Resolved: The Science Fiction Genre Doesn't Exist

[jeriendhal]

You know all those Big Name authors who writes books with time travel, or about dystopian futures or genetic engineering and then insist what they're writing is Literature and not science fiction?  I think they're onto something.

Science Fiction is not, in and of itself, a genre per se,  at least in my head.  It's a landscape.  Say sci-fi to anyone and the first thing that will probably come up is ships grandly floating through the void.  But that's just a place.  What happens in that landscape defines the story.  Star Trek?  Gene Roddenberry pitched it as "Wagon Train to the Stars", and more often it was a flat out morality play.   Wrath of Khan could be described as "Horatio Hornblower in Space" (note the uniform change between that movie and ST:TMP, with all the military braid and brass added in).  Firefly is explicitely a post-Civil War western.  Mil-SF requires litte explanation, nor Planetary Romance. 

Even so-called "Hard SF" is always about more than just making observations about pretty spaceships flying around.  Heinlien wrote a family comedy with The Rolling Stones and explored the nature of duty in both Space Cadet and his later Starship Troopers.  Asimov's I Robot stories were mysteries at their heart, made more explicit by the time of Caves of Steel.  At his most cardboard even Clarke's books were about men overcoming obstacles, either to build a great engineering achievement (The Fountains of Paradise) or exploring and examining a a strange alien environment (Rendevous With Rama). 

Even my Big Damned Sci-Fi Novel is an homage to the great treasure hunt novels of the past, most specifically the The Treasure of Sierra Madre.  The spaceships in it are background, a comfortable environment so the readers will have their assumptions set, which make overturning one or two of them all the more fun.

So maybe those so-called "Literary" writers are onto something after all.

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Wrath of Khan could be described as "Horatio Hornblower in Space"

Nah. Moby Dick in space. They weren't even trying to hide it. :)

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

Yep. Kinda. If something has spaceships or other not-yet-available tech, it's science fiction, the same way that something that has magic is fantasy. But something being science fiction or fantasy doesn't say a thing about the plot.

I'm more into fantasy than scifi, so I'll talk about that, but I imagine the principles will be similar...
What rubs me the wrong was about the whole "it's not fantasy, it's literature" thing is that I associate it with dismissive "fantasy automatically sucks" attitudes.
I remember someone coming into a Discworld discussion group and saying when someone asked him what he was reading when he had his nose in a Discworld book, he'd tell them "satire" - because he could not admit to his friends he was reading fantasy. Then he continued arguing that Discworld really was satire instead of fantasy, as if those were mutually exclusive. I don't know, maybe there are people who think all fantasy stories must be copies of Lord of the Rings with some names replaced.

I still consider fantasy and science fiction genres, because I don't know what else to call them, but they are a different kind of genre from those describing a category of plot, such as "romance" or "murder mystery".

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Kirk as the whale? I didn't think Shatner had put on that much weight . . .

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

In my mind there's always sort of been a dichotomy between "landscape" genres and "plot" genres. Landscape genres are SF and fantasy and westerns and historicals, plot genres are romance and mysteries and adventures.

Plot genres have a landscape, but it's irrelevant to the genre conventions. Landscape genres often borrow plots from plot genres (see Bujold, for instance), but it's the ambiance that makes the genre.

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

And now all I can remember is the English teacher who insisted that the sole difference between satire and parody was, "One is written and the other is spoken." Although I cannot for the life of me remember which was supposed to be which.

Strangely enough not the teacher that I sometimes refer to as my psychotic or fascist English teacher (she stated, while explaining that she would confiscate any red pen or pencil seen in class, that she felt it should be illegal for anyone but an educational supply store or art store to sell red pens or pencils and both should require documentation proving that you were a teacher or artist before selling them).

I do find it interesting though to see the derision that is directed at genre fiction as 'formulaic' when you will run across humor articles giving formulas for 'literary' fiction. But I find it even more interesting to see people who are fans of one genre try to insist that there is a firm barrier between genres, "Ew! You got romance in my science fiction!" "Well that's better than this book. The author let some western slip into the romance. Blech! Who wants to read about cowboys trying to romance a lady?"

Actually, despite the second exaggerated line, I have to wonder if romance writers and readers might be the ones most willing to cross genres. You have supernatural-romance, western-romance, science-fiction-romance, pre-history-romances, time-travel-romance...

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

ohhh.. Good point! Remind me to steal that idea for something later. :)

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Now why on earth would I do that? [g]

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

I'd like to suggest "intent" as third category of genres. That'd include comedy, horror and satire (intent to amuse or scare the reader, or criticise society, respectively). I'm probably missing something.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Actually Hornblower vs. Queeg would be kinda cool... :)

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

The Romance genre seems to be more inclined to split definitions than most, with the categories you mentioned being specific marketing niches. The teacher in the one writing course I took had some interesting comments (most of which I've forgotten) about the expectations in each category, particularly the differences in historical, "Hot and heavy" and Christian specializations.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Hmm, "Landscape", "Plot" and "Intent". I do believe we're onto something here...

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

only thing missing now is to tell and convince the world of those... :)