A Stalker’s Notebook: Speculative Fiction – The Genre without Limitations by Charles Tan

The term speculative fiction holds a special place in my heart because it is able to accommodate all the other genres under its umbrella. What I mean by that is that fiction written under it can include elements of romance, mystery, horror, etc. In a certain way, the same can be said about the other genres. Romance, for example, is present in a lot of narratives, whether it’s a crime novel or a horror short story. Suffice to say, a story or book doesn’t have to be classified as romance in order to have romance in it. That’s the problem with the use of the genre label. It’s tempting to “box” various works, yet the reality is that each story contains elements of other genres to some degree.

The only genre that doesn’t call attention to what type of stories it tells are books under “Fiction”; in a perfect world, all fiction would fall under this category. Yet Fiction as a marketing term sometimes comes with its own connotation, such as it being more literary than genre books. That’s why certain authors prefer to be seen as Fiction instead of fantasy, or science fiction, or horror (or -insert genre here-). But the Fiction label for me is arbitrary. Some genre works suddenly become a part of its canon, from Frankenstein to Fahrenheit 451. Still, for the most part, there’s lots of leeway under the Fiction category:  you can tell a mystery story, a romance story, a concept story, etc.

There is another connotation associated with Fiction, however, that, for me, limits itself:  realism. Because of this one requirement (to which, again, Fiction arbitrarily makes exemptions), that pseudo-genre hampers the kind of narrative it can tell. I won’t delve too much into why accurate realism in fiction is ultimately folly. Fiction is a construct told in a coherent manner, whereas real life doesn’t follow the same rules:  not every incident in real life has a purpose or is cleanly resolved. Heck, in real life, no one is constantly grammatically correct. Instead, realism is actually this faux reality trying to emulate the real world and always falling short. That’s not to say realist novels are not without their merits. They have them. However, at the end of the day, one must acknowledge that a realist book isn’t so realistic, any more than video games are faithful simulations of the real world. They can come close, but they’re never the real thing.

Which brings me back to speculative fiction. For me, it’s the genre that’s like Fiction without the snobbery. You can tell the stories that you want without placing artificial barriers. You can, for example, exaggerate one element so that it affects everyone and everything: we might end up with something like George Orwell’s 1984. Or maybe there’s one concept you want to distill and tackle in either short story form (“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K Le Guin) or novel-length form (The Dispossessed by the same author). There are even stories that feel very mundane and could occur in the real world but still fall under the umbrella term of speculative fiction (some of Karen Joy Fowler’s fiction comes to mind, such as “Always”).

There’s also another advantage to such a vague term as speculative fiction. The only expectation one comes into reading it with is that anything can happen. Take horror, for example. When you read a short story that’s classified as horror, you’re already preparing yourself for the horror element to pop up. Compare this to reading a story simply labeled as speculative fiction, where you don’t know whether it’ll tickle your sense of wonder or frighten you (or both). While there’s something to be said about the technical craft of writing a horror short story, sometimes it’s better to not know that it’s a horror piece in the first place for it to have a greater impact.

Let me reiterate, though, that a lot of these inclusions also work in other genres. Romance, for example, can have fantastical elements, hence the paranormal romance category. And some mysteries might contain horror and vice versa. It’s just that with such a broad term as speculative fiction, the potential for all these other elements coming into play and the inclusive nature of the term (as opposed to realism which screams to me “don’t include improbable elements”) are what make it appealing for me.

Today BSC welcomes Charles Tan, who is going to be offering us glimpses into his Stalker’s Notebook. He’s kicking us off considering a word many of us have adopted, and some of us could claim to have perpetuated in the net-age of discussion. I want to take this opportunity to welcome Charles to the BSC fold.

Check out Speculative Fiction – The Genre without Limitations after the jump…

About Charles Tan

Charles Tan's fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has contributed nonfiction to websites such as The Nebula Awards (http://nebulaawards.com/), The Shirley Jackson Awards (http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/), SF Crowsnest (http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/), SFScope (http://sfscope.com/), Fantasy Magazine (http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/), Fantasy Literature (http://www.fantasyliterature.com/), BSC Review (http://www.bscreview.com/), The World SF News Blog (http://worldsf.wordpress.com/), and SF Signal (http://www.sfsignal.com). In 2009, he won the Last Drink Bird Head Award (http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/10/04/the-first-annual-last-drink-bird-head-award-finalists/) for International Activism which is described as "In recognition of those who work to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia…" You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker (http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/), or the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (http://philippinespeculativefiction.com/).