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Reviews 117 2Robert Frost, "The Figure a Poem Makes," in Robert Frost: Poetry and Prose, ed. Lathem and Thompson. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1972), 394. GARY BURNETT Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction by Darko Suvin. Kent: Kent State UP, 1988. pp. xviii + 227. $26.00 (cloth). Thirteen of Professor Suvin's previously published essays (1973 to 1984, a few here revised) appear in this collection "unified by an endeavour to both clarify and develop the theoretical and historical conclusions reached" in his earlier books and to "record an implicit dialogue " he carried on with others while co-editing Science Fiction Studies from 1973-1981. The book is not exactly chronological but is organized intelligently into four parts: Presuppositions (two essays). Theory (five essays), SF Practice: Seven Writers (five essays), and a Conclusion. As might be expected, these are critical discussions rather than scholarly articles although scholarship is not lacking. One of the first theoretical critics to devote himself to the study of science fiction, Darko Suvin remains one of the best—perhaps the best working in English—and Positions gives a good sense of his thinking and work as it developed into the mid-eighties. More than this, the book will be fruitful because he has included only essays useful as bases "for further analysis": that's the author's claim and on the whole he has lived up to it. In addition. Professor Suvin is a deeply thoughtful socialist and progressive critic of literature who has brought a basically Eastern European perspective to SF studies in English. The essays collected here illustrate these qualities , and in this time of great change in Eastern Europe they can be of real use to North American readers, critics, and teachers of science fiction. "As a socialist," Suvin writes, he has always been attracted to the "Promethean impulse toward a knowledge to be wedded to self-governing happiness on this Earth." Here as elsewhere he insists on estrangement, cognitive potential, materilism , and rational utopianism as aesthetic (and even moral) standards; hence the underlying strength of his progressive criticism. Refreshingly in these times of burgeoning irrational movements , our author remains a staunch and true child of the Enlightenment. Throughout the book Professor Suvin openly confronts the issues involved in the criticism of what he calls "Paraliterature" (commercial or popular fiction), indicating along the way several reasons why it should be studied; at the same time, he clearly loves SF, does not condescend, and admires good writing. This, I think, is a tricky and entirely necessary compromise in the study of popular fiction. The issues must be confronted and thought through; Suvin here gives us a model for that, just as he gives us a model for the location and analysis of the ideological in SF. The studies of individual authors, in Part Three, seem to me less strong than the theoretical pieces, but this is mainly because they are not thorough or detailed enough to satisfy the appetite they whet. On reading the study of, say, Philip K. Dick's work, I am intrigued by the brief treatments of this aberrant genius's tales and want Suvin to tell me more about The Three Stigmata of Palmer Elderitch and Ubik. And I want him to show me precisely why Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (a book I've always enjoyed) is an "outright failure." Still, the essay does suggest a complex way of seeing P.K.D.'s work whole, even if it does not give the richly detailed criticism one craves. This same weakness—arousing then failing to satisfy the reader's appetite— will be found in the treatments of Lem, Le Guin, the Strugatsky brothers, et. al. The essays in Part Three are, however, well worth reading. Few critics can so easily discuss the works of Lem, Dick, Asimov, Le Guin, the Strugatskys—writers from East and West—all together. The context thus created is stimulating. The "Conclusion"—titled "SF as Metaphor, Parable and Chronotope (with the Bad Conscience of Reaganism)" and published in 1984—is on the whole a strong, interesting piece— especially in the opening pages as it brings a sophisticated, informed discussion of metaphor to the...

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