The Genre Evolution Project

Doing the Research of the Future

Becky Adams, Jon Bakos, Caitlin Light, Ross Smith

New Material © 2005

What We Believe

• Innovations in literature are not merely caused by randomness, or sporadic acts of genius.

• Cultural phenomena do not occur in a vacuum.

• The culture can change because of literature, and literature can change because of the culture.

Founding Fathers

• Two professors at the University of Michigan wanted a way to test these beliefs:

Dr. Eric Rabkin Dr. Carl Simon

Hypothesis

• Cultural phenomena evolve in the same way as do biological systems. . .

. . . that is, as complex adaptive systems.

But what are CASs?

Hypothesis Defined

• Nonadaptive System:• Simple Adaptive System:• Complex Adaptive System:• VERY Complex Adaptive

System:

Meat Grinder

Radio

Thermostat

Biosphere

The GEP studies literature as if it were evolving in the same way as a biosphere

CAS: whole adapts to parts, parts adapt to whole Each gives the other feedback, promoting change

Putting the Genre in GEP• In order to test its hypothesis, the GEP needed

an object to study. We chose…

The American Science Fiction Short Story

Operationally Defined as…

Any story appearing in a self-described science fiction magazine published in the United States.

Stories under 12,000 words

No serials

Operationally Defined?

• Rather than using the content of the stories to tell if they are sci-fi, we use the context.

• If the magazine tells us the story is science fiction, we take them at their word.

• This allows us to see what the aspects of literature the culture considers to be science fiction, and to see if these change over time.

Quantitative Study

• Traditional recipe for literary criticism:– Old man in room– Pen and paper

• This is all well and good, but what if you want more than just an informed opinion?

• GEP attempts to study literature quantitatively, using a set of well-defined fields and values for its analysis.

Why Science Fiction?

• Dr. Rabkin’s area of expertise• We like it• We have a sensible operational definition:

(beginning April, 1926, with Amazing)fiction that appeared in American SF magazines

• Adequately complex

also….

We have excellent contextual data, such as:

Contextual SF Data

– precise dating – wide variations in format – observable advertising content – letters to the editor – letters from the editor – Astounding’s “Analytical Laboratory” – circulation figures

SF was born to be studied!

So How Does it Happen?

• University of Michigan affiliation• Undergraduate and graduate students• Weekly Meetings

Collaborative effort!

• Sibling groups:– Michigan State University– Texas A&M University– University of Trento, Italy

So We’re Gathering Data… But How?

• Group members are put into reading pairs. Each pair reads a magazine per week.

• Using pairs helps improve the reliability of our data by giving readers a chance to discuss and compare. Objective reading!

• Pair results are then entered into an online Access database, and checked over one more time to ensure that nothing is left blank/erroneous.

Fields and Values

• What we use to code a story

• Extremely detailed list

• Over 30 fields, up to 19 values each

• Many fields have evolved down through the years

Some GEP Fields

Genre Content - The element in the story that would make most

readers recognize the story as Science Fiction and

without which the story might not be generally considered to be science fiction by ordinary readers.

Genre Form - The basic form, or skeleton, on which the story is built.

Dominant Science - The science whose workings are central to creating the

narrative world and/or dramatic problem(s).

Some GEP Fields

• Character Count / Dimensionality Good example of a field that evolved:

1. Counting Char.

2. Defining Dimension

3. Invention of “1D” Char.

4. Instances “1D” Char.

5. Organization of Instances

6. Defining a Scene

7. Scene Boundaries

The Databases

Our project uses 3 databases that are linked together:

Text database detailing information from the stories, including every incarnation of a story.

Author database with biographical information

Context database that includes data about the magazines, and also anthologies.

We have an additional magazine covers project that’s examining that aspect of context.

Why an Access Database?• Access is a relational database, which means

we can have fields whose values depend on other fields.

• We can also examine several fields at a time by creating queries within Access. If you want to study stories from the 1950’s, written only by women, with alien protagonists and sad endings, you can!

Getting Good Data

ICR Inter-Coder Reliability– Agreement between researchers on codings– Keystone of our credibility– Many of our methods serve to increase ICR:

» group meetings» pair discussion» layout of instrument

GEP data collection is complicated – ICR is very

important!

Some GEP Publications

• “Age, Sex, and Evolution in the Science Fiction Marketplace”

» Eric S. Rabkin & Carl P. Simon

• “The Medical Lessons of Science Fiction”

» Eric S. Rabkin

• “Who Really Shaped American Science Fiction?”

