The Heart Of Speculative Fiction Is Not Weird
Unable to attend Realm Makers, the first ever Christian speculative fiction conference, I’ve been following with a great deal of interest online. Thanks to our webmaster and weekly contributor, Stephen Burnett, we could follow live Twitter feeds. He also posted an array of conference pictures that spoke volumes about the goings on in St. Louis.
Other conference attendees, such as Morgan Busse, have also begun to report their experiences and to share pictures. From someone on the outside looking in, I’d say the event was a huge success, with all the potential of becoming bigger and better moving forward. I am so happy about that and look forward to the day I’ll be a part of it.
But something has been niggling in the back of my brain–something I’m not comfortable with. I don’t know if it’s a perception I fear or an actual inaccurate belief I want to contradict, but at the heart of my discomfort is the idea that speculative fiction, and Christian speculative more so, is weird. These stories, some believe and others may assume, are for the few, the proud, the niche, and not for everyone.
First, I don’t find that perspective to be true to experience–otherwise speculative fiction, whether in print or on film or via television, would not be so successful in the general market. In addition, I don’t find it to be true philosophically. Let me explain what I’m thinking here.
Both fantasy and horror, or supernatural suspense, if you prefer, are built upon the struggle between good and evil. Science fiction doesn’t stray far from that premise either. I’ve heard mystery writers say the same thing, but not romance writers or historical or contemporary. In other words, speculative fiction centers upon a Biblical truth–a spiritual war exists between God and those rebelling against Him.
This battle is not something assigned to a small group of religious fanatics. The struggle at the heart of speculative fiction is common to humankind. This fact came out for all the world to see last week in a 60 Minutes spot by Lesley Stahl in which she reported the findings of a Yale study involving babies as young as three months old.
The study concluded that humans are born with an innate sense of right and wrong and of justice. At the same time we have a built-in propensity to hate. We’re wired, as one of the researchers said, for selfishness and bias.
Something good in people. And something evil.
Surprise, surprise! Lesley Stahl certainly found these results to be revolutionary. The whole “blank slate” concept is completely, scientifically proven to be false.
Of course the findings are absolutely consistent with what the Bible has said about human beings all along. We are created in God’s image, part of what He looked upon and found “very good.” But we are fallen. We have the implant of Adam’s rebellion against God wired into our being.
Good. And evil.
And this is the human condition. It’s why society creates great art and music, builds hospitals and schools, reaches out to help the needy and the suffering while at the same time establishing prisons and police forces, armies and governments, courts and judges.
All of humankind deals with the conflict at the heart of speculative fiction. Why would we ever think our stories are for a niche? Why would we label them as weird or separate ourselves from other readers and other writers?
We are among those who see the world and us humans in it, with clarity. We understand what’s really happening, what we’re all up against. As Christians, we not only see the facts, as the Yale researchers now do, we also understand the cause. In other words, we have the truth–not a truth or a theory or a religious idea.
Truth is universal. It is not for a niche. It is not weird. Consequently, stories that show truth ought not to be considered weird or for a specialty audience. Truth is for everyone. Hence speculative fiction is for everyone.
The sooner we unlock the closet in which we voluntarily reside, the sooner our stories will have the impact Truth should have on our culture.
Thank you, thank you, thank you sister for readdressing this.
On occasion, when I heard this sentiment hinted at the conference, I rebutted.
But I wonder how deeply this niche thinking is embedded in our thinking. It may not be enough for conference attendees to think more casually about the broad appeal of speculative stories. Instead we must actively mortify the niche mindset.
Stephen, I agree! I think it needs to be a conscious effort on our part to stand against the easy mindset that says, Us four and no more; shut the door.
But seriously, I’m also afraid of the perception of those who don’t consider themselves speculative fans. Oh, they’ll watch Revolution on TV and will say Star Wars is their favorite movie franchise. They might even read Narnia to their kids. But they’re not speculative fans, they say. Why? Because they don’t identify with “weird.”
