The Exception

It occurred to me after reading what I last wrote.  Although, Sci-fi writers quietly eschew the impossible task of creating the truly alien (while pretending to do otherwise) the one glaring exception is H.P. Lovecraft.  Instead of politely ignoring the problem, he reveled in it.  He took the impossibility of it, built a gilded frame around it, and shined his spotlights into the abyss.  (Of course, for Lovecraft, it wasn't so much the impossibility of creating the truly alien that he found vexing, but rather the impossibility of being able to cope with it.)

Imprint

Despite its implied pledge, Sci-fi is always more concerned with distorting the familiar than presenting the alien.  How could it be otherwise?  It fills itself with overly (yet necessarily) anthropomorphic aliens, impossible/implausible (and occasionally visionary) technologies, and entire planets that resemble one tiny fragment of our own multifarious Earth. No matter where they take us, writers can only deliver recognizable elements - mixed-up and blended through the kaleidoscope of their craft.

Many would fault Sci-fi for this limitation, for not being able to deliver the very object of its focus, but this too misses its mark.  At its core, Sci-fi is always about facing the consequences of (inevitable) change.  (At least all Sci-fi worth reading is.)  At its best, Sci-fi somehow illuminates those unpredictable, dreadfully wondrous contingencies within our impending, impossible future.

Usurper of the Sun

Perhaps my favorite sub-genre of Sci-fi is contact stories. Tragically, these stories inevitably fail to deliver satisfying resolutions.  The art is always in the build-up - the suspense surrounding an unknown alien intelligence.  Anticipation ever heightening towards the unveiling of something universally epic and transformational.  It's the narrative equivalent of painting yourself into a corner.  Once you've hooked an audience with the promise of revealing the 'great mysterious other' - no description, no matter how artful - can possibly manage to fulfill expectations.  It's failure by design.    

It's no wonder there are relatively few great contact stories.  Carl Sagan did the seminal Contact,  Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama (which was actually earlier.)  Both and had the good sense to make their aliens  disappear, at least partially managing to maintain some of the mystery (and in Clarke's case, prompting sequels.)  Yet even these award-winning novels conclude with the inescapable aftertaste of disappointment.  We always want more.

I appreciate these flawed constructs.  Most Sci-fi simply invents its artificial elements and tosses them in.  Introduced as exposition, we readily accept them and move on.  It's so much more powerful when a writer confronts the magnitude (and impossibility) of describing the truly alien.  Willing to - fearlessly or foolishly - push the narrative forward, all the while inwardly aware that what lies beyond the great wall of the unknown can never be adequately described, they try anyways.

So it's with a special reverence when I announce Usurper of the Sun, by Housuke Nojiri, is a great contact novel.  Its premise: an alien intelligence (or unknown force of nature) is building a ring around the sun, indiscriminately threatening Earth.  It presents an alien intelligence so different that any communication with it (or understanding of it) is very likely impossible.  Set in the very near future, told from the point of view of a Japanese scientist over a lifetime, it at times carries the weight and feel of an important historical autobiography, the chronicle of an obsessive quest to communicate with something  incommunicable.  In the end, the novel does make the fatal mistake of showing us the builders - effectively destroying any sense of plausible realism and landing us squarely within the realm of lighthearted Sci-fi.  *Sigh*  But such is the fate of contact stories.  And Usurper of the Sun remains among my favorites.

Housuke Nojiri is the author of several Sci-fi novels.  Usurper of the Sun won the Seiun Award for best Japanese Sci-fi novel of 2002.  Nojiri possibly deserves to rank among the pantheon of great Sci-fi writers, but most distressingly only Usurper has been translated into English.  Another of his older novels, Rocket Girls, is slated to be published in English soon.  I'm already in line.