Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

to the sterile "wiring diagram" stories that Astounding (later Analog) was often accused of publishing.
This sort of thing often turns a story into little more than a mildly sugar-coated lecture and I sometimes
think that writers of these kinds of things would do better to write essays than to try and write fiction. I
once claimed that I did not like James Hogan's books because "the words get in the way of the story"
which is just a smart-arse way of saying the same thing. If all you want to do is explore the implications
of a technological gimmick or theme then an essay is probably by far the best medium.
That is not to say that technological gimmicks don't have their place. Of course they do -- it is just a
matter of finding the right place. Bob Shaw invented one of the few truly original science fictional
concepts when he came up with the idea of slow glass -- glass that slowed down light to such an extent
that it literally took years to crawl from one side of the pane to another so that when you looked into it
you saw scenes that had taken place outside the glass years ago and probably far away. He thought of
slow glass many years before he first wrote about it. He felt that he needed just the right plot to utilise
the device properly and over the years he considered and discarded dozens of stories that didn't quite
seem to fit. Eventually he came up with what seemed to him like the perfect plot and he wrote Light of
Other Days which later formed part of his novel Other Days, Other Eyes. The emotional impact of
the story was amazing and it walked away with every prize in sight. If you want to be mercenary, he has
probably earned more from that one story than from all his other stories put together. All because the
plot was just right. With a different plot, with a flawed vehicle to carry it, people would probably have said
"Oh yes, nice idea, next story" and the impact would have been much less. It would have sunk into the
oblivion of a zillion other nice stories. But with the right plot to carry the gimmick, it was unbeatable.
Despite these caveats there is no doubt that a science fictional plot is a very special thing a little divorced
from a "mundane" plot. Galaxy magazine used to have an advert on the last page which consisted of an
extract from a cowboy story. The characters rode up on horses and their six guns roared, bullets flew
and the bad guys bit the dust. Underneath this little extract was another where the characters rode up
on flying saucers and their ray guns and blasters roared and the bad guys breathed vacuum. "You'll
never see it in Galaxy" the advert said.
The point was, of course, that flying saucers, ray guns and blasters do not of themselves make a story
science fiction. If it could equally well be a western, then it might as well be a western. The things that
prop up the plot are not the whole plot, they are only window dressing and Galaxy claimed (untruthfully)
that it would not publish such artificial science fiction stories.
James Blish used to refer to this sort of thing as the "call a rabbit a smeerp" phenomenon. They look like
rabbits, they act like rabbits, but if you call them smeerps instead then does that make it SF? He thought
not, and I agree with him.
So examine the plot details closely. Is it a smeerp or not?
Of course the basic plot is almost always going to be a smeerp. It is what you do with that smeerp after
you first conceive it that counts. For example, few people would deny that Alfred Bester's magnificent
Tiger, Tiger is one of the best SF novels ever written and yet the plot, as Bester has admitted many
times, is a direct steal from Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. That could so easily make it a
smeerp. However Bester was completely in control and knew exactly what he was doing -- none of the
historical smeerp-like trapping of the source are carried forward and what Bester does with the
implications and ramifications of the basic idea turn it into a true SF novel, about as far removed from a
smeerp as it could possibly be.
How original is the plot? The individual plot elements are unlikely to be very original -- one space journey
is much like another, one love affair like all the ones that have gone before, one destroyed universe
much like the next. How potentially boring and dull. But nevertheless if these elements are put together
with originality and insight they really will begin to function at a meaningful level. If you cook your stews
using only tins from the stock cupboard you will end up with bland and boring food. But if you use fresh
ingredients with a modicum of skill and imagination you will make a tasty dish fit for a banquet. The more
a story is plotted using elements straight from the stock cupboard the less likely it is to enthral and
compel, the more likely it is to be a yet another smeerp.