Escape From Planet Petersen: A Space Opera For All-Time

Cast of characters:

Marcus Petersen, the Hector Spector

Me (Art Bales), the force of chaos

Sarah Boyle, our hero

Mark Rose, secret agent on Planet Petersen

Sarah Lefanu, secret agent on Planet Petersen

Len Hatfield, our fearless leader

Robert Heinlein, a definitive kinda guy

We have been transported to Planet Petersen, a planet currently residing in the somewhat tenuous region of the Oooy galaxy, where the emperor, Marcus Petersen, has recently been doing research into the much bally-hooed short story, "The Heat Death of the Universe, " by Pamela Zoline. As this galaxy has been expanding for a few years it has nearly reached its breaking point, and when it does, something cataclysmic will happen! We don't know yet.

Petersen:

(from spec #3)
The text tells us that Sarah (if I may be so bold as to refer to her on a first name basis) fights a constant "desperate/heroic" (207) battle againstentropic forces. I find these two terms appropriate and tend to think ofthem synonymously. Despite what I think our general tendency is (i.e. that heroic implies righteousness and hence imminent victory), it's the desperate battles that give the opportunity for heroism - the fight against incredible odds and so forth. Also, being heroic almost necessarily implies impending doom/death/failure. Would Hector not be somewhat less heroic if he was a match for Achilles? Classical heroes (which are still our models for heroism, like it or not), with very few exceptions, did not grow old more often than not, they died in some 'glorious' way (e.g. Hercules throws himself atop his own pyre, Achilles is cut down through Trojan subterfuge, Samson dies in the act of bringing the temple down upon his enemies, Arthur is mortally wounded in the final battle against Mordred (in some versions), Quijote collapses while attempting to embark on a final sortie, Chullainn fights alone against an army of opponents, Obi Wan falls to Vader in an act of self-sacrifice, and the list goes on). It boils down to this: to be a hero means losing. And let's face it, Sarah is definitely fighting a battle she cannot win. In Sarah's case, her very attempts to bring order to her house (and, by association, to her life in general) undermine what she tries to accomplish. In her near manic attempts to "index, record, bluff, invoke, order, and placate" (208), she "writes notes to herself all over the house; a mazed script larded with arrows, diagrams, pictures; graffiti" (207). The self-consciously imposed order causes a move toincreasing entropy.

Art:

Jolly good show old man! I see you've been putting your radiation cap on again. Well done, well done. I hadn't thought of viewing Sarah Boyle in such an heroic light, but you have a good point. Being the protagonist of the story she certainly is a commanding presence within the story, manipulating both her world (as much as she can in an act of futility) and the narrative. While she is cleaning, ordering, shopping, crying, etc., we are offered only selective bits of her inner psychology. This selectivity results in a certain order, which is of course a reflection, or diegesis of Sarah's mental framework. So, while the actual structure of the story is quantified and ordered into 54 independent sections, the story of Sarah is one of increasing disorder, and loss of control, emotionally and psychologically. Waxes ironic, dontcha think?

Sarah Lefanu:

"Sarah Boyle's life is a struggle against disorder. Death and chaos are held at bay by cleaning, ordering, measuring and naming. The numbered paragraphs fulfill the same function, as do the 'factual' or scientific inserts..." (Lefanu, 96).

Marcus:

Sarah's fruitless attempts to order her life are reflected in the structureof the story - the numbered paragraphs. The numbers give the illusion of strict order without imposing any real order on the story. While everything is superficially sequential, the story lacks a solid organization and jumps around quite a bit; we get bits of Sarah's life out of chronological order (it is even left ambiguous whether or not many of the biographical nodes occur on the same or different days), and these bits are broken up even further by the insertion of thermodynamic laws and Sarah's own cosmological musings. So the numbers denoting the paragraphs indicate an attempted imposition of order on an essentially (and necessarily) disordered system.

Art:

Yes, my sentiments exactly. In fact, the narrative is nearly lexical in that the entries need not be read sequentially from beginning to end; they could also be read in a random order and still be fairly clear. I suppose there is some chronology to the narrative, but it is so ambiguous, as you suggest above, Marcus, that I think it is inconsequential. Now this is an interesting trait of the story, for while Sarah is attempting to exact order over her environment, her story is one that has little order to it, beyond the numeric ordering of entries. The irony of this, and the fascinating aspect of it, is that the diegesis of the narrative is both consciously manipulated into order and simultaneously a working into chaos; the representation is one of order, the actual content of Sarah's disintegration is one of increasing entropical chaos.

