The sci-fi community has been bashing about the question of whether or not sci-fi as a genre should die. Yeah, I know, the death of another genre (chuckle). The reason they're considering killing off sci-fi? Because it's not fair to women, doesn't cater to race, and all the stories are about white males. All of which I've heard said about the mystery genre. But today I ran across a statement by one of the "combatants" that truly makes me wonder what goes on in some writer's heads.
The post I was reading is at Jason Sanford's blog http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2009/12/response-to-should-sf-die.html and the response comes Jestede Vries http://eclipticplane.blogspot.com/
From Jason, "Stories are what matter first and foremost in any writing genre, and no amount of intellectual debate can ever change this."
Jestede in the comments, "...if a story is the be-all and end-all (and I'm not saying it's not important and it's of crucial importance. But it's not the only thing.) then why bother dressing it up as SF, thriller, mystery, literature, horror, steampunk and what-other-genre-have-you. We might as well call it all fantasy and be done with it."
Well, duh! It's fiction, it is fantasy no matter what the genre. This idea that we should pretty up the world with our fiction is one of the most stupid ideas I've ever heard. Take a look around you, prejudice is standing in the room with you in one form or another. Male/female, gay/straight, race, politics, religion, everything we think and believe is based on a prejudice of one kind or another. Do I wish it was otherwise? Of course, I do. But to a write only stories that are politically correct is just creating a new kind of fairy tale.
Some of the best stories I've read that tackle discrimination have come out of the sci-fi genre. I can't remember the name or the author, but I remember a short story about a man who finds himself in a valley of blind people and they kill him because he's different. He can see. From Star Trek, I remember an episode where the inhabitants of one planet, who had black and white faces, hated each other because the white half of their face was on the wrong side.
You don't have to beat your readers over the head with your ideas of right and wrong, shift the line of sight, move it in a different direction, then pull the rug out from under them to make your point. They'll understand because readers aren't as stupid as you might think.
The world is not black and white and we as writers would be doing a great disservice to our readers if we painted it that way. Even in the mystery genre writers try to pretty up the world of crime, but children and pets do get killed, women get raped, and men are killed for the change in their pockets. It's reality, so why do we shy away from it? Why do we try to pretend that these things don't exist by keeping them off the page?
As writers we should be able to write about the truth of the world as we see it. Sure, not everyone sees the world the same way, but that's why we read a variety authors and genres instead of just one. If every writer were to write politically correct stories what a very boring reading experience that would be. I read for pleasure but I also read to learn, to see how other people think, to find out what their experiences are like compared to mine. Be brave when you write.
6 comments:
Great post Sandra. Spot on.
Fiction is fantasy, fantasy is fiction. End of story.
All the best for 2010, David.
The Country of the Blind by H G Wells? I don't think the hero died in that one, but he found an isolated valley populated with blind people who thought he was imagining being able to see.
Um, SF writers have wanted to kill off the genre for decades because it's a ghetto. This appears to be a different tack though. The top-selling genre books are paranormal fantasies now so maybe they want to hitch their wagon to that rising star.
Look at the way something like Jurassic Park was marketed - not as Science Fiction that's for sure. Or any of Crichton's work that extrapolated scientific discoveries.
The whole thing smacks of folks who haven't really read SF. I'm a pretty liberal fellow and get along with folks of all kinds. I got a lot of my sensibility to others from reading SF. It's a wonderful tool for helping people overcome their prejudices if you ask me, or to keep them from forming them in the first place.
I've never understood why people get so uptight about fiction, David. We make shit up, if you don't like our shit, read someone elses or write your own. It's that easy.
Yes, Anton! I found the story online and reread it. For some reason I remembered him being killed as he tried to climb up the moutain. I expect after 40 years your memory tends to rewrite endings. But the story still speaks to discrimination and it also teaches people to be true to who they are.
But Charles, these are the sci-fi writers, shouldn't they be reading what's out there? I think sci-fi speaks more to basic humanitity than any other genre. Not so much the hard core technical stories but the softer ones that explore human nature in all its guises.
What these people need to do is stfu and write more stories. All I care about is good story. It doesn't matter to me what car I travel in (mystery, noir, horror, sci-fi), I just want to enjoy the trip.
JDC
I totally agree, John! If it isn't about the story, why bother?
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