science fiction & fantasy

What is your science fiction worldview?

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The other day I discussed why science fiction is more of a worldview than an actual genre. But if that's true, exactly what type of worldview is SF? I'm trying to figure this out and I'd love to hear from people about what they consider as the science fiction worldview, or what they consider to be the markers of science fiction. 

I almost asked people to define science fiction before realizing that a worldview doesn't fit with the idea of a hard and fast definition. Part of this is because worldviews continually change and flow across time and place. The other part is because I agree with what Nnedi Okorafor wrote in her must-read essay "Can you define African Science Fiction?", which is that all too often "labels suck."

As Okorafor says of labels:

“Yes, they are ways to simplify life. They make things easier to understand and faster to find. They have their uses. But when you take them too seriously, they are bullsh*t.”

So I'm not looking for definitions or labels to slap onto science fiction. But I am looking for viewpoints on what science fiction might be in our 21st century world. But to get us started I've also collected a number of famous and not-so-famous definitions of SF. But I hope no one considers these definitions as anything more than the beginning of a much larger discussion. 

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below. If you'd like to offer your thoughts in private, email them to me.

Jason's incomplete list of SF definitions even though definitions often suck

Here's my initial take on the science fiction worldview: The present as seen through a science-based view of the future.

In addition, here are a few of the definitions of SF which have stuck with me over the years:

  • "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology." — Isaac Asimov giving a traditional definition of science fiction.
  • "Fiction in which things happen that are not possible today." — Margaret Atwood, who has often said she doesn't write science fiction.
  • Science fiction is about "events that have not happened." — Samuel R. Delany. I also love Delany's statement that "Science fiction isn’t just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be — a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they’re going to change the world we live in, they — and all of us — have to be able to think about a world that works differently." 
  • "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." — Robert Heinlein giving another traditional definition of SF. Is it just me, or are the traditional definitions of science fiction often mind-numbing and boring?
  • Science fiction is about "subverting paradigms." — Nalo Hopkinson. The full quote is "Science fiction and fantasy are already about subverting paradigms," which was said in response to her fiction being described as "subverting the genre." The complete interview is found in the excellent book Report from Planet Midnight. 
  • "Science fiction: the unknown is to be understood and thereby changed." — Nancy Lebovitz
  • "Science Fiction is the improbable made possible." — Rod Serling
  • The "literature of ideas" — Niko Silvester and many others
  • The "literature of cognitive estrangement" — Darko Suvin
  • The "literature of change" — Richard Trietel. Also make note of Tom Shippey's comment that "Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it."

What if science fiction is a worldview instead of a genre

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Shaun Duke raises an interesting point by saying that science fiction has in many ways become a supergenre. Shaun began thinking about this during a discussion with Maureen Kincaid Speller and Paul Kincaid about what science fiction "is," a discussion in which Kincaid said thinking of SF as a genre in the narrative sense is not an accurate application of the term "genre."

Cue the Shaun-Duke-summarizing-and-melding-with-Paul-Kincaid quote:

“Unlike romance or crime, there is nothing unique to the narrative practice of sf that can be separated from everything else. This might explain, for example, why there has been so much discussion about the nature of sf as a cross-pollinating genre – crossovers being so regular an occurrence that one would be hard pressed to find an sf text which does not cross over into other generic forms.”

Shaun then suggests that people consider science fiction as one of the "supergenres" alongside realistic fiction and anti-realistic fiction, underneath of which rest the traditional genres of historical novels, crime stories, romances, fantasies, and so on. "These supergenres would not necessarily define the genres beneath them, but they would suggest a relationship between genres that moves beyond narrative practice, but never quite leaves it behind. A fantasy novel might be as much historical as it is anti-realist; the former is a narrative practice, while the latter is a conceptual 'game.'"

Shaun makes some fascinating points in his essay, which I suggest people go and read. I also look forward to reading Shaun's future exploration of this topic.

However, I wonder if Shaun doesn't take his thought experiment far enough. Perhaps instead of even speaking of science fiction as a genre or supergenre, we should instead speak of SF and other established genres as viewpoints toward seeing the world. 

After all, fiction itself is a worldview, a way of saying that certain types of stories have not truly happened and likely will never happen. The "fiction" worldview allows people to approach fictional stories with a different frame of mind than the viewpoints we have when approaching historical texts, or memoirs, or poetry, or even real life.

And within the viewpoint of fiction rest more individualized views of what fiction can accomplish. These viewpoints—our traditional genres like fantasy, horror, romance and so on—essential set up people to understand what they're about to experience. Just as the human mind must learn to interpret the sensory inputs we receive from our eyes and ears—allowing us to know that this image we're seeing is a tree, and that buzzing sound we're hearing is a bee—so too must people learn to understand the fictional stories they experience. Hence the existence of genres, which help people understand the fictional motifs and themes and beliefs they are about to encounter.

Now I know there's more to genre than merely a worldview—there's also a marketing aspect which publishers and authors use to sell books, along with social communities of readers connected with each genre. However, I think this worldview theory is still a useful way to understand part of why genres exist.

And if it's true that genre should in part be understood as a literary viewpoint, this would also help explain why science fiction is in such decline.

During Readercon earlier this year I spoke briefly with a well-known author whose fiction, while incorporating many aspects of SF, is not usually considered a part of the science fiction genre. (Yes, I'm being vague, but this was a personal conversation and I don't intend to name the author.) When I asked the author why he thought fantasy had eclipsed the science fiction genre in recent years, he said that "Unlike with the fantasy genre, science fiction is still trying to discover what it wants to say." 

