What is science fiction? A failure of definition.
Questions of definitions of science fiction have continued to define the very existence of the field or genre. Issues of definitions are ongoing and can easily become tedious. However, there are ways of thinking about science fiction that I find resonant, although elusive. One such idea is that science fiction is what the jazz musician and afrofuturist prophet Sun Ra says it is. David Toop’s book Ocean of Sound, (https://www.waterstones.com/book/ocean-of-sound/david-toop/9781852427436) originally published in 1995, contains an account of a meeting with Sun Ra. While walking, Sun Ra talks about composition: ‘“Compositions talking about space, following, you might say, intuition. Talking about things that are totally impossible but still holding to it that it’s true. It’s just like being a scientist. People think, ‘Impossible, couldn’t happen’. Now I’m talking even more impossible things.”’ (Toop 1995, 26) Walking with the assistance of a stick, he pulls some papers out of a plastic carrier bag, dropping some on the wet pavement. Mindful of the fact that these may save the planet, Toop and Sun Ra have to chase the papers to save them from the wind. Based on the fragments of information that Sun Ra passes on regarding the contents of these papers, Toop can only infer that what Sun Ra is describing is science fiction: “superior alien beings wish to raise the consciousness of humans because the mess we are making is threatening the balance of the cosmos, so they transmit secret knowledge to a place where the vibrations are right.” (27)
Toop is right, this does sound like science fiction. For me, this is an indicator of series and credible intent. However, Toop is quick to align the correlation of these ideas to science fiction as evidence of crackpottery. It is an indicator not of a seriousness of thought in itself, or a believability, but of the possibility that he is a crackpot. Science fiction as a belief system is still, it seems, enough to suggest that Sun Ra is simply bonkers. Toop is quick to point out that the United States has its share of eccentrics and crackpots, conspiracy theorists in what was still then a pre-internet world of conceptual craziness.
However, Sun Ra’s science fictional thinking is diffused for Toop, partly, by a humorous self-awareness. However, for Toop, there is still something of the folk prophet who has created a patchwork of ideas, knowledge, hokum. The humour is brought out in one of his songs: “Ra claimed in one of his drily catchy songs that the end of the world had already been and gone, so he knew how to play with the rules of the apocalypse business.” (27)