» Eric S. Rabkin, James Mitchell, & Carl P. Simon

“Age, Sex, and Evolution in the Science Fiction Marketplace”

• Looking at:» Author Sex» Word Count» Main Character Sex» Genre Content» Main Character Age

we discovered…

Differences by Sex

• Women:– Shorter stories– Main char. gender =

50/50 split– Female characters in

male roles– Younger main char.

• Men:– Longer stories– Main char. gender =

90% male– Male characters in

male roles– Older main char.

Though Genre Contents in published stories were the same for men and women, stories differ in many ways:

Author Sex v Story Length

Author Sex v Story LengthWomen Publish Shorter Stories

6136

5352

3000

3500

4000

4500

5000

5500

6000

6500

7000

Male Female

Author Sex

Nu

m b

er o

f w

ord

s

3000

3500

4000

4500

5000

5500

6000

6500

7000

Auth Sex v Main Char SexMain Character Sex vs Author Sex

Men write about men; women write about both sexes

(n=1132, df=1, X2=171.66, p<0.0001)

938

72

62HaveMaleMain

Characters

56Have

FemaleMain

Characters

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Female Male

Sex of Author

Similarities

• No rapid growth of female authors (to coincide with growth of feminist movement) in the 1960’s

• The number of women in SF has increased slowly but steadily since the 1920’s, and our data show no decline or boom.

Auth Sex v DecadeAuthor Sex v Decade

Significant Increase in Number of Female Writers

(N=1203, df=7, X2=45.97, p<0.0001)

19 152 114200 125 134 202

138

3 418 12 18 27

37

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

Deacde

Female

Male

“The Medical Lessons of Science Fiction”

• Only 41 stories with Dominant Science “Medicine” out of 1094 stories that had a Dominant Science.

–Expected distribution, if all sciences coded equally? 61

• Medicine only 2/3 of expected result!

Okay, 41 Stories. Reprints?• Reprints indicate a story’s cultural “fitness” the

same way reproduction indicates an organism’s biological success.

• Only 5 of 41 stories coded “Medicine” reprinted:

“Flowers for Algernon” 19

“Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” 17

“The Planners” 8

“The Last Flight of Dr. Ain” 7

“The Miracle of the Broom Closet” 2

What do these stories have in common?

Similarities

• 3 of the 5 written by women

• All but last deal with society in which physician is very strong, almost godlike, and confirm society’s fearful attitudes about that power.

Conclusion?

ConclusionMedicine “…is a matter that science fiction

typically does not want to address, but when it does, it is disproportionately women who show us the way, who make clear that the only good doctor is the doctor who puts his…or her…welfare after that of the patient. The SF exploration of medicine, in Keyes and Wiener and Wilhelm and Sheldon, makes us feel that we are misspending our funds by supporting such people.”

“If one were to read science fiction about medicine out of one’s common humanity, it would put one on guard. If one were to read it as a physician, one would draw one clear lesson: learn humility and service or society will abandon you…the future of medicine, science fiction tells us, will be molded not only by the minds of doctors but by their characters.”

“Who Really Shaped American Science Fiction?”

• After taking over Amazing, John W. Campbell announced his intent to increase the depth of science fiction’s characters. This was to nullify the criticism that SF was solely interested in ideas and technology, rather than people.

• The commonly held belief is that he succeeded. The GEP wanted to test this claim.

The Study• Examined:

»Number of 3D characters in SF overall during Campbell’s career

»Number of 3D characters in Amazing during Campbell’s career

• We left a 2 year gap between the date Campbell took over the magazine and the date we used to begin our study

»Accommodate for editorial backlog

% 3D Chars v DecadePercentage Three-Dimensional Characters v Decade

80s differ from 40s, 50s, 60, 90s90s differ from 30s, 70s, 80s

(F=7.868, p<0.0001, R2=.031)

9.01

5.90 5.735.46

8.63

10.15

3.22

0.00

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s

Decade

Per

cen

tag

e T

hre

e-D

imen

sio

nal

Ch

arac

ters

0.00

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

Conclusions?

• Not only did number of 3D characters not increase under Campbell, they actually decreased slightly overall!

• No more 3D characters overall• No more 3D characters in Amazing

Campbell didn’t influence the evolution of SF in the way everyone thought!

The GEP Online

Ann Arbor:

www.umich.edu/~genreevo

East Lansing:

www.msu.edu/~edisonsw/

Well, if that’s all of that…

…it’s coding time!

The GEP Online

Ann Arbor:

www.umich.edu/~genreevo

East Lansing:

www.msu.edu/~edisonsw/