Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup(or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the genre name game)

Fatastika, speculative fiction, science fiction, scifi, slipstream, interstitial, magical realism…

You’re probably reading all these posts from all these different authors swimming around in the blogosphere, and you feel like you’re drowning in a soup of labels and categorizations. You probably think you can’t possibly keep all this crap in your head right, and you wonder why (why? WHY?) do we need a million different ways to say the same damn thing. I mean, they’re all Science Fiction, right? Or they’re all Fantasy right? Why not just SFF? Or F/SF?

Let’s slip aside taxonomy for a moment here, and just focus on the labels that are all seeming to say the exact same thing differently. We’re skipping taxonomy and sub classifications and spin off genres for the simple reason that genre fiction is geek fiction, and geeks like to break things down and classify them. That’s what geeks do, and the more classifications we can make, the more complex this living organism of rules and logic and labels becomes, the happier we are. So we’re going to strip those away for a moment and focus on the big guns: Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fantastika.

Why four labels to mean pretty much the same exact thing? Well, as you can probably guess we have politics at play here. Most things that are overly complicated for no visible reason falls back on politics, almost every single time. Once upon a time it was all Science Fiction. Even the hardcore whackadoo fantasy with giant flying wizards and muscle bound barbarian nomads with singing swords saving maidens from being eaten by a Cyclops. There is still some remnants of this, and how long it took the SFWA to include fantasy in its name (but not in it’s acronym, for some reason) because fantasy was considered a subset (subgenre) of Science Fiction.

So Fantasy, being a label all it’s own is important in ways, and obvious in others. But you’ll have some (and I won’t say just yet whether I agree with them or not) who think Science Fiction is really fantasy in disguise, it’s just fantasy with space ships, and is just as improbable as fantasy is, it just doesn’t realize it’s being improbable. So in a way, some people point out that fantasy is all there is. Again, the label, it is all politics. Once you get into subgenres it does become more about classification and ossification, but this big one here? All politics. Trust me. Tell someone you know who reads science fiction that it’s the same as fantasy and watch the fireworks. It’s a pure, guttural, emotional bile that’s spewed forth, all laced with the language of politics. If it was simply classification, emotion wouldn’t be involved, no, not at all. They would just shrug, correct you, and then not care.

Then let’s turn our gaze into Speculative Fiction. Oh my, this is the big elephant in the room. People slam this one as being snobbery, they slam it and say people who are ashamed of writing Science Fiction use this label, that they’re snooty intellectuals who are slumming it, whatever. The need for this name makes sense, and it’s also, again, almost all politics. Since the dark days of genre there has always been a split, a war, between two halves of the fiction: those who wanted to use genre tropes to thrill, and those who wanted to use genre tropes to make art. The art makers loved reading and writing thrilling stories as well as making their little opuses (opusi?). The thriller writers didn’t want art, they wanted pulp and nothing more. Thus speculative fiction was born, to give some breathing room to those who wanted more from their fiction than just a good time. Which of course, pissed off the pulp people even more, which was confusing (to me at least) since they thought the art crowd was then ashamed of writing pulp.

Which is it boys, do you want us in your genre or not?

Anyway, done with that side rant, onto Fantastika. I’m not a huge fan of any of these terms, to be honest. They all have various meanings and usages, and fantastika’s is an interesting one. Coined by Clute but used a lot by a few of my friends, it’s a catch all umbrella, and a very political one at that. Some I know use it to claim all writing is Fantastika, especially science fiction and fantasy. Fantastika is more of a European term, more of a term that means anything that invokes wonder and amazement. Again, Fantastika (because it’s not American sounding, I guess?) gets also slammed with the snobby label and the “what, SF/F not good enough for you?” accusations that Speculative Fiction gets. Although Fantasika (for my money) sounds far less snotty than Speculative Fiction, but that’s just me. Fantastika is, like all the others, pretty much a political term, that’s trying to rebrand SF/F to cover more ground, to be more interesting, and to get new ideas across.

