Speculative Fiction: A Serious Question

Woollybear

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And there seems to be the great divide. The if fiction - setting = philosophical essay, then it follows that fiction = setting + philosophical essay. And this does seem to be the position of many in the SF community.

It's my position, for sure.

But you limit this declaration to SF and imo it applies across all fiction. FREX take The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--it is definitely societal commentary--and the setting is part and parcel to it. Reading that book, you feel isolated, you feel abused, you feel what Lisbeth feels to some extent, and even take righteous pleasure in abusing the tormenter. Because of setting. Almost any fiction I can think of has a point of one sort or another, and strip the setting and you're left with simply message. It ain't just SF. And I've never been to Sweden nor trafficked.

It isn't philosophy at the heart of fiction; it is experience. You are right, of course, that many today find the whaling parts of Moby Dick foreign to their experience. It isn't the world that they experience anymore. (Not so specifically whaling so much as dangerous physical work.) But Melville really did go to sea, and really did sail on a whaler. Even if he hadn't it was real work for thousands of men for many years. It isn't speculative. It really happened. It was an experience real people actually lived. You may not think that distinction matters. I'm not committing myself on whether or not it matters. But to a great many people it matters very much. The question, after all, was why isn't SF taken seriously, not whether it should be.

The issues in SF, just like the issues in thrillers, really are happening. The settings are relatable. We have space ships. We travel in space; soon, perhaps, to a new planet even.
 

amergina

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I want to pop in as a mod of this forum and remind people to respect your fellow writer... including the genres they write in.

Also, let's not turn this into the old "literary vs genre" argument, especially since both literary fiction and genre fiction are types of commercial fiction.
 

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Quite a bit, actually, in my teens and my university years especially. I read Heinlein, Azimov, LeGuin, Wyndham, Miller, Lewis, and many more whose names don't come to me at the moment. And then the vein started to run dry for me and I started to read Conrad and Steinbeck and Kipling, and Dickens, and found something there that I had not found in the SF/F that I had been reading. I'm sure there are people who read and value both. I'm not arguing with their taste or preference, but if you want an answer to why speculative fiction is often looked down upon, then it is most likely to come from someone like me who has seen both sides of the coin. .

I think you need to read more widely in the field; the world has changed and so has SF / spec fic since that time. Like, a lot.

Even in terms of old-school "classic SF," which is not, by the way what Speculative Fiction equates with, your statement doesn't really describe the spec fic accurately.

Pynchon writes speculative fiction; opinions may vary as to whether he's writing SF.
 
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lizmonster

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But here's the thing: the literary world does not actually take philosophical novel very seriously. It never has. Literature, at its core, is about those things that cannot be rendered propositionally. A philosophical novel can certainly be used to explore a philosophical question (think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) but in the end it succeeds as philosophy only insofar as its conclusions are reducible to propositions, and that is not what literature does. Literature explores those things we can't quite get at propositionally. Most mainstream readers want the drama of the human condition free of both robots and monsters and of philosophical speculations. And that is why they look down on speculative fiction. They see elves and spaceships and weeping robots and they are just not interested.

They may be right or wrong to think so, but if you are asking why they don't take it seriously, that's why.

What's always interesting to me about literary criticism is that it's so often opinion framed as a statement of fact. I learned how to do this in college, and got quite good at it, but even then I had to have cites to back up my assertions. My professors might agree or disagree with my position, but I was graded on how well I argued it, and how well I supported my premise.

There's a vast difference between preferring some genres over others and stating unequivocally what a genre does or doesn't accomplish as a body of literary work. I've certainly got strong genre preferences in what I read, but I'd never venture an opinion about the objectives of a genre I don't follow.

I will advance one statement of fact: Genre fiction is literature. Literary fiction is a sub-category of literature, and can (and does) exist in any genre.

