The Return of AtwoodWatch

[coalescent]

grahamsleight points out an article by Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction that's too good not to relay:

If you're writing about the future and you aren't doing forecast journalism, you'll probably be writing something people will call either science fiction or speculative fiction. I like to make a distinction between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. But the terms are fluid. Some use speculative fiction as an umbrella covering science fiction and all its hyphenated forms - science fiction fantasy, and so forth - and others choose the reverse.

I have written two works of science fiction or, if you prefer, speculative fiction: The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake.

If she keeps this up we're going to have to stop mocking her for not getting it, aren't we?

ninebelow has a roundup of her previous statements on the relationship of her work to sf here.

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Good to hear.

[drplokta]

And how does she classify fiction that only employs what is currently known, but is not set on the Earth, e.g. Dan Simmons's historical novel Phases of Gravity, part of which is set on the Moon?

[andrewducker]

That'd be _mundane_ semi-speculative fiction.

:->

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Ha! :)

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

d00d, someone needs to tell me what "mundane science fiction" is, because I Just Do Not Get It.

[ex-susumu64.livejournal.com]

I think the "mundane" and the "science" kind of cancel each other out so you're just left with the "fiction".

[talvalin.livejournal.com]

Genius. With this and the Mundane Missile description, you're on a roll.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

((boggles))

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Bobbins. It is Bobbins.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....the things you make lace with?

[andrewducker]

mundane SF is a manifesto that Geoff Ryman started, trying to encourage people away from Space Opera and into more earth-based, people-centred SF that didn't involve impossibly big ideas.

Think Neuromancer, River of Gods or Air.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Because River of Gods and Air certainly don't have impossibly big ideas!

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Think Neuromancer

((sputters))

((brain explodes))

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

"Earth is all we have" sf. The focus seems to be on near-future hard-science stuff. People seem to object more to the tone of the website and manifesto than to most of the content; the Mundanes assert that mundane sf isn't just good, it's in some way better.

[andrewducker]

While I, myself, like Banks' Culture Novels and the Lensman novels, non-SF people tend to be put off by all of that - mundane SF is much more likely to be attractive to these people, AFAIK.

For yer actual SF fanboy, of course, sundiving spaceships carrying memeplexes to fight alien AIs are the bees knees (that, by the way, is the finale of The Golden Age).

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

the Mundanes assert that mundane sf isn't just good, it's in some way better

((facepalm)) Nice, the way people like to assert sf is better than "mundane" fiction itself....aghghghg!

Do you have a link to this website?

[(Anonymous)]

And if, halfway through, the characters all get run over by a Vauxhall Nova, it's mundane infernokrusher.

-- tom

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I'm not even sure what we call that one ... ;-)

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I hope someone has had the nous to pass this on to Langford.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Nice to see what is effectively a recanting of her original refusal to classify O&C as SF.

However, to be a bit cynical, I wonder if this has come now, after O&C has been a critical and commercial success, because the reclassification isn't going to hit sales?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I am shocked by that suggestion. Shocked, I say.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

She wrote pretty much the same thing ("I myself have written two works of "science fiction" or, if you prefer, "speculative fiction," The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake.") back in January 2004, several months before the paperback release of O&C.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Mrghghghg, well, yes, that's good to hear but I don't think I'll ever get over the shock of reading her article on Le Guin (much less Le Guin's posting it approvingly on her own website!). But yes, that's rather good. Altho it does seem to limit the field to 1) "science fiction is what we can't do YET" and 2) "speculative fiction is more what _could_ happen" (so 1984 would be, by her terms, an example of speculative fiction, esp as Orwell used a lot of what was in 1948 to hand anyway). Which actually seems to knock out rather a lot of stuff I've read which isn't "possible" (a lot of the so-called slipstream, which borrows rather a lot from literary mainstream fic), altho maybe she would consider, say, invented worlds either something that _could_ be discovered, which would be science fiction, or a version of fantasy.

It used to be, or at least so I think, that sf writers would sort of automatically set advanced civilizations "in the future" or the Star Wars version of the fairytale opening "Once upon a time" with "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." It seems the field is maybe now more open to worlds which just exist in and of themselves and the authors don't feel the need to mention Earth or set up Earth parallels. Or maybe that's just more my reading patterns than anything else.

[deborahb.livejournal.com]

Damn! There goes half of my best material!

This writer needs to be smacked...

[applez.livejournal.com]

...with TEH MUNDANE SF. ;-)