I think it’s imperative to “unweird” the genre if we are to draw in readers–and why wouldn’t we want to do that? We, who write truthful stories, above all, should want MANY readers.
Becky
I only realized within the past couple of years that I was what the world would call a “geek”. I just thought everybody appreciated these speculative stories that I loved! My mom is SO not a “geek”, but she read us Narnia and The Hobbit and The Prydain Chronicles and many others growing up – we just thought that was a universal experience and everyone was familiar with and enjoyed these stories, albeit to varying degrees.
This “speculative fiction is weird” mindset seems almost like the literary world’s version of hipsterdom. “I read speculative fiction BEFORE it was cool.” Haha. People like to think that they are special and different in some way, so painting what they do as unique feels like giving themselves an edge. (And the funny thing about hipsters is…they’re not all that unique anymore because hipster style is everywhere!) There’s almost a kind of arrogance to that attitude, a pride of being “in the club”. There’s nothing wrong with being excited about the genre you love and sharing that excitement with other fans! But if we paint ourselves as a special category we have a tendency to alienate others who are interested in the genre.
True, not everyone appreciates “geekery” to the same degree. But I completely agree with you, Rebecca, that lots of people read Narnia, love Star Wars, or the newer Doctor Who, but distance themselves from the speculative genre as a whole because the people who live and breathe speculative fiction like to say it’s “weird”, and perhaps the more mild fans feel they don’t qualify. Not everyone’s a geek, but you don’t have to be a geek to appreciate spec-fic! 🙂
Bethany, me too. I love to read, and when I found speculative fiction, I didn’t think I’d entered into a different realm. I had simply found good stories that I loved and I wanted more like them. When I didn’t find a lot, I decided to write my own.
But never did it cross my mind that I was writing to a specialty group. After all, I found most of the speculative books I loved at the height of their popularity. As I started interacting on line with other speculative writers, I learned how little I new of the genre.
And I also learned I was supposed to think it weird that I liked these stories. Well, I can’t see it–not when some of my favorites have been best sellers for weeks and weeks. With the Lord of the Rings, it’s like we’re on round two of its popularity. And I’m supposed to think fantasy is only for a small niche? It doesn’t fit my experience.
Becky
Yes, and if you think about it, everyone is weird in their own way. OK, I stole that from Seth Godin.
The point is, we think readers of Amish fiction are weird, and they think readers of literary fiction are weird, and …
The thing that sets SpecFic fans apart is that we embrace our weirdness instead of trying to pretend we’re just like normal people.
But if there is really no such thing as “normal,” then there’s no point in brandishing the “weird” banner. I think there is value, though, in celebrating a niche that embraces the fantastical.
True, Kristen (though my teachers always said we should refer to people as unique rather than weird. 😉 )
I don’t think there’s anything wrong about celebrating the broad reaches of imagination–which is what speculative literature is, I think. We say we ask what if but most writers will say the same thing. But our imagination takes us beyond the here and now and even beyond the there and then. And lots and lots of people will want to come with us if we don’t close ourselves off.
That’s the part I don’t understand. Writers who presumably want to sell books are essentially saying to the public, this isn’t for the majority of you readers. You’d have to have something a little off kilter to like our books.
I just don’t buy this. One of the best Christian speculative books I’ve read is Stuart Stockston’s with his dinosaur characters. Was it weird? That’s like saying, was Richard Adams’ Watership Down with his rabbit characters, weird. It was a good story, a believable story, that anyone could like.
Becky
Somebody at the conference (Jeff Gerke?) pointed out that the biggest titles in Christian fiction have been speculative: Narnia series, Left Behind. This is also true in the culture at large, for example Star Wars. Nothing weird about Star Wars!
Amen times ten, Prof. McGonagall.
When Jeff said that, I rejoiced.
This bestseller status is also more proof that we needn’t rant so much about “don’t be preachy.” After all, “Narnia” is overtly Christian in its themes (if not all the allegories that Christians wrongly perceive each story is), and to be sure, Left Behind goes completely overboard with the preachiness because that’s what the story is based on: evangelism and end-times.
