Two old Speculative Fiction Nerds walk into a bar…
No. Really. We met in a bar and realised we had one major thing in common: words. Preferably wrapped about fantastic worlds like some insane crazy quilt.
Hi, we’re Carole Cummings and J Tullos Hennig, and like the title says, we’re two old SF nerds, and Cole has kindly (or foolishly, we’re not sure yet) invited us to TAR to talk about the genre. There are lots of things we want to go into eventually, but for today, we thought it best to focus on the basics:
WTF IS SPEC FIC?
Carole Cummings: So, there was a post here on The Armchair Reader by Alex Beecroft and Elin Gregory, wherein they discussed Erotica vs. Romance. It was a great post and there was some really good discussion in the comments, but the one that made me want to write this post was the exchange I had with Erastes. She was talking about a Fantasy story (not hers) that a reader had complained about, saying it had too much sex in it, and the comment made no sense to Erastes because it was a different world and sex was treated differently there. And I went off on a tangent (because I do that) about blanket statements and anachronisms and how people just don’t seem to understand that a world created as a backdrop to a Fantasy story is not our world and should not be viewed through our world’s lens. And since all that happened here in the big, comfy Armchair, Cole kind of got hit with the shrapnel of my nattering and he said I could come do it some more, and as long as I didn’t spill beer on the carpet or get Cheetos crumbs all over the yarn, I might be able to come back.
JTullosHennig: So that’s why you asked me to this party. Because I don’t eat Cheetos. Or drink beer.
CC: Yes, because I’m trying to teach you the ways and joys of the Unhealthy Yet More Toothsome Diet, young padawan, but you keep eating all that green stuff and refusing the enlightened path of the Goddess Melitta. (Come to the Dark Side—we have cookies!) But mostly because when you and I say “We write Fantasy”, we know what the other means by it. See, I’ve had many, many aborted conversations with new acquaintances that contained that sentence verbatim. They usually go like this:
New Acquaintance: So, what do you do?
Me: I write.
New Acquaintance: Oh? (*perks in interest*) Blogging? Memoirs?
Me: (*sighing inwardly because I already know where this is going*) No, I write fiction. Novels, mostly.
New Acquaintance: Huh. (*skeptical*) Do you have anything published?
Me: Yeah, several books and a couple short stories.
New Acquaintance: Wow. Like, published-published? Like, your stuff’s on Amazon?
Me: (*annoyed with the ‘published-published’ thing but unwilling to engage long enough to make a point, because I still know what’s coming*) Yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all that stuff.
New Acquaintance: (*no longer skeptical*) That’s so cool! So, what kinds of books do you write?
Me: (*thinking ‘ah, there it is’*) I write Fantasy.
New Acquaintance: (*frowning but politely trying not to*) …You mean like dragons and trolls?
Me: Well, more like magical beings and different worlds, but yeah, close enough.
New Acquaintance: (*stares for a second then looks down at full drink*) Oh, look, I need a refill. Nice to meet you, er…
Me: Carole.
New Acquaintance: Right, Karen. Nice to meet you, Karen. And good luck with your little stories!
Me: Damn. I never get to shock people with the whole ‘Yeah, and my two male protagonists usually end up doing each other’ thing.
JTH: That’s about the time I order another brandy.
CC: I find the margarita bar.
JTH: Margaritas work It’s those straight tequila shots I can’t take any more. Unfortunately. But that conversation–it’s just the way things are, the “you write what?” has, ad infinitum, been the reaction from The Mundane. It was only us wierdos that even knew what SF/Science Fiction was, let alone knew that it split into SFF–Science Fiction and Fantasy, then broke off into more pieces–which is why we’re calling this a Speculative Fiction Show.
Only now, with the help of lots of full frontal on HBO, are those of The Mundane thinking hey, maybe this Fantasy stuff isn’t so bad… lookit the tits! Which is just annoying in its own fashion… though in all honesty I have to cop that it’s nice to finally see the men getting nekkid, too. So. It can be argued that Spec Fic is getting more widely sown and read, and thusly more acceptable to The Mundane. But therein lies the real issue. Spec Fic should not BE mundane. The whole point of SF/Fantasy/Whatever-It-Is-This-Decade–Speculative Fiction!–is that it is its own world, in more ways than one.
