One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts (why sci-fi)?

[rai]

We have discussed 'what makes a story sci-fi?'. I have a question about this one story (One Ordinary Day, with peanuts) a story by Shirley Jackson (who wrote "The Lottery" ).

The story "One ordinary day, with peanuts" was published in 'The magazine of Science Fiction and fantasy' and has been anthologised as science fiction. However, I do not see how it ever was Sci-fi. There are no ray guns or no time shifts or no anything scientific or futuristic that I can tell.

It could be an episoide of "The Twilight Zone" but that to me does not make it science fiction.

Is this just a case where Science fiction publishers want to look like they are literary and have a 'name' author and so they publish it and call it sci-fi even tho it's no more sci-fi than a book like "No Country For Old Men" would be.

 

[Fried Egg]

Rai, I don't think I've read that particular story but one thing that struck me straight away after reading your question is that it was first published in the magazine of Science Fiction and fantasy. Perhaps then it's more fantasy than SF?

But like I said, without having actually read the story, I can't really comment.

 

[rai]

I don't want to give it away, you can google it and read the whole story (it's not bad) but it is more or less just what it says and ordinary day story.

But I just got an old anthology called "A Science Fiction Agrosy" which is more or less a science fiction anthology with this story in it. This anthology is from the 70s so I don't know if there was a distinction of 'fantasy' back then. Its not a story with Orcs and Goblins but just a fiction story.


Some stories (Such as "The Lottery") are not really sci-fi but you could say they are something like Post-apocalyptic and just don't say so. But I could not find that in "One Ordinary Day" story.

 

[Pyan]

For those that are interested:

One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts by Shirley Jackson

 

[biodroid]

Isn't SF about the ideas that could be a possibility in the future?

 

[Dave]

Well, I'd say that since such a kind of 'Jack Spratt and his wife' couldn't really exist that's why it is a fantasy. Fantasy as a genre once encompassed a much wider variety of stories that it only seems to today. I agree though that the 'fantastic' element of the story is really rather mundane.

 

[The Judge]

I'd not read the story before (thanks for the link, pyan), but my reading of it is that Mr Johnson and his wife aren't human. His insistence on not betting on a fire sign on a Wednesday, and his giving of a race tip which is more than a simple tip, indicate someone with other-worldly powers of some kind. The same with him picking the right man to bump into, as if he's reading minds.

Also the fact that he and his wife alternate being good and bad, with their seemingly seeing no difference between the two, makes me think aliens playing or experimenting.

 

[dask]

According to Damon Knight's introduction, the stories in his sf anthology A SCIENCE FICTION ARGOSY reflect sf's return, beginning in 1937, to the more "literary standards...it had abandoned in the nineteen-twenties under Hugo Gernsback and others" and confuses the issue even more by calling Miss Jackson's mini masterpiece "marvelously unclassifiable." Now that it's all clear...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

"Marvelously unclassifiable" often gets tossed in with the speculative fiction. I would say that the idea of the husband and wife switching places that way loosely fits as speculative fiction, because there is an outlandish "What if" to the concept.

But I thought it a remarkably tedious story, and the twist at the end didn't redeem it in my eyes. She could have set that up with a story half the length.

 

[Pyan]

But I thought it a remarkably tedious story, and the twist at the end didn't redeem it in my eyes. She could have set that up with a story half the length.

Don't forget that it was originally written for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, though, and as such was paid for on wordcount (as it still is - 6-9 cents per word, according to the current guidelines).

Not much incentive for cutting and tightening when you lose money by doing so...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Magazines and anthologies usually pay by the word.

The editor is paid to make sure the author doesn't milk the story for every penny. When it comes to including it in an anthology decades later, naturally the editor doesn't have any say as to it's length, but the one who bought it originally would have.

 

[dask]

"Marvelously unclassifiable" often gets tossed in with the speculative fiction. I would say that the idea of the husband and wife switching places that way loosely fits as speculative fiction, because there is an outlandish "What if" to the concept.

Jack Williamson agrees: "science fiction is many things to many people --- nowadays it is often speculative fantasy with no science at all." Makes it official, "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts" is science fiction for people who hate science fiction.