I see your point, that there are universal truths that are the base of speculative fiction, but there does seem to be some disconnect when we look at pure sales numbers. Speculative Fiction does well at the Box Office and some can do well as books. However, the average speculative title doesn’t do quite as well as the average of many other genres. Romance, romantic suspense, etc. are bigger sellers in general than speculative. It’s not the only genre that suffers. Westerns are in big decline, though I suspect that’s because of the decline of the Male reader.
The difference between watching science fiction and reading science ficton is key. It does suggest that there is a portion of the population that will see a film like Iron Man, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, or The Hunger Games but have little actual interest in picking up and reading a science fiction book.
My suspicion may be that it has to do with world-building. You can gather what’s going on in Star Wars in five minutes, but there’s authors who can take forever to establish this world and you’re one hundred pages in before truly grasp what’s going on. It may also be that science fiction books get associated with fandom. Liking Star Wars is normal. Having memorized all the facts about the series, the related novels, ties ins, etc. and getting in long debates about continuities, and dressing up like the characters are not. I’m not saying its bad, but normal, it’s not.
I’d love to know for sure what speculative fiction writers do that makes their books less accessible to the average reader and how to avoid it.
It’s less about male vs female reading habits than that romance is much more flexible as a genre than westerns. Setting plays a huge part in westerns, with sparsely populated, lawless frontiers to give the characters room for independence and challenge and general non-civilization, and we have fewer and fewer frontiers. Romance can pretty much happen anywhere there are people. Space westerns might have legs enough to go somewhat further, but I don’t see any new ground (pun accepted) for westerns to go.
Adam, that’s exactly what I’m thinking–if we share this common nature with all people, then we really have something to say to all people.
I do understand that not everyone is going to like our brand of fiction, but I think in labeling ourselves “weird,” we’re waving people off before they get a chance to find out if they might like what we write, or not. We sort of take the decision out of their hands.
This is a great topic for a Realm Makers workshop, I think!
I’d say one thing is inaccessible names. I’m a fantasy writer and I’m turned off when I see a host of names I don’t know how to pronounce–especially early in a story. I feel like I’m reading “Jabberwocky,” that poem by Lewis Carroll that replaces known nouns and verbs with made up words. It actually does make sense, but it’s not an easy read and doesn’t necessarily attract readers except for those who are curious–and those may not read through the whole thing.
(To be continued)
The big selling genres right now are paranormal romance (romance + anything is big). Dystopian is hitting its saturation point, at least from the publishers’ point of view.
A lot of Christians have stuck themselves writing epic fantasy. Nothing wrong with that. As Stephen King said, “They are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Gray Havens because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them.” But epic fantasy is a tough market to break out in. (Although right now, Game of Thrones has made it a hot market, if you hawk your book like mad.)
But if we had folks branching out into the hungry YA market, especially the paranormal romance area, that’d be a great. I’m always shocked to bump into the occasional moral. It’s refreshing and there needs to be more. (It’s sad that the strongest moral opinion I’ve run across has been the words of the demon Brimstone in Daughter of Smoke and Bone, in giving the heroine rules for how to live. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t sleep around–wait for the right one.)
The YA market isn’t opposed to weird. In fact, the weirder the better. Same goes for middle grade. If only Christians would tackle those genres! I’d love to see the Splashdown stable of authors tackle it, for instance.
Kessie, are you referring to YA? I think that’s what the new Zondervan Blink imprint is designed to do. YA has been hot in the general market for some time, but slow to come to the Christian market, for whatever reason. I’m grateful for AMG because they really seemed to lead the way, acquiring fantasy and YA fantasy, at that.
Some of the middle grade work that’s out there is a best kept secret. Evan Angler’s middle grade/YA dystopian is really good. Jonathan Rogers wrote middle grade; Chuck Black still does. Wayne Batson’s Door Within Trilogy was labeled YA, I believe, but it really fit middle grade based on how SCBWI defines it. Bryan Davis’s Dragons in Our Midst series was really MG also.
