Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

Richard wrote: "I agree. If we don't show the reader enough of the character to make us care, they won't follow the story, regardless of technically interesting it might be. I'm not sure I'm successful at it, but ..."

I'm not sure I totally agree. Many of Kurt Vonnegut's books, for example, I don't think revolve around character development (or at least don't rely on that to gain the reader's interest). It's quite possible, I think, to have characters we care about whose personal development is more or less static. (This coming from the guy who's latest work in progress suffers from an unlikeable MC--woe is me!)

Billy Pilgrim, for example, in Slaughterhouse Five is a character in stasis...literally; the main plot idea being that history is predetermined and that there is no individual choice: what has happened, is happening, will happen exists all at the same time in an unchanging now. So the character doesn't change, except in his understanding of the nature of time and existence.

Character development, as in the character realising something and changing, is a problem for authors who write in series with a single main character in close focus. You can't have an epiphany in every book. I think it's more important that a character be interesting and reasonably likeable, than to be on some kind of spiritual journey resolved at the end. Love plots have a similar problem. If you spend the first book on a will she/won't she plotline, you're pretty much forced to have them tumble into bed before the end of the book. Then what to do in the second? These humans are a real problem.

Richard wrote: "Character development, as in the character realising something and changing, is a problem for authors who write in series with a single main character in close focus. You can't have an epiphany in ..."

I'm not sure you can't have an epiphany in each episode. It might be difficult, but the thing about people is there is no single universal truth that we can set our watches by for the rest of our lives. It's possible for a character to have an epiphany, operate under that epiphany in the second book, only to realize his methods are flawed. Book 2 could end with the epiphany that he didn't change in a positive manner. Book 3 he could struggle to right the ship and get back on a good path only to have another epiphany that a second truth influences the first. Etc., etc. Life is always changing and our views consistently change as our environment exerts new influences.

Richard wrote: "I agree. If we don't show the reader enough of the character to make us care, they won't follow the story, regardless of technically interesting it might be. I'm not sure I'm successful at it, but ..."

I agree, if the reader cannot care about the character why read the book?

BUT, if a writer is really good, it's perhaps possible that a world, or perhaps something else, could become a character

if the reader cannot care about the character why read the book?

While that is a popular form of entertainment, I don't believe everyone is reading stories just to follow characters. The problem is finding your audience for what you are writing. The more mainstream you write the less effort is needed to identify the audience, but you still have the problem of reaching the people who will actually read your book.

Robert wrote: "if the reader cannot care about the character why read the book?

While that is a popular form of entertainment, I don't believe everyone is reading stories just to follow characters. The problem i..."

And even in mainstream stories, "caring" about the main character is not a universal thing. The whole anti-hero thing, stories where the MC is a homocidal maniac or a viscious delinquent (A Clockwork Orange) fly in the face of that advice. One of my beta readers once described his connection to the anti-hero in a novella like this: "I wasn't actually rooting for him to win, but I didn't want him dead either."

I am a scientist and science fiction author and I find Paul's question intriguing. If you think about it, "Science Fiction" is an oxymoron. One arises from "reality" and the other "unreality". So Sci-Fi as a genre is the merging of the two. Science is based on the belief that the universe functions on principles that can be understood and used to manipulate "reality". For me, archetypical Sci-Fi is the imagining of a possible "reality" which is grounded in that scientific belief. My personal interest is science fiction with a spiritual twist. A quote from one of my characters, Saint Manisha the Seer, recognizes the role of scientists in an ineffable universe.

"Blessed are the scientists, for like the ancient shaman, they toil to expand awareness. Despite their narrow window of consciousness, they bravely stretch their looking glasses through that opening snatching brief glimpses beneath the skirts of an awesome universe."

I think the question of whether sci-fi "actually exists" is a difficult one to answer, because it assumes there is a definitive answer outside of human language. I mean, none of the categories that humans talk about "really exist": for example, if you believe in evolution as a continual and ever-changing process with no end, then all the species we've named (penguins, cheetahs, pangolins) are really just snapshots within an ever-changing work-in-progress, just one particular stage in an eternal flow, and, really, neither "penguins", "cheetahs" nor "pangolins" "really exist". They're just temporary concepts that we've given temporary names to because we're mortal creatures who like to give stuff names while we're here. (At least, that's my attitude to existence!) So asking if "sci-fi" "actually exists" is the same kinda question. Of course it does, like a pangolin does, and of course it doesn't "really", because it's just one frame in a complex and ever-changing flow.

(Still, as true as my answer might be, it doesn't help work out where to put my book in a bookshop, does it.)

