A short thread at deadcity icon‘s Livejournal provoked the question, Does genre matter?”
I think it does. Like anyone I can see the mainstreamification of sf/f concepts and tropes (e.g. Pynchon’s new book), but this phenomenon isn’t really new (e.g. most of Vonnegut’s work).
But the thing is, the sf concepts that transfer easily to the mainstream are largely sf-lite: alternate history (e.g. The Plot Against America), “my boyfriend is a vampire” (see approx. forty billion examples), Nightmare in Red! type of dystopia (e.g. 1984), etc. These involve worldmaking decisions (e.g. “If I have vampires in my book will I also have werewolves? Mummies? Abbot & Costello?”) but on a very low level. (At a thread on the sword and sorcery community I kicked this idea around recently.) The world (in mainstreamified sf/f) will not be flat, or ring-shaped; the sun will rise in the east and set in the west; there will be cars and corned beef sandwiches and telephones: a huge array of background material that can be assumed and does not need to be explained (or invented/appropriated).
If writers (or readers) want to explore a genuinely different world, though, they have to turn to genre fiction of a particular type: “deep genre,” in Judith Berman‘s trenchant phrase. In my view, something would be deep genre if the imaginary world (and the reader’s exploration of it) is a major part of the story-telling: the world is in the foreground, it is not just part of the background. Particular examples would fall along a continuous spectrum (from deep genre to fringe genre) rather than into discrete categorical boxes, but either end of the spectrum will be pretty clear. Margaret Atwood’s famous dismissal of sf as “talking squid in space” is relevant here. There will be no “talking squid in space” in mainstream sf/f until the likelihood of talking squids in space is much more widely accepted than it is right now. (Vonnegut’s Tramalfadorians might be an exception, or not.)
And that’s why genre matters. It’s your one sure source of fresh speaking squids when you want some. And sometimes some of us do.
This was a major factor in my decision to send some of my specfic stories to mainstream zines rather that specifically-genre zines. I’m well aware some of my stories are SF Lite, but changing that changes the story in ways I don’t want it changed–so now I’m experimenting with seeing just how receptive the litzines are to SF L.
This isn’t a bad idea. I’m sure the editor(s) at McSweeney’s wouldn’t care if a story is sf, as long as it’s the kind of story they like. I haven’t ever read Zoetrope, but they don’t exclude sf/f in their guidelines. So why not? “Let’s drop the big one and see what happens” is my motto (which is why I was turned down for that job in the State Department, I expect).
Unfortunately, I don’t really write stories of this type. Mine are all “Talking squid in space” type–or, more precisely, the “talking squid stained by an evil older than time lurking in the dark woods and preying on passersby” type. Deep genre is where my imagination seems to live.
Seen this website? Speaking of talking squid in space. It doesn’t say so but I gather it’s run by Vonda McIntyre. (At least her own website links to it.)
It’s a new one on me, but it looks fun. More and better talking squids are what the world needs now. And if the collection Ant Men of Tibet is half as brilliant as its title, it’ll be worth the trouble to hunt up. I immediately wanted to write a sequel to the eponymous story– “Aardvark Men of Nepal” aut sim.
I think you’re right about VM running the site; I accidentally hit the “E-mail the Squiditor” button when I was going for the site credits and her name was part of the e-mail address.
I have to agree about talking squids making the world a better place.
I have to confess to being myself in the process of writing a piece of–can we call it–squidfic.
SquidFic! That’s what SF stands for! It accounts for all those movies at the Sci Fi Channel that seem to have been written by cephalopods.
Squidfic is certainly better than an alternative I was toying with: invertebriction. On second thought, that sounded like something that happens to your tires if you run over a slug. On third thought: the abstract quality of flipping a brick? Anyway, not a winner…