CC: Definitely. Someone who saw a Star Trek movie might think pointed ears are cool, but it’s the serious nerds who find coolness in… oh… things like the mating rituals of hobbits and the ecological implications of tribbles.
JTH: Which is also part of the problem. Serious SF nerds tend to shun The Mundane and also tend to write seriously nerdy books. Which can lead to… misunderstandings on all ends. Which is rather why we’re here, eh?
CC: *nods* I really don’t expect people to be impressed by what I do. I don’t expect them to ask for my card or go look me up online or gush on their Facebook that they just met me and she ROX OMG! But it would be nice if more understanding were involved.
(Side note: I don’t rock. I might engage in arrhythmic spasms while trying to rock sometimes, but I don’t, alas, rock.)
JTH: *snorts & peers into CC’s glass* A few more of those and you might. *raises her own* So. This original post you were telling me about–the one here on Cole’s TAR? It rather sounds like The Mundane is invading the asylum and trying to dictate to the Nerd Contingent what kind of Speculation is allowed. Which screams a need for not only understanding, but a wee bit of empathy. And perhaps some comprehension that SF is comprised of much more than Will Smith kicking the crap out of some Unfortunate, if Evil, Alien.
Now, you know I loved the Lord of the Rings movies. I loved the books, too–those books were why I went to the movies, not vice versa. But the unfortunate fact remains: it’s usually the other way, and the movies are more accessible to a mass audience than the books will ever be. Whether this is a good or bad thing? I’m not sure. On one hand, there is a definite and gradual erosion–of quality, amongst other things–that occurs when something is made more accessible. On the other hand, it means that good artists get recompense for their work, a wider recognition for something they’ve been marginalised for, just like that person did to you in your not-so-hypothetical ‘You write what?’ meeting. How does that Don Henley song go? “Call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye“? People who only know Speculative Fiction from the Lord of the Rings movies or SF with CGI and nothing else or the sword & sorcery made mass-market palatable with lots of tits? Those are the people who are woefully unprepared for what they get in a book that is true to Spec Fic form. Not necessarily their fault, perhaps just… unprepared.
CC: See, and that right there is where Spec Fic in the M/M genre has a problem. M/M is so associated with genre Romance and Erotica that people expect one or both of those things when they pick up a M/M book, no matter how it’s labelled, and that expectation sabotages the reading experience. A Science Fiction novel with some M/M content stands no chance when a reader picks it up expecting a Romance with a stray spaceship or two.
Like I was talking about with Lisa from The Novel Approach back in the original TAR post—so many people don’t seem to understand what Spec Fic is.
JTH: *whips out dictionary* So. Just for the record…
World English Dictionary
speculative fiction
—n. a broad literary genre encompassing any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements
*blinks* What, doesn’t every writer carry a dictionary around? I mean, now there’s e-readers–and yes, I know I said I’d never touch one of the bloody things, but that was before I discovered you could import manuscripts, make notes and load them with the Holy Grail… erm… the O.E.D.!
It says ‘broad’ in that definition. And there are so many things that Spec Fic can be… so what do you mean by ‘what Spec Fic is‘?
CC: Going along with the end of that definition, it seems to me that Spec Fic is a story the events-characters-plots of which are so entrenched in and intertwined with the world built around them that they could not have taken place in any other world but that one created specifically for them. Where the world is as important as the characters and the plot because the world helps to define the characters and the plot.
JTH: Sounds pretty bang on from my side of the bar, too. *clinks glass against CC’s* Though there’s a lot more to expand upon. Several topics I can think of, right now. So. You invited me on this gig to address our experiences with Speculative Fiction?
CC: And to address the expectations, good and bad, of those who perhaps don’t have the same background in reading and writing it. I think between the two of us we have over seventy-five years of reading and writing this stuff. I was reading Tolkien before I hit puberty. You were treading the fault-line of SF publishing in the 70s and 80s.
*rereads that last paragraph*… Oh god, JTH, we’re old!
JTH: Experienced.