I’ve actually had the opposite complaint–when will publishers put out more adult speculative? It’s not just kids who like it.
Becky
Maybe it’s just my postmodernism kicking in, but it seems more effective to convince people to accept the weird rather than convince them that something actually isn’t weird. Weird is subjective, after all. Once they get used to it, their definition tends to shift on its own. Or at least that’s what’s happened to me, and by now I watch shows like Adventure Time and Xxxholic.
I have a sign in my studio: Normal people worry me. I hope it prepares my students for a wider mental landscape, the unpredictable, the unexpected, the unscripted.
This tension between normal and weird vividly describes the present human experience, caught between good and evil, capable of both at the same time as Rebecca mentioned. Humans desire to be unique and separate AND tribal and innate to relational dynamics.
To sell a story we are required to ‘stand out from the crowd to be noticed’, ‘have a brand,’ yet those who stand out too far freeze in the chill of upturned noses. I, for one, am grateful to those who stay true to the story they are given to write, stay true to the Story Teller God who intensely loves our dichotomy and loves those who dare to LIVE where good and evil meet, that unpredictable, unexpected, UNSCRIPTED land of POSSIBILITY!
Henrietta, I think our culture often puts a premium on individualism, and the truth is, there really isn’t an “average” person. God made each of us unique. And yet we share a host of commonalities.
Rather than playing to the ways in which speculative stories are unique, I’m suggesting we point to the ways in which they speak to the commonalities.
I believe most people, rejoicing in their individuality, still want to belong. As you pointed out, we want community. I find the “weird” label to be divisive. It’s a way of separating from the majority. Just yesterday I received a blog post from a writing instruction site and the topic was using pronouns. One section was labeled “When not to use YOU.” The second point in this category said, “[Don’t use YOU] in negative prose (‘You are weird’).”
To this author, the term “weird” is a negative, and I think that’s a pretty widely held opinion. Consequently, our self-identifying as weird isn’t winning us readers, I don’t believe. It isn’t letting readers know that our stories are about universals.
Another that comes to mind is long sections of set up that don’t have tension.
With that is the dreaded info dump in which an author explains the world or the backstory. I’m sure there are others, but what a great topic.
Becky
Another one: map, or no map. I like maps. I’m reading a fantasy story at the moment that could seriously use one, but there isn’t one. Did the author decide this was a turnoff to some people?
I don’t think the decline of the western is connected to the popularity of romance or that it is a reflection of a shrinking male readership. Rather I think the Old West simply is no longer politically correct. It was a period of exploitation when white men railroaded (literally) the Native Americans. The heroes of old are not admired as they once were, though I grew up with believing that the true heroes were the ones who befriended the Indians and worked for fair treaties.
Add in the way the literature of that time period portrays women, and it is doomed in this PC day and age.
Becky
No, westerns are alive and well–they just have to be set in space. (Firefly.) And the Indians weren’t Elves. We like to think of them that way now, but they weren’t.
My mom dug up a bit of family dirt–my great great (three or four generations, I think) grandmother was half Indian because her mother was raped when Indians raided their town. Her family raised her and never spoke of it, and my mom had to find the story in a book somewhere while she was tracing our genealogy. My cousin had enough Indian blood to get a scholarship for collage because of it. 🙂
Notleia, in my way of thinking, it’s not so much convincing people as it is telling the truth. Is speculative fiction only for a small group of individuals who like to pretend that what isn’t real, is? Hardly. It is something so much bigger–and I am arguing, it’s bigger than contemporary fiction can handle. It’s also universal–touching upon the concerns and needs of Humankind. Why would we want to hide a universal by dressing it up as a specialty item? I don’t know of any other business where people would call this a good strategy.
Becky
My experience with some people who object to the weird is that even if you convinced them to watch/read it, they generally don’t see the good story for the weird. They don’t invest enough in it to see the good story.
