POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Science Has NOTHING To Do With The “Sense of Wonder” We So Crave!

Using the Program Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California in August 2018 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This originally appeared on my blog in September of 2018. The link for the WorldCon is provided below (though I don't know if it's still alive)…

Science: The Core of SF's Sense of Wonder
Many readers come to science fiction for the jolt of wonder at imagining the clouds of Venus, the chromosphere of the sun, or the frigid surface of Pluto. They want their breath taken away by the long scope of time of evolution and geology and the stars. What is that sense of wonder experience and how do people feel it differently? What science in science fiction most succeeds at getting to those feelings? Our panel of writers and readers of scifi wax rhapsodic about science in science fiction.

Bridget McKinney: fantasy and science fiction writer (film and television).
Stanley Schmidt: author, professor, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact; musician, photographer, traveler, naturalist, outdoorsman, pilot, and linguist; Guest of Honor at the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention, Nebula and Hugo nominee for his fiction, Robert A. Heinlein Award, SFWA’s Solstice Award, retired
Becky Chambers: author, nominated for the Hugo Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, won Prix Julia Verlanger in 2017.
Suzanne Palmer: writer and artist, won Asimov's and Analog reader awards, finalist for 2018 Hugo
Vincent Docherty: fan, con-runner, researched in Quantum Chemistry, works in the energy industry.
Annalee Newitz: journalist, editor, author of both fiction and nonfiction: Popular Science, Wired, Techsploitation, San Francisco Bay Guardian, io9, Gizmodo, Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica.

This is a heavy group of individuals!

The question that vexes me (and has helped me!) is the answer to the question: What is a sense of wonder?

Here’s some definitions from the internet.

CAST OF WONDERS: “…we don’t rigidly define the genre…stories that evoke a sense of wonder, that have something unreal about them…non-condescending stories with wide appeal…without explicit sex, violence or strong language. Think Harry Potter or The Hunger Games…makes us think…thrilling entertainment and adventure…high fantasy, elves, dragons, secondary worlds, and magic…all forms of sci-fi: far-future, near future, space opera, hard SF — but accessible…”

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction: “…a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time…”

“On the Grotesque in Science Fiction”, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Professor of English, DePauw University: “…the primary attributes of sf at least since the pulp era. The titles of the most popular sf magazines of that period—Astounding, Amazing, Wonder Stories, Thrilling, Startling, etc.—clearly indicate that the putative cognitive value of sf stories is more than counter-balanced by an affective power, to which, in fact, the scientific content is expected to submit.”

John Clute and Peter Nicholls (Clute & Nicholls 1993): “…‘conceptual breakthrough’ or ‘paradigm shift’…achieved through the recasting…previous narrative experiences in a larger context. It can be found in short scenes (…‘That's no moon; it's a space station.’) and it can require entire novels to set up (as in the final line to Iain Banks's Feersum Endjinn. [Tried desperately to find it; couldn’t…)

George Mann, English author and editor: “…the sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known…” and “It is this insistence on fundamental realism that has caused Verne’s novels to be retrospectively seen as of key importance in the development of SF. …—people in droves came to the books looking for adventure and got it, but with an edge of scientific inquiry that left them with a new, very different sense of wonder. The magic of the realms of fantasy had been superseded by the fascination of speculation rooted in reality…”

Isaac Asimov: “…because today’s real life so resembles day-before-yesterday’s fantasy, the old-time fans are restless. Deep within, whether they admit it or not, is a feeling of disappointment and even outrage that the outer world has invaded their private domain. They feel the loss of a ‘sense of wonder’ because what was once truly confined to ‘wonder’ has now become prosaic and mundane.”

David Hartwell, editor and critic: “Any child who has looked up at the stars at night and thought about how far away they are, how there is no end or outer edge to this place, this universe—any child who has felt the thrill of fear and excitement at such thoughts…”

Damon Knight: (In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, referencing Samuel Moskowitz): “…some widening of the mind’s horizons, not matter what direction – the landscape of another planet, or a corpuscle’s eye view of an artery, or what it feels like to be in rapport with a cat…any new sensory experience, impossible to the reader in his own person, is grist for the mill, and what the activity of science fiction is writing about.”

Finally, from Clute, Langford, Nicholls, and Sleight’s ENCYCLODEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (the entire article here – http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sense_of_wonder -- is very instructive, but I distill from it this diamond): “…‘sense of wonder’ may not necessarily be something generated in the text by a writer…it is created by the writer putting the readers in a position from which they can glimpse for themselves, with no further auctorial aid, a scheme of things where mankind is seen in a new perspective.”

I said earlier that this concept has both vexed me and helped me. I’ve been twice published in the online podcast called CAST OF WONDERS. It’s too bad that no one from that marvelous production wasn’t included in the discussion. I was rejected most recently with their standard note: “ Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. Our readers felt the story was missing the developed sense of wonder or fantastic element that we consider the hallmark of Cast of Wonders stories.”

It’s helped because I’ve had two stories published and cast with them (see the sidebar if you’d like to listen. The first one is “Peanut Butter and Jellyfish”, the second “Fairy Bones”. I haven’t cracked the market since they went to a professional pay scale, and every tom-dina-and-hawra have sent them their hot little pieces of fiction. Overwhelmed, they now regularly close their submission gates. They have a contest up now for a 500 word SF/F/H piece that oozes “sense of wonder”…I’ll try, but I wonder – is it that the competition is better or that they have more non-sense-of-wonder to wade through and they are grabbing things that meet their needs but may not be the “biggest” or “best”. No idea, just wondering.

At any rate, to summarize “sense of wonder”: While science or fantasy or horror can be the vehicle, this is entirely a FEELING that comes from inside a READER. It has little to do with the writer or editor. It has to do with the ability of a piece to force a reader to feel a certain way. It is, at its core, cognitive manipulation!

Now excuse me while I get my teacher’s hat on; very few people are as good at cognitive manipulation as the very best of teachers!

Program Book: https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/WC76_PocketProgram_2018_Final_WEB08152018.pdf, Who’s Who: https://www.worldcon76.org/guests/program-panelists
Image: https://www.sfexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/sf.Stephens.0409.jpg