Locus Roundtable: Writing Within and Without Genre
Paul Graham Raven
Genre labels emerge from a genuine need: taxonomy and subsubsubdivision lets critics and fans (and yes, marketers and authors too) reach terms of mutual convenience. The slippage and fuzziness of the labels has always been a problem when graphed against an axis of time (as x increases, so fuzziness trends toward infinity), but the rate of rate of change has been accelerated by a) faster and wider communication between fans, critics, publishers and marketers; and b) the ubiquity of the post-modern condition (no text exists in a vacuum, and there are an exponentially increasing number of texts in the cloud to draw comparisons with, meaning that the potential interlinkages between texts are expanding at whatever mathematicians call the exponential of an exponential).
End result: genre labels are now a folksonomy. The thing with folksonomies is that they’re useful when the group contributing and referring to said folksonomy is fairly small, because the points of reference are shared and hence easily debated (I’m reminded of the old and apparently true lament that back in the New Wave era it was easily possible to buy and read the bulk of the genre’s output in the year it was published). However, once anyone can wander in and apply a new/trendy/retro/hybrid folksonomical tag to something (witness the blanket steampunkization of, well, pretty much everything), meaning becomes so fuzzy as to be reduced to the most superficial aesthetic considerations… and the more widely the tag is applied, the more the fuzziness accelerates.
All of which is to say: as much as we all have a pretty good grasp of what sf (or specfic or skiffy or fantastika or or or) means to us, the more people we try to explain that definition to, the more it slips out of our grip, picks up germs from the taxonomies of others. The only way to keep a label pure is to guard it like an underfed junkyard dog.
Or, to put it another way: no matter how many new terms of encompassment we come up with, disagreement over the texts encompassed will emerge almost instantly. The advantage, to my mind, of the simple ‘sf’ abbreviation is that it can stand for science fiction, scifi and specfic (as required), and it’s old enough that everyone recognises it (even if they don’t necessarily agree on what it means); not everyone will agree, naturally, but the point I’m trying to make is that a universal consensus is impossible, and probably not worth chasing.
Trying to define or constrain ‘sf’ it will always be as easy as nailing jelly to the surface of the ocean… but that’s probably why arguing one’s own particular corner is such fun.
Pingback:Tweets that mention Locus Roundtable » Locus Roundtable: Writing Within and Without Genre -- Topsy.com
Pingback:Locus Roundtable: Writing Within Genre
Pingback:Locus Roundtable: Writing Within and Without Genre
A stimulating discussion. I’m most in agreement with John Kessel, which may be understandable. What hasn’t been discussed here, however, is that identifying the genre is essential for a reader if he/she is to read it properly: each genre (and the original use of the term applied very broadly to fiction, drama, poetry, etc., and SF, Western, Detective,..are sub-genres at best, or categories) has its own reading protocols and if the reader applies the wrong protocols the reading goes awry. See Thurber’s “The Macbeth Murder Case.” So a writer who wants a reader to arrive at a particular reading response can hardly avoid dealing with a reader’s expectations.
Pingback:Science fiction’s future-flinch | Velcro City Tourist Board
As a writer (vs. the reviewer/critic that Paul W. distinguishes) I think any time I hit upon an idea for a story, that idea arrives with suggestions of the genre territory it’ll occupy fully intact. What I can and can’t do with it is dependent, among other things, upon the scope of my familiarity with that territory–the better handle I have on it, the more knowledgeable I am about what’s been done already, the more things I can do, and the more things I can upend. (See Terry’s McMurtry quote.) I suppose I stand between Mssrs. Witcover and Kessel in that I think I’m very conscious of the genre the story is aiming at, but that this pointed direction came already embedded within/implied by the idea. I’m not spending much time ruminating upon it. To me that’s all the more reason to be aware of the things that aren’t of that territory, because they offer elements I might want to draw upon that would make the story different, richer, unique. Like hauling some Franz Kafka or Bruno Schulz into my very in-genre fantasy story. And the debate will rage on anyway as to whether the resultant story belongs in “this” category or “that” category. Which is all just fine by me.
I don’t like the term “Speculative Fiction” – it sounds so undecided, like we have no idea what we are writing or reading. However, I don’t have any problem with genre labels. I read in a variety of genres, and I don’t feel there is anything wrong in dividing a story in Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror etc. When I am writing, I know what genre I am writing. It’s not a conscious decision to write in particular genre, but each story, just happens to be the right one for one genre more than all the rest.
It sounds like a round defeat for “speculative fiction” as a prissy umbrella term. I recently read some interesting things along these lines (folks should check out Cheryl’s link there as well) from Robert VS Redick:
http://suvudu.com/2010/03/when-the-pizza-wakes-ending-the-genre-vs-literary-fiction-battle-once-and-for-all-by-robert-v-s-redick.html
Still as a publisher (of “speculative fiction” until I can afford tattoo removal…) a useful umbrella term would be nice. This discussion wasn’t about such a thing directly, but it did touch on some options: “the fantastic”, “fantastica”, “science fiction, fantasy, horror, and slipstream, and …” none of which are particularly appealing.
The “what to call this whole umbrella of genre fiction” went a bit outside of the original question, but I found that very interesting.
Recently, Orson Scott Card, in an interview with John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley on io9’s Geeks Guide to the Galaxy, made the case that fantasy is now properly a subset of science fiction, because modern fantasists are just as rigorous in their world-building:
http://io9.com/#!5746150/orson-scott-card-writes-humans-in-episode-29-of-the-geeks-guide-to-the-galaxy
And even more recently, Scalzi says: To engage in further nitpicking, everything you can possibly label as “science fiction” is in fact just a subset of a larger genre, which is correctly called “fantasy.” This is because science fiction — along with supernatural horror, alternate history, superhero lit, and the elves-and-orcs swashbuckling typically labeled “fantasy” — is fundamentally fantastic. Which is to say, it involves imaginative conceptualizing, does not restrain itself according what is currently known, and speculates about the nature of worlds and conditions that do not exist in reality. It may gall science-fiction fans to think of their genre as a subset of fantasy, but it is, so calling a film “science fantasy” is in most ways redundant.
http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2011/02/science-fiction-vs-science-fantasy/
It sounds like a round defeat for “speculative fiction” as a prissy umbrella term. I recently read some interesting things along these lines (folks should check out Cheryl’s link there as well) from Robert VS Redick:
http://suvudu.com/2010/03/when-the-pizza-wakes-ending-the-genre-vs-literary-fiction-battle-once-and-for-all-by-robert-v-s-redick.html
Still as a publisher (of “speculative fiction” until I can afford tattoo removal…) a useful umbrella term would be nice. This discussion wasn’t about such a thing directly, but it did touch on some options: “the fantastic”, “fantastica”, “science fiction, fantasy, horror, and slipstream, and …” none of which are particularly appealing.
So I agree with Cheryl Morgan: AAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!
I do like that the banner ad I see when visiting the roundtable is for Expanded Horizons: speculative fiction for the rest of us.
Just a quote note: I didn’t complain that Horton said I wrote slipstream, I complained that there was no such thing as slipstream. So far as I can tell, it really means stuff that obviously betrays influences other than the textual hardcore of SF or fantasy influences, which one would hope wouldn’t need another whole subgenre for itself. (Writers should read far more widely than they write, even if they write in several genre traditions.)