"Systemised magic and time travel not serious subjects" - discuss

[prizzley]

This quote is taken from a newspaper article about the Booker prizewinner Eleanor Catton and refers to plans for her next novel. The full quote added "outside fiction for children".

Yesterday evening I enjoyed a talk on fantasy writing, where the speaker listed the greatest fantasy authors and the fantasy books that have topped the bestseller charts.

It seems we still have a long way to go. Bizarrely, the journalist also writes - wait for it - Children's fantasies!

If such writers are so dismissive of fantasy for grownups, it's no wonder we struggle to interest agents.

 

[allmywires]

well, I definitely disagree. It's a foolish person - and a writer no less! - who can't understand the importance of mirroring of real-life society in speculative fiction and the powers of exploration within the massive genre of alternative speculative universes.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Umm no I don't find them all that serious - my stories deal with abuse, rape, incest, family relationships, love, teen pregnancy etc In comparison the time travel elements and the magic system do feel trivial.

My time travel is more fantasy than sci-fi though (involve a mouse called Hickory and a clock).

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Something doesn't have to be a "serious subject" to be of interest to adults. Growing up doesn't banish one's sense of humor. Mostly.

Which is not to say that I believe magic and time travel can't be handled seriously, either. It depends on the book, and also on your definition of "serious".

That said, I don't handle them seriously, myself, but then again, I don't handle much of anything seriously. I have gotten in trouble in Challenge stories by taking too snide or sarcastic or whimsical approach to things that are generally considered "serious subjects".

 

[alchemist]

Another book snob. I dismiss her notions.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Bless them, imagine how much colour their life must lack... No magic?

 

[prizzley]

My next project contains a form of time travel, which only magic users can operate. I haven't tackled the science behind it yet, but I intend to research it very seriously.

Anya, I love the Hickory & clock idea.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I went fantasy just to make it easy on myself. The clues as to how to work the time machine are embedded in Agatha Christie's Hound of Death, Sherlock Holmes, a nursery rhyme book and Alice in Wonderland. (OK maybe I have given it serious thought lol) Hickory is the familiar of Old Father Time. Basically it opens a wall in one world that opens in Merlin's cave on Earth.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Hounds of Death and Father Time. Sounds pretty serious to me.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Less so when Hickory the mouse and the White Rabbit get involved

 

[Mirannan]

I went fantasy just to make it easy on myself. The clues as to how to work the time machine are embedded in Agatha Christie's Hound of Death, Sherlock Holmes, a nursery rhyme book and Alice in Wonderland. (OK maybe I have given it serious thought lol) Hickory is the familiar of Old Father Time. Basically it opens a wall in one world that opens in Merlin's cave on Earth.

Interesting. BTW, quick derailing question; what are the actual titles of the two Alice books? They are usually named wrongly. (Don't cheat by looking it up. )

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Err...Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass? Without cheating, so probably wrong.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

First one is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Second one, I think, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found.

I've exploited the ten year gap in Carroll/Dodgson's journals and his migraines/seizures to suggest Alice Liddell wasn't the real inspiration. She was his cover so he didn't have to admit to a girl with pea-green hair and her boyfriend, Merlin, who was blond with blue eyes. (Neither Alice nor Merlin were impressed when they saw the illustrations )

 

[ZombieWife]

Another book snob. I dismiss her notions.

It's small-mindedness and a lack of imagination. Also poor literacy skills in regard to critical thinking. A topic or concept is only as limiting and "non-serious" as you make it.

The only thing this person's comment elicits from me is an eye roll.

 

[prizzley]

It's small-mindedness and a lack of imagination.

I could have forgive her (some people just don't get fantasy), but since she writes fantasy for children, it's a dig with self-interest and that's just unacceptable!

 

[Ursa major]

People say all sorts of odd things; such as Margaret Attwood repeating on the BBC in the last couple of weeks her view that "science fiction has space ships and monsters" (which is true of some of it) in a way that strongly suggests that it must contain one or both of these. (That's the implication, when she uses the absence of these to prove that she doesn't write science fiction).