As for why people "look down" on spec fic: some of that is certainly preference, and some of it is the popular perception of the genre as something that relies on weird locations and fictional technology at the expense of story. The former is subjective and doesn't bother me in the slightest. The latter is a function of ignorance.
 

eqb

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As for why people "look down" on spec fic: some of that is certainly preference, and some of it is the popular perception of the genre as something that relies on weird locations and fictional technology at the expense of story. The former is subjective and doesn't bother me in the slightest. The latter is a function of ignorance.

I can't begin to count how many people have said to me, "SF, I hate it. It's all squids in space." And when I ask, "What about (insert literary SF name)," they reply, "Oh, that's not real SF."
 

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The interesting question is why SF in particular seems to think it should be taken more seriously than other genre fiction.

Who says that it should be? I haven't seen this.

You are right, of course, that many today find the whaling parts of Moby Dick foreign to their experience. It isn't the world that they experience anymore. (Not so specifically whaling so much as dangerous physical work.) But Melville really did go to sea, and really did sail on a whaler. Even if he hadn't it was real work for thousands of men for many years. It isn't speculative. It really happened. It was an experience real people actually lived. You may not think that distinction matters. I'm not committing myself on whether or not it matters. But to a great many people it matters very much. The question, after all, was why isn't SF taken seriously, not whether it should be.

Melville based his plot on the sinking of the Essex, an actual whaler that was actually sunk by a sperm whale attack. I'd wager you could poll readers of Moby Dick and a majority wouldn't know of the Essex, nor say that they read Moby Dick "because whaling was real work that real people actually did".

I will say to the OP that my experience has been that most people I talk to don't dismiss spec fic as being a "lesser grade of writing". Spec fic is extremely popular in film and print. Some people don't like it, and that's fine. No genre is universally loved, and why would it be?
 

Introversion

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I can't begin to count how many people have said to me, "SF, I hate it. It's all squids in space." And when I ask, "What about (insert literary SF name)," they reply, "Oh, that's not real SF."

Ah yes. No true Scotsman. :tongue

P.S. - "Squids in Space" -- now there's a dark corner of the genre I've clearly been neglecting...
 

indianroads

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IMO Speculative / Science Fiction lends itself well to the exploration of our social values. Consider The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin, Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein, Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury, 1984 by Orwell, and even the old Star Trek TV show that (although misogynistic) pushed against the boundaries of race and sex, along with many other examples. The genre entertains, but also gives us the opportunity to float ideas before the public (which is great as long as the author doesn't get up on a soapbox and preach).
 

Albedo

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I can't begin to count how many people have said to me, "SF, I hate it. It's all squids in space." And when I ask, "What about (insert literary SF name)," they reply, "Oh, that's not real SF."
See, I WANT to write about squids in space, as a profound commentary on the human condition/'experience'/wherever we're moving those goalposts now. And the answer to people who ask 'but why, if you are ACTUALLY writing about the experience of humans, is your book not about human things like going to book clubs and having midlife crises and generally not meeting a bunch of fab space squids' is, dude, this is a book ABOUT fabulous space squids. If I took the squids out, it'd be a different book. But it's still also ABOUT the human experience, innit.
 
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Introversion

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If I took the squids out, it'd be a different book. But it's still also ABOUT the human experience, innit.

Is life lived without space squids really life worth living? I’d need some proof. Preferably couched in Russian proverbs by people smoking tiny hand-rolled French cigarettes.
 

buz

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Now all I can think about is Baba Yaga smoking a tiny cigarette riding a space squid to the grocery store
 

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I think it's an aspect of the genre fiction versus literary fiction divide. It's certainly not just speculative fiction some people sneer at. The mods over in the Romantic and Women's fiction section regularly have to remonstrate with posters who disparage the genre (at least the SF and F forum doesn't get that as often). I don't know if mystery or historical fiction get that kind of treatment, but some people sneer at spy novels and thrillers as "pulpy trash" and so on.