Mat said it doesn't help work out where to put my book in a bookshop...

For most of us, the question is how to place our books in bookshops (bookstores) of course :-)

I view science fiction as a genre that is probably more closely linked to its umbrella term, speculative fiction. I believe most authors in the field are aiming at some level of speculation as to the potentialities of science, physics, and technology. That is, it is an attempt to project into the future based upon all that we've discovered in the last twentieth century. In some ways, I think, science fiction, if you want to call it that, is the defining genre of the last century, because science is this time period's most interesting historical feature. I suppose not all science fiction is technological or scientific. I tend to write more soft, social science fiction, as opposed to hard science fiction, but it usually does some have some science or physics in there, at least as an ornament. Thematically, a lot of SF writers have steered toward dystopia. I'm not sure if the majority are attempting to be cautionary, but maybe that's another aspect of the genre's speculative characteristics.

Perhaps another way to express Matt's comment is in quantum physics terms. Genres come in and out of existence without ever being fully definable like quantum particles.

Stephen wrote: "Genres come in and out of existence without ever being fully definable like quantum particles."

Exactly! The same can be said for music genres: I've read so many forums and comments sections where people spend way more time arguing over whether this or that band is "death metal" or "black metal" (or even "blackened death metal", as some sort of compromise), than they do about whether or not they enjoy the music. The definition of genre terms (like all words, actually - Wittgenstein said this many moons ago now) is simply whether or not we more-or-less agree what we're refering to when we use the words. It'll never be unanimous - there'll always be someone who wants to include Frankenstein or 1984 under the genre "sci-fi" - but as long as people generally know what they're talking about, a genre can "stick". My favourite genre to talk about (not to listen to) is the musical genre "grunge", because none of the bands who were called "grunge" bands sounded very similar, and none of them wanted to be called "grunge" bands, and none of them ever used that term for their own music. And yet it totally stuck as a genre, because it was used so constantly by the media and then the public. So, was it "real"?

I suppose the thing about Sci-fi is that it offers near unlimited possibilities, and can include so many elements of other genres. As the years go by, it fragments into more and more sub-genres. As Mat said, they split and evolve, but sometimes they cross-breed and create something else.
The problem comes when you have to force them into specific sub-genres, which you have to do on places like Amazon if you want to stand a chance of getting noticed. The trouble is that current sub-genres are extremely restrictive when compared to the possibilities that Sci-fi offers.

Kindle Science Fiction has 21 "types" listed, which is further broken down into 2 more classifications, Characters and Genre.

Is this what you are talking about?

Characters
Aliens (1,087)
AIs (318)
Clones (370)
Corporations (249)
Mutants (308)
Pirates (58)
Psychics (346)
Robots & Androids s (937)


Genre
Horror (579)
Humor (215)
Mystery (747)
Non-Romantic (5,056)
Romantic (1,210)
Thriller (1,600)

Robert wrote: "Kindle Science Fiction has 21 "types" listed, which is further broken down into 2 more classifications, Characters and Genre.

Is this what you are talking about?

That is what I'm talking about, but, even if you can navigate all the keywords to get into those extra catagories, they are still fairly limited.
I suppose the problem arises from the fact that we have the ability to electronically classify things to the nth degree. I mean, I remember back in the day, you would walk into a bookshop and all the Sci-fi/Fantasy books would be in one section, displayed in alphabetical order, by author.

I'm old enough to remember when there was a section for sci-fi books, and fantasy was somewhere else, along with the comics. Fantasy only got melded into sci-fi in the '80s.

Richard wrote: "I'm old enough to remember when there was a section for sci-fi books, and fantasy was somewhere else, along with the comics. Fantasy only got melded into sci-fi in the '80s."

I must be showing my age. The '80s was probably the time I started reading Sci-fi/Fantasy.

Starting in the 50's was pretty interesting. Books, cigarettes, and gasoline was less than 25 cents. The ultimate starting place for science fiction was the library, easy to find, old and new, shelved side by side. Because it was still manageable back then, it was actually possible to read in chronological order the stories and authors, allowing a person to develop an alternate sense of history based on the reality of what if, and not, this is the way it is. Book stores were all over the place, each one representing the unique whims of the individual owners.

The problem is speculative fiction is science fiction but more philosophical and less scientific. Get it? This book is a classic example of brilliant speculative fiction but not too much science. There is a balance and where the balance point is - well that depends on you, and ref. Edwards's book you = 99.9% of nothing. By default we are all drifting around thinking we are everything but in fact we are not.

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