Speculative Fiction #1: General Comments…
Margaret Atwood likes to use “speculative fiction” as a catch-all category for her work and others’, everything from paranormal stories to hard sci-fi. Somewhere in that broad category you’ll find fantasy too. I prefer to be a bit more refined in my taxonomy—that’s “refined” in the sense of a more precise categorization of what a story is about. There’s nothing refined about a zombie in the sense of “refined gentleman”! Speculative fiction is just too general. Apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, ghost stories, zombie stories, fantasy, psi-fi—Ms. Atwood would cram all those into her speculative fiction genre. And probably make those who must shelve books in brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries go completely insane!
Genres, subgenres, and sub-subgenres are needed within speculative fiction. And don’t forget all the cross-genres—how would Ms. Atwood handle A.B. Carolan’s YA sci-fi mysteries? YA, sci-fi, and mystery are all major genres, and A.B.’s Mind Games could be classified as psi-fi too.
Of course, Margaret isn’t to blame for all this confusion and chaos. She has a following. Between them and the anti-cultural appropriation crowd, it often seems like a war between authors. Can someone wave the white flag, please?
Why don’t we just put everything into the categories of fiction and non-fiction? All fiction is speculative by definition, after all…i.e. not real. Nope, that doesn’t work either. What does one do with historical fiction? A lot of that type of novel isn’t fiction. For example, my Son of Thunder, which I classify as a mystery/thriller, could also be classified as historical fiction—a fictional tale is woven into real history, although some of the history is filled in a bit. (It could also be classified as Christian lit, which is another catch-all genre like speculative fiction.)
The Dewey decimal system was invented to help sort out this chaos. (I’m dating myself. I’m not sure millennials know what that system is. They tend to do their “research,” i.e. search for background material, on the internet now.) It just created more chaos, but it makes computer sorting and cataloging easier, even with non-fiction books, assuming the number given to a book makes some sense. It and all other single-item taxonomy systems fail with books.
A book is better categorized using key words. YA, sci-fi, and mystery can be key words. So can hard sci-fi, psi-fi, fantasy, cyber and steam punk, and so forth. But who determines the key words? This is like all data-retrieval efforts: they succeed only to the extent that the humans categorizing the data are competent.
In answering that question, the book’s publisher has a thorny problem, and the solutions often don’t smell like roses. For self-published books, the author might be the publisher, but, even in that case, and certainly for traditionally published books, the problem still exists. Take Amazon, for example. Their search algorithms use key words (smart move), but only the publisher can set them (dumb move). The author usually knows best what key words apply (or can figure it out easily enough by comparing the book to already existing books), but most publishers often fail miserably because the publishing execs and their minions determining the key words don’t read the books they publish. Readers have to fall back on title and author, the first a poor guide to content and the second useless if the author writes in many genres.
This is definitely detrimental to browsing, especially if that depends on a computer. By shelving in brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries often works against browsing too—I’ve found Rembrandt’s Angel among the art books at B&N! (I’m guessing that the knucklehead doing the shelving completely focused on Rembrandt in the title.)
To their credit, though, people doing the shelving, and even publishers, pay no attention to Atwood. I for one have never seen her category Speculative Fiction when I’m buying books. But I’ll give her credit: Readers could find Rembrandt’s Angel a lot better if it were shelved under that category. They would only find it by accident at that B&N.
***
Comments are always welcome.
The creation of ITUIP. The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” my celebration of and homage to Asimov’s Foundation series, tracks how the Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets (ITUIP…pronounced “eye-tweep”) came into existence, and a lot more. In Survivors of the Chaos, you’ll travel from a dystopian Earth dominated by multinational corporations and policed by their mercenaries, to a starship’s arrival at the distant planet New Haven in the 82 Eridani star system. In Sing a Zamba Galactica, you’ll begin with first encounter at New Haven and end with humanity saving Swarm, a strange collective intelligence. In Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, you’ll meet a psychotic human industrialist who wants to control all of Near-Earth space—he’s my version of Asimov’s Mule…and a lot scarier!
I’m proud of The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection and its extrapolation from current to futuristic science. Here’s what Pulitzer-nominated author David W. Menefee said about the first novel: “Readers steeped in current literature will appreciate the brevity of scenes that burst in front of you with a blinding flash of startling detail and then exit as quickly as a comet streaking through the night sky…ensnares you aboard a mental roller coaster catapulting over the hills and valleys of a world gone mad…a disquieted galaxy peppered with a roster of characters that would make a casting director envious, highly detailed space scenes, and an inspiring plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat.”
Many centuries of the galaxy’s future history await you in this ebook bundle of all three novels. Only $5.99 at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor’s, Gardners, etc.), this bargain bundle will give you many hours of reading entertainment.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
