Is the Book World Done with Science Fiction?

I’d guess most hardcore readers of what used to be called “science fiction” know that the book industry has decided to wrap fantasy and science fiction into a single package they’re calling “speculative fiction.” The music world is also attempting to lump smooth jazz and R&B into “neo soul.”

There are obviously lots of consolidated categories everywhere in this media-infected world. My biggest pet peeve in political commentary and analysis is the notion of red and blue states that we’ve been stuck with since the end of 2000 when no one could figure out who won the presidential election. Politics in America has become stupidly adversarial and over-simplified because of that categorizing glitch perpetrated on all of us by a media maw that felt it needed to simplify how complex the fake democracy is in this country in order to talk about it in sound bytological form. For the record no state is either red or blue. It’s just not true. Most are brown and green and cement gray and sparkly asphalt black and maybe swirly changing flower colors mixed with produce section hues mixed with breakfast cereal aisle graphics.

However, I did not come here to trash our media’s self-important reductionist ignorance. Nor do I wish to talk down to critics, academics, and publishers who feel the need to categorize books, stories, movies, art, TV shows, dance, etc. in order to simplify discusssion, sales, and marketing processes. What I do want to suggest, though, is that science fiction as a category needs to be a protected realm. So does fantasy. They are not the same, and in many ways they are not followed by the same people. It’s certainly possible to blend the two genres together, but the one tends to be playing with the predictive nature of technology and social progress, and the other with what I think of as mythical and impossible realities that are intriguing and enticing, but far beyond the idea of the possible, probably, or predictive.

A Long Way from Ignorance

I didn’t know I was writing science fiction when I began serious work on my new novel Sound Effect Infinity way back in 1989. In some ways it felt like a weird conspiracy puzzle mixed with mystery and detective work, along with what is now called fan fiction. In reality back then, I was doing a fairly bad job of attempting to write about a near-future world. The first “finished” iteration of Sound Effect Infinity (original title: Beyond the Will of God, taken from a line in the Jimi Hendrix song “1983…A Merman I Should Turn to Be”) was an example of a writer giving up on their original vision because they didn’t understand they were writing science fiction.

I was a young, ignorant, dumbass, wannabe novelist back then (with a full-time job as an independent technology and environmental consultant, three kids, a mom who needed taking care of, and a wife I was and still am, deeply in love with who deserved better than my juniorific, naively stupid, hopeful self). I’d read science fiction (and fantasy) all of my life. I discovered my favorite novel in my early teens, the utopian world-building science fiction Islandia. That book kicked my teenage desire to write stories into a gear that never down-shifted. So did TV shows like The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and The Prisoner. The same can be said about the effects of reading Dune, Foundation, The Kin of Atta, Childhood’s End, The Lathe of Heaven, etc. Most recently, I have enjoyed reading all of the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games books. And Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife is one of my favorite books of all time (as much for the astounding writing and character relationships as the imaginative plot itself).

Then there is work by Haruki Murakami and George Saunders–neither science fiction exactly or fantasy. Not really. I don’t think they’re “speculative” either. But what are they? Literary multiverse fiction? Dreamy, mixed confusion, playful magic, soaking wet sparkling neo-realism?

Wonderlands

There’s a great book of essays out there by Charles Baxter called Wonderlands, published in 2022 by Graywolf Press. In some ways that book is pointing to a good amount of the effect the idea of “speculative fiction” has without losing the core importance of the idea of science fiction and fantasy as separate realms. The argument can be made that literature has transcended itself in the past two decades while the marketers and critics were spending time coming up with new definitions and not really paying enough attention to the transcendence.

Whatever the case, my new novel, Sound Effect Infinity, is without doubt science fiction that is partially dystopic and strangely advanced, but driven by wonderland questions about the magic of music and sound; and how that magic may be connected to paranormal psychology and human transcendence itself.

So, I take issue with the term “speculative fiction” no matter what. My story is not hypothesis, guesswork, or an attempt to discern our future. I wasn’t speculating at all. Sound Effect Infinity, like most science fiction, is a platform for readers to consider ideas and notions that are difficult to put directly into words. The idea is not to speculate but to unlock doors in people’s minds so that they can ask themselves questions they didn’t even know existed. That makes for a weird kind of entertainment, but it’s all part of a noble tradition that every contemporary science fiction author is proud to push forward. I’m guessing that fantasy authors feel the same about their genre.

Featured Art by: Shitao, Tim Williams