Because in the end, if we just keep writing the same things over and over again, it gets stale. I know a lot of SF/F writers and readers are into the concept of Darwin- and they know in order to keep a healthy gene pool you need genetic diversity. It’s required. So why, then, I wonder, do we want such staleness in SF/F? The minute something new comes along they poo-poo it. They shirk at new labels, new ideas, new thoughts. That’s pretty much what all these names are deep down in their bones- they are new ways of seeing our genre, the genre we know and love. It’s a way of creating genetic diversity. And isn’t that something to strive for?

Written by Paul Jessup

Paul Jessup

Paul Jessup has a beard (A BEARD) and plays with genre, and sometimes he takes that genre and makes things with it. Sometimes those things involve words, and the words add up, until they are big words and small words and novel words. And then people publish them and he dances. It’s a fun dance.

http://pauljessup.com

Discussion
  • Henrik N May 30, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    The Latin plural of “opus” is actually “opera”, though “opuses” is more common in English.

  • Preston May 30, 2011 at 10:51 pm

    FYI, the plural of opus is opera (from the Latin opus, operis, neuter. – nominative plural form is opera). On a side note, the difficulty pluralizing opus reminds me of the similar difficulty with octopus – octopuses and octopi are the most used forms. While both of these are technically acceptable, their lack of euphony is surely a reflection of tacking English and Latin plural endings, respectively, onto a Greek root. The most correct plural (regardless of what spell check might tell you) is the farm more sonorous octopodes, with the stress placed on the second syllable.

  • Niall May 30, 2011 at 10:56 pm

    I hate to be the second person in a row to make a pedantic correction, but I just wanted to note that as I understand it Clute didn’t *coin* Fantastika, it already existed, he adopted it (and in doing so inevitably modified its use a bit) as a critical term.

  • Matthijs A. May 30, 2011 at 11:02 pm

    Definitely food for thought. Surely there are some relevant differences between Fantasy and SF? I like them both and I recently had an interesting conversation about this when a friend of mine said that he didn’t know that there was a difference between them. I was completely baffled.

  • Martin May 30, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    Why four labels to mean pretty much the same exact thing?

    Because they quite obviously mean different things? Science fiction means science fiction, fantasy means fantasy and speculative fiction and fantastika both mean science fiction and fantasy (and supernatural horror and all non-mimetic fiction) . They are just more elegant/convoluted ways of writing SFF or F&SF – see also: the fantastic. There are nuances to this – speculative fiction meant something different in the Sixties, Clute probably has strong ideas about his own term – but your historical/political summary is pretty dubious and it is clear what the terms mean today.

    Once you get into subgenres it does become more about classification and ossification, but this big one here? All politics. Trust me. Tell someone you know who reads science fiction that it’s the same as fantasy and watch the fireworks. It’s a pure, guttural, emotional bile that’s spewed forth, all laced with the language of politics. If it was simply classification, emotion wouldn’t be involved, no, not at all.

    You’ve not really put forward any reason to trust you though. I don’t really see how you can differentiate between genres and subgenres here. Genres are classifications as much as subgenres; readers tend to be emotionally invested in the types of fiction they read whether that is a subgenre or a genre. Tell someone on the internet that space opera is the same as urban fantasy and you will probably get a pretty “emotional” response.

  • Paul Jessup May 31, 2011 at 6:28 am

    “You’ve not really put forward any reason to trust you though.”

    Whoever said you could trust me? I don’t trust me, and you shouldn’t either.

    And I do know the plural of Opus…I was just playing with it, toying with it, teasing the constructs of it.

  • John Stevens May 31, 2011 at 9:08 am

    Oh, you are IN for it NOW, mister! I saw that “typo” at the top!

    I think politics of a sort is at work with some of these designations, but (says the anthropologist) there’s more to it than that. It’s people creating identity, linkages between social relationships with people and texts and ideas, and even, yes, trying to figure out what makes some stories different than others, what cuts across them as well as bounds them. It’s often quite personal, thus the frequent gasket-blowing in people’s heads. Certainly the geekish proclivity to endlessly categorize (and implicitly hierarchize) is on display in these arguments, but they are also discussions of our conceptions of the nature of story and meaning. We want to know what others think, learn more, twist this stuff around to see what it means, and sometimes cast back into history to track influences and changes.

