SF/F Commentary

Paul Weimer (who podcasted a review of Prometheus with me about a week ago) was kind enough to ask the question in the title, perhaps in some vain hope that I actually know what I’m talking about.  I’ll start by first saying much of what follows is uneducated speculation, in part because predicting trends in SF is a crapshoot (remember when Mundane SF was the “next big thing”?) and in part because I am not familiar with all the SF novels being published (traditionally or otherwise) simply because it is not my job to be familiar, and I’ve got 20 other things going on — some of them actual jobs or job-related. That said, one of the curious things about this question is that it wasn’t immediately clear to me what Paul meant by “Space Opera.”  As a narrative tradition, Space Opera has been identified as the “high adventure” genre, often coupled, in some ways, to Planetary Romance (Burroughs, for example), but with greater reach, greater inherent optimism, and an extraordinary love affair with the infamous “sensawunda” (also:  colonialism, but you can read John Rieder’s book for that).  It’s a genre that reminds us at once of the great history of SF and all that is wrong with it.  But Space Opera does have a newer face.  Some call it New Space Opera — a crummy term, to say the least, but effective enough.  I see this new type of Space Opera as a more serious version than its predecessor, not in the sense that old form SO lacks seriousness, per se, but more in the sense that New Space Opera, insofar as it exists, seems to be constructed on a frame of complexity and rigor.  You might also say that NSO has a serious tone that seems absent from SO, though I am not altogether convinced that this is necessarily true, particularly since some authors identified with NSO, such as Tobias S. Buckell, seem to draw heavily from old SO.  In other words:  NSO may or may not exist, though there is probably something going on in SO that is distinct from the older form.  The community should probably discuss this trend at length (maybe it has). I say all this as a way to attempt to explore Paul’s question, which seems to hinge on a concern with definitions.  Since SF based in the solar system (that is, SF in which humanity moves about the solar system instead of remaining stuck on Earth or going elsewhere) has usually remained the domain of hard SF (not exclusively — Burroughs again), I suspect that SO which takes on the traditional narrative forms are unlikely to sustain a movement in solar system SF (these titles are getting ridiculous, I know).  It’s not that there can’t be sensawunda and adventure in our solar system; quite the contrary.  Rather, it seems to me that SO has a tendency to look to far off, practically unattainable futures in which interstellar travel is a given, aliens (or human factions) are plentiful, and the wonder of exploration to alien (not extraterrestrial, per say) worlds is practically a necessity to narrative.  That’s what the community has made SO into for so long, to greater and lesser degrees (for taste, of course).  My gut tells me that SO which clutches to local concerns will invariably collapse back into hard SF, though I cannot as yet explain why in any intelligent manner. That doesn’t mean SO in the SS won’t exist — a stupid position to take.  It means that such writing won’t take over the traditional form.  There’s something else in store for SO.  Something that NSO, existing or otherwise, must be leading to.  But I have no idea what that will look like in the end.  Do you?

In a recent episode of Read It and Weep, one of the hosts criticized urban fantasy’s strange habit of ignoring what I call “the big question.”  The criticism was fairly light — being a humorous podcast and all — but it convinced me to blog about it here. First, the big question: Why do so few urban fantasy novels explore the spiritual, religious, and historical impacts inherent in discovering the existence of the supernatural? This is a huge question for me, in part because it is also a little pet peeve of mine.  Some of the least interesting UF novels avoid the question altogether.  And they do it at the expense of the smidgen of realism necessary to make such a work, well, work.  If your characters go through life believing dragons and fairies and what not don’t exist, why would they suddenly buy into some relatively mundane hints to the contrary?  Even big, in-your-face hints (i.e., seemingly irrefutable evidence) would be taken by a lot of us with a grain of salt; many would assume they’ve gone completely mad.  But most UF novels don’t bother addressing this problem.  Something weird happens; someone waltzes up and says “dragons be real”; and the disbelievers respond with “Okie dokie.”  In the real world, this would not happen, unless you magically stumbled upon the very tiny minority of folks who believe such things in our present world.  Human beings are naturally skeptical of a lot of long-since-debunked nonsense, with rare exception. Similarly, a lot of UF novels fail to address the religious or historical aspect of the question.  A lot of UF novels are set in America with American protagonists and antagonists.  This means that it is statistically likely that the majority of these characters are believes in some version of the Christian God.  How would Christians respond to the existence of vampires?  How would that response vary depending on the denomination or the religious dedication of an individual?  One great example is Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey and its sequel, And Blue Skies From Pain, which imagines that the Fae and the fallen angels from the heavens actually exist (the novels are set in 70s Ireland).  Leicht actually explores the big question in a unique way:  making the Catholic Church part of a war with the Fae (basically); the Church responds by creating a division specifically trained to deal with the Fae, assuming they are all part of the Fallen (angels who led the rebellion against God and were cast out of heaven), thereby keeping the gears of their religion intact and providing the Church a rationale for its power structures.  It’s a clever bit of worldbuilding. For me, the failure to address this problem from both sides (the impact of knowledge and the natural inclination for calling B.S. on stuff that lies outside contemporary belief systems) creates a shitty book.  You’re already asking me to suspend my disbelief to buy into a world where dragons and vampires and werewolves actually exist, a leap that requires me to shut off parts of my brain to enjoy the ride.  But when your characters can’t be bothered to question, as most of us would question in the real world, the events around them, you’re basically saying “Eh, whatever.”  It’s lazy and it makes for bad characterization. There are probably a lot of exceptions, though.  Great UF books.  Great UF writers.  And so I’d like to ask everyone this:  Which urban fantasy novels actually take the “big question” head on? Suggestions welcome in the comments.