2015 - Science Fiction Manifesto - Jeff Noon

Texto

Curated from @JeffNoon on Twitter.

A while back I wrote a sort of manifesto for science fiction. I’ve just updated it. I’ll present it here. 26 ideas and images…

Science Fiction infects and transforms. It questions, supports and replicates, firing off clichés and wonders at equal rates.

Science Fiction moves at the pace of life, accelerated or slow-motion. It walks the borderlines of mainstream culture, enamoured of edges.

Science Fiction is an emergent system. It exists both in the reality of the present day and the equally valid reality of tomorrow’s dreams.

Science Fiction conducts experiments upon Form and Content, inventing new techniques, new processes, new kinds of narrative expression.

Science Fiction evolves through small variations and wild mutations. It is designed to examine, distrust, perfect and dismantle itself.

Science Fiction enflames, enrivers, begulfs, undertugs, sidetwists and interslips. It befogs, englows, transplodes and intraflows.

Science Fiction is modified by its users over time. It revels in having loose screws and wires. It can so easily catch fire.

Science Fiction is unashamed to fly on sentimental wings over lands populated by werebeasts, elves, vampires, androids, aliens and unicorns.

Science Fiction is trying to understand itself. It never will. It’s not that kind of genre. It’s diseased. The disease is its power source.

Science Fiction is the undercurrent, a visceral urge towards life. It worships weirdness and tradition, and will fuse the two to make anew.

Science Fiction is a magical sword forged in that ultimate of all fantasy realms: the human mind.

Well-mannered literature is scared of pulp, of popular art. And of the avant-garde. And by this act it severs a deep vein of the life blood.

Science Fiction revels in elements from both pulp and avant-garde, and frequently mixes the two to create avant-pulp dreams and realities.

How fruitful this world is, when pulp fuses with the avant-garde. What strange, conjoined creatures are born. How the twin suns shine.

Science Fiction is a four-dimensional object (at the very least). It has more edges and borderlines than all other genres put together.

Science Fiction will create new ways of reaching the public. Words will flow from root to stem to flower to seed to air to earth to root…

Science Fiction does not have an operator’s manual. The operators are the manual.

Science Fiction is a journey of words through time. It says Down with perfection! Welcome to corrupted signals, glitches and fused wires.

To read, write or add new engine parts to Science Fiction is to partake in a grand, bizarre, dangerous, clumsy, vital, unique experiment.

Science Fiction embraces clichés. It can read through the clichés, explore clichés, dismantle clichés. It knows that wonders lie ahead.

Science Fiction moves along well-travelled paths, and yet, at the dusty end of the road, it desires to go further, out into the wastelands.

Science Fiction seeks out realms where no signposts or maps point the way. It crosses borders illegally under cover of night, in disguise.

Science Fiction celebrates hybrid creatures: monsters of the Id, machines of flesh, women who turn into fish, and floating men of fire.

At the liquid edge, Science Fiction leaves mainstream, middlebrow culture far behind. It travels beyond, into fog, into darkness.

Let us go now. Open all channels, connect to everything. Here we are gathered, lost in the flow of words. There is a strange light ahead…

@JeffNoon

URL: https://talesofgrim.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/jeff-noons-science-fiction-manifesto/

Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20161105170612/https://talesofgrim.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/jeff-noons-science-fiction-manifesto/