Skip to main content

Embrace the Gray Area


In the big field of speculative fiction there are two major genres fantasy and science fiction. Of course there are all their related sub-genres. There are readers who only read science fiction and refuse to read fantasy, and then there are readers who will only read fantasy. Those purists might have trouble with this article, because I want to talk about the stories that are both, the novels that fall into that gray area. There is a gradient that exist between fantasy and science fiction. Some stories are 100% science fiction and some are 100% fantasy. But some are maybe 15% science fiction and the rest fantasy. Some are mostly science fiction but have a little fantasy to them. Then there are some where you just don’t know. There is a commonality between science fiction and fantasy. In either case there is some aspect of the story that is not to be found in our world as we currently know it. This is why both fall under the heading of ‘speculative fiction’.

Consider Game of Thrones. Of course it is pure fantasy you say . . . or is it? No, as I see it there is a bit of science fiction in there too. It takes place on a planet with an eccentric orbit around its star (or stars) which makes for wildly unpredictable seasons. The Starks may be fond of reminding everyone that “Winter is coming”, but nobody really knows when that is going to happen or how long it will last (Not that anyone pays attention to the warning. They are all too busy fighting.) And then there is the substance known as wildfire. Is it magic, or is it some highly energetic unstable chemical compound that is unknown on our Earth?

Sometimes it may be hard to quantify exactly how much of one of these novels is science fiction and how much is fantasy. But sometimes it’s easy. In Piers Anthony’s Split Infinity novels, it is exactly 50/50. It takes place on a world that exists is two parallel dimensions. One moment the main character, Stile, is on the world that is ruled by technology, and the next he finds himself on the same world, but this one is ruled by magic. As Stile unexpectedly pops back and forth between worlds he has to readjust his brain to accept the world he is in, just as the readers have to readjust our brains.

 Arthur C. Clarke had a famous rule “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So something like The Book of the New Sun novels by Gene Wolfe are hard to categorize. The books in the series are: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch. (By the way, I think The Claw of the Conciliator may be my favorite title for a book ever.) These books certainly have the feel of fantasy in every fiber of their being, yet they take place thousands of years in a dystopian future where the all of the magical elements are probably just advanced technology.

 

From 2015 to 2017, N. K. Jemisin wrote her amazing Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky). This is another series set thousands of years in the future with technology that at times masquerades as magic. But it all comes down to the characters coming to terms with who they are and how they are going to survive. This series has won more awards than any other in recent memory, winning both Hugo and Nebula awards. Jemisin is a powerful writer whatever genre she is in.

I understand that some people are drawn to science fiction and find fantasy frivolous. Others are drawn to fantasy and find science fiction cold and off-putting. To me, I probably lean a bit more toward science fiction, but really, a good story is a good story. As long as the characters draw me in and the plot is engaging, I don’t care what genre it is.

(My novel Starliner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or Amazon.com. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October).




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Second Wind

  You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running.   In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, which is tr
1 comment
Read more

Roy Batty Figures it out

  This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner . If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it. In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner , the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech: “I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.” I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this
Post a Comment
Read more

The Outsider

  I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up (or
1 comment
Read more