A meditation on speculative fiction: or, what is genre?

-


What are the similarities between science fiction and fantasy?

 

The similarities are the use of the universal myth (I mean more from a folklore context

Stories are like fossils we excavate from our minds they exist beyond our comprehension of them.

A primordial soup of narrative vocabulary that is objective or we would not have expectations for them.) in different contexts. Fantasy is a past or present that never was and Science Fiction is a future or near future that never will be.

 

It is a means of allowing for traditional storytelling in the age of people on their phones (I tried writing a story that was all text messages, it is really hard). A way to preserve mythic vocabulary.

 

What is hard about genres is it's about expectation. Both, John Crowley and Samuel Delany subvert the language and context I described but are exceptions.

 

Thomas Pynchon writes supernatural histories using scientific metaphors. Making him both a Fantasy and a Science Fiction writer.

 

There are no definitive rules on what a genre can be only expectations of what it should be.

 

Genre is a means for us to find what we want. A buzzword to sift through the Noise

 

It is a marketing term and to take it too literally is what complicates things.

 

Literary Fiction is a genre where the expectation is that contemporary speculative fiction is kitsch. This is a silly expectation but that is why I don't trust capitalism.

 

Comments

  1. ChristineDecember 3, 2022 at 2:38 PM

    Good post! The distinction between sci-fi and fantasy is exactly how I separate them in my own mind.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. M1A1December 3, 2022 at 2:52 PM

      thank you. and yeah most of my feeling on expectation come from a Neil Gaiman non fiction collection Called the View from the Cheap seats. He said genre is about expectation like musical without songs is not a musical.

      Also, that is a really good book even if it is mostly introductions to other book in the first third of it.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wayward Bound Or: a warped piano accompanying an epic f@%king poem. (Cluster one, of five.)

-
Image
        an Opera in D-Minor (Call me little horn!)   I wish I was a poet... Looking up at the Spun Sugar (The shade of clouds of the near dark) Whistling some bluegrass tune, as my sweetheart cooks our supper (Some slow cooker chili with jalapenos and banana peppers shore would hit the spot).   I wish I was a catfish swimming through the outer dark of space eating the light and swimming in the abyss. While space pirates dance in their shuttle craft with the naked women they have "liberated" as the carrier they attacked is set ablaze from the inside.   ...The maidens are never to be seen again...   I wish my bones to be picked clean by some prehistoric critter... that I may be devoured... that the loss of my life (through one hell of a struggle) would leave me content despite the meaninglessness of the pain. Because I know in my heart that things worked out.   I'm too tired to be optimistic But lived enough to know It's a thin line between b
Read more

On the potential distance of other worlds. (revision)

-
“My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.”                                 - Edrward Gorey                             1          (A prelude and epilogue) "the ravens fly with quickening lines, dreams of mine but gets goodbyes." where shadows move, confused as signs and our lessons fall as loose as rhymes. Where the plague crow follows the storm yet, we are all so busy with our dream. The sign broken still stands alone, maggots also are fond of quivering my nightmare youth or sanity cries "Dreams of mine, remember" he sighs. of "give it your best please you must try." but in spite of the poetry still we die.                               2 Whenever the words escape or are said, "you deserve to get what you get." I feel as if I paraphrase the dead, "are we to believe miseries gift?" A gnostic with zen
Read more