I agree with the fact that we lack stories of different ways of life, which are different, maybe not as comfortable, yet desirable. It is -- and I believe it is an interesting sociological phenomenon in itself -- as if the energy-economy-ecology crisis we face has made the future unthinkable, almost impossible. I can only recommend "the ministry for the future" from Kim Stanley Robinson, imagining how we could, through hardship and losses, but also a great deal of agency and cooperation, curtail climate change and transition toward a more sustainable society worldwide.
And if by any hasard there are some people speaking French around, there also is the wonderful podcast "2030 glorieuses", in which guests present what they do to change our societies into greener, more peaceful ones. There is also in each episode a reference to a book which portraits, in a way or another, a concept or imagery of a better future, and the personal optimistic foresight of the year 2030 (it started in 2020, so the idea was to imagine what could be done in ten years with some voluntary effort).
Death to lyrical prose! ‘Darkly comic’ novels that aren’t even funny can go next.
This is an interesting perspective to keep in mind as I am myself writing a sci-fi novel that deals with the apocalypse as it’s happening. Granted, I want my work to skew towards horror as well. Which, as a genre, has a different relationship to futility than sci-fi.
I haven’t yet read the works you’ve mentioned (Our Wives Under the Sea is on my TBR list), but I do wonder if their inability to push the more speculative elements of sci-fi is a symptom of them being genre-bending literary fiction writers, not true genre writers. In one of your replies you mentioned how wanting to write a speculative story is different from wanting to tell an emotional story. The imaginative realm is not necessarily the point. It’s just set dressing. The imaginative elements are there to support the story, not complicate it. Serviceable =/= satisfying.
But the emotional story is one-note because sentimentalism infects everything. Everyone is either super precious about their sense of ennui or really, really wants to be a winning Hero. And we’re left with emotionally stunted stories that can’t think through, or tangle with, what it means to be a tiny part of a larger ecosystem. Which - granted, that’s intellectually and emotionally hard to deal with. But… these writers are (allegedly) creating stories more gripping and thought-provoking than your standard romance*. They are supposed to be able to do the hard stuff.
*no hate to romance writers BUT they work within a formulaic genre meant to hit certain big, flat buttons of overwhelming emotion and these buzzy little novels are… doing the same thing fairly often, but somehow getting an intellectual pass.
Completely agree with all of this. I guess the sci-fi boom has created a space for this genre-bending fiction that ultimately isn't sci fi or literary fiction, but something generically different. I agree that the emotional worlds explored in these books are curiously anemic, especially because these are books that are supposed to foreground emotional worlds.
I think in literature more generally there has been a calcifying effect across genres, so a given work is expected to be faithful to the story beats and tropes that one associates with its genre. This is very frustrating.
Also, what is most annoying about this to me is that there's a lot of precedent for sci fi telling stories that are both speculative and emotional -- but they tend to be explorations of how emotions would be under a certain set of circumstances.
I feel this way about Becky Chambers, and I realized that it's not that the societies depicted aren't utopian in some ways but that the main characteristic of those utopias is passivity. We never see how the characters structure their societies, and they never have conflict with the tenets of their societies, and they never have to change anything. If things go wrong, they just give up and stop in their tracks and wait for someone to make a choice for them and if that choice doesn't come, they will literally give up all agency and die. It's as if action itself is wrong in some way.
that's extremely interesting. i haven't read becky chambers' work (although i know it's very popular), but i wonder if it's a similar thing of an author wanting to tell an emotional story instead of a speculative story, if that makes sense.
And not to be tacky but I believe in fiction, I think the imaginary is a political space in the sense that it's where all the people of the polis go to figure out what is allowed and what is possible
Excellent post. Yeah I'm surprised by the number of people who seem to think this is the literal end. Even if our society collapses, it's not the end. People will be around. They will try to live somehow. People had babies during the black death but for some reason because of some wildfires and hurricanes writers are ready to give up.
It is very surprising to me. I think you've really hit at the fact that it is an ahistorical attitude -- these ideas that this is the end are coming from people who assumed they'd be living their lives in peacetime. I don't want to sound unsympathetic because I too want to live a life in peace, and i think it is legitimate to grieve, but I just think of how much good science fiction came out of the atmosphere of nuclear panic in the 20th century...