CC: Okay, yeah, what you said. *tries not to hyperventilate* And with experience comes knowledge.
JTH: It’s to be hoped, anyway.
CC: We know the SF genre. We’ve been reading it for more years than some people have been alive. We’ve been writing it for just about as long–
JTH: More. My mother used to swear I was writing in the womb and came out with a pen clutched in one tiny, defiant fist. Poor Mum. Sounds painful.
CC: And our education mumblety years ago included things that government now considers an ‘extravagance’: analytical lit, grammar, creative writing…
JTH: Art history, music, anthropology, sociology–the latter two being extremely important in writing Spec Fic. Granted, I got more of my ‘schooling’ on my own reconnaissance… they didn’t teach the types of things I wanted to learn in the little red country schoolhouse… *grin*
CC: And that brings up another point: we have been doing this–both reading and writing Spec Fic—for all the years in-between and, as I’m sure most would agree, practical applications go a lot further in the pursuit of knowledge and advancement of skill level than academic dissection does.
So, our combined experience in every facet of the Spec Fic genre qualifies us to… Er, well, okay, it qualifies us to tell you we’re qualified to tell you that. *frowns and rereads again*
Spirit Guides! That’s what it qualifies us to be. JTH, I wanna be a Spec Fic Spirit Guide. Make it so.
JTH: *raises glass* Cheers. Here’s hoping Cole doesn’t smother us with a soft cushion.
CC: Or strangle us with yarn.
So, and as your official Spec Fic Spirit Guides™, in subsequent posts we’ll be discussing a lot of other facets of the genre and how they apply to Spec Fic in the M/M world. (Provided Cole hasn’t been back there knitting us straightjackets this whole time.) But for now, let’s wrap it up with some audience participation:
What popped your Spec Fic cherry?
CC: Mine was The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien back when I was…9? 10? Ish.
It started out innocently enough—just a bit of hobbit to cheer me up, some dwarf when I needed a bit of a downer, and then a wizard or two when I really wanted to trip. All of which led me to the hard stuff, AKA: LOTR, but that’s another story. It was right around that time that Meg and Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle turned me on to the tesseract, and Geekdom officially called me to its trippy bosom.
JTH: Man, that was way a long time ago. Hm. I was in a play of The Hobbit, which led me to read it… but that wasn’t the first… Hm. It truly was the Space Race, first for orbit and then the moon shot, that started me in on SF nerd-dom. And Star Trek on… Thursday nights? And from there it was… ah. Ray Bradbury. The short story collection R is for Rocket. Particularly The Fog Horn, and Frost and Fire. And A Sound of Thunder started my obsessions over time trippery at a very impressionable age.
So, Fair Readers, what did pop your SF cherry? And what made it special? Comment and be immortalised!
AND NEXT, from the SF Nerd on TAR: Just what were you expecting when you read that ‘Fantasy’ label, anyway?–Common tropes, expectations and myth-conceptions of Speculative Fiction. Oh, and more drinking.
BIOS—
Carole Cummings lives with her husband and family in Pennsylvania, USA, where she spends her time trying to find time to write. Author of the Aisling and Wolf’s-own series, Carole is an avid reader of just about anything that’s written well and has good characters. She is a lifelong writer of the ‘movies’ that run constantly in her head. Surprisingly, she does manage sleep in there somewhere, and though she is rumored to live on coffee and Pixy Stix™, no one has as yet suggested she might be more comfortable in a padded room. Well, not to her face.
J Tullos Hennig is suspected of having written since in utero. JTH was a professional writer 30 years ago, but Very Rotten Luck prevailed so the publishing ground to a halt. It was posited that all involved might be happier did writing also halt, but resistance is, yes, futile… and here we are. JTH has recently re-imagined the legend of Robyn Hood in a duology of Historical Fantasy; Book 1, Greenwode was published by Dreamspinner Press in January 2013. The second book, Shirewode is due out this September. JTH is presently working on the opening novel of a Speculative Fiction series.
Filed under: Authors A-C, Authors G-I, Guest Post Tagged: Carole Cummings, J Tullos Hennig, Spec Fic, Spec Fic Nerds