    I think your point about a certain “genetic diversity” angle makes sense, because we constantly want to re-view stories and see what they have to offer us, and sometimes categories, genres, and taxonomies help us do that. I think there is an aspect to these arguments that enrich the conceptual environment and stimulate creativity, just as these arguments sometimes can limit our vision or bog us down in useless squabbling. I think there’s something about the nature of creativity going on in all of this, although I can’t pin it down right.

    Good post! Also, VIVA FANTASTIKA!!!!

  • Bob May 31, 2011 at 11:34 am

    My problem with fantastika is it’s a top down political term used by those who want sff to be take “seriously” and that was my problem with the usage of speculative fiction as well. I think both terms are divisive codewords for separating “good” (literary) authors from “bad” (pulp) writers. Writers of fantastika and/or speculative fiction are saying “Look my stuff is better than that stuff published in the “Golden Age” or that stuff published in pulps; don’t give me a Hugo, give me a Pulitzer.

    Sff is from the people for the people, right on!!!!

  • Paul Jessup May 31, 2011 at 11:58 am

    “My problem with fantastika is it’s a top down political term used by those who want sff to be take “seriously” and that was my problem with the usage of speculative fiction as well. I think both terms are divisive codewords for separating “good” (literary) authors from “bad” (pulp) writers. Writers of fantastika and/or speculative fiction are saying “Look my stuff is better than that stuff published in the “Golden Age” or that stuff published in pulps; don’t give me a Hugo, give me a Pulitzer.

    Sff is from the people for the people, right on!!!!”

    But are they? Are they really? Come on, get off it. There is no distinction except the one in your own mind. There are no code words at all, literary writers who write genre fiction love genre fiction, even the pulps. Trust me on that. There is a reason we’re writing it, and not anything else. The pulps appeal.

    Maybe you should read my article, you know? Especially the middle so paragraphs. It might help.

  • Bob May 31, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    Of course there are codewords calling someone a tea bagger is prime example. I want to review sff and I have a set of standards on what constitutes good sff. If I picked up a book labeled fantastika, I know it’s just a pretentious (IMHO of course (to be obvious)) term for sff but my standard wouldn’t change (see below). If it contained good writing and used sff tropes, it may still fail as good sff. Vonnegut (post Sirens of Titan) for instance.

    First and foremost good sff requires a Sense of Wonder, whether its called science fiction, fantasy, horror, fantastika, spec fic, paranormal romance, or just the mother of all these genres, romance (i.e., Ivanhoe.) I think that Sense of Wonder is axiomatic to good sff, it’s like swing is to jazz, if it ain’t got that swing it don’t mean a thing.

    Let me get something clear Paul; are you saying you’re a literary writer? Is that code for good writer, i.e., one who believes in craft. Workshop writing, Or one who is just styling? Or what exactly? I know Franzen is a literary writer, is that what you mean?

    I don’t like fantastika cause it rhymes with swastika.

    C’mon Paul all opinions are in some ones mind. Top down in this case mean the writer telling the reader what is. Just in case I’m a guy who believes once the writer publishes something, that something is not theirs anymore, it belongs to the reader any reader and the reader doesn’t need the author to explain anything.

  • Yano May 31, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    The same discussion is going on for ages in the music industry.
    “you listening to pop music?”
    “wooot? not at all. i am listening to alternative music”

    there are some over-categories that really make things a bit easier. like fantasy, science fiction, detectivegenre etc.
    but the rest is just elite thinking to make yourself stand out in a crowd.
    if you really want to tell someone what book you like, and what it is about, one word won’t be enough anyway.

  • Paul Jessup June 1, 2011 at 4:17 am

    “Of course there are codewords calling someone a tea bagger is prime example. I want to review sff and I have a set of standards on what constitutes good sff. If I picked up a book labeled fantastika, I know it’s just a pretentious (IMHO of course (to be obvious)) term for sff but my standard wouldn’t change (see below).”

    1. I’ve yet to see a book marketed as Fantastika in the English speaking countries. It’s mostly used in European countries, and in there, it is all kinds of Wonder Stories. From pulp to avant garde. They don’t seem to have the same kind of hang ups as you have

    In the US only seen it used by book critics. Critics are known for polemic, for making stuff sound more complicated than it is. It could be anything, even the pulpiest pop culture soup, and a good critic (Zizek, let’s say) can spew all sorts of crazy to make it sound like a complex work of madness.

