Speculative Fiction: On
Definitions, Distinctions, and Other, Less Boring Stuff
Dennis Rich
There are a lot of
reasons to read speculative fiction. People like to escape and test the limits
of our imagination. I get that. There’s also a lot of meaning hidden in these
stories, and every one gives different insights into humans or the worlds
they’ve created. Of course, there’s a pattern in what stories create what
meaning: that’s what I’m here to sort out.
Let’s
start off by looking at the major parts of spec fic, sci-fi and fantasy.
Distinguishing them is more difficult than you’d imagine. Philip Martin characterizes
fantasy thus in his essay, “Fantasy and Belief”: it “creates a world
imaginative to the highest degree”. So
does sci-fi, you retort. And there’s no fault in your reasoning, as far as
I know. Martin agrees, too, but he states that sci-fi is extrapolated from the
laws of our universe. So far, so obvious.
Alas, it doesn’t work.
What about the radioactive spider bites of Peter Parker, or Muad’Dib’s
precognition? Science or fantasy? The answer, of course, is ‘somewhere in
between’. Let’s go back to our original question, then. What stories create
what meaning? Maybe what a reader notices before anything is a story’s distance
from the real world. And maybe this distance isn’t entirely unrelated to the
sci-fi/fantasy split. The way I see it, there’s a spectrum (there’s always a
spectrum). On one end, the settings resemble our world, and on the other, the
setting is completely unfamiliar to a reader. In my experience, knowing where a
book is on that spectrum tells me more than a genre label ever could.
Closer to our world lies much of science
fiction, peeking just ahead into possible and implausible futures. Here on the
spectrum, stories get close to the ‘essence’ of sci-fi, which James Gunn, in
his essay “Toward a Definition of Science Fiction”, said was to “deal with the
effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the
past, the future, or to distant places”. The relation of changes to the real
world are clearer when real world is more apparent, so these stories are
well-equipped to level judgments on the societal level. Watchmen, for example, throws wrenches into society to see how it reacts.
It
makes pretty overt statements about the philosophy of mutually assured
destruction. A system with unstable linchpins is doomed to collapse, and
collapse it does, mostly. The small changes the author makes to our world
highlight what’s already wrong with it.
But
a lot of speculative fiction, from both vaguely defined genres, lies way over
on the other end of the spectrum. Martin says that fantasy stories ask, “if we
lived in a very different world, how would we behave as individuals or in
groups?” When a story barely acknowledges our world, it can focus on those
beliefs and traits common to all humans (I didn’t want to say ‘human
condition’, it’s so cliché). The further to this side of the spectrum a story
is, the more clear an author’s view of his species can be. Reactions to
fantastic stimuli are some of the best methods of gauging the true essence of a
character, and these stories use this to craft meaning in unfamiliar worlds.
We turn to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as
an example because it’s my favorite book (so you know I’m completely
impartial). That Universe (caps not optional) is vast, incomprehensible, and unbelievable.
On the pathetic, confused protagonist’s aimless quest to save it, we notice
that the alien races highlight the failings of humans: Vogons are unpleasant
and bureaucratic, the Silastic Armourfiends war constantly, and the Golgafrinchans
are useless (these names aren’t made up, I swear). Meanwhile, the protagonist
himself reminds the reader at every turn how steadfastly man, in the face of
all adversity, can cling to his habits.
If
you’re the kind of person who skips to the bottom of blog posts, first of all,
why. But I don’t judge, so I made you a diagram. Stories to the left are good
at showing how changes affect our world and creating meaning about society:
arguably the point of science fiction. Stories to the right remove characters
from their world to make more broadly applicable statements about how humans
think, act, and live, which is arguably the point of fantasy. While I’ve never
heard this division explicitly stated, I think it defines the experience of
reading speculative fiction for every reader, experienced or not.
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteWay to call out the "TL;DR" crowd at the end, sir! Now, the standout quality of this post, to my way of thinking, is how you toss over your shoulder the obvious stuff about extrapolated worlds and rules of this kind or that and get down to the fundamental idea of "How far away is Kansas in this book, exactly?" Looked at in these terms, there's no particular reason to divide sf from f, other than fancypants notions of, say, value or tone or stylistics, which are frankly pretty mutable things. Purists who believe fantasy is optimistic are doomed to stare with jaws slack at the things GRRM does to his characters, and ultimately, any posit about this or that is doomed to some kind of qualifier: mostly; often; usually; etc.
The spectrum you suggest, though, has adopted the only thing all books have in common: the given world. Whether that's the setting or the farthest imaginable thing from the setting, you can begin a discussion from that launchpad.
Best,
TT