A Spec-Fic Canon For Us

by Joshua Fagan

The importance of canons is so fundamental that it is easy to understate. Anti-canon arguments rely on either a one-sided individualism or a conflation of “the canon” with the concept of canonicity itself. “The canon,” usually referring to a long-established literary canon stretching all the way from Homer and Vergil to the present day, has attracted significant criticism from a certain shade of progressive for being rather exclusionary by twenty-first century American moral standards; i.e., for being too white and male. These complaints come from a sincere place and a genuine concern for representation, though at their worst they can be somewhat reductive, such as in their application of modern racial terms like “white” to writers like Homer. Still, whatever concerns may exist with “the canon,” avoiding canons as a concept is impossible. There is a canon of feminist writers, a canon of Chinese writers, and so forth. Canon-building, far from being nefarious, is both natural and absolutely essential. It connects the present with the past and makes a promise to the future. Speculative-fiction writers can and should care about the process of canon-making.

A canon is, in its simplest terms, a list of works considered to be particularly important and deserving of study. There is the general implication that these works are enjoyable or satisfying, but personal pleasure is not the foremost objective. The question of a canon is one more wrapped in historical significance and nuanced artistic achievement. A “canon” work is not necessarily great in the way a tasty sandwich is great, but rather great in the way Alexander the Great was great: as a measurement of impact and timeless significance. Matthew Arnold, the great champion of canons, is often cited as advocating for teaching “the best which has been said and thought,” but more important is why he advocated for the study of culture, as promoting “the growth and predominance of our humanity proper” and “the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature.” For Arnold, canons were not a trifling matter; they were about allowing people to become more richly human and escape insularity and dogmatism.

Importantly, such a standard does not mean “canon” works are not enjoyable; for instance, the film canon contains slow, contemplative European masterpieces from people like Ingmar Bergman or Andrei Tarkovsky, but it also contains Alfred Hitchcock thrillers that are at least as exhilarating and intriguing as any action movies released today. However, a canon aims at something higher and more enduring than providing superficial delight. The purpose of these works is not to flatter a modern individual’s preferences or the trends and tendencies of today. In fact, the entire purpose of a canon is the exact opposite: to provide a different reference point than simply what is popular today or what a particular individual might like. A canon is opposed to the hyper-individualist and libertarian belief that people should just watch or read what they like and not bother with the rest. Of course, a canon does not yearn for people to specifically consider what they do not like; it is not tedious homework. Yet it does have an educative value: it is a list of works that are important to have a full and broad understanding of a certain body of knowledge. It is a list of works that an individual should know with some degree of familiarity regardless of whether that specific individual likes them.

Canonicity and such discussions are present even when not explicitly referred to as such. Thinking about which Legend of Zelda games are the best is a discussion about canon. Asking about where a newcomer should start when listening to the discography of The Beatles is a discussion about canon. Arguing about which ambient electronica albums from decades ago are still worth hearing is a discussion about canon. All of these are topics I have relatively recently read discussed on Reddit and elsewhere. When I read a Reddit post about Zelda titled, “Twilight Princess has to have some my favorite dungeons in the franchise,” that is an argument about canon. It takes a game almost twenty years old and reasserts it back into the public discourse, forcing others to consider its value and significance. These discussions are of course not exactly the same as those of literary scholars discussing the merits of which Victorian novels are the most essential to study, but the difference is just one of sophistication; the basic concepts are the same. The central idea is not simply “what is the best” but rather “what is worth remembering,” which is significantly different. No one can engage with every work of art ever made, or even every work of art in a certain genre or era: people do not have that much time. There thus emerges the challenge of which works of the past are worth revisiting in the present, not because they mindlessly repeat the attitudes of the present but because they provide something that the present lacks. Canon-building is fundamentally a work of memory-making.