This quote struck me because I'm fascinated with why so few people these days read science fiction.  But what if the problem with SF isn't that it merely doesn't know what it wants to say to 21st century audiences (although I believe that is part of the problem). What if the worldview of science fiction, centered around technological change and futurism and humanity's place in the universe, no longer strikes many people as being unique to the genre because this worldview has become common among a sizable portion of humanity.

In short, what if SF's worldview is now the defacto worldview of so many people living through the technological changes of the 21 century that the genre seems rather tame and boring?

I don't know if this is true, but it's what I'm contemplating today. But if there's any truth in this, then if science fiction is to again become relevant to people the way our genre views the world—and our genre's place in our fictional understandings of life—must change.

My GenCon Writers Symposium schedule

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Going to this year's GenCon? Then swing by the GenCon Writer's Symposium, which is held right upstairs from the main exhibition hall. Your GenCon badge gets you in for free to the Symposium's more than 140 hours of programming by more than 50 authors, including myself.

My schedule of events includes:

Friday, Aug. 15 at 2 pm
Writer's Craft track: Writing Amazing Short Stories with John Helfers, Toni L. P. Kelner, Jim Lowder, and Catherine Shaffer.
Learn what makes a great short story great, what types of stories work in short form, and tips for crafting amazing short stories of your own

Friday, Aug. 15 at 5 pm
Business of Writing track: Selling Your Stories with Elizabeth Vaughan, Carrie Harris, Scott Westerfeld, and Maurice Broaddus.
Learn how to sell a finished story, get advice on choosing a market based on the length or genre of your story, and learn to improve the chance that the person you send your story to read it!

Saturday, Aug. 16 at 1 pm
Publishing track: Traditional Publishing with John Helfers, Erik Scott de Bie, Saladin Ahmed, and Jim Minz.
Find out what it takes to get published by the big publishing houses, learn the advantages of going this route, and discover the challenges 
inherent in this path to publication

Saturday, Aug. 16 at 6 pm
Writer's Craft track: Short Fiction Plotting with Don Bingle, Catherine Shaffer, Dylan Birtolo, and Christopher Rowe.
Learn to shape a plot when you have less than 10,000 words to tell the entire tale! It takes a special set of skills to forge a plot that works in 
short fiction, and we'll tell you how to do it

Sunday, Aug. 17 from 11 am to 1 pm
Read and critique session with Elizabeth Vaughan, David B. Coe, and Maxwell Alexander Drake.
This session gives attendees the opportunity to read something they've written and to hear instant feedback from published authors. If you stop by this session and share a little of your fiction I'll not only give feedback but also suggestions on where to submit the story.

If you see me at the Symposium, be sure to say hello. I love talking with people.

 

We hate your genre—except when we write it

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The news for On Spec Magazine is bad—the Canada Council for the Arts denied their grant application for 2015 because "the quality of writing remained low." As On Spec's managing editor Diane Walton explains, this is flat-out wrong and merely the rationalization the Council used to remove funding from a genre publication. Walton says the magazine is exploring alternate funding mechanisms and asking for support.

This appears to a case of bias against the speculative fiction genre (a view shared by Michal Wojcik and others). My belief in this is based not only on the fact that On Spec continually publishes high quality fiction but because I've witnessed first-hand the literary snobbery and beliefs which appears to have doomed On Spec's application.

You see, a while back I received a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, which at the time was a very nice monetary grant awarded to individual artists (they've since discontinued the program). I won the award with a story which, while containing genre elements, easily passed for the types of stories at home in the Mississippi Review and the Beloit Fiction Journal. Since I'd published works in those exact literary magazines, and ran a literary journal called storySouth, the Arts Board judges no doubt saw me as one of their own.

I'm not merely making this assumption—I know this is truth because a few years later I ran into one of the judges who'd decided I was fellowship worthy. This person introduced herself to me, praised my writing, and asked what I was writing these days. 

When I mentioned science fiction stories, she promptly informed me that if she'd known I was going to write those types of stories she wouldn't have be voted for my fellowship.

Ouch. Burn. How dare I take their official literary imprinteur and use it to write that nasty genre stuff.

Of course, the irony is that major literary authors from Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison to Michael Chabon and Junot Díaz regularly dip their toes into the genre pool. But that's evidently okay with our world's self-appointed literary elite.

I now understand that the distinctions between genres—including between the so-called "literary" genre and all other types of fiction—don't matter as much as many people believe. Great fiction can exist in any genre or type of writing, just as bad writing also exists across all genres.

It's too bad the Canada Council for the Arts and many other lovers of literature don't understand this.

Really?

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So I wrote the other day about the speech guidelines for the upcoming Hugo Awards ceremony. Quite a few people in the genre have commented about the issue, including author and critic Ian Sales, who stated:

Really, Ian? I'm an American and the Worldcon is in Britain, so I simply have to "deal" with my concerns over these speech guidelines curtailing discussions of politics in our genre?

Just so no one misunderstands, Ian later states that he is clearly referring to free speech issues:

It's nice to believe that the science fiction and fantasy genres—and indeed, all of literature—are based on the free-flow of ideas and words. But this has never been true. There are certain people and themes and motifs and beliefs we are supposed to accept without questioning if we want to be a part of the genre, and likewise certain people and views who are not supposed to be a part of genre discussions. And if you dare to raise a point which the dominant genre voices disagree with, they simply dismiss your concerns as if what you're saying couldn't possibly matter.

That's what Ian Sales is doing by saying that free speech is a US argument. He is too smart a writer and critic to be dismissing views like this, but there he is, still dismissing away.

As Damien Walter said in response to Ian's comments, this year's Hugo Award speech guidelines "seem to be about stopping an embarrassing scene" when the genre might need just such a scene because of the issues we're dealing with.

So true. Sometimes the genre needs a scene. Unfortunately, the scene many in the genre want is merely more of the same old same old.