On Genres, Truths, and Tropes (part two)

One reason I enjoy writing fictoids (typically under 500 words) is that it enables me to try new things without committing to them in a lengthy project.

But while side gigs don’t diminish a novelist’s reputation, writing too many novels too fast can.

At best it undermines readers’ appreciation of your seriousness to the task.

At worst it burns you out too quickly and / or traps you in a self-repeating cycle of mediocrity.

It’s been said Philip K. Dick was the best novelist in the science fiction and that three of his books are among the very best the genre has to offer -- the only problem is nobody can agree on which three they are.

PKDick published 35 novels in his lifetime, plus 8 more posthumously.  All of them are filled with the same off kilter imagination, the problem being they don’t all gel equally.  Several are near misses, several are borderline, but as it’s hard to tell sometimes when PKDick is writing from the heart or when he’s just throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks, picking a consensus masterwork from that is impossible.

What PKDick’s work possesses is something lacking in most of works in the sci-fi genre:  Timelessness.

Now in fairness, some timeliness / timelessness is less problematic among some genres than others.

Readers seem far more willing to pick up a 1920s detective novel than a 1920s romance, a 1930s horror story than a 1930s space opera.

Detective and horror novels -- even when set in a specific era -- present themes that transcend the particularly literary style and tropes the writer may employ.

We accept them as taking place not in the present day but in the historical past, and as such we accept the manners and mores as being different from the current era’s.

Detective and horror fiction also enjoy the advantage about dealing with deeper meanings and themes even if they need to be hidden between the lines.

Romance (and full disclosure, I’m not a reader of the genre, merely an outside spectator) also deals with deeper meanings and themes, but in a more direct manner.  With rare exceptions (i.e., Jane Austin and the Bronte sisters), romances set in the era they were written tend to age badly as cultural standards re courtship /marriage / sex and how interest in same is expressed changes over time. 

Which is not to say modern writers can’t write romances set in an earlier era (Regency novels are still immensely popular) but that they’re written for modern sensibilities filtered through the lens of the past.

And, yeah, I’m well aware the romance genre can run all the way from G to NC17 rated with side excursions into such things as Amish or Native American romances, but a G rated Regency romance written today reflects today’s attitudes even if it doesn’t necessarily endorse them.

It’s the contrast between the present and the past that makes that sub-genre appealing to many.

There are far too many genres and sub-genres to overview adequately here.  Suffice it to say some genres -- in particular westerns and sci-fi (but not fantasy) -- tend to age more acutely than other genres.

Westerns obviously because older works in the genre were written reflecting attitudes of their era, and we’re rapidly learning how inaccurate-to-downright-bigoted those attitudes were.  Even when we read a work understanding it as an artifact of an earlier time, it’s hard not to respond negatively to the basic cultural assumptions of the era (this is a problem facing even legitimate classic literature, as Mark Twain and Huck Finn can attest).

Sci-fi often faces similar problems re cultural attitudes with the added complication of scientific knowledge ever expanding, rendering earlier speculation null and void.

Indeed, for many works, such as Star Wars or Frank Herbert’s Dune, it’s easier to think of them as fairy tales in space rather than genuine science fiction.

Fantasy, of course, sidesteps that issue by typically casting stories in far away places in far away times with imaginary cultures that substitute magic for science and technology.  Lack of cultural or more touchstones with contemporary society can be overlooked by the relative exoticness of the tale (exotic here not in its common contemporary usage as high adventure in desolate foreign lands and jungles but rather its original meaning of something markedly different from expected norms).

© Buzz Dixon