Shannon McKay: "To Naomi Kritzer: Mental Illness in Speculative Fiction"

To Naomi Kritzer: Mental Illness in Speculative Fiction

By Shannon McKay

            Considering that fantasy and science fiction are two of my favorite literary genres, I have read a wide range of both. However, a topic that I rarely come across in my readings is mental health. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, in the United States around 18% of adults have a mental disorder, but I have rarely read a speculative fiction book in which a character deals with chronic mental illness. At school, my friends and I deal with this every day, and we have many student-lead events throughout the year which we use to discuss the mental health issues afflicting our community. I also understand that this is a very difficult topic to deal with, and there are many difficulties with incorporating mental illness into fiction. However, having characters who deal with mental disorders could help end the stigma surrounding them as well as make your story more relatable to readers.

            Out of about 30 novels and short stories we read for my speculative fiction class, only a few dealt with mental health, and I do not see much difference in the books I read outside of class. One reason I think there are few mentally ill characters in speculative fiction is because this type of character development does not fit well with hard science fiction, which are science fiction stories that revolve more around a scientific problem than the characters, and these types of stories do not lend themselves to complex character development. An example is I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. Although the stories themselves are very engaging, they are more focused on problems occurring with the robots rather than on the human characters. Two main reoccurring are Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan, but there is very little that distinguishes the two from each other. This lack of character development does not leave much room for characters with mental illness. In my class, we also read many short stories, which also hinders the idea of creating complex characters with mental disorders. One example is Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”, which is about a girl who stowaways on a cargo ship and must be ejected into space due to a lack of fuel. Given that the story is only 23 pages long there is very little time to go into the character’s backgrounds as well as deal with the problem at hand.

Even though it might be difficult to write characters with mental disorders, incorporating them into your stories would be beneficial to both yourself and your readers. One reason being that there is a lot of stigma and misinformation concerning mental illness. Although I do not believe it is your job as a fiction writer to provide this type of information to the public and vanquish all stigma, writing about characters with mental illness could help to alleviate some of this stigma, and help people understand mental illness better. Including mental illness in your stories might also make the book more relatable to readers. I have found that my friends and I often become very attached to characters with whom we can identify with through gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. If a character is dealing with a similar problem to the reader’s, they might more drawn to the book. This idea could possibly fit very well into your novel adaption of “Cat Pictures Please”. The idea of mental health would work well in a case like that of Stacy Berger from your original short story who dealt with depression from her job. Many readers can either identify with Stacy who needs help but does not know how to get it, or with the computer who is trying to help everyone.

            Even though mental illness might be hard to write about in fiction, this concept can add a layer of depth to a novel. Many authors might feel uncomfortable writing about mental health issues due to the difficulty of the topic or from fear of misrepresenting mental illness. However, this type of fiction would reach out to a large audience of people who might feel uncomfortable with their own mental disorders and would offer a new take on the meaning of mental health through fantasy or science fiction. I hope this advice concerning mental health has been useful or at the very least thought-provoking, and I am very excited to read your next book!