Some people decry such work as "escapist." I wouldn't say all SF and F are escapist--much of the genre is intensely thought-provoking social commentaries or examinations of what it is to be human (and even when they are first and foremost a rollicking fun tale, there are often deeper issues and themes under the surface). Not that pure escapism should be frowned on either. Why does everything have to be serious?

It also could be because genre fiction is often written in a simpler, more workmanlike style of prose--one that is pretty accessible to readers and doesn't get between them and the story (the emphasis being on the story). I think this is the opposite of, say, literary fiction, which is (again) considered more highbrow or serious. Literary fiction is also very much about the style of the writing as well as embracing themes that may not be comfortable or readily accessible to most people (and doing so in a way that is more up front about it).

Of course, some SF and F is written in a literary style. It's not like the categories are mutually exclusive.

There are fans of genre fiction who disparage literary fiction as being pretentious or phony too or no fun at all to read.

And of course there are "highbrow" magazines, like The New Yorker, with columns dedicated to the review and discussion of literary books. There are magazines devoted to the serious discussion of speculative fiction too (like Locus), but they aren't as well known by your average college-educated adult (not that your average, college-educated adult necessarily reads magazines like The New Yorker, but most have at least heard of it).

Haters are always going to hate, and there's nothing like declaring oneself superior and putting others down to avoid thinking about one's own insecurities, but there are plenty of people who like various kinds of fiction, genre, mainstream and literary.

I think there are fewer people, actually, who disparage SF and F than when I was younger. I understand many colleges and universities now offer classes that assign SF and F titles as reading.

One thing I like about AW is they don't tolerate the "my genre is holier than yours" stuff here.
 
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sandree

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The 'truth' I try to get at in my first manuscript, which is climate fiction, is why, with our human intelligence, experience, ingenuity and so on, are we so demonstrably blind to the cost of the carbon choices we make daily? To me, it is an interesting human question. Are we truly 'addicted' to oil? Are we addicted to a western lifestyle? Are we addicted to the beliefs we have formed from our childhood? Are we addicted to the relatively lesser degree of guilt we feel by taking a denialist stance than by taking a reasoned scientific and pragmatic stance on the question of burning fossil fuel (or not)?

There are so many players and motivations in this climate mess, too. It is very like what played out with the tobacco industry some decades back.

I imagine that plenty of people don't want to read about climate crisis in their fiction. However, we are in incredibly treacherous waters and time is running out. This is non-fictional. We'll have more drought, more heat waves, more death, more hurricanes and wildfires this month, and the climate crisis is likely exacerbating all of them.

So, can fiction help with this? Can speculative fiction help "shift hearts and minds"?

To answer your question--taking these very serious 'real' issues and trying to make them palatable to the reader--hopefully even fun--might be accomplished by using robots (or in my case, actually, genetic engineering and anthropomorphising of certain climate details.) In other words, speculative fiction.

Most people in the cli-fi realm use speculative fiction because we believe more people need to be convinced--we need a WWII-level mobilization, to limit the damage we're doing to the biosphere.

That's my answer anyway. It's fun to try to make this topic enjoyable, heheh, and I bet the above doesn't hit the mark, heheh. But if I had wrapped it up in robots maybe it would have. Or maybe not.

We’re on the same track. My first speculative fiction novel tries to do just this.
 

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There was a telepathic cuttlefish excerpt (on a planet that never saw sunlight) on SYW a year or two ago. I loved it. The intelligent species indigenous to my built world will have octopus-like intelligence and might appear in book two. But the viewpoint and all major characters are essentially human and drive 99% of the story.

I suppose it could be fun to write a short story from the octopus-like viewpoint. I know it's all joking above, but don't we all, in our hearts, believe Data is human and the Horta should be treated with respect? It's a question of identity, less than squids in space.

Sandree--:) Big grins. Yes, I remember your cover and title (Seeds of Change.). My novel will be out by the end of the year I think. I'm just giving a few green presses (and similar) a chance to get involved if they think we'd work well together...
 
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