    ” If it contained good writing and used sff tropes, it may still fail as good sff. Vonnegut (post Sirens of Titan) for instance.”

    See, the reason why I called you a tea bagger is because you use terms like this- failure. You use objective terms to explain a subjective experience. And that subjective experience is based on reflections of the past– of stagnation and pointing towards a mythic golden age of SF that never existed.

    “First and foremost good sff requires a Sense of Wonder, whether its called science fiction, fantasy, horror, fantastika, spec fic, paranormal romance, or just the mother of all these genres, romance (i.e., Ivanhoe.) I think that Sense of Wonder is axiomatic to good sff, it’s like swing is to jazz, if it ain’t got that swing it don’t mean a thing.”

    There you are again- stating a subjective qualifier (I think) and then using the subjective and proclaiming it as objective fact (in other words- your language is murky).

    “Let me get something clear Paul; are you saying you’re a literary writer? Is that code for good writer, i.e., one who believes in craft. Workshop writing, Or one who is just styling? Or what exactly? I know Franzen is a literary writer, is that what you mean?”

    Oh come on, get off it. I’m not a literary writer, if I were I wouldn’t be here, would I? No. But I’ve been labelled as such because my work doesn’t follow some sort of rules set down by golden age worshipers like yourself. Of course, you’d know all this if you read the above article, I cover it, in a very tongue in cheek, jocular fashion.

    “I don’t like fantastika cause it rhymes with swastika.”

    I don’t like Mufflers cause it sounds dirty. What’s your point?

    “C’mon Paul all opinions are in some ones mind.”

    Subjective fact.

    “Top down in this case mean the writer telling the reader what is.”

    Used to then define something as objective fact. You got any more tricks up your sleeve? Or you just going to do this all day?

    ” Just in case I’m a guy who believes once the writer publishes something, that something is not theirs anymore, it belongs to the reader any reader and the reader doesn’t need the author to explain anything.”

    Then you’re reading the wrong genre, esp if you’re one of the people who hate it when a writer doesn’t explain everything in his fictional world and then yell at him for bad world building.

    Look, I play with genre because genre is fun. I don’t take anything seriously, I lie half the time, hide my real feelings the rest of the time, and play with everything. Sense of play is a good thing to have.

  • Farah Mendlesohn June 1, 2011 at 4:24 am

    For me, sf is a subset of fantasy. Fantastika? Not terribly bothered about this one: it’s purpose seems to be to enable the inclusion of writers who are not writing within the community discourse, which is fine.

    What fascinates me is the internal politics over the “earliest” sf: you can tell a lot about what someone thinks sf/fantasy is by where they site it’s origins.

  • Hal Duncan June 1, 2011 at 8:39 am

    Oh, Paul, don’t you know you’re not *allowed* to adopt an openly defined label — speculative fiction / fantastika — and thereby concede that your work is not “proper” Science Fiction / Fantasy according to the closed definitions of the tribalists? No, when they assert their prescriptivist definitions in which Science Fiction / Fantasy must satisfy X, Y and Z constraints in order to be good (i.e. true & proper) SF, you *can’t* just say, “Well, um, in that case, since I’m writing fiction which deliberately ignores Y and Z constraints, I guess my stuff sits in a broader category that requires a different label.”

    I mean, God forbid you acknowledge the legitimacy of their closed definition(s), given the historical roots of these genres in the pulps, by *conceding* the rhetorical ground to them, allowing that some work is best described not as Science Fiction / Fantasy (as they understand it, as they require it to be, codified in a particular way,) but rather simply as fiction-which-is-speculative, fiction-which-is-fantastical — ergo speculative fiction or fantastika (or just plain fantasy vis-a-vis Farah, or strange fiction as I’d tend to describe it myself.) God forbid you implicitly accept their insistence on X, Y or Z constraints as axiomatic, as fundamental criteria of Science Fiction / Fantasy, by applying a different label to work disregarding said constraints.

