It's Margaret's fault

[dreaminghope]

I blame Margaret Atwood.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of her books. But she's still wrong about one thing.

It's not even necessarily current-Atwood who is the problem - she has apparently softened her stance somewhat - but past-Atwood, who insisted that The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake aren't science fiction books but are instead 'speculative fiction' because "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen."

I blame Atwood for making it sound like science fiction is a limited genre and that any book with literary merit - or literary pretensions - actually belongs to a different genre: "speculative fiction", "distopian fiction", "magic realism" (the academic name for a certain kind of literary fantasy).

It's good marketing: Ms. Atwood surely knows that science fiction fans will read "Oryx and Crake" no matter what she calls it, but literary fiction fans and awards committees don't take genre books seriously. It just bugs me that so much well-written, intelligent science fiction gets pulled out of the category, furthering the (incorrect) assumption amongst much of academia that what's left is pulp. To some, if something's not trashy, it can't actually be science fiction, and if it is science fiction, it can't be smart or thoughtful.

It is also interesting that distopian science fiction is often elevated over more optimistic visions of the future. Not to say that their writing is equal, but consider that The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood is held to be literary, where Stardance by Spider and Jeanne Robinson is firmly situated in the science fiction and fantasy section of the bookstore. That doesn't surprise me; cynicism and pessimism are often considered marks of intelligence, where optimism means that you aren't smart enough to grasp how awful things really are.

I like science fiction, whether it be literary or trashy or something in between. So whatever, Atwood: You have written three science fiction books. Distopian speculative fiction, sure, but that's a science fiction sub-category. Deal with it.

Comments

[awehla.livejournal.com]

I agree, a lot of science fiction I have watched or read has been smart and thoughtful. I love what I love and I don't care what category it falls into. If people want to trash things because they see them as fitting into a particular genre they don't normally like that's their problem.

Atwood should be proud of her books whatever category they fall into.

Lisa
x

[serioushat.livejournal.com]

I thought science fiction deal with science and/or technology. eg. if 'X' currently non-existent technology were real, then what kind of world would we live in? How would it be different, and how would this affect characters and/or plot?
I haven't read the Handmaid's Tale in a long time, but I don't remember a whole lot of different technology or science stuff in there... maybe we could call it social science fiction?
I agree that both fantasy and sci fi get a bad rep for being fluff. I actually think it would be much harder to write a really good sci fi or fantasy novel than a more mainstream novel. You have all the same challenges as a mainstream writer, plus you have the additional challenges of how to add fanasty or sci fi elements without becoming cliched, unbelievable, or cheesy. Quite a challenge, I would think.

[dreamhope.livejournal.com]

I like Robert Heinlein's definition of science fiction: "... realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method." So it doesn't have to include advanced science; The Handmaid's Tale is future-set, based on speculations about social changes that would preclude technological advancements. It could definitely be considered to be part of a sub-genre of science fiction: distopian, speculative, or social.

I completely agree that writing non-cheesy fantasy/science fiction is a big challenge.

[(Anonymous)]

I became a fan of Battlestar Galactica within the last few months, and watched some of the dvd bonus features. Which included interviews with the cast, some of who really didn't want to do a sci-fi series until they'd looked at the script.

Any genre or non-genre has complete crap. But each genre has really intelligent writers. Even romance, I'm sure.