Take my dude’s parents. They HATE anime, so much so that my dude can’t watch it while they’re anywhere in the house. They hate the unrealistic, stylized artwork, the fantastical/speculative settings and plots (the anime my dude and I gravitate to is the fantasy/sci-fi/speculative type), and probably also the Japanese voice acting. Where it starts looking hypocritical is that his mom LOVES Popeye cartoons, which are just as unrealistically stylized and fantastical as anime (and have much worse voice acting. And plots). They’re both weird, but Popeye is weird in a way they’re used to. And since they’re cantankerous old people (I say this lovingly), they’re not willing to change their minds.
Yes! A map, and I’d even add, a glossary.
I’m guessing I know what book you’re talking about, Phyllis. I’ve thought three or four times as I’m reading, where’s the map?!?? I keep meaning to check the author’s website to see if perhaps he put a map up there.
Becky
I must admit, I get a little tired of the maps, especially if the world is a shapeless blob that isn’t all that memorable. Then again, even though some “Narnia” editions include a map, Narnia’s shape isn’t nearly as iconic as its tales and characters. Only Middle-earth has an iconic shape in map form; perhaps newer authors should not try to attempt matching that level of geographic development? Yet another time when we should let Tolkien be Tolkien, and explore story forms he didn’t already try.
Maybe…. but something deep within me would die if fantasy writers ditched the iconic interior map and ridiculed it as outdated. I’m a hardcore high fantasy lover first, before anything else in regard to the stories that I enjoy.
I don’t think the success of LoTR‘s map has much to do with the shape of Middle Earth, even though the shape is iconic. It’s about the geographical coherence. Tolkien was the father of rigorous worldbuilding. Current high fantasy writers like Brandon Sanderson have deliberately broken new ground and avoided some of Tolkien’s famous characteristics, but they still retain at least as detailed worldbuilding. In the writing process, worldbuilders like Sanderson probably need to sketch a map in order to keep their geography coherent.
Those maps don’t necessarily need to be shared with the readers in the published book, but why shouldn’t they be? Some readers don’t like them, but those readers can ignore them. I can’t imagine how briefly glancing at a map the first time you start reading a book could possibly ruin anyone’s reading experience. On the other hand, the experience of following the characters’ journey on a map, and of speculating what the other parts of the world pictured on the map but not explored in the book’s plot might be like, is a critical part of the experience of many fantasy fans, myself included.
I don’t want Doctor Who fans to tell us high fantasy fans that we can’t have our maps in new fantasy novels, or to pass judgment on how cliche those maps may or may not be.
I’m a map person–maybe because I’m a visual learner. I love stories with maps and will spend time studying where we’ve been and where we’re going. I make connections I missed during the read. No one has to look at maps or at a glossary, for that matter. I think both are tools for epic fantasy, more than any other genre, and readers that don’t like or need them are free to ignore them. But for those of us who find the reading experience enhanced by them, it’s a blow when they’re left off.
Becky
Well said! I agree exactly. I must admit that glossaries always tempt me to spoil my own reading experience by browsing through them prematurely, but they can be genuinely useful from time to time, especially in series with lots of characters and places.
Yes, Becky, I expect you’re reading the same book!
My brother always calls me weird, and I say “thank you.” But I think the necessary world-building is too much for a lot of people. My mom feels a need to understand everything that’s going on, which makes it really hard when the show itself has ambiguity (the identity of River Song until GMGTW, for example)
I know people–a few–who don’t care for fantasy. They want straight fiction without strange creatures or symbolic meanings. I tend to think they are in the minority (there’s an educator who’s done research and has written on learning styles, and I think there is one type that takes a more linear approach–the rest of us, I think, are fine with the imaginative, and some of us love it). I tend to believe, apart from those few who think in a very concrete way, that most people will grow in their appreciation of the imaginative the more they’re exposed to it. That’s why Star Wars was such a huge success initially, why Harry Potter exploded in popularity.
Becky