Somewhere in the genre community there is someone blaming the death of science fiction on all those bastards mixing their filthy mysteries and romances with the hardcore awesomeness of SF. I don’t know where they are, but knowing the SF/F community as well as I do, I have no doubt that they exist, frothing at the mouth every time an author like Michael Chabon or Richard Morgan or *insert cross genre author here* tosses out a new, critically acclaimed book. After all, cross genre SF is a terrible amalgam that is systemically tearing down science fiction, piece by piece, right?
Hardly. Cross genre is perhaps the best thing to happen to science fiction since the golden age, at least as far as being an intentional “movement.” What cross genre does is exactly what science fiction needs to convince people that it’s not the same thing it always was, that it’s not the spaceships and explosions and Star Wars/Star Trek rip-offs that too many people have allowed to flood their minds. It’s more than that. It’s complicated narratives involving anything from intense murder mysteries to complex relationships to interstellar battles. Spaceships and explosions may exist, but they are not contingent; they are probably elements of a particular brand of SF, a brand that cross genre circumvents, or, perhaps less negatively, moves around to take the genre in new directions.
SF, ultimately, is better off with these non-traditional narratives injected into it. We need the mixture in SF as much as we need ideas and strong prose, especially if SF expects to survive and continue to be relevant. SF has to be able to move around, to work its way into the cracks of other genres and remind people that it’s there and ready to cause some literary damage.
What do you think of cross genre SF? Do you hate it or think it’s great? Let me know!
