This story calls for a redefinition of SF, and is a textbook example of what I have been trying to spell out over the last three years but have been unable to: SF as mode, as an attitude. I would not be as trite as to say that if SF is to survive as a respectable literary genre, that's how it should be remembered. But the richness and potential of SF as simultaneously genre and mode is perhaps nowhere better represented than in this story.
The Asian Shore poses questions about the nature of self and identity. The core of the story is a theory proposed by the protagonist, one John Benedict Harris, about the essential arbitrariness of constructs, physical, biological and social. It might be, according to John, something we do not perceive because of our conditioning, but it is there, embedded as pervasively in our theories as our buildings, our jewelry, our food, what have you. It might not be a difficult notion to grasp intellectually, but to understand this intuitively is to give in to chaos, to a kind of madness.
Throughout the course of the story, it is made clear that our protagonist has begun applying his theory to himself. This is made complicated by the fact that he deliberately chose to move to an alien city to better equip himself to test his theory out. There is very little comparable to the deeply unsettling nature of a foreign land with an alien tongue. Anyone who's ever traveled extensively, and alone, knows this. Some would label this a culture shock, while others would know that it is fundamentally an unwillingness to shed one's prejudices, to discard an identity that is ultimately arbitrary, and held together with those tremendous fallacies: history, culture, society, and memory.
By the end of the story, John emerges triumphant, but in a disorienting and ambiguous manner I will not ruin here. The resolution took me by surprise, but this is not a story with easy answers. The key to understanding it lies in its texture, in its language, its descriptions of an alien culture.
What is dread, after all (the story seems to ask) but an unwillingness to part with convenient fictions as a way of seeing ourselves? It is perhaps no wonder, then, that Disch was such a harsh critic of escapist SF. His work always strained at its boundaries, and SF is all the better for it.
Year published: 1970
Rating: *****/5 stars
Bears comparison to: Interestingly enough, this story has several thematic, and stylistic equivalents. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Tourists, by Lisa Goldstein, and The Overloaded Man, by J. G. Ballard.
The Asian Shore poses questions about the nature of self and identity. The core of the story is a theory proposed by the protagonist, one John Benedict Harris, about the essential arbitrariness of constructs, physical, biological and social. It might be, according to John, something we do not perceive because of our conditioning, but it is there, embedded as pervasively in our theories as our buildings, our jewelry, our food, what have you. It might not be a difficult notion to grasp intellectually, but to understand this intuitively is to give in to chaos, to a kind of madness.
Throughout the course of the story, it is made clear that our protagonist has begun applying his theory to himself. This is made complicated by the fact that he deliberately chose to move to an alien city to better equip himself to test his theory out. There is very little comparable to the deeply unsettling nature of a foreign land with an alien tongue. Anyone who's ever traveled extensively, and alone, knows this. Some would label this a culture shock, while others would know that it is fundamentally an unwillingness to shed one's prejudices, to discard an identity that is ultimately arbitrary, and held together with those tremendous fallacies: history, culture, society, and memory.
By the end of the story, John emerges triumphant, but in a disorienting and ambiguous manner I will not ruin here. The resolution took me by surprise, but this is not a story with easy answers. The key to understanding it lies in its texture, in its language, its descriptions of an alien culture.
What is dread, after all (the story seems to ask) but an unwillingness to part with convenient fictions as a way of seeing ourselves? It is perhaps no wonder, then, that Disch was such a harsh critic of escapist SF. His work always strained at its boundaries, and SF is all the better for it.
Year published: 1970
Rating: *****/5 stars
Bears comparison to: Interestingly enough, this story has several thematic, and stylistic equivalents. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Tourists, by Lisa Goldstein, and The Overloaded Man, by J. G. Ballard.
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