realized, and despite being unfinished because of Peake’s death, ultimately satisfying.

Image via
MervynPeake.org

If we were to list the greatest books that are usually classified as ‘fantasy,’ Titus Groan would be challenged for the top spot only by The Fellowship of the Ring and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

But although it’s usually classified as ‘fantasy,’ Titus Groan (and the rest of the Gormenghast novels) do not contain any overtly fantastical elements.

It’s a series of palace intrigues set in a sprawling, arcane, labyrinthine castle, the likes of which does not, and has never existed. But it could have. The royal family is stranger and older than any medieval family — but not impossibly so.  Which begs the question: What is the edge of Science Fiction and Fantasy? Is this a book that we should be honouring with a Hugo Award?

Despite this major question, it seems inconceivable that Titus Groan should fail to garner both a Hugo nomination and the award. It’s just too good not to.

We look forward to voting for it on our ballot.

Do you have suggestions for works that might be worthy of consideration for the 1947 Retro Hugos that we may have missed? Please comment on this post.