Who Do You Think Are The Most Neglected and Forgotten Writers?

[dask]

Pretty bubbles.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Since we're overanalyzing things, what would be an example of speculative fiction that isn't science fiction, fantasy, horror, or alt-history?

Yeah, the term "speculative fiction" is useless.

 

[worldofmutes]

Can’t Post-Modern also be speculative? I don’t know, not Post-Modern but take Blindness by José Saramago.
It’s not genre fiction.

Edit; I read a romance fiction recently by AS Byatt „Possession” which is very speculative. The whole book was written in Epistolary, and was about two fictional Victorian authors having an oldschool English affair. More specifically, it was about two Oxford students uncovering documents and correspondents between them. I would say that was very speculative, without at all being science fiction. You would have to read it to know what I mean.

 

[Toby Frost]

Everything I like is Real Science Fiction. Everything I don't like is a travesty. I think that settles the argument.

 

[Randy M.]

The historical has no overlap with horror or SF here but it surely should to produce alternative history, all horror is a subset of fantasy, and either all fantasy and SF is speculative (if you agree with Heinlein and Ellison and such like), in which case it should cover them both completely, or it is another expression for SF, in which case fantasy shouldn't overlap with it at all. Either way it's wrong. I don't see how any SF could not be considered speculative. Basically, its a bit iffy. Perhaps I'll draw a proper one sometime

My blinders were on regarding historical fiction which I don't often read in spite of often reading "old stuff." As for Speculative Fiction -- I'm not thinking of examples outside sf/f/h. About the use of "Speculative," it reads to me as a way of keeping SF as a descriptive while broadening the landscape the descriptive describes. It's a sort of terminological empire-building, subsuming fantasy and horror but making clear s.f. is the dominate genre, which in the '50s and '60s would have been the general perspective, I think.

The original diagram, though, does show Horror correctly. Not all horror is fantasy, unless you insist that all horror has a supernatural or alien cause, thus edging out of the canon Red Dragon and even more problematically, Psycho in spite of Robert Bloch's body of work, much of which is non-supernatural though published in horror venues (notably anthologies). Most horror readers would blow raspberries at that. A more complete diagram would show it overlapping a circle labelled "Mystery/detection/crime" or something equivalent.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Everything I like is Real Science Fiction. Everything I don't like is a travesty. I think that settles the argument.

Only in the quantum physical universe, not in the Newtonian.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'd really like to see a non-Euclidian Venn diagram.

"Things that are Cthulhu"
"Things that are not Cthulhu"
"Things that dwell between dimensions"

 

[psikeyhackr]

Here you go:

View attachment 85753

The Speculative circle should be shrunk to fit inside Science Fiction and shifted to exclude Fantasy but include some Historical. I think that would match what Heinlein meant.

 

[Bick]

The original diagram, though, does show Horror correctly. Not all horror is fantasy...

I don't think it does, and it is. My opinion...

Psycho

Definitely not horror - it's a chilling thriller, but it's set in the mundane real world with no supernatural elements.

 

[Bick]

The Speculative circle should be shrunk to fit inside Science Fiction and shifted to exclude Fantasy but include some Historical. I think that would match what Heinlein meant.

Yeah, but Heinlein was wrong so I wasn't copying his idea religiously.

 

[Bick]

I'd really like to see a non-Euclidian Venn diagram.

"Things that are Cthulhu"
"Things that are not Cthulhu"
"Things that dwell between dimensions"

Please draw this Toby

 

[dask]

Definitely not horror - it's a chilling thriller, but it's set in the mundane real world with no supernatural elements.

If I understand what you’re saying correctly, for a story to be horror it needs to contain the supernatural?

 

[Bick]

If I understand what you’re saying correctly, for a story to be horror it needs to contain the supernatural?

For me, that’s right. I know other folk see it differently

 

[dask]

Okay.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Yeah, but Heinlein was wrong so I wasn't copying his idea religiously.

HERESEY!!!

May you be drowned in flat cats like Captain Kirk.

 

[Randy M.]

I don't think it does, and it is. My opinion...