Canons fail when they become too rigid and dogmatic. They are fundamentally reflections of what about the past deserves to be passed to the present, so as the opinions and values of the present change, canons inevitably will as well. What was considered important for Victorians to read included Shakespeare and Milton but also a lot of writers that the average educated person today would not recognize. Canon debates do not belong to the elites; they are discussions that everyone should be allowed and encouraged to consider. A canon that mindlessly reflects the dictates of a distant era is one that is dead to the present. There will never be a singular, eternal list of best works in any category or medium, from medieval English literature to American jazz in the mid twentieth century, and yes, to speculative fiction too. Still, the impulse behind establishing a canon should remain clear: the point is not to list the most pleasant, enjoyable works, and it is certainly not to list only the works that prefigure the commonly accepted ideals and belief systems of the present. Canons are measures of what the present believes is worth remembering, what it believes is worth saving from the oblivion of time’s irrevocable passage.

Speculative fiction is perhaps more averse to the canonizing ethos than other genres, as the very notion of speculation exists in tension with tradition. Still, even the most wondrous and fantastical speculation has roots in the works of the past. So much of modern fantasy takes for its foundation Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, even more so than many writers understand. Tolkien’s influence is not limited to stories about hobbits and orcs, or even to stories with a European-fantasy foundation. Any novel that takes an emphatic interest in worldbuilding, in maps, in detailed fantastical languages, or in an artificial history of the world that extends far beyond the scope of the plot is Tolkien-influenced in some way. Of course, Tolkien himself was influenced by the work of William Morris, Norse legends, and old Arthurian epics. Science fiction has a self-image as a more forward-looking genre compared to fantasy, but there are as many canonical figures in its pantheon. H.G. Wells and Jules Verne in particular are so titanic that references to them and their work, intentional or otherwise, are not difficult to find. Jurassic Park likely does not exist without The Island of Doctor Moreau by Wells, and any work that features time machines is in some way a reference to The Time Machine, the Wells book which invented that concept.

Understanding these canons of speculative fiction does not chain the individual to the past but rather deeply broadens the individual’s understanding, providing a larger intellectual foundation than just personal caprices or familiar trends. On the more fantastical side of the spec-fic canon are writers like nineteenth-century masters George MacDonald and William Morris, the whimsy of Terry Pratchett, the darkly delightful fairy tales of Angela Carter, and so on. More on the side of science fiction are Mary Shelley and Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Ursula Le Guin, the wild speculations of Arthur C. Clarke and the contemplative daring of Stanislaw Lem. Other intelligent, reasoning people will have different ideas of who should be included on a speculative-fiction canon. Such disagreement is healthy, provided it is conducted in good faith and between people who have in mind a common end: to consider what art should not be forgotten, what art does more than reflect the trends and biases of a bygone era and has a kind of eternal, enduring significance. The active, working mind is important to this process, hence why I titled this article a canon “for us.” It is not a mechanistic, archaic process but a deeply alive and conversational one.

What writers of the present will be considered essential reading for the future we cannot know, and we should not pretend we do. As Percy Shelley writes, a poem (by which he means any enduring artwork) “is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth,” and which works accomplish this feat cannot be decided merely by one generation, and instead, “it is reserved for future generations to contemplate and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and splendour of their union.” We are too close to the authors of today to view them with the distance required, for the same reason that we can only write history once enough time has passed to enable the observer to separate the important from the trivial.

The average work from the past still remembered today is almost always superior to the average popular work of the present, not because art was necessarily better in the past but because generations of people preserve and support the art that they believe matters, that has enough meaningfulness that it cannot simply be replaced by the hot new things to read or watch. This process of preservation is not done automatically, but it is also not done merely by professors or New York Times critics. It is done by you and me, with every conversation we have with friends and every Reddit post or YouTube video we make. 

Joshua Fagan is a writer and academic currently residing in Seattle. His creative work has previously been published in venues including Daily Science Fiction, The Fantastic Other, and Star*Line. As an academic, his work focuses on the intersection of literature and science, particularly the interpretation of evolutionary thinking in the aftermath of Darwin, and he has published a variety of articles on Anglophone writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as William Morris, H.G. Wells, and Robert Frost. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary speculative-fiction publication Orion’s Belt.