Eccentric Flower:200612/The Iron Piano

The Iron Piano

2006-12-15 12:23:00

This is a very interesting thread. The part I am specifically finding interesting is mostly in the comments (although of course it wouldn't have happened without the original post to spark them!), so don't skip those.

I stopped playing the "do I write SF" game for the same reason as my recent comment about maybe-cyberpunk: I can no longer claim to have any certainty at all about what "science fiction" means.

If we go by the Lucy definition, which appears pretty sane to me, that "science fiction really is technology-based, whether you write about the technology or the society that is affected by that technology. It's a very particular sort of speculative fiction," then I write science fiction some of the time. For example, the O story which I linked two entries down is very clearly SF - nor, to my credit, have I ever said it wasn't.

I don't happen to think that the story is ABOUT the ramifications of "sessions" (programmable virtual reality) - for me the primary theme is a young woman who knows what she wants but not why she wants it, and is not altogether clear on why The Real World Cannot Be The Fantasy World, and how she learns better. But it is also clear that the story could not take place without the "sessions" technology, that this is fundamental to it.

Of course I have never liked the "speculative fiction" label, because to me all the fiction I am interested in is speculative, so the term is too generic to be useful in my world. In fact, I think I've just inadvertently stumbled across the definition of Fiction I Don't Like (replacing the incorrect "mainstream" or "litfic" tags previously used): I'm not interested in fiction where every single thing that happens could actually plausibly happen in the real world right this minute. There must be SOMETHING, some McGuffin, in the story that is "speculative" (which is just a fancy way of saying "made-up").

Of course mileage varies: I know a couple of people who use the same formula and read only things that fall on the other side of it.

But back to SF. Apparently (I glean this from Lucy's thread) Margaret Atwood has, in the past, claimed in public that her writing isn't SF. (There may be deeper layers to that onion, though. Read the thread!) I have only read one Atwood book, and that was The Handmaid's Tale, long long ago. For various reasons, none of which are deliberate avoidance, I haven't managed to read any of her books since. I would have to hesitate if called upon to categorize The Handmaid's Tale. I don't know what it is. It's speculative, and yet it's sort of retro-speculative - its made-up part is postulating a society where, in many ways, we have regressed. Does that count as SF?

Anyway, I agree with the claim that one cannot write well in genres one despises, whatever one's definitions of those genres may be. It's entirely subjective. If you define an X and you say furthermore that you deem X to suck, yea and verily, then fine, but then I expect one will not-

- You know what? I'm going where Jean Kerr went again, and when one does that, it is best always just to quote her instead:

It is perfectly all right with me when a character in an avant-garde play points to a realistic iron bed and says, "That is a piano." It is still all right with me when another character sits down in front of the bed and plays The Blue Danube Waltz on the mattress. But thereafter I expect that nobody will lie down on the piano.

With this in mind, and also taking into account a post from M'ris, here are some pianos I expect never to lie down upon:

- I hope never to write a book which contains a dragon as a primary character. The ultimate evolution of that field was fulfilled, and not in a good way, by a 15-year-old some years ago. (I do reserve the right to use dragons as characters, as one of the four Chinese elemental animals, in an extant project of mine called Unity which is grandfathered in.)

- I am not interested in fantasies involving epic struggles between entire civilizations or races, mostly because I cannot wrangle scope that big, either as a reader or a writer. I subscribe to the Sartre belief that Hell is other people, and I like to keep my casts small and my interactions personal. The Hellbound Woman has maybe twenty significant characters for the reader to keep track of and that's already too many by half.

- I am dubious of talking and/or anthropomorphized animals of all kinds unless you are Kenneth Grahame. (Watership Down gets a pass too, as a special case.)

- I will never write a book about planetary colonization.

- I will never write a book which contains ship-to-ship space combat.

- I'm not interested in alien invasion unless it's done in a really twisted way. However, I am also not interested in variations on Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing because these have been officially Done To Death.

- If you place teleportation as a means of large-scale bulk transportation in your universe, then I expect you will also address the economic and social changes this would cause. Conversely, if you say, "Oh, but we can't use that for cargo," at least give me lip service on why. ("Too expensive" will suffice, but you have to say it.)

