Sean Potempa: "How Genre Has Destroyed Creativity within SF"

How Genre Has Destroyed Creativity within SF

By

Sean Francis Potempa

            Jonathon McCalmont argues that “it has long been considered necessary to define SF before one can talk about it.”  More specifically, there is often a tendency to believe that fantasy and science fiction have to be concretely separated, but this is not true.  People old enough to read and understand SF critically do not gain more from their reading experience by knowing that there is a clear distinction between the subgenres.  People read stories for two purposes-for entertainment and to learn.  For those reading for entertainment, the distinction is helpful in making reading choices based on past reading experiences and personal preferences, but for those reading to learn, polarizing these two subgenres detracts from the main themes of these stories.

People have come to understand the differences between fantasy and science fiction on their own.  Stories of these genres also typically aim to provide some explanation for why the world is created the way it is.  Fantasy tends to deal with fairies and trolls and aims to use a unique world that brings to light fundamental truths about human nature, while science fiction focuses on using futuristic technologies to expose potential flaws and detriments of advancing technologies on societies.  This is a relatively common understanding of the distinction between the two genres, and most people do not need to be sat down and taught this distinction, since the definition of these genres permeates modern culture.

There is this strange notion that science fiction and fantasy must be separate.  This leaves both readers and authors to blame.  Readers come to expect the same general layout every time that they read fantasy or science fiction.  They have come to understand how the hero’s journey functions and how almost every robot apocalypse ends.  We take the same storyline and just copy-paste it over and over again.  For example, Joshua Wood argues that almost all high fantasy adventures after Tolkien follow the same storyline, just with different names and slightly different creatures.  The art of world-building has been destroyed since then for fantasy.  While there is not the same mass acceptance of a single story within science fiction, we still see the same themes and storylines pop up over and over again.  Even between such stories as Capek’s R.U.R.  and “Super-toys Last All Summer Long”, the notion of a robot is essentially the same.  Both face the same question on the morality of developing robots with human characteristics and use essentially the same ideas in terms of how the robots are slightly off, but almost the same as humans.  There are only three main types of robots that pervade through a lot of science fiction (sub-human, post-human, and extra-human).  A world of possibilities opens up by exploring area between fantasy and science fiction.

Readers eat it up every time though.  They love the same storylines, and so authors deliver.  Readers think, “Oh, I liked that book, so I am going to find one very similar to that book,” because that makes sense to us.  So we’ve come to a halt.  Writers don’t want to create original material because they are afraid of how it will do and whether or not it will deliver a large enough profit.  Even for those admirable writers who step outside of the normal, publishing unique material is risky for publishing firms.  I am not arguing that focusing on defining genres is bad, I am arguing that it is terrible and destroys the potential creative output of many otherwise spectacular authors.

There are generally accepted differences between science fiction and fantasy.  Just like any other genre, perceptions about these genres pervade through culture and conditioning.  In this way, defining SF genres leads to a polarization of who reads and enjoys these stories.  Defining genres encourages authors to write to a specific audience and dampens creativity.  Genres are important for helping readers figure out which type of story that they are in the mood for, but by creating a world which has complete polarization is insulting to authors and detrimental to readers.  So as you go on your merry way, I ask that you pick up a new book, one that looks different.  It doesn’t have to be an SF book, but rather, any random book you find at the library.  Try it out, because there are some brave authors out there whose work is stifled because we are too content with reading the same thing over and over.