I agree with the fact that we lack stories of different ways of life, which are different, maybe not as comfortable, yet desirable. It is -- and I believe it is an interesting sociological phenomenon in itself -- as if the energy-economy-ecology crisis we face has made the future unthinkable, almost impossible. I can only recommend "the ministry for the future" from Kim Stanley Robinson, imagining how we could, through hardship and losses, but also a great deal of agency and cooperation, curtail climate change and transition toward a more sustainable society worldwide.
And if by any hasard there are some people speaking French around, there also is the wonderful podcast "2030 glorieuses", in which guests present what they do to change our societies into greener, more peaceful ones. There is also in each episode a reference to a book which portraits, in a way or another, a concept or imagery of a better future, and the personal optimistic foresight of the year 2030 (it started in 2020, so the idea was to imagine what could be done in ten years with some voluntary effort).
Anyway, thanks for your work :)
thank you for these recommendations! the podcast especially sounds great, I have been looking for a way to keep up with my french.
Death to lyrical prose! ‘Darkly comic’ novels that aren’t even funny can go next.
This is an interesting perspective to keep in mind as I am myself writing a sci-fi novel that deals with the apocalypse as it’s happening. Granted, I want my work to skew towards horror as well. Which, as a genre, has a different relationship to futility than sci-fi.
I haven’t yet read the works you’ve mentioned (Our Wives Under the Sea is on my TBR list), but I do wonder if their inability to push the more speculative elements of sci-fi is a symptom of them being genre-bending literary fiction writers, not true genre writers. In one of your replies you mentioned how wanting to write a speculative story is different from wanting to tell an emotional story. The imaginative realm is not necessarily the point. It’s just set dressing. The imaginative elements are there to support the story, not complicate it. Serviceable =/= satisfying.
But the emotional story is one-note because sentimentalism infects everything. Everyone is either super precious about their sense of ennui or really, really wants to be a winning Hero. And we’re left with emotionally stunted stories that can’t think through, or tangle with, what it means to be a tiny part of a larger ecosystem. Which - granted, that’s intellectually and emotionally hard to deal with. But… these writers are (allegedly) creating stories more gripping and thought-provoking than your standard romance*. They are supposed to be able to do the hard stuff.
*no hate to romance writers BUT they work within a formulaic genre meant to hit certain big, flat buttons of overwhelming emotion and these buzzy little novels are… doing the same thing fairly often, but somehow getting an intellectual pass.
Completely agree with all of this. I guess the sci-fi boom has created a space for this genre-bending fiction that ultimately isn't sci fi or literary fiction, but something generically different. I agree that the emotional worlds explored in these books are curiously anemic, especially because these are books that are supposed to foreground emotional worlds.
I think in literature more generally there has been a calcifying effect across genres, so a given work is expected to be faithful to the story beats and tropes that one associates with its genre. This is very frustrating.
Also, what is most annoying about this to me is that there's a lot of precedent for sci fi telling stories that are both speculative and emotional -- but they tend to be explorations of how emotions would be under a certain set of circumstances.
I feel this way about Becky Chambers, and I realized that it's not that the societies depicted aren't utopian in some ways but that the main characteristic of those utopias is passivity. We never see how the characters structure their societies, and they never have conflict with the tenets of their societies, and they never have to change anything. If things go wrong, they just give up and stop in their tracks and wait for someone to make a choice for them and if that choice doesn't come, they will literally give up all agency and die. It's as if action itself is wrong in some way.
that's extremely interesting. i haven't read becky chambers' work (although i know it's very popular), but i wonder if it's a similar thing of an author wanting to tell an emotional story instead of a speculative story, if that makes sense.
And not to be tacky but I believe in fiction, I think the imaginary is a political space in the sense that it's where all the people of the polis go to figure out what is allowed and what is possible
Excellent post. Yeah I'm surprised by the number of people who seem to think this is the literal end. Even if our society collapses, it's not the end. People will be around. They will try to live somehow. People had babies during the black death but for some reason because of some wildfires and hurricanes writers are ready to give up.
It is very surprising to me. I think you've really hit at the fact that it is an ahistorical attitude -- these ideas that this is the end are coming from people who assumed they'd be living their lives in peacetime. I don't want to sound unsympathetic because I too want to live a life in peace, and i think it is legitimate to grieve, but I just think of how much good science fiction came out of the atmosphere of nuclear panic in the 20th century...