    No, no, no, no, no, no, NO! [Add exclamation marks as required]

    The coffee that does not have cream and whisky in it because it’s not meant to be an Irish Coffee is not “a coffee”. It is a *failed* Irish Coffee! It is *not a proper* Irish Coffee! It’s not even *not meant to be* an Irish Coffee! (That would be the writer telling the reader what it is, duh.) If the people say it’s a *bad* Irish Coffee, well… off to your room, no supper for you! Cause that’s just what it is.

    If you call it “espresso,” clearly that’s just because it makes you sound like a right fancy-dan, like you’re better than everyone else. Admit it! It’s just so you can set yourself and your hoity toity chums apart from us “children and drunks” who want cream and whisky in our coffee. That’s how you see it, right? Elitist barrista!

  • Paul Jessup June 1, 2011 at 9:02 am

    oh, I just laughed myself silly. Hal- this is a warning. If I ever see you in person I’m giving you a big fat old kiss. You have been warned.

  • E. M. Edwards June 1, 2011 at 9:57 am

    I have no plan to top Hal Duncan’s adroit skewering of those who think a greater range of precision in genre labels is pure elitist posturing on the part of certain writers, i.e. those with snobbish pretensions of preferring works of literary merit over commercial dreck – which is what some people on this thread appear to suggest. He shows I think, exactly how much water that bucket carries – not a drop.

    Science fiction and fantasy are not genres just to piss in, nor are authors like Borges, Ajvaz, Calvino, et al, and more recent weird writers like Michael Cisco, always easy to pin down. Magical realism shares the water cooler with certain types of fantasy and speculative fiction is on a first name basis with much of the best of the sci-fi canon – but also goes for afterwork drinks with weird tales and horror.

    In the centre of these large categories, it may be easy to identify an author’s credentials – few will I suspect, confuse the work of Brandon Sanderson as anything other than Fantasy with a big F, to pick an example. But at the littoral edges, these definitions can fail, falter, and even get in the way of appreciating a novel for what it is – and what it is not. So, letting authors decide in part at least, where they might place their own work, seems neither elitist, snobbery, or over-complicated – it seems perfectly sensible to me, and imminently useful.

  • E. M. Edwards June 1, 2011 at 10:00 am

    Correction: “eminently useful” of course. Perhaps we can have a category for writers who can’t spell, as well as a section of curses while we’re at it, for the malign influence of spellcheck.

    e.

  • Bob June 1, 2011 at 6:10 pm

    Paul are you trying to poke holes in my opinions with Aristotelian Logic? I understand the use of the term fantastika and IMHO

  • Bob June 1, 2011 at 6:29 pm

    it offers nothing new that sff didn’t already cover. IMHO it is use by people who perceive sff as a ghetto literature and because of the perception believe fantastika is different than the olden days. Does this mean I’ll stop reading everything with John Stevens byline, no, but I won’t stop rolling my eyes when he writes or says fantastika. That’s a fact.

  • Bob June 1, 2011 at 6:44 pm

    Farah I agree science fiction is a subset of fantasy. Science fiction looking forward for the most part and fantasy looking backward. Then again steampunk, paranormal romance, urban fantasy and dark fantasy, etc., blur those strong delineations don’t they?

  • Bob June 1, 2011 at 8:30 pm

    Paul when I talk about a Sense of Wonder in sff, I’m talking about something specific. I’m talking about the experience one has when Sinbad fights the Roc, Snow White first stumbles upon dwarves, John Carter meets Tars Tarka, the lights turn on in Rama, Gandalf the White enters LOTR, Yatima comes to self awareness, those are wondrous moments and obviously subjective experiences but because the author intentionally creates those experiences and they can be shared and discussed they are objective. That Sense of Wonder is what is I say is necessary for good sff. You may disagree but I don’t see how that makes your view progressive and mine reactionary. Obviously my examples above transcend your mythic Golden Age quip.

  • Farah Mendlesohn June 2, 2011 at 4:33 am

    Bob: I can’t see that the new aesthetics changes the mode very much. Sf has always looked to the past, and some fantasy has looked to the future (maybe more should), but the dividing line of “wanting to know how it works” rather than “wanting to enjoy the mystery” still seems to be intact and those for me remain the real dviding lines between sf and fantasy, or the short version: do your dragons just fly because that’s what dragons do, or because they are genetically engineered?

