In the second part our century, pulp fiction has inundated American culture. Nearly every decade, new subgenres have extended the range of well-established popular genres: gothic, romance, Western, historical, spy, "police procedural," thriller, family saga, and so forth. Among these, science fiction emerges as a genre that many Europeans view as a peculiarly American art form. Science fiction now has its own tradition, its own classics, a brotherhood of tens of thousands of fiercely devoted followers, access to an audience of millions, an institutional structure that includes regular conventions, and a vast network of periodicals. It also has a system of prizes (Hugo, Nebula) that combine the prestige of the Oscars with that of the Goncourt and Renaudot. It had and has its animators: Sturgeon, Simak, and Campbell are the kind of visionary entrepreneurs that any industry might envy. It has its towering and legendary figures. Malcolm Bradbury brings to science fiction a genuine moral sensitivity, a fine attention to the mysteries of the world, and the subtle anguish of a conservative facing technological progress and the evil lurking in nature and man. Isaac Asimov has a piercing and eclectic mind with which he ranges the universe and tackles the rational and ethical dilemmas of human existence. Paul Anderson, a master of narrative, projects the creative energy of a free society onto a cosmic stage. Robert Heinlein, a libertarian, gives free rein to the unattached individual to penetrate galaxies and, indeed, alternative universes while seeking some personal goal or salvation. Ursula LeGuin, the melancholy chronicler of indeterminacy, explores the hidden powers of dream only to return to reality as the ultimate wonder. Science fiction has also given a from of expression to the poetic-mystical J.G. Ballard, the quick and versatile intelligence and spectacular imagery of Robert Silverberg, the verbal and structural experimentalism of Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Larry Niven, and Joanna Russ, the philosophical and sociological probings of Arthur Clarke and Brian Aldiss (both Englishmen), and the detailed visions of Frank Herbert who introduced the term ecology to a wider audience and provided terminological shape to diffuse concerns. Mainstream writers also discovered the potential of science fiction: G.K. Chesterton, Luis Borges, Aldous Huxley, Ernst Junger, Kingsley Amis, Anthony Burgess, and Thomas Pynchon have all made excellent use of its possibilities.
Does all this matter? Stanislaw Lem, perhaps the greatest European practitioner and critic of the genre, says that the adaptation of literary formulas from science-fiction writers by mainstream authors does not strengthen science fiction as a genre. In his recent collection of essays, selected from articles published in Polish, Hungarian, Austrian, and American journals over the last thirty years, Lem repeatedly accuses science-fiction writers of squandering opportunities, relying on cliches and "trash" (by which he means repetitive patterns), and self-consciously but unsuccessfully aping the upper realm of literature. Some of these verbal assaults, which account for over two-thirds of the volume Microworlds, are just the exercises of a curmudgeon. This gruff and sullen tone is often parochial, snobbish, vituperative, or plain wrong. It is wise to ignore most of it. Yet, each scathing statement about science fiction is followed by friendly comments on many individual works and authors, illustrating the exception rather than the "rule." Lem even outlines some basic features of science fiction as an intellectual enterprise, sometimes, ironically, when he speaks about matters outside the field. He argues that what he wants to do for science fiction is "to prepare the outline of a rational internal
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