Locus Roundtable: Writing Within and Without Genre
John Kessel
This is what I was attempting to get at in my earlier brief post. We write within and against genre; it’s hard for me to imagine a writer setting pen to paper without some at least implicit conception of a genre within which she is writing.
Ellen Klages
Imagine me, John. (I know you can, if you try.)
I do not think about genre when I’m writing, unless I’m writing by invitation to a specific market or an anthology.
I occasionally think of genre when I’m editing or revising, but only in the context of figuring out where I might sell the finished piece.
Paul Di Filippo
If I can chime in with John about the impossibility of writing from a blank mental canvas, whilst simultaneously touting my own work in a way I hope might amuse the panelists, let me point folks toward this essay of mine from F&SF, now over a dozen years old, which tries to imagine a writer so innocent and naive of genre that his work was absolutely unprecedented.
One of my proudest recent moments occurred when fellow panelist Gary Wolfe opined in Locus that my story “Yes We Have No Bananas” blended so many genres and tropes so oddly that it was almost impossible to categorize. That’s what we shoot for!
Thanks, Gary!
John Kessel
Ellen: I don’t believe you 🙂
Seriously, I think that “genre” is the basic way we create fiction. By “genre,” I mean some set of narrative expectations, tropes, limitations on choices that we receive (and internalize) from our reading of other work. I mean FORM. We may work against genre (I almost always do, while at the same time working within it) but we are at some subconscious level aware of it when we make, moment to moment, the choices we make to tell a story.
What is “originality” other than the choice to work against our perception of a received genre, or our way of embodying genre elements in a new context?
About the original question, the term “speculative fiction”: I always think of this term in the way that Robert Heinlein intended when he originated it, or in the way Judith Merrill applied in her anthologies a decade later. The current usage of the term as an umbrella term for a grab-bag of fantastic genres does not appeal to me. In what way is a vampire story, or a quest fantasy, speculative fiction?
Gary K. Wolfe
And you’re more than welcome, Paul!
But it’s becoming clear from this discussion that some writers are more conscious of genre than others when sitting down to a blank screen, and I’m beginning to wonder if “genre” is even an adequate term to describe fantastic literature, or a particularly useful one. Mysteries, westerns, romances–those are pretty clear genres with pretty clear narrative conventions. But the fantastic isn’t like that; there may be conventions, but as Paul’s story demonstrates, those conventions can be tossed up like a deck of cards and rearranged endlessly.
I’d like to know not if people think about genre, but if they think about the fantastic when setting out. The fantastic seems to be a line that, when crossed, can’t be crossed back. You can move a mimetic narrative into SF, the way Lessing does with The Four-Gated City, or move an historical novel into fantasy, the way Cecelia does with Kings of the North, but you can’t really move it back again, short of some dumb “it was all a dream” trick. The fantastic, it seems to me, is an entirely different mode, not just a genre.
Or for that matter, in what way is historical fiction not speculative fiction?
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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.
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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.)