- I am mostly not interested in the "odyssey" trope unless you can do it better than an old coot named Homer. (That sounds more cynical than it is; I've read some good ones - but it must be more than a travelogue.)

- I am not interested in Handful of Brave Souls Stave Off the Impending Darkness/Apocalypse.

- Shoot me if I ever draw up an alien species (or analogue, such as "elves") strictly so I can show the habits of those species and how they are clearly superior/more desirable than humans. Um, that is, I don't mind elves but some elf books are clearly wish-fulfillment, where the author wants to go BE an elf (or condemn humanity using elves as the mirror). I am suspicious of any story where it seems like the author is mostly concerned with building his dream universe (this includes most late Heinlein). I'm guilty of this sin myself (not with damned elves though), so I know the danger.

- I don't do romances. That is, I love romance but I must have something more in a story than Boy Meets Girl (or girl meets girl or girl meets Arcturian or whatever variation you like). However, I am old-fashioned, and I do like stories where the denouement is that the young lovers find each other and we have a heart-shaped iris-out, tra-la. But there has to be some other plot along the way.

- I am really not interested in either medievalism or pseudo-medievalism. The age of the jerkin and the broadsword is dead and buried, and anyway I'm aware enough to know how often people get it badly wrong, but am too lazy to do the legwork to get it right.

- I'm also very bad with Real Science Numbers, which is one reason I haven't written more Ring stories or improved the ones I have. I need a math and physics advisor. There's a separate entry on this I've been meaning to write. This means most Very Hard SF is out for me; and the genre doesn't interest me much anyway when it gets more focused on the tech than the humans.

- I do not care for Intrepid Young Plucky Heroes (I will make an exception for Heinlein juveniles - grandfathered). When I wrote an Intrepid Young Hero, I deliberately made him a very cynical kid from an abusive home with a horrible self-image. I was then told he was wholly unsympathetic. Perhaps so, but I will not write Wesley Crusher. What I'm gonna do is give him a Plucky Young Female Friend, since everyone liked her better anyway. She will be his counterweight. Strangely (not!), I am far more tolerant of Plucky Heroines than Plucky Heroes. In fact I'm more tolerant of heroines than heroes, period. Boys suck.

- I'm not interested in books where people do nothing but have angst about their lives and existential crises any more than I am interested in books where there is nothing but romance. But like romance, it's often fun to have some along the way.

- I don't write horror because I am very bad at being scary.

- I don't write humor because I am very bad at being funny.

I think that's the lot - until I remember the fifty I missed.

Add your own.

Reader Comments

Thanks, Columbina! I sensibly amended my definition to say that science fiction did not have to be technology-based so much as science-based. In other words, bring on your Singularity, your methane-breathers, your DNA gone wrong, your third (fourth, fifth) gender, your post-catastrophy society, your depleted world economics along with alien invasions and weapons of mass destruction. There's so much variation in science fiction.

I am pretty sure I will never write a book about planetary colonization or ship-to-ship space combat. But I can't promise not to write a book about what happens after that.

-- athenais - 2006-12-15 13:12:08

For a second there I thought you were channelling Emma Lazarus:

Give me your tired, your mutant,
your methane-breathers yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your post-catastrophe society ...

-- columbina - 2006-12-15 13:16:35

Was Wesley Crusher ever sympathetic? -- p_j_cleary - 2006-12-15 13:31:07

Heh. Well, I believe he was INTENDED to be sympathetic. I simply can't believe that there is enough wiseassery in the world (yours and mine notwithstanding) that they put him in deliberately as a big ol' joke. If they did, it misfired for me; I cannot watch episodes of that show with him in it. (Actually, I can't watch a lot of ST:TNG, period; but that's a separate entry.) -- columbina - 2006-12-15 13:41:52

...I lift my lamp beside the Christmas tree machine.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

-- postrodent - 2006-12-15 14:21:36

I think he was intended to be somebody for the Young Folks to identify with. Only it kind of backfired. -- mellificent - 2006-12-15 14:45:35