You know that feeling when you realise other people, who look and act much like you, are utterly different on a fundamental level, and you never even suspected? I’ve just had one of those moments.
It came, in part, after reading this gambit on a post by Michael J Moore on the SFWA’s ever-excellent ‘The Art of Writing’ blog: “You write speculative fiction for the same reason you’ve read or watched it your entire life. There’s something inside of you that craves tales of relatable characters overcoming adversity.”
MJ, if I can call him that, just throws it out there as a given, as so obvious we can all sign up to the sentiment and have fun developing the argument from there. But for me the words rang false. There’s an insecurity, a sense of needing affirmation, seeking it out vicariously through stories, in his claim that I don’t recognise, at least not in myself. But who’s the odd one out here - MJ or me?
Putting aside that the claim doesn’t say anything special about speculative fiction - all fiction should be about main characters overcoming hurdles - I write (but, to be honest, barely read) speculative fiction because of the ideas, the what-ifs, the how the world may switch if you altered a line on the list of ingredients. Dick’s ‘Beyond Lies the Wub’ is a perfect example. The relatable character overcoming adversity bit is just a vehicle for more fundamental philosophising. Which is rarely there. Hence my general reluctance to read things which are more-often-than-not overwhelmingly ho-hum, making me turn instead to things like non-fiction which prompt the disquieting speculating which drives my writing.
The other prompt for this posting comes after watching the comedy Fast and Furious 9 (it is a comedy? yes? there are police vans with ‘Interpol’ on them). In this, two characters - don’t ask me who; there’s a Vincent Diesel (nominative determinism?) involved, and neither were him, that’s about all I remember; I slept through bits - speculate on why they’re still alive after so much jeopardy and danger. They fluff they opportunity to conclude they must be recurring characters in a movie franchise - the braver, meta-, Deadpool-alike choice - and simply decide they’re invincible. So arrogant, so brash, so… American.
Maybe that's the difference?
Here in Europe, we watch America in much the same way as we rubberneck accidents on the motorway: with a sense of grim, morbid fascination, knowing we shouldn’t be looking and that it slows our own journeys, but also that we didn’t ask for it to happen, so if fate and fortune throw a blackly, bleakly comic carnival sideshow our way, what are we meant to do? I’m all for putting up screens so you can’t see the gory details. Would work for traffic accidents too.
Most of those involved in speculative fiction are American: that’s who publishes most stories, that’s where I mainly submit - and, without going back and checking, where I have most success. But I refuse to write like an American, except in a basic sense - 'realize', 'hood', 'trunk', and so forth, but I have learnt that a demi-john is a 'carboy' (who knew?).
Looking back at editors’ feedback, I can’t help but sense occasions where culture clash has come across as po-faced literalism, preventing someone ‘getting it’. Remember that story, the one the (American, SFWA professional-rate) publication hated with the feedback:
"I'm sorry, I found this story unsavory and unpleasant with a disturbing ending. I think at certain points it was attempting to be clever or rough-edged but was just distasteful. Written with undeniable skill, it is nonetheless full of nasty, evil people. While it is a good set-up, unfortunately they win, going against the sort of story we prefer, where evil doesn't win.".
even though one of the characters was written with Ben "Paddington-fucking-Bear" Wishaw in mind to play (in your head, obviously.) Well, it's coming out later in the year through the well-regarded British outfit PS Publishing. Looks like they got the joke - and the fact that the end was meant to be disturbing: if evil never won, it's meaningless when good does so.
As George Bernard Shaw said, we’re two countries separated by a common language. To Americans it’s all about the winner, to Europeans - the British, at least, or maybe just me? - it’s about the game. In speculative fiction, just as in the rest of life. Yes, it's a gross generalisation, but one that captures a truth, I think.
2084. The world remains at war.
In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.
The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.
Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.
Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.
24 0s & a 2
Twenty-four slipstream stories. Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