Definitely not horror - it's a chilling thriller, but it's set in the mundane real world with no supernatural elements.

Horror doesn't need to have supernatural elements. That's why it overlaps mystery/crime. (Of course, my opinion. But I can support it. )

 

[Toby Frost]

If we're talking about fantasy (especially if the more talented an author is, the more deserving they are of renown), I'd nominate Mervyn Peake's first two Gormenghast novels (the third was written when he was ill and literally losing the plot, so doesn't really count). Peake was an incredibly talented man - an author, poet, playwright and artist - who had a difficult life and died way too young.

The Gormenghast books are long and not exactly light (but then neither is The Lord of the Rings) and don't create a massive alternative world (he does depth rather than breadth). But the characters are excellent, the events often exciting, and the prose is very close to poetry at points (there are poems and illustrations too, and they're very good).

I sometimes wonder whether, if fortunes had been different, the shops would be full of derivative novels about people called Marcus Scream in the castle of Fortinbras, written in much worse prose and with far less imagination. As it is, Titus Groan and Gormenghast don't really have a clear antecedent and didn't create a school, and are something of a curiosity. They deserve a resurgence.

 

[hitmouse]

If we're talking about fantasy (especially if the more talented an author is, the more deserving they are of renown), I'd nominate Mervyn Peake's first two Gormenghast novels (the third was written when he was ill and literally losing the plot, so doesn't really count). Peake was an incredibly talented man - an author, poet, playwright and artist - who had a difficult life and died way too young.

The Gormenghast books are long and not exactly light (but then neither is The Lord of the Rings) and don't create a massive alternative world (he does depth rather than breadth). But the characters are excellent, the events often exciting, and the prose is very close to poetry at points (there are poems and illustrations too, and they're very good).

I sometimes wonder whether, if fortunes had been different, the shops would be full of derivative novels about people called Marcus Scream in the castle of Fortinbras, written in much worse prose and with far less imagination. As it is, Titus Groan and Gormenghast don't really have a clear antecedent and didn't create a school, and are something of a curiosity. They deserve a resurgence.

Very reasonable points. It does make me question what we mean here by neglected and forgotten. Peake is not on the same scale of recognition as Tolkein et al, but he does have a very dedicated fanbase, academic studies, occasional TV adaptations, and he is never out of print.. Importantly, those people who like Peake tend to really like him, and are often affected lifelong, in a way that only a few fantasy authors (Kenneth Graham, AA Milne, John Masefield, Tolkein) ever manage.

 

[Randy M.]

Very reasonable points. It does make me question what we mean here by neglected and forgotten. Peake is not on the same scale of recognition as Tolkein et al, but he does have a very dedicated fanbase, academic studies, occasional TV adaptations, and he is never out of print.. Importantly, those people who like Peake tend to really like him, and are often affected lifelong, in a way that only a few fantasy authors (Kenneth Graham, AA Milne, John Masefield, Tolkein) ever manage.

And I believe that Mary Gentle and Michael Moorcock, among others, have tipped their authorial hats to Peake in some of their fiction.

 

[BAYLOR]

If we're talking about fantasy (especially if the more talented an author is, the more deserving they are of renown), I'd nominate Mervyn Peake's first two Gormenghast novels (the third was written when he was ill and literally losing the plot, so doesn't really count). Peake was an incredibly talented man - an author, poet, playwright and artist - who had a difficult life and died way too young.

The Gormenghast books are long and not exactly light (but then neither is The Lord of the Rings) and don't create a massive alternative world (he does depth rather than breadth). But the characters are excellent, the events often exciting, and the prose is very close to poetry at points (there are poems and illustrations too, and they're very good).

I sometimes wonder whether, if fortunes had been different, the shops would be full of derivative novels about people called Marcus Scream in the castle of Fortinbras, written in much worse prose and with far less imagination. As it is, Titus Groan and Gormenghast don't really have a clear antecedent and didn't create a school, and are something of a curiosity. They deserve a resurgence.

It's not fantasy even though classified as such.

It doesn't fit into any of the conventional literary categories .