"Speculative Fiction"

First of all, if you don't know (which would stun me, because why would you be reading my li'l ol' opinion if you don't know who I am?), I'm a burgeoning writer, with a strong Scifi/Fantasy background. And that sentence leads me to this rant... for me, growing up, and most fans of the genre, it's always been "Scifi." Scifi is a broad genre, sometimes difficult to define (I'll probably have another rant on genre definitions in general later on). The problem is, the early days of popular science fiction founded its general definition with pulp novellas and cheesy monster films, casting it in general ill-repute with the greater populace. Occasional thoughtful works suck as 2001 and Planet of the Apes were slow to repair this, and sadly, all that work was dashed with Star Wars. For all it's epic coolness, Star Wars has had a generally negative effect on the Scifi genre as a whole, as the powers-that-be ignored the mythic depth of the original trilogy and focused again on the pulpy nonsense aspects that, while cool to a nerd like me, were just too odd for the general public.

Now, to my actual point: because of this negative perception of the Science Fiction genre, many of the quality artists who work in it refuse to admit to it. The term they prefer, and get rather huffy about insisting upon, is "Speculative Fiction."

What utterly pretentious crap.

First of all, doesn't 'fiction' sort of include 'speculative,' just as part of its definition? An international espionage thriller, a detective story, even a simple romance involves speculation on the writers' part--if it didn't, it wouldn't be fiction. So for starters, the label doesn't make much sense. But my real problem comes from the elitist attitude such a moniker suggests--that their stories are somehow better than others, don't deserve to be degraded by being part of the same category. I mean, I think most people's blogs are crap, but I don't go and call this a "personalized opinion center" just to make myself feel better.

Now, I understand where a lot of these writers (for it is largely writers insisting on this) are coming from; when someone asks what my story is about, I do feel myself hesitate before admitting it's a Scifi/Fantasy story. Even with the great progress things like Battlestar Galactica and the Lord of the Rings films have made for the genres, they are still not fully in the main stream (though Science Fiction is getting tantalizingly close). The scifi genre has been referred to as a 'literary ghetto' where shoddy, low standard work is the norm--and indeed this is somewhat the case. Fans of Scifi and Fantasy are far more concept-driven than the general public; we like neat ideas, whether it is futuristic settings or technologically-impacted characters or philosophical questions advances in science bring up.

The result of this concept focus is, we don't care so much about the execution. As a prime example, the seminal Scifi series Dune brings up many fascinating locales and at times delves into in-depth explorations of philosophy... but the writing itself is, frankly, rather dry and stiff. Several classics of the genre suffer sizable stylistic problems when compared to classic literature, and in our (often overwhelming) nerdy fervor about that which we find cool, the labeling of such books as 'classics' actually hurts the genre. Every time someone makes an unreasonable comparison like "Forever War is like Catch-22 in space!", people become more skeptical of the genre as a whole. Instead of trying to elevate interesting but flawed works to 'classic' status, we would be better off simply admitting there are few true works of literary caliber in the Scifi genre, and working our collective best both to improve the quality of the genre as a whole, and reducing the stigma on the genre such that more quality writers would be willing to delve into it.

Yet, instead of this, many the strongest writers in the genre insist they write 'speculative fiction', which is not only nonsensical and pretentious as I said, but also unrealistic. Like it or not, the public knows what Science Fiction is, that is the term they are comfortable with. Trying to use a new term with the same definition is a misguided exercise in political correctness; does using the term "African American" instead of 'Black' really improve their socioeconomic realities?

The real problem comes from people making any differentiation at all; many of the best books and films are very difficult to place into any one understood 'genre.' The one way in which 'genres' are useful is to help the audience find stories to their tastes, and the fact of the matter is, all 'Speculative Fiction' would still fall under the 'Science Fiction' or 'Fantasy' genres for this purpose. Adding an additional, artificial genre where no actual categorical differences exist would merely create confusion... but that doesn't matter, as the public will never adopt 'speculative fiction' anyway. Already, the silly term has made me spend far more time and effort than is worth it just for this rant. I'll get back to my plan... elevating the genre I love instead of abandoning it.

Or I might just fall asleep. I have a feeling half of this was incoherent from fatigue... but oh well. That's one rant I feel a little better about.
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VestDan

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