  • Reuben June 2, 2011 at 10:58 am

    Really though, who cares what the genre label is as long as it sells copy? Hell you could lable the same book Speculative, Pulp, and Romance and sell it in three different sections of the bookstore. I would buy it from the pulp section and then remark that for a pulp novel it had amazing prose and made me cry at the end.

  • Hal Duncan June 2, 2011 at 12:42 pm

    Bob: “IMHO it is use by people who perceive sff as a ghetto literature and because of the perception believe fantastika is different than the olden days.”

    It couldn’t be that the perception of Science Fiction / Fantasy as a ghetto literature is a) right and b) no judgement on quality?

    A)

    These are commercial marketing category labels, coming out of the culture of penny dreadfuls, dime novels, sensation novels and 30s pulps, the first category created in the Gernsback/Campbell era, the second schismed off from Science Fiction in the 1970s. Both modes were, not surprisingly, codified *as* ghetto literature by writers and readers insistent upon them satisfying certain aesthetic criteria they considered intrinsic qualities of the genre(s) — like, oh, being driven by sense-of-wonder. Both modes have been shaped by aesthetic imperatives set by the category fiction audience — sense-of-wonder, plot-driven story, ya de ya. Yes? It’s just an acknowledgement of history to perceive those category labels as signifiers of ghetto literature.

    The label speculative fiction took off, by my understanding, during the New Wave, when writers were creating works that *really* breached the traditional conventions of the Golden Age, stories like Disch’s “Descending,” novels like Delany’s Dahlgren, works that might be pushing the horror button rather than the wonder button, focusing on estrangement rather than awe, character rather than plot, stories doing all the sorts of things that made readers cry out that this wasn’t “proper” Science Fiction. No doubt some writers hoped with that rebranding to get away from the stigma of the ghetto, but that was forty years ago and it’s no longer an alternative branding, just an umbrella term to avoid petty taxonomy disputes.

    The point is writers who don’t follow the traditional constraints just get fricking tired of arguing that sense-of-wonder, for example, is not an essential feature, that fiction using strangeness (aka the “speculative element” or the “fantastic”) in other ways is legitimate Science Fiction or Fantasy. Sure, one *could* point to stories like Bradbury’s “The Veldt” or “The Ravine” as taproots of an approach that pisses on most of the closed definitions. One *could* reference works from the Golden Age itself as evidence of an all-inclusive Science Fiction. Or one could point beyond the ghetto, to Kafka and suchlike, as evidence of an all-inclusive Fantasy. But it’s a fucking tedious fight one has to wage again and again and again. Bollocks to it. It’s easier to let the taxonomists quibble over Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror and just gloss the field within and beyond the ghetto as speculative fiction, fantastika or some other catch-all.

  • Hal Duncan June 2, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    B)

    Rather than projecting attitudes of disdain, you might actually *pay attention* to what those writers say about their love and respect extending to (if not being *rooted in*) the pulp fiction which does follow such constraints. Contrary to your assumption of snootcocking snipewankery at those pulp roots, writers who see sff as ghetto literature might actually be valuing it more highly for that.

    We might hold, for example, that being disregarded as “trash” freed ghetto writers to use the fantastic during a period when petit-bourgeois standards of literary propriety, in the latter half of the 20th century, largely equated relevance with Realism. We might hold that only a pulp writer like Bester could really carry the torch of Modernism in his typographic shenanigans because outside the ghetto the choice was between “serious” contemporary realism and postmodernism declawed by its own ironic distancing. I do.

    Paul, John, myself, Clute — none of the people I’ve seen use these umbrella terms is doing so from some scorn of the ghetto. Or we wouldn’t be fricking writing in it, duh.

  • Hal Duncan June 2, 2011 at 12:45 pm

    Bob: “That Sense of Wonder is what is I say is necessary for good sff.”

    You understand then, surely, that us evil elitists are simply *conceding the label* when we nod and say, sure, OK, if you insist that’s what Science Fiction / Fantasy is, what it does, by definition, I guess that’s *not what I’m fricking writing*? You understand, surely, that the alternative nomenclature is *accommodating closed definitions like yours*?

