Locus Roundtable: Writing Within and Without Genre

Russell Letson

My solution to the challenge of building a consistent categorical system has been to acknowledge that “genre” itself does not require a single set of discriminating principles. This allows “formal” categories (long/short-form prose fiction [including viewpoint-convention subtypes] and poetry, drama, and their format-rooted sub-categories) to co-exist with content categories of all sorts (love stories, success stories, crime stories, survival stories, et infinite cetera). For our purposes, it’s useful to have metaphysical categories–that is, to separate “realism” or “mimetic fiction” from “the fantastic,” with the understanding that while fiction is always subjunctive (I think I’m stealing from Delany here), some conjectures are metaphysically profound enough to justify a binary divide. Which leads to a second divide: the fantastic itself can be split into stories that take place in a world that follows rules like X (where X=a rational-materialist cosmos) as distinct from those that require Y (a supernaturalist cosmos). And as Paul W. points out, a serious Christian or Muslim or Rastafarian might locate X and Y in a manner that, say, I would not. Science fiction is fantastic (not-true-to-historical/mimetic realism) but materialist or at least non-supernaturalist. Until Charlie Stross starts playing “Magic, Inc.” games with Lovecraft and letting the Elder Gods leak into our world, or one uncomfortably like it.

Ellen Klages

I will admit that when I sit down at a blank page, I do think about whether it’s a short story or a novel.

I think about length, but not about genre content, except in a marketing context.

Really.

Because other than as a way of identifying where a story might find a home, I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone calls it.

Rich Horton

I’d like to suggest that certain “Secret Histories”, as well as some conspiracy type fiction (Dan Brown, maybe even Robert Anton Wilson), and arguably some near-future thrillers, do at least try to cross the line to the fantastic, and then cross it back to mimetic — or, alternately, to suggest that when they crossed the line they weren’t, really.

There are also those novels that seem to treat the fantastical element as heavily metaphorical — maybe Susan Palwick’s Flying in Place, for one example? The question there, again, is “has the line really been crossed?” But surely Palwick (as I believe she stated in an NYRSF piece) knew very well she was playing with genre when she wrote that book, for all that it appeals very much to non-SF readers (if my wife is any indication).

For another example — what about Karen Joy Fowler? I follow John Clute in reading it as SF, but I think many readers don’t see that aspect of it.

That’s probably just me playing a game, though — I don’t think it really disputes Gary’s point.

Brief comments on the main thrust of this discussion, that I think largely echo what others here who are not writers of fiction have said, like Rusell Letson.

I too am — to a fault, at times — a categorizer, a maker of lists, a labeler, a sorter. I think it helps me understand what I’m reading, and to see where writers (perhaps unconsciously) connect. But I am aware too that that can lead me into danger — to, as some have suggested, missing some of what a writer is trying. It can also lead to laziness — to a quick and dirty positioning of a book without really taking it apart.

And I’ve had writers push back against labels. (Nick Mamatas, for instance, bitterly — and probably to an extent fairly — complained when I suggested he wrote slipstream.) I think a lot of writers resist labels partly because they seem to restrict their personal originality — to limit them, maybe. And that’s sensible, I dare say, in their act of creation. But I think it still makes sense — if we take care — for critics, after the fact, to try to see what a writer has actually done, partly by labeling it.

As for the term Speculative Fiction, I’ve never been fond of it, but if it is used, by all means use it in the Heinlein sense.

10 thoughts on “Locus Roundtable: Writing Within and Without Genre

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  • February 14, 2011 at 4:53 pm
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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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  • February 16, 2011 at 4:19 pm
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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.

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  • February 17, 2011 at 6:21 pm
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    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.

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  • February 17, 2011 at 10:42 pm
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    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.

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  • February 18, 2011 at 12:56 am
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    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.

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  • February 18, 2011 at 1:18 am
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    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.)

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