Everything I Know About NASA I Learned from TV

I struggled with Penley’s book when I first read it because I felt she never quite drew out the connection she claimed was central to her argument. Providing some comparisons at the beginning, her choice to deal with NASA and Star Trek separately made it harder for me to see where exactly the slash comes in. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the idea of looking at NASA in terms of narrative, and trying to understand how their story has changed over time.

I think part of my initial struggle might come from the fact that, as Alexandra pointed out, I’m looking at NASA (and Star Trek) fourteen years after this book was written. Because I didn’t watch Star Trek when I was young, I’ve always understood it more in terms of other people talking about it. When I saw the newest movie, I got the joke about red shirts, but only because they were referenced in other shows. I know my experience of Star Trek doesn’t apply to the whole class, but I think looking at NASA in terms of this backwards system of understanding might be more relevant. For people with post-Challenger memories, the narrative of NASA often revolves around cultural references. Penley did play out the idea of NASA trying to cast its own narrative to follow Star Trek’s, and I think that has expanded into incorporating other stories.

It’s hard for me to define what NASA means without thinking in terms of popular culture. I know more about the Homer in space episode of The Simpsons than the Teachers in Space program it was apparently loosely based on. NASA continues to tie itself to popular culture occasionally. Examples I could think of off the top of my head were Buzz Aldrin’s self-effacing appearance on 30 Rock and NASA naming a treadmill after Stephen Colbert when write-in votes won him a contest to have a room on the international space station bear his name (they don’t name rooms after living people, apparently). Since the connections don’t seem to be NASA-initiated and since NASA has shown some level of restraint, it’s harder to tell what they’re doing with their narrative. It seems they don’t want to become a joke, but also realize they have to do some joking to remain relevant. But instead of NASA using pop culture, it appears pop culture is using NASA at this point, calling the shots and having some say in its narrative as well.

The expansion from NASA/Trek to NASA/pop culture has in some ways allowed the organization to reframe its own story, though not necessarily for the better. In thinking about the narrative path NASA has taken since Challenger, and since 1997, I was surprised to realize how little I actually know about the organization. I’d completely forgotten about the Columbia explosion in 2003 – an event I did live through, which killed just as many astronauts as Challenger. But it seems to have had far less of an impact on the general public, perhaps because, as we talked about last week, 9/11 had taken its place as the defining flashbulb memory of a generation two years earlier. The real difference between the tragedies, though, seems to be the narrative that surrounded Columbia. There was no national hype, no pop cultural tie-in. And I couldn’t even remember it.

Talking about the success of Apollo 13, Penley explained that modern NASA narratives seemed to revolve around its moments of crisis. Perhaps it’s a sign of a successful reframing of their story that NASA's more recent failures haven’t taken such a hold in their narrative. But that leaves the problem of what we’re left with. Again, I’m reminded of our discussion last week, specifically Delany's idea that every story also includes the narrative of the things left out. In this case the exclusions seem a lot more important. From what I do know of the Challenger story, the idea of the astronauts dying in the explosion still remains (and when I talked about it with my friends, that’s the story they remembered as well). Though the transition into the space of popular culture has kept NASA somewhat relevant, I’m interested in the cost. Penley focused on the lack of a female voice, and that still remains, but I feel the loss of any real NASA narrative is evident today. They've replaced their focus on tragedy and near tragedy with comedy, and while I’m happy to watch Tina Fey's and Stephen Colbert’s versions of NASA’s story, it would be nice to hear NASA’s perspective again as well.

"Nova" and Historical Consciousness

Samuel Delany’s novel "Nova" is packed with political, social and cultural insights that appear timeless; the human beings of the 32nd century have achieved enormous philosophical and technological progress, but they interact with one another in a way that is still recognizable and comprehensible by the human beings of today. Delany paints a portrait of history that, in the words of Kyrin (The Black Cockatoo’s pseudo-historian and the narrator of much of the novel) is “a great web that spreads across the galaxy, as far as man.” (174) For Kyrin, the history of his era cannot be taken as a linear progression, with direct notions of cause and effect, beginning and end: it must be seen as a fabric, with ripples whose initial cause is often difficult to ascertain. This non-teleological view of history helps Kyrin justify the writing of a novel, in an age where novels are viewed as hopelessly obsolete. Even in an era where sensory syrynxes can convincingly replicate realities and tell stories, a medium from ancient past continues to offer an important means of constructing meaning.

Kyrin’s commentary provides Delany with a means of justifying the anachronisms and ancient allusions that pervade the text. Much of the story’s plot is derived from the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. The race for Illyrion is crafted from fragments of English pirate novels and other glamorous narratives of colonialist exploration. The blind prophet Dan seems to be a blatant reference to the blind prophet Tiresius, who makes multiple appearances in Homer, Sophocles and Dante. Even the format of Delany’s historical commentary seems drawn from elsewhere: Kyrin’s certain disconcerting similarities to the historical commentary that pervades books III and IV of “War and Peace.” When described in this manner, Nova seems like no more than an amalgamation of others’ ideas. As experienced, Nova presents itself as an incredibly original text, seamlessly fusing tropes from the past and commentary on the present with a narrative set in the world of the future.