So, you ask, is this SF? It contains elements that are usually considered to be worthy of the SF paradigmatic qualifications: science stuff, cool concepts of the universe (entropy, thermodynamics). However, the story is centrally focused around the mundane events and emotional status of a suburban housewife--boooring! Well, not really, because Sarah's life, her mundane everyday activities, become the subject of entropical forces, forces on the cosmic scale. It brings them into a fascinating sphere of speculation. This superimposition of cosmic and mundane aspects makes the mundane seem incredibly exciting. How do Sarah's actions affect the universe? By attempting to create order is she somehow affecting, or staying, the ceaseless machinations of entropy? Is entropy so ubiquitously familiar that we affect it with everything we do and everything we think? Whoa, get me off this crazy train you serpentinal, schizoid, lunatic reincarnation of Eve. If you just hadn't eaten that damn entropy apple!

Art is sweating and breathing heavily, in a state of mania.

Marcus:

Art, get a hold of yourself. You're stirring up something in the atmosphere. Hear that rumbling? That sliding, crashing, wheezing, bass-like noise? I think your causing a disturbance in "The Force," Art.

Robert Heinlein:

If it wasn't for you meddling kids I'd have gotten away with it too! Now I'm ruined! Finished! I'll have to go back to selling "Space Nuts" costumes to kids at Halloween on Pluto. You're messing up the genre. I made SF what it is today, and now you're ruining it. Don't you know that SF is supposed to be, "realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method" (Rose 4).

Mark Rose:

"Heinlein [your] definition begs many questions.... Zoline's "Heat Death of the Universe" makes apparent some of the limitations of approaching science fiction--or, for that matter, any genre--by way of definitions. Zoline's story, if only by its place of publication, asks to be read in the context of science-fiction expectations. Whether or not is "is" science-fiction is finally as much beside the point as whether Marchel Duchamp's signed shovel is art" (Rose 4).

Art:

Well, I really don't understand how you can compare me with a shovel, but whatever. Nevertheless, I think you've struck on an important element of Zoline's story; it defies being categorized by genre, which is ironic since it is a story about order and chaos. I suppose it argues for a relativity in more ways than one; it certainly is not easily ordered into a specific genre.

Sarah Boyle:

Oh, cut it out! Who cares whether my story is about order, or emotions, or motherhood, or gender issues? It's just a story. Don't you guys have anything better to do than sit around and talk about my story?

The rest of the cast:

Well, Sarah, I have to say that I'm a bit offended that you are so insensitive to our interests in your story. (Petersen begins to blubber, tears streaming down his imperial cheeks). You'd think you'd care that we were so interested in you and your cosmological mania.

Art:

It's OK Marcus, she doesnít mean to diminish our efforts, she just sees them as futile since she views the universe as teetering on the edge of destruction. But, back to the notion of genre, isnít the story interesting as a work of SF? I mean, itís SF, but itís also mainstream, mimetic kind of stuff. It depicts Sarah Boyle as a common human being, with common, ìreal lifeî kinds of scenarios, only she is not common in that she brings the realm of scientific theory into her everyday existence. If this doesnít blur the neat categories of what is SF, and what is not Sf, then I donít know what will.

Len Hatfield:

(Shrieking, in terror) Look, up in the sky, the atmosphere is breaking apart. We're doomed!

Art:

Quick everyone, get into Sarah's shopping cart space dingy. We'll fly out of here yet!

(They all pile into the shopping cart. Sarah fires up the engines, checking all the gauges to make sure it's ready for take-off. She hits the gas. They ascend into the darkness of the disintegrating atmosphere)

Sarah:

See? While you guys have been wasting your time bickering over my story, entropy has been methodically increasing. Didn't you notice?

("Sarah Boyle pours out a Coke...and lights a cigarette" as they all leave Planet Petersen (Zoline 209). "They go higher and higher into the stillness, hesitate at the zenith, then begin to fall away slowly, slowly, through the fine, clean air" (Zoline 217).