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Genre Fiction as FanFic
By Dave Klecha | November 9, 2006
I’m going to be seeing some of my favorite fanficcers tomorrow, and that reminded me I’ve been thinking about the place of fanfic in literature for some time now. The kerfluffle that Scalzi started back in the summer has now run its course, I feel fully confident that not only will what I have to say be ignored, but considered irrelevant by anyone who does happen across it.
I’m timely like that.
Anyway, the simple thought that occurred to me is, on some level or another most genre fiction could be considered fanfic of some stripe or another. Certainly not of the “Harry and Hermione doing what I think they ought to be doing, instead” strain, but insofar as fanfic could be considered critical commentary (per Henry Jenkins), then I think much of modern genre literature qualifies as well.
Look, for starters, at the aforementioned Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, a work variously described as, I paraphrase, “a Heinlein tribute novel.” Scalzi himself is an avowed Heinlein fan, so it’s not a great stretch to call his original novel a bit of Heinlein fanfic. Again, not in the traditional sense that occasionally brews heated debate of copyright infringement, but the kind that is deeply inspired and influenced by its antecedents, giving nods and winks and little touches that can ground you in the tradition and let you know that this book is part of the ongoing dialogue with the past.
Lois McMaster Bujold is occasionally rumored to have filed the Starfleet serial numbers off of one of her early stories and reminted it Shards of Honor, one of her first novels sold to Baen. Whether the rumor is true enough or not, enough people have seen the influence there to recognize, again, the antecedent.
And those are the two examples that come off the top of my head.
But more than just that, it’s instructive to see how many prominent authors of today have come out of fandom. Of the most recent Campbell winners, Scalzi (2006), Elizabeth