The universe of Nova is one where faster than light travel is possible, but humans still believe in tarot card readings: after Mouse denounces the credibility of Tarot, Kyrin tells him that “…the idea that all these symbols, filtered down through five thousand years of mythology, are basically meaningless and have no bearing on man’s mind and actions, strikes a little bell of nihilism ringing.” (123) To Kyrin, the weight of tradition is something that should not be absolutely authoritative, but should never be ignored entirely; concepts that are long-lived have lasted for a reason.

The major thematic elements of the novel, when combined with Kyrin’s explicit explanations of 32nd century historiography, helps convince the reader that ideas that may seem dated often have enduring meaning. Even novels, which Kyrin characterizes as “…always a historical projection of its own time” (128), can produce traditions that echo throughout space. Within Nova, Delany underlines the importance of both science fiction and ancient history: the past and future are often not far from the present.

Why the Stuff?

As much as I appreciated the glimpse into Gethenian life with the archival chapters, I found these chapters to be somewhat puzzling. Why were they there in the first place? Part of the work these chapters do within the text is to pull back from Ai's perspective, which is, after all, just another archival document (Ansible Document 01-01101-934-2, if you want to be specific). The narrative that dominates the text (in terms of page numbers), Ai's extended struggle both to survive and to incorporate Gethen into the Ekumen worlds, is but one primary source document. Ai's story can never dominate the reader (in terms of being the only perspective).

I am somewhat reminded of Atwood's essay, "My Life in Science Fiction", where she discusses the importance of the perspective shift that moves the narrative into the past. She poses the essay on Newspeak at the end of 1984 and the epilogue of her own Handmaid's Tale as historically distancing elements that turn these dystopic worlds into "merely a subject for academic analysis" (Paragraph 35, here). Similarly, the narrative form of the (if not really epistolary then somewhat epistolary) Left Hand of Darkness, made up of various archival documents, troubles the dominance of Ai's personal narrative. There is another narrative that can only appear when all of the chapters are read in concert. Sure, it would be easy for Le Guin to publish an edition of this text where the only chapters are Ai's journal, where the text is another first-person narrative of betrayal, redemption, and loss and success--but it isn't. Why isn't it?

Perhaps the biggest change that happens with the introduction of these other materials is, rather than a perspective shift, a perspective loss. Instead of Ai being the avatar of the reader (author!) in the text, guiding our reading and providing the necessary information, he is one of the voices competing shrilly for our attention. We read this not as friends, but as historians, sifting through primary source documents and piecing together the narrative of a conflict that is bigger than Ai and Estraven and the Ekumen worlds. (Okay, sure, you could read it as a friend... *waves hand dismissively*) Though two of the myths and legends are recorded by Ai ( judging by the "G.A" in the subheadings of chapters 4 and 9), they are not integrated into his own journal, but set aside from it. He does not introduce these chapters, and his narrative breaks off cleanly at the end of the previous chapter.

So who has compiled this book, if not Ai? The narrative suggests a historian in the future, perhaps working with a mass of primary source documents, picking out the ones that deal with Gethen and with the question of gender duality-gender binary. The narrative suggests a historian from one of the Ekumen worlds, writing at a time when Gethen seemed to always have been part of the Ekumen, but curious about when it wasn't. Why these documents in particular? Why documents at all? And why not a map? (At least not in my edition; Seth's link to Le Guin's site suggests the same lack.)

I think Ai comes close to answering these questions when he opens the narrative:

"The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact that you like best; yet none of them is false, and it is all one story." (1)

When he says, "you can judge better", he is asking the reader (of his journal) to provide the totalizing narrative gaze that he cannot provide. He is asking the reader to distill from the various elements of the tale a vision of the world in which this tale took place, and what that world means now for the reader.

Ai and Estraven

The relationship between Ai and Estraven takes long to develop because of Ai’s distrust and Estraven’s failure to communicate. But the biological division is still greater than the social ones, and the journey across the ice parallels the slow process of empathy. Genly Ai describes Estraven in physical, somer-kemmer or woman-man dualized terms, especially by sight: “I saw [Estraven] now defenseless and half-naked in a colder light … and saw him as he was” (201), “I saw then again … what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in [Estraven]: that he was a woman as well as a man” (248). For Ai, their defining moment of friendship came from accepting the difference between the two, and yet the power in the scene (248–249) derives from the great potential of their mutual love during Estraven’s kemmer.

