In which Chaz is vexed. Again.

[desperance]

Hmmph. The new Interzone has an interview with Christopher Priest, which I read straight off, having so much enjoyed the movie of "The Prestige". And he said, on the essential difference between SF and fantasy:

SF is in the end about human responsibility: actions lead to consequences, and the fiction describes, discusses and evaluates those consequences. Those actions can be couched in reality, or they can be speculative in nature. Thus it is a moral fiction, and the highest forms of it can be accepted as literature. Fantasy is the opposite: it is about the intrusion of irrational and uncontrollable events, over which man has no control, or only nominal control. Once fantasy attempts to grapple with reality it ceases to be fantasy, so the generalisation holds.

So what are we to take from this: that fantasy is not a moral fiction, because it does not address human responsibility? Actions do not lead to consequences, in even the highest forms of the genre? 'Scuse me, but both parts of that seem to me to be large and pendulous bollocks, only waiting for the snip.

Also, that last sentence is a weasel. It's the squids-in-space argument: "I do not write [genre of your choice], because it is without merit; where it has merit - or indeed where I write it - then it is not [genre of your choice]."

Bah, I say. Also, humbug.

Snip.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Now that I can live with. Thank you.

[fastfwd.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[Fantasy] is about the intrusion of irrational and uncontrollable events, over which man has no control, or only nominal control. In fact, this describes a lot of my science fiction. I often write about the impact of technology on people who have no choice but to endure it and/or find a way to survive it. And really, isn't that the story of our lives? Global warming, for example?

To be honest, I'm tired of reading about the inherent virtues of sf over fantasy or vice versa. There are none, no matter who insists otherwise. I blame the severe stratification of the fantastic genre, which has been imposed on us by increasingly anal marketers, desperate to improve sales figures. The time was when you could call yourself a science fiction writer and then write whatever you wanted to. Robert Bloch, for example, called himself a science fiction writer till the day he died. I heard him talk about writing and story several times--always he talked about story. What's the story about? What's the point? What feels like the best way you can tell it--science or magic? Is it scary or not? Decide, then write it that way. James Gunn and Robert Heinlein told me the same thing.

So did Judith Merrill, but more indirectly. If you can, find copies of her old best-sf-of-the-year anthologies, which contain sf, fantasy, horror, and what has lately been called slipstream--things as varied as "The Jewbird" by Bernard Malamud and "Bring the Jubilee" by Ward Moore, "Automatic Tiger" by Kit Reed and "The Television People" by Tuli Kupferberg.

In conclusion (she pronounced, finally taking a breath), writers would do better to concentrate on their own virtues rather than my-genre-can-beat-up-your-genre.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

writers would do better to concentrate on their own virtues rather than my-genre-can-beat-up-your-genre.

Yay, and amen.

I have some of the Merrill anthos, which I must revisit; I remember them as pivotal to my early reading.