    So you (or whoever) are dead-set on Science Fiction / Fantasy following X, Y or Z criteria as essential features? Bully for you. When writers therefore choose an alternative name to refer to the broader field of work that does *not* treat those criteria as essential — speculative fiction or fantastika (or strange fiction) — why for the love of Cock would you get all sniffy about them not identifying work that disregards said criteria with the genre you say it’s not a good example of?

  • Bob June 2, 2011 at 3:35 pm

    Hal, actually Sense of Wonder is my one and only criteria for sff, which explains why I’ve read a lot of mediocre writing in the past. Hello my name is Bob and I’m an emotion junkie. I love it when my jaw hits the floor, the shit scares out of me or I’m creeped so bad I whimper for momma.

    So you’re saying you’re not actively seeking to create a sense of wonder or the feeling of the uncanny or shocking terror in your reader? You don’t want to drive them freaking batshit crazy.

    You’re saying the nights of cave women storytellers telling the little cave babies about how their great grandpa fought the giant titanium plumed eagle-devil while plummeting down down down to the lake of red molten lava – is a thing of the past?

    Nowadays we get the story of the scarecrow who lifted the toilet seat and watched grandma’s severed head bobbing in the bloody frothy commode.
    “Would you be a dearie and get me outta here.”
    “Sure” said the scarecrow, “care for a cup of tea?”
    “That be perfect, I am a bit chilled. Star Trek is on tonight you know, let’s watch it together.”

    So it goes

  • […] and the texts of fantastika can offer a framework for engagement and exercise of the imagination. Even the struggles over conceptualizing the genre can provide intellectual terrain for exercising the imagination and pondering what we write and see […]

  • Hal Duncan June 3, 2011 at 5:05 am

    “… a sense of wonder or the feeling of the uncanny or shocking terror…”

    Shifting the goalposts much? That’s like saying your only criteria for X is that it evokes joy… then offhandedly allowing for work that evokes sorrow or disgust instead of joy. The marvelous is not the uncanny is not the monstrous.

    Actually, going for the uncanny over the marvelous is one of the characteristic features of fiction breaching the ghetto literature conventions in the way I’m talking about — doing so such that many decry it as “not proper SFF.” Fiction written to make your skin crawl is largely a whole other beast to fiction written to make your jaw drop. *By definition*, the uncanny plays the sense of the familiar off against the foreign. By its nature, it’s about weirdness so subtle it’s unsettling because you’re not sure if it’s just a natural deviation in normality. It’s close to the Absurd. It’s the strangeness of Pinter’s “The Birthday Party,” where the drama is basically domestic but skewed so profoundly out of whack that it’s Just Plain Wrong. This is very different from straight horror, and often more oneiric than overtly fantastic. It’s certainly not about sense-of-wonder.

    I might well write one story that *does* push the sense-of-wonder button. The next might take the strangeness in a totally different direction. One might be obviously Fantasy down to having fairies. Another might be absurdist or oneiric. I’m not interested in taxonomy and tribalism so it’s all strange fiction, far as I’m concerned, poncy or pulpy.

    This is not about particular modes of strange fiction being “a thing of the past.” The uncanny is hardly a new thing. It’s been happening since Bradbury, goes all through the New Wave, right up to Kelly Link and your imaginary, “The Scarecrow and the Severed Head. It’s you that’s setting up an opposition between the Irish Coffee of strange fiction with the wonder of whisky in it and espresso with the biscotti of the uncanny on the side. I’m saying it’s all coffee. Since many, if not most, legitimately consider Irish Coffee a distinct thing that requires the wonder of whisky, I’m not going to present that espresso with the biscotti of the uncanny as Irish Coffee.

    If you don’t count the sort of strangeness you describe in “The Scarecrow and the Severed Head” as “proper SFF,” the point is, you’re not really allowing for the uncanny; you’re requiring something more specific — the marvelous. Which is fine, as I say. It just means it’s silly-kittens to complain about someone who writes “The Scarecrow and the Severed Head” calling it strange fiction or speculative fiction or fantastika because it doesn’t fit your criteria.

  • Bob June 3, 2011 at 8:28 am

    “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
    and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
    I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
    For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
    and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
    Every angel is terrifying.” Rilke, Duino Elegies

    I concede fantastika it is.