10
Tuesday, April 6, 1976
University Dally Kansan
Sci-fi more than monsters
By BARBARA ROSEWICZ
Good science fiction writing goes beyond monsters and men on the moon, says Robert Scholes, professor of English at Brown University.
Science fiction should project sociological and philosophical problems through the author's imagination, he said in an interview Friday.
If a monster in science fiction stands for more than a monster, he said, "then his
Scholars is the scholar-in-residence in the accompaniment of English for a week at the university.
SCHOLES SAID IT HAD been in only the 40 or 10 years that science fiction had been invented.
A hundred years ago, he said, science fiction was very hastily and carelessly written and was the butt of a commonly repealed joke.
If "something was good, then it couldn't be science fiction; if it was science fiction, then it couldn't be good," he said. "Science fiction has the strongest trend in American fiction writing."
THE ART NOVEL, the kind that wins
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Scholes, professor of English at Brown University, called Mary Shelley, who created the tale of Frankenstein in 1818, "the founding mother of science fiction."
But he said that it took nearly a century for science fiction to become a recognized literary form.
Frankenstein creator gave birth to sci-fi
Robert Scholes discussed yesterday the development of science fiction writing from the 19th century to the present in a lecture to the University in the Forum Room of the Kansas Union.
Grants to three county agencies were approved by county commissioners yesterday at the Douglas County Commission meeting.
Commissioners approve grants to county bodies
The Probation and Parole Internship,
Douglas County Corrections and Volunteers
in Court programs were awarded grants
from the county for program needs.
The Probation and Parole Internship
numerum received $1,89.35 from the county.
The remainder of the nearly $9,000 budget for the program will come from federal and state funds. Jane Kreps, project director, said yesterday.
two interns, either junior or seniors from the University of Kansas or Baker University, will be hired for one year beginning July 1. Kreps said she would probably begin accepting applications for the program during the first part of May. The university has no transfer students in school year and full-time during summer mothos, she said. They have the same duties as probation officers, but on a smaller scale, Kreps said.
smaller audiences. Interest in the art novel was confined to those who could appreciate the technical resourcefulness of the "virgin performers" who wrote the books, he said.
The commissioners also authorized a grant of $500 to the Douglas County
The interns carry a small case load and gain experience working with paroles, she said. They also familiarize themselves with enforcement personnel and their duties.
Therefore, a substitute was needed and modern science fiction was introduced, he
The remainder of the money will come from state and federal funds.
The grant will be part of a nearly $10,000 funding package to pay the salary for an assistant director for the corrections office, a corrections spokesman said.
Volunteers in Court will receive about $10,000 of its $25,000 budget from the county.
The grant will help fund the Person to Person, Alternatives to Detention and Truncation programs, which are subdivisions of the Court in Court program, the spokesman said.
"The future and alternate time streams opened a new world." Scholes said.
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People became interested in science fiction because it projected current social problems, such as ecological disasters, he said.
smeeney's work the first century "A.F.- after Frankstein."
DURING THIS TIME, the works of Fadgall Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Edward Bellamy and Edgar Burrows, as well as many others, use technology, stimulated science fiction, he said.
Scholes said Poe's writing was an example of the metaphysical aspects of science fiction, which deal with speculation about the state of the universe.
Verne's writing, however, was totally unspeculative and was concerned primarily with technical and physical aspects, he worked on the story for which he financially successful science fiction writer.
Bellamy dealt with the dimensions of social commitment and time in his science
BURROWS, he said, was a master at telling a tale, who wrote exotic adventure
He said a new social awareness and literary self-consciousness had resulted in varied attempts by contemporary science fiction writers to find a science fiction language that was as adventurous as the technology of today.
Scholes was H. G. Wells was the first author to combine the metaphysical, physical, social commitment and time elements in science fiction.
Science fiction uses the available information and predicts consequences, Scholes said. However, he said, the material isn't necessarily dated if science answers the previously unanswered question treated in a work.
FOR EXAMPLE, he said, man's landing on the moon has damaged the moon as a result. Science fiction writers could use the information obtained from the moon's ex-planet surfaces.
The moon landing, he said, hurt only such
people as those that had characters who
breathed on the moon.
He said it was hard to draw a line between the best science fiction writing and "trainstream fiction," which he identified as that feature that emphasizes literary techniques.
Writers of both genres, he said, use imagination, a gift for the language and a tool for communication.
Scholes said his primary interest as a critic of fiction was semiotics, the study of sign systems. It includes such things as symbolization, communication systems and traffic lights, he said.
IN SCIENCE fiction, Scholes said he could use semiotics to look for types of plot patterns. He said that semiotics was more useful in analyzing texts, such as the works of James Joyce.
Scholes has written several critiques of Joyer's works.
Through semiotics, he said, he identified features peculiar to Joyce, such as his comments on the culture of Dublin, Ireland, Joyce's birthplace.
Scholes spoke on the "Semiotic Approaches to a Fictional Text: Joyce's Pipeline" last Friday, and gave a lecture on the semiotic difference fiction written yesterday afternoon.
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