The Contradiction of the SF Novum

The core contradiction of the sf novum—theorized by Darko Suvin (borrowing from Ernst Bloch) as "a totalizing phenomenon or relationship deviating from the author's and implied reader's norm of reality" (Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, 64)—the non-identity that sets its limit and makes it possible at all, is the tension between the novum’s radical newness and its failure to be new at all. By its very nature, the novum is always fashioned from ready-at-hand signifiers, leaving the newness it produces haunted by the mundane out of which it emerges and against which it turns. What Adorno says of the new defines the novum (which translates into english as "the new"): “The new is the longing for the new, not the new itself: that is what everything new suffers from” (Aesthetic Theory, 32). The novum is not merely the appearance of the new; it is the longing for the new, the longing of the mundane for the new. Therein lies the suffering of the novum; therein lies it’s truly radical possibility.