A review of my novel The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes called
the work “space noir.” I loved that
phrase. And though I didn’t aim for such
a label I welcome it and find it accurate.
The review, by Michael
Wellenfels, appeared in his “Book Culture” blog, “The Shelf Life”:
. . . if
Star Wars is space opera, The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes is
space noir. For me, noir trumps opera. I love the lone protagonist
navigating a complex web of blind alleys, shadowy players and secrets galore – it’s
the stuff that really turns pages, and Wendland does it well (http://blog1.bookstore.washington.edu/2014/06/05/alien-landscapes/).
Thank you, Mr. Wellenfells! I love that type of story too, and I’m glad
mine worked for you.
But this got me thinking about
the possible characteristics of “space noir.” I don’t want to produce a list of
requirements—there’s no better way to kill the energy in a sub-genre than
establishing a list of “must have’s.”
And I’m sure my own book would not satisfy everything on such a list (I
had no list in mind when I wrote it).
But I couldn’t help thinking of the possible associations, and maybe
even the background, of such a label. So
let me offer a few basic assumptions on what would permit this phrase to be
used.
First of all, there’s a
precedent for noir stories in SF,
though not many before the 1970s. The first inspiration (for me, anyway) was
the Marvel comic Warlock from Jim
Starlin, and then the starker, grimmer tale “Darklon the Mystic,” also from
Starlin, that appeared in Eerie in
1976, a story of murder and revenge under an overly starry sky. It used the standard noir locations of dark
cities and grimy bars, but spaceships were included too. A greater influence was the Dan
O’Bannon/Moebius story, “The Long Tomorrow,” that appeared first in Metal Hurlant (1976) in France, and then
Heavy Metal (1977) in America. It
established the scenario of the hard-boiled detective walking the mean streets
of a futuristic but dysfunctional city—with a nasty scene at a spaceport. The next big example, inspired by the Moebius
story, was Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982),
the most influential example of SF noir yet.
It was startling to me when it came out—I saw it 8 times within three
weeks. But Bladerunner was limited to Earth, specifically a grungy if
futuristic but nearly unlivable urban world, with almost nothing natural in it at
all. Noir, but not really space noir. And Bladerunner’s
type of noir went on to influence most of the cyberpunk stories that followed, starting with William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). But these books were also often limited to
only Earth or near Earth orbit.
The kind of space noir I was
interested in would be more free-ranging.
So here are some tentative, non-restrictive, and never required
characteristics of a speculative sub-genre:
1.
As Wellenfells suggests, one common feature would
be the “lone protagonist navigating
a complex web of blind alleys, shadowy players and secrets galore.” The person need not be a private eye, but
someone who predominately, by choice or necessity, works alone, and thus is
often more in danger—and ignorance—than a whole police squad or “galactic
patrol.” And the hero could be compromised with a secret past, not eager to
share his or her personality. We get
only hints of it, and thus the main character can become as much a mystery as
the events of the book.
2.
Most likely, you need a murder, a drastic event to start the story rolling. It could be several murders or a physical
catastrophe that looks too purposeful.
But the murder should not be posed as just an intellectual mystery—this
is no cozy, no game or puzzle for a Marple or Poirot to solve. The murder, or whatever the event is, should
be more than just a moral indiscretion; it’s also a slip in cosmic balance,
something not right on a bigger interplanetary or interstellar scale. The story’s
not just a whodunit, and the villain is not just a murderer. There’s the hint of greater insecurity and of
more going on—beyond the city, and especially beyond the planet . . . even
“beyond the stars.”
3.
The trail of investigation leads into space, not just to orbital
stations or habitats but to other planets.
Indeed, as the story progresses, the bigger concerns and wider vistas
overtake the simple murder, and the forces and motivations behind the act swell
in significance, so the protagonist has to travel to different worlds or
different outposts in space. The
involvement or problem can thus span the magnitudes of star-fields and the
galaxy, and even, possibly, time itself.
4.
Setting is important in all noir stories;
witness how the grunge future of Bladerunner’s
acid-rained Los Angeles has become such a visual influence (internet depictions
of Neuromancer’s “chiba” look an
awful lot like it). We can get a bright
outer side of the future in space noir, but we also get the underside, a short look behind the scenes, at the
underprivileged, the “discarded,” just
to show that the culture itself, no matter how progressed or technologically
superior, still has its problems, and still tries to hide its seamier
self.
5.
And, as another part of setting, obviously not
required but appropriate if included, there could be a scene at a spaceport, preferably at night. As with most noir stories, there’s a sense of
transience, of people dislocated, of old train stations and people on the
run. This spaceport is not just a bright
stop with great restaurants and exclusive shops; it also has a seedy underside
or underworld where people don’t want to stay hurry on to somewhere else.
6.
And finally, and here’s where this type of noir
would be completely different from more standard urban noir, it needs a touch
of the sublime. In traveling into space, natural (or
artificial) phenomena are encountered that have all the characteristics of the
sublime: they’re overwhelming to human
observers, they’re often beyond comprehension, they’re near impossible to
describe (they challenge our standard means of comparison and understanding),
and they’re frightening—and the fear
itself can become an attraction. Whether
they’re black holes or crashing galaxies or exploding suns or planetary
geologies in upheaval, they can be fascinating because they’re so new and
alien, so unlike anything we’ve seen—captivating even when they’re incredibly
scary.
This last quality is important
because, in urban-centered noir, the overly-powerful element that the small protagonist
must confront is usually some characteristic of the culture—ruthless corporations, out-of-control technology, vast
economic or social exploitation. Think of the eye of the cop at the beginning
of Bladerunner staring out at the
industrial wasteland that is human-made, a world of metal and brutal profit, of
poison smog and climate collapse. But in
space noir, it’s something in the larger universe we must confront, something
cosmic, some aspect of the way planets and stars and galaxies work, or a manipulation
by aliens powerful enough to be gods.
Humans are not up against their own society out of control or their own
technology running rampant, they confront some aspect of the whole universe
instead, its secrets, its powers, its indifferent violence. There’s just more
to deal with.
I don’t know if that’s enough to
define a sub-genre, but it’s a possible type of story I’ve come to love (Alfred
Bester’s The Stars My Destination
might fit as a good “classic” example), and I hope to deal more in it. Each new book would have its own
characteristics, like my next, In a
Suspect Universe, which won’t be as close as my current novel. But the next after that in the Ranglen
“trilogy” should be more representative—it’s tentatively entitled Galaxy Time.
All in all, these notions sound fun. And creating the characteristics of a
sub-genre can be almost as interesting as writing the book itself.