I suppose she feels she's being (playfully? smuggly?) clever when she says these things. But to me it suggests one of:

• she really believes it (which makes her look either foolish or wilfully ignorant)
• she is joking, but knows that many hearing her are ignorant enough to believe her (and can remain ignorant of the truth, because any SF they read without space ships and monsters must be speculative fiction not SF) and perhaps thinks she might benefit from this, because
• she really is concerned that her standing in the Literary world would be undermined if she admitted to writing SF (a concern that would suggest she might have a rather low opinion of readers of, and critics in, the Literary genre)
• she is joking and simply doesn't care that people may not realise it, and that she is, in effect, persuading people not to read SF (apart from her own work in the genre, obviously**).

None of these paint her in a good light, at least in my view. By all means identify traits in books that one doesn't like, but words that turn readers away from whole genres (because how would they know that a monster or space ship won't appear in a book labelled as SF?) is just plain wrong.

[/rant]


** - Which has the unpleasant whiff of self-interest (that prizzley suggested may surround Ms Catton's rather foolish statement), which might be captured thus: "You want to read SF, but are worried it might taint your literary soul? Read my books safe in the knowledge that your literary soul is safe in my hands." And she can laugh all the way to the bank, at the expense of other writers and of her readers (in the sense that they'll be abstaining from reading some marvellous books).

 

[HareBrain]

I could have forgive her (some people just don't get fantasy), but since she writes fantasy for children, it's a dig with self-interest and that's just unacceptable!

Who actually said the thing about time travel and magic? The journalist or Eleanor Catton? It's a bit unclear and some people seem to be assuming one and some the other.

 

[Ogma]

HareBrain, I was wondering the exact same thing. I don't understand why people are getting so worked up about these comments. People like different things. Some people are prone to be derogatory about things that they are not interested in. For example, if those people are not into football, they might regard winning a match as a pointless endeavour. Is that going to put one football fan off? If someone from a Flat Earth Society is interviewed in a paper and says the world is really flat, is that going to have any bearing on the sale of globes? I think not.

Statements of this type may be made thoughtlessly or humorously. They may be made with the intention of appealing to a specific audience which has already made its mind up on the subject, or they may be intended to spark controversy (and notoriety). But I very much doubt that they have any long term impact on the popularity of SF. If anything, they only succeed in alienating potential readers of literary fiction who are offended by the disparagement of their interests.

 

[Toby Frost]

Do you have a link to this article? It sounds quite interesting, in a bad way.

To address just that quote, time travel is an important subject because the passage of time itself is an important subject. Almost everyone has some sort of regret that they would try to put right if they could, or some sort of worry or hope for the future. Who wouldn't want to at least have a go? When a character uses a time machine to go back and kill Hitler, ask that girl out, make up with their dad, the author is necessarily talking about loss and regret. Those are important subjects, or at least they will be when some literary writer picks them up and makes a second-rate job of what SF writers have been doing for decades.

I'm a little more bothered by systemised magic. Partly because it feels a bit like a contradiction in terms, but more because it suggests that sort of world-building which takes up time for useful stuff like getting your book written. However, while working out in insane detail what fire magic will do when combined with blood magic (make curry, I suppose) won't result in anything terribly relevant to the human condition, there are a lot of people interested in reading that sort of thing.

 

[Ursa major]

I don't understand why people are getting so worked up about these comments.

It depends on who says them. If a big name** says it in the mass media (as in being interviewed on the TV on or on a national radio station, or in a national newspaper), it may have an effect. But if Bob the builder, or Tanya the car hire company marketing manager, says it down the pub after a couple of drinks, who really cares? (Unless they're telling you that your Romance novel, "Isn't a proper book," obviously.)

As the saying goes: With Power comes Responsibility.



** - Being the just-voted winner of the Man Booker Prize counts, at least for a while.