Speculative Fiction
Several weeks ago while talking with a couple of friends, one mentioned how she had never read any science fiction. She said she had always felt the genre was similar to modern romance fiction. I really didn't know how to respond to that, other than to feebly recommend several authors I thought she should read. I've been thinking about it ever since, because I know just how badly I failed in defending a genre I've been a fan of for quite some time.
Today I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog and found he had posted the speech he gave at the Nebula awards ceremony. Neil succeeds where I so miserably failed.
Today I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog and found he had posted the speech he gave at the Nebula awards ceremony. Neil succeeds where I so miserably failed.
posted by Mark A. at 12:36 AM
2 Comments:
I like Gaiman's defense of "SF." My favorite long defense of fantasy literature is probably Stephen R. Donaldson's essay "Epic Fantasy in the Modern World." It's available on line:
www.stephenrdonaldson.com/EpicFantasy.pdf
Donaldson defines fantasy as "a form of fiction in which the internal crises or conflicts or processes of the characters are dramatized as if they were external individuals or events." And he argues that fantasy is so popular because, unlike most modern literature, it rejects futility: "The characters in fantasy novels actually meet their worst fears; they actually face the things that demean them; they actually walk into the dark. And they find answers."
My favorite short defense of fantasy is from Joss Whedon (the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer):
"I don't want to create responsible shows with lawyers in them. I want to invade people's dreams."
Just finished reading that Donaldson .pdf, and I gotta say it sounds very familiar to what Philip K. Dick said about sci/fi in an interview published in the 1984 Missouri Review:
“The first thing is the idea. A pure idea. The next thing is characters who will be confronted by an environment which is a kind of special-effects mock-up of an idea. In other words, I translate and idea into a world. Then you need the people who must live in that world. I always try to find somebody who’s the victim of the idea and somebody who’s the master of the idea, so that you have a bifurcated society with somebody who’s going to make it off the idea and somebody who’s going to be victimized by the idea.”
Sounds similar to what Donaldson said about Lord Foul and Thomas. However, I think Donaldson possesses the ability to craft deeply human characters, unlike PKD, who seems more interested in the ideas than character. I don’t know if I’ve ever seem a more self-loathing character than Thomas Covenant. Of course he had good reason to hate himself. I mean, he raped the first native he saw for god’s sake.
You mention Whedon. His recent run on the Astonishing X-Men comic has been nothing short of amazing. He also has a movie coming out, and if the trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/serenity can be trusted it should be pretty good.
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