Michael
Damian and Lynne Thomas
“What do you love about short science
fiction & fantasy? What will keep you reading it once you're out of this
class?”
My favorite
part about reading this kind of genre fiction is that they allow me to escape.
To my mind, I believe that reading short science fiction or fantasy stories
give me a break from reality. It allows me to travel to a far-fetched land or a
distant time that intrigues my mind without reminding it of the day I just
experienced. For each piece of work that we read in this class, this has proven
to be true. Each unit we begin, I am able to explore new worlds that authors
previously unknown to me have created.
In our
studies of science fiction, we read a large variety of books each giving a
different feel to the genre. When reading the Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic,” I was
introduced to the dark, grimy, and sometime over the top nature of the subclass
of cyberpunk within science fiction. However this form of reading quickly
changed when I faced the more emotionally stressful stories, e.g., Anderson’s
“Kyrie” and Godwin’s “Cold Equations.” They explored ideas that I would not
have expected been possible to be explored through science fiction. Throughout
my life, I have always expected the genre to be more action and tech oriented
like Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” However, these stories altered my
previously constructed ideas about the genre and were able to understand the
miniscule but prominent detail that separates hard and soft science fiction.
Following
this unit, we explored the parallel genre of fiction. Although we were only
able to read one short story that belonged to this genre, it (being Kij
Johnson’s “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”) along with the two novels that we read
were able to give me a new perspective on what fantasy can do. The worlds
forged in fantasies can be just as diverse if not more so than those forged in
science fiction. Although there does exist fiction like Tolkien’s classic novel
The Hobbit that straight up go for
exploration and unveiling of a high fantasy world, other stories allow for
other aspects to shine through from within the medium of fantasy. In the
aforementioned low fantasy short story by Johnson, the author provides a sort
of “afterstory” for the may character Aimee after the event that tore her life
apart. The story is less action oriented and tries to allow for both the reader
AND the main character to complete Tolkien’s three key aspects of stories:
Recovery, Escape, and Consolation.
Even after
the ending of this class, I will most likely continue reading speculative
fiction works. However, I do feel like I will have to start out independently
reading short stories or novellas first. Longer novels are still a rather large
commitment for me and I may not be able to follow through with them if I am not
reading it for a class. From this class, I believe that I was able to learn how
to appreciate speculative fiction much more than I would have without having
taken this class. I have grown curious as to the absolute variety of worlds
that are possible to create in writing these kinds of stories. One of the
authors that I was introduced to in this course that I am most excited to
experience more thoroughly is HP Lovecraft. His writing is vivid and intense
which makes the reading extremely enjoyable for me personally. Overall, I have
no regrets taking this course and I will definitely be able to take this genre
with me on for the rest of my life.
Tiger,
ReplyDeleteThis blog post, which is a bit like a retrospective of the course more than a discussion of what might keep you engaged with short sff, is at its most interesting when you end up talking about specific authors you want to read more of. Considering carefully what features of a text really make you sit up and take notice can give you a lot of insight into yourself as a reader -- and also gives the Thomases insight into what appetites are out there, waiting to be sated by the work they can publish.
(Look out for the line editing for working going online, too... Some agreement errors, etc., in the first paragraph that I think another read-through could have gotten sorted out.)
Best,
TT