Ai’s valuation of physical sexuality and love contrast Estraven’s use of intuition and psychological understanding, as mysterious as the nature through which they travel: “There is a frailty about [Ai] … he has a spirit easy to despair and quick to defiance: a fierce impatient courage” (227), “[Ai’s] name is a cry of pain” (229), “I am infected by Ai’s pure pleasure” (230). Even Estraven’s curiosity of Ai’s kemmer-perversion is framed in terms of what Estraven believes is Ai’s “low-grade sort of desire” (232) and not primarily a physical description.

Ai and Estraven also differ in their narrative styles. Whereas Ai frequently writes as “I” and recalls dialogue, Estraven instead observes, describes, and conjectures. Again one sees the dualism between seeing, through one’s own eye, and intuiting as facets of getting to the truth, which for each is appreciation for the other. The physical love, seeing-is-believing methodology of Ai then is a rather Western perspective next to the Estraven’s Eastern intuition: emotional, patient, trust-valuing, believing-is-seeing. But their apparent equality in the fairness of a harsh environment covers, with a layer of snow, the dominance each school exerts on either Ai or Estraven, who only when stripped bare of the social and normative values of Karhide or Terra—shifgrethor and masculinity—contemplate a substantial friendship aided by the tension of kemmer between aliens. The periodic changes in narrative voice provides a better “blending process” than, say, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” which as Rhiannon pointed out is characterized by a marked imbalance.

On the other hand, such an imbalance is present but not at the detailed, personal level which suggests a gradual acceptance of otherness. Instead, the ultimate arrival of Ai’s ship, the prophecy of Gethen’s alliance, and Estraven’s death are each conquests, however empathetic or nonviolent, which in this case are of the Western ideas over the Eastern. More important than the exactly posed conflict is Ai’s final isolation following his transformation across the ice. In a position to understand and appreciate both worlds, Ai instead sees in his own kind as “great apes with intelligent eyes” while finding “familiar” the ungendered face of a Gethenian (296). Had Estraven survived, they may have experienced a similar alienation among his Karhidians, who in fact betrayed him to punish his own attempt for understanding. Is this the cost of acknowledging the other? The story ends before we see the Ekumen and Gethen’s progress, so Ai and Estraven are tragic characters. Or, perhaps the way to reaching out to the other may be attained, as Ai did, at the level of personal touch, and its prevalence increased by diffusion rather than swept away by some clash of cultures.

On Genre and Narrative

In “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”, Suvin argues that fantasy is a genre which imposes “anti-cognitive laws” on its environment, whereas science fiction is characterized by a framework cognitively consistent with the author’s surroundings. This implies a tension between these genres which causes them to be mutually exclusive, but The Left Hand of Darkness shows that they cannot be neatly compartmentalized in the manner Suvin suggests. Though the main narrative – told from the perspectives of Ai and Estraven – can certainly be identified as employing a cognitive framework insofar as the technology, social structure and physiology of the Gethenians are constructed and presented in an internally consistent, logically plausible manner, the sections referencing Gethenian mythology, which might be properly characterized as fantasy, are not as “anti-cognitive” as Suvin might claim. For instance, the mystical and seemingly unscientific ability of the Handdaran Foretellers to predict the future, referred to in “The Nineteenth Day”, is reconciled with the Gethenian environment when Ai suggests that this strange ability might be somehow related to his mindspeech, which he has a biological explanation for. Similarly, the Gethenians’ discovery of the expanding-universe hypothesis as a result of “The Sayings of Tuhulme” provides cognitive, scientific grounding to an otherwise fantastical religious scripture describing Meshe’s ability to foretell what would happen ten thousand years from his time. Indeed, the very fact that myths and legends are a highly significant part of the oral literary tradition in Karhide, a technologically developed nation, suggests that the fantastic and the scientific need not always exist in opposition to one another. Thus fantasy is not necessarily as “anti-cognitive” as Suvin claims it to be, suggesting that the boundaries between fantasy and science fiction may often be blurred by their similarities.

Another aspect of The Left Hand of Darkness which I found interesting was how the tone of the narrative very closely reflected what Ai was thinking. While in Mishnory, Ai finds that the buildings are somehow “insubstantial”, and his host Shusgis “vague around the corners and edges, just a little bit unreal”, suggesting he is somehow detached from his surroundings, and finds his environment uninteresting. His narration of his time in Mishnory reflects this, as he glosses over details of the city around him, focusing instead on the conversations he has with the city’s politicians. Conversely, when trekking over the Gobrin Ice to return to Karhide, Ai is fully aware of and engaged in his surroundings, often describing the terrain and weather conditions he and Estraven were facing in great detail (“Sove snows in flurries, and thick ash with it”; “A peak rises up out of the Ice, the sharp graceful barren cone of a young volcano”). Because Ai and Estraven were struggling to survive in the face of difficult weather and terrain conditions, their physical surroundings must have seemed particularly real to them, and this is reflected in the tone of the narrative. Thus constructed in this way, the narrative of The Left Hand of Darkness provides us with an additional layer of insight into Ai’s mind, telling us not only what he is thinking, but how his thoughts are influenced by his surroundings as well.