People talk sometimes about whether
stories are believable. Believable is not the key point of fiction,
it is self-consistency (unless the lack of self-consistency is,
itself, part
of the story). Self-consistency says that if magic requires the
use of words and gestures, then all magic must be explained in terms
of the use of those words and gestures. Exceptions may exist, but
those exceptions must be recognized in-universe as being such.
This is, in fact, usually one of the
main points of anything that is called 'genre
fiction'. A genre can be defined as a set of acceptable breaks
from reality which can occur in a story. In fantasy, it is magic and
its attendant tropes. In horror, it is monsters and other physical
representations of evil and fear. Some science fiction is built
around a particular kind of self-consistent change or assumption
about reality.
It is one thing that authors of
'speculative'
fiction (which encompasses all three) discuss and work at. The
author must know these rules and be able to extrapolate from reality
plus that interpretation in order to arrive at a believable,
self-consistent set of possibilities. Where possible, these
extrapolations should otherwise follow known aspects of reality as
the reader will know it.
And it's not just variations on the
laws of physics that science fiction explores, but variations on the
ways in which human minds and societies work. Even explorations of
what a non-human mind might be like. This is often referred to as
'soft' science fiction, since it is based in psychology, anthropology
and sociology instead of hard sciences like mathematics, physics and
chemistry.
To me, though, 'soft' science fiction
is becoming the most interesting to write. People have already
examined a myriad of ways that physics and technology can be modified
to create new kinds of worlds. I find myself more interested in
questions like “what would it be like to be truly and utterly alone
in the universe?” or “in what ways does a physical sense of
identity affect one's internal sense of identity?”. Those of you
who read my other
blog may recognize Nemo
and Fog
as looking at these questions (among others).
To hardcore readers of science fiction,
it will come as no surprise that my favorite authors, in the
long-term, are Philip
K. Dick, Alfred
Bester, Theodore
Sturgeon and William
Gibson. All were (or are) far more concerned with character,
society and the impacts of technology upon humankind than writers of
hard science fiction ever were.
Art is the exploration of that which is
human. That includes fear, fantasy, science and identity. Put all
those together and you get 'speculative'
fiction. It's where I belong.
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