It is a common conceit, among those critics, academics and indeed, readers, unfamiliar with the genre of the Fantastic, that in the genre’s departing from this “real” world—with its presumably explicable details amounting to an agreed-upon reality—one also ventures from the significant to the irrelevant. A host of descriptive words arrive to accompany this easy dismissal: escapist, popular, the not-quite-serious; and for many even the subgenre labels themselves carry pejorative connotations. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Horror.
If there was ever a time when Fantasy or Science Fiction or Horror embraced true escapism, it was long ago, when the very notion of flights of fancy was enough to elicit disapproving frowns among certain literati, for whom mundane reality was all the challenge they cared to face.
If you note some derision in my tone, be assured it is accompanied by a loose shrug. The debate over the significance or relevance of fantastic literature within the broader stream of literature seems to be a perpetual one, exercised in varying levels of snarky commentary and frustrated indignation. The pendulum knocks and crashes in its wild swinging to and fro, with an increasingly large element of the population blissfully indifferent to those distinctions so avidly sweated over, promulgated and defended by a shrinking subset of self-avowed arbiters of culture. Despite this, at times it’s enough to leave a writer (even me) ticked off in the face of what is clearly studied indifference.
It is probably fair to assume that the majority of readers now holding this book are well familiar with the genres on display in this collection. You don’t need convincing as to the relevance of these tales, or the value of their place in the canon of modern literature. Equally likely, many of you will have been challenged, from time to time, and made to defend not only your choice of reading material but also your interest in prose and poetry definitively not subservient to mundane reality. You can probably recall, in sharp detail, those expressions of disapproval and dismay—from teachers, parents, even friends—and at some point the question arrives: Is it not all a waste of time? After all, where among the classics of literature will you find such absurd, escapist fare?
Well, everywhere. It is no stretch—no stretch at all—to argue the works of Homer as being Fantasy fiction, Epic Fantasy fiction at that. The same argument can be made for Gilgamesh, and Beowulf. I have, on occasion, described Lord of the Flies as dystopic Science Fiction—and received reactions of skepticism, if not outright disbelief, in response. As for Horror, well, the potential list one could make from the literary canon just goes on and on (Dracula, Frankenstein, Paradise Lost, etc.).
Whatever. Enlightenment makes no inroads on ignorance, and sad to say, we are talking about ignorance. The willful kind. The kind that isn’t interested in arguments, or intellectual engagement. The kind that makes its pronouncement a declaration voiced in tones of actual pride (“Well, I don’t read that rubbish. . . .” or “I don’t read that rubbish,” or, “I don’t read that rubbish”). Judgement precedes knowledge and once the door is slammed shut, good luck in prying it open again.
I am not unmindful of counterarguments in this position, where it might seem to some that I am beating a straw-man of my own making: there are examples of literature of the Fantastic that are indeed acknowledged as worthy of being called serious. But I would argue that in each case, a strange kind of intellectual shell-game has preceded the label of acceptability, and it is this: by virtue of being deemed “worthy,” such works (and their authors) are deftly extricated from the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction or Horror. The very act of “exceptionalism” permits serious consideration of said work or author, while perpetuating the ghettoization of the original genre. Sadly, sometimes the author him- or herself participates in this exercise, to the detriment of every other author and every other self-identified genre work of fiction (often for reasons of choice placement in bookstores, and consideration in the book review sections of major newspapers, not to mention invitations to “serious” literary festivals and so on). It’s all rather ridiculous.
Although it’s probably not well-suited given this collection’s subtitle, I’m not much of a fan of the phrase “speculative fiction” either, which strikes me as yet another (diffident) effort to legitimize works of the Fantastic. After all, all fiction is speculative, isn’t it? Whether it’s a story set in modern day Winnipeg, or the Weimar Republic, or the seedy side of downtown Vancouver: each of these examples may purport to a reality, one based on life experience or exhaustive research, but in the end, if you give it some thought, you’ll realise that it’s all invented; that the recognizable traits are just there to convince you that what you’re reading is real, and that accordingly the characters within that tale, their thoughts, their emotions, their actions, their motivations, are all authentic—when the truth is, they are all inventions of the author’s imagination.
Transpose these characters to a world with different rules—to a world unlike our own, or one in the far (or near) future or distant past—and all that we as readers are then witness to, is what can only be called a virtuoso act of imagination. I am going to risk arrogance here and say, explicitly, that such authors working in Fantasy and Science Fiction and Horror, have to work much harder than do their compatriots writing contemporary, “realist” fiction. They need to convince of you of unfamiliar rules, unfamiliar settings, while at the same time assuring you, the reader, of the essential humanity of the story they’re telling. Having written both forms of fiction, you’ll just have to take it from me: contemporary, “this-world” fiction is easy compared to writing Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror.
So, having sat for years on the grisly end of denigration as a writer in such genres, I hereby reverse the qualitative imbalance, and with brazen audacity announce that contemporary, realist fiction, is in fact a lesser form of writing, an easier and lazier effort at imagination, and one far-too-reliant on all that’s recognizable in the real world—to carry (for the author) the weight of significance, to bask with little effort in the seriousness of common veracity; and as for its often desperate struggle to elevate the mundane, through patently unrealistic subtext (the real world has no subtext: it just is), awkward symbolism, unrealistic foreshadowing, epiphany and denouement, these are nothing more than contrived structural impositions on reality.
Which is not to say that there aren’t good writers writing contemporary fiction. There are a few, to be sure, but the extent to which some pundits would elevate their efforts, they are given far too much weight, far too much hyperbole, and far too much significance in the world of literature, to the detriment of many other talented—genre—writers.
In launching, with a hard shove, the pendulum the other way as I have just done, I can already hear the reverberations of outrage at my bold claims (assuming anyone cares). To those who care to argue against my assertions, so long as you are familiar with works of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror, by all means begin your assault, and I may find some future forum in which to engage in lively discussion. If, however, you’ve not read any Fantasy, Science Fiction or Horror, well, let’s end our debate here and now, because you don’t know what you’re talking about, and I have no interest in wasting my time seeking to educate you.
The writers in this collection have unleashed their imaginations. They have pushed the notion of an explicable reality, and they have dragged—at times elegantly, at other times roughly—the human condition into strangely flavoured worlds. This is not escapism. This is engagement: a dialogue with the present and real world, evoking the tensions of sensibility peculiar to, and indeed uniquely so, the genres of the Fantastic. In these genres, more than anywhere else, metaphors can be made real: intent can be given physical form, and the very purpose of storytelling—its deepest roots—are revived and given universal significance: why? Because they evoke in readers the one crucial element so woefully absent in “realist” fiction: a sense of wonder.
This here real world is suffering from a loss of wonder—and if I venture, in aside, the suggestion that writers of contemporary, realist fiction are partly to blame for that loss, I do so with ready argument, although this is neither the time nor the place for further elaboration. Accordingly, consider my statement a provocation, since that is how it was intended. For what it is worth, I think we need to rediscover that sense of wonder, not in a return to childhood (as critics of the Fantastic might charge), but as adults, if only to counter this growing plague of cynicism and weary nihilism. If such an endeavour is cause for dismissal or indifference, God help us all.
Steven Erikson
Falmouth, Cornwall, 2012