Friday 27 August 2010

Genre Drift 27th August 2010.

When I was younger, I was an avid science fiction reader. I was brought up on the real techie stuff, the nuts and bolts of the spacecraft, and the semi-humanoid physiology of the aliens. The almost believable technological leaps that would give us faster-than-light travel, and intelligent humanoid robots (of both the benign Asimovian Three Laws variety, and the nasty Cylon type) and so on. The story was as much about the technology as it was about the characters.

Being able to “paint” the enemy as some form of arachnid devils or scaly wall eyed monsters with huge teeth and death rays made it quite easy to judge which side we should be on.

The genre has moved on, a huge amount since, Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Galactica notwithstanding. (Note the TV and movie tie ins).

Most current science fiction is much more character based, far less focus on the technology – if it’s there it’s just there – it isn’t the focus of the story any more. It’s about the human interaction with the technology, the way we use it rather than an end to itself.

Think about it, Avatar with humans as the baddies probably wouldn’t have been shot as a film 40 years ago (not that the special effects would have been up to it, and not that it’s that well characterised either).

The point I’m labouring here, using sci-fi as an example, is that genres don’t stand still, they evolve continuously.

Genres change, they drift, sometimes they split and the separate parts intertwine and reconnect further down the timeline. If you lovingly craft something that fits a genre, as it was 30 years ago, because that’s the best period as far as you were concerned – what do you think most publishers will do with it?

On a slightly parallel note, I read, with sadness, an attack on Stephanie Meyers recently because her vampire based stories don’t correctly portray vampires as they traditionally have been in the past, they lack the menacing depth of the “I vant to drink your bloood” variety. Maybe it’s that intelligentsia thing – that snobbery that pervades parts of the literary world - let’s mock what’s popular for the simple reason it’s popular, and therefore somehow vulgar.

3 comments:

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  2. I, for one, am glad that genres and literature don't remain stagnate and written in stone (pardon the pun). To take something we love and make it indelibly ours is a gift as close to true freedom as I can imagine. I love romance, sci-fi (the techie stuff and the not so techie stuff) and fantasy. What I write tends to be a blend of those genres. If I had to read the same old thing or write within rigid boundaries, I probably would take up needlepoint instead.

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  3. There's nothing wrong with needlepoint! LOL.

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