Taylor Reyes: "Dear Bridget Smith: What defines "classic" SFF?"

How much emphasis do you, as young readers, place on the "classic" elements of SFF? What do you find valuable in a classic work, and what doesn't interest you?”

           

Dear Bridget Smith: What defines “classic” SFF?

By

Taylor Reyes

Rather than truly delving into this question, I think that it’s important to consider an question brought up by this prompt: What it means to be a piece of “classic” literature? The word in itself isn’t too problematic; in the Oxford Dictionary, classic is defined as “judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.” This explanation, however, doesn’t hold up well when applied to literature. The exact definition of a classic work is a widely debated topic among literary fans and critics alike of all genres.

For the most part, people accept classic texts as those that are able to withstand the test of time through their intrinsic messages and themes, which remain every bit as relevant throughout the ages. However, many agree that there is no sure-fire formula inherent in works of classical literature. This really seems to beg the question, is there such a thing as “classic” elements of literature at all, let alone of SFF?

The nature of SFF is ever-changing. Sure, you could argue that about almost any genre really, but there’re so many complex aspects of SFF that change much more rapidly than do the characteristics of any other genre. This is because SFF is a genre that consistently builds upon itself; past iterations of this category help new authors to forge new stories.

This is partially a result of the rapid advancement of technology evident in the world around us. Science fiction in particular often deals with some sort of scientific development that is either not real or not possible yet. Let us take a look at Ray Bradbury’s 1950 anthology, The Martian Chronicles, for example. A collection of somewhat-related events about the colonization of Mars, this story is truly one of many stories that resulted from the “Mars Fever” that exploded in the late nineteenth and remained until the late twentieth century. During this time, we did not have the means to disprove the theory that there might be intelligent life on this planet. As time went on and we began to see that life on Mars is highly unlikely, we began to shift away from stories about life on Mars and move towards more plausible applications of technology, or at least ones that haven’t been proven false yet.

Fantasy, although not chiefly based on the workings of technology, also is a constantly varying media. Like science fiction, fantasy builds off of its predecessors in order to appeal to a changing world and, likewise, changing fanbases.  Many modern fantastical stories are compilations of elements from old stories that are presented in a new way. For example, there are great deals of modern fantasy stories that include some sort of supernatural beings, such as werewolves and vampires. Although mainly geared toward romance, such as the Shiver trilogy and the Twilight tetralogy, these stories essentially derive from the same premises but present them in a way that appeals to some people in the modern time.  

As you may have noticed, I have alluded to the idea that SFF builds upon its forerunners quite frequently. This seems to suggest a presence of a so-called “classic” generation of SFF stories. I do not believe, however, that this is the case. Sure, there’re the stories that have had a profound impact on the SFF community, such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, among others.  Additionally, there are the initial Martian stories that inspired the stories that inspired the aforementioned The Martian Chronicles. And there are the myths that inspired the supernatural fantasy stories that I brought up as well as other stories, such as The Odyssey, that inspired certain characteristics from other types of fantasy. SFF definitely seems to draw on other SFF, but I do not think that this means that there is a “classic” version of SFF. Because it is so susceptible to change, the stories that it has to derive from are constantly changing as well. Thus it is increasingly difficult to characterize anything of this genre as one of the “classics,” let alone to elicit specific elements of SFF that could be considered to be “classic.”