I came across Susan M. Gaines's Carbon Dreams (2001) after having recently met the author in person. Knowing Gaines's educational background (chemistry and oceanography), my expectations were set -- this would be a novel about science, what critics have been calling a "science novel" or "science-in-fiction." Not science fiction. But the novel about the scientist, one that would describe scientific work and scientific practice in detail. Genre governed my expectation, as usual.
In the last couple of years, both critics and science writers have been raving about Ian McEwan's Solar (2010), which is a realistic account of a physicist. McEwan discusses and describes scientific inquiry in detail, and opens up contemporary questions about climate change and society. New Scientist called McEwan's descriptions of science "excellent and bang up to date" (8 March 2010). But Solar isn't solely about science in the end. The plot mechanism relies on Michael Beard's problematic character and failed personal life to deliver a conclusion that opens up larger sets of questions about personal and professional ethics.
As I read myself writing, I note that I tend to use the phrase "opens up questions." While some critics rely on reputable institutions to designate what is or what is not a "literary" text, I (perhaps naively) would like to think the literary can be defined in formal terms. Novels which engage other questions that have been asked in order to formulate new (and presumably "better") ones are literary. From the perspective of "literary studies," novels which attempt to answer the questions they establish are not literary, and tend to get dumped into the wasteland of "pop culture." (And "cultural studies" is the academic landscape that negotiates and problematizes such dumping). This is my own take on the problem of "canon" when it comes to the contemporary novel.
Carbon Dreams opens the question and then reformulates it. Set in the early 1980s, the novel realistically portrays the period when man-made climate change came to be taken seriously be the science establishment. The young, female protagonist, Dr. Christina Arenas, is instrumental for the reader's coming to understand the nature of the discoveries leading up to this paradigm shift. The overall plot of the novel has to do with scientific discovery as much as it does the problem of being an academic and a woman (a plot component that I especially appreciated).
Gaines insists that she didn't write the novel to be a "science novel," but as literary fiction. Based on my definition, the text falls under the category of the literary. It broadens the reader's understanding of the relationship between politics and science and helps the reader understand an historical point in time when climate change gets politicized in the United States. And it further complicates what it means to be an academic scientist and to live a fulfilling personal life, especially as a woman.
The problem is, of course, literacy. Not all literature scholars are equipped to read this novel. Even if one is familiar with the pressures of the modern academy, you have to know basic things about science, like the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. You have to know how scientific method works. And you should know how fields of science break down. All this is to say, without basic scientific literacy, it might be tempting to skip pages of text.
In formal terms, the novel is superior. I wonder about the "reading public," though. What I'm suggesting is that there is, indeed, a new genre of literary fiction. But, because of the problem of literacy (one that comes from a modern division of knowledge), we need to call it something besides "literary fiction," something like the "science novel," in order to maintain our divisions. Perhaps, though, the future of literary fiction is the science novel as a sub-genre rather than a separate genre.
