Following up on the sense of wonder post, as well as picking up some threads from my earlier post on Mundane SF, and the latest Scalzi article for AMC, I’ve had a lot of different thoughts percolating about a particular question: “Why write SF in the first place?”
Of course I’ve railed against the literati who think there’s some other primary purpose to fiction other than as a means for entertaining the reader, for my purpose that’s a given. But if your ultimate goal is to tell an entertaining story, then why would you write a SF story rather than a mystery, a romance, or a techno-thriller? Obviously it has something to do with the type of story you have to tell, different genres have different strengths. If your story turns on the nature of good and evil, horror stands out, as does high fantasy and certain types of crime fiction. If the story turns on manners, social mores, and the relationships of men and women, romance tends to stand out.
What (aside from the speculative aspect) does SF do better than other literary genres? I think it comes down to humanity’s relationship to the universe. No other genre attacks the existential questions of our identity, our reality, or our purpose, as science fiction. Science fiction almost takes the questions themselves for granted, so much so that while the Mundanes were waxing rhapsodic about the philosophical aspects of The Matrix, most SF fans were wondering what the big deal was. The first modern SF novel, Frankenstein, was about a moral question, what is our responsibility should we create another thinking being? Blade Runner asked the same question. If you want to write about the nature of reality, or of God for that matter, you almost have to write science fiction.
5 Comments
steve buchheit · December 5, 2008 at 1:45 pm
“or of God for that matter”
Strangely enough, that was the subject of my College Senior Paper to finish my Creative Writing Minor. Specifically it was on the presence of God (or gods) and how they relate to the stories of Arthur C. Clarke.
A.R.Yngve · December 5, 2008 at 1:59 pm
“What (aside from the speculative aspect) does SF do better than other literary genres?”
It understands the Darwinist version of reality: the world is changing, evolving, never standing still (except when things go wrong).
Bushey · December 8, 2008 at 9:40 pm
The one thing that Sci-fi does better than any other genre, is focus and leverage the readers key emotions about the future, or potential presents (what could be rather than what is). These key emotions are perhaps the two most powerful we humans experience…Fear, and Hope.
A western can’t fill you with dread for tomorrow…even alternative history, or history by supposition can only make you fear what might have been. Mysteries are almost always solved by the end.
Consider if you will the impact that The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001, Contact, or The Andromeda Strain have had on our group consciousness. Standard fiction hopes and fears come and go like our day to day ones. Sci-fi fears and hopes resonate because they explode beyond our day to day ones, like pouring kerosene on a fire.
Ryland · December 9, 2008 at 12:08 pm
That and laser are cooool.
ryan · July 4, 2009 at 4:21 pm
science fiction/fantasy is the only genre in which Libertarian-type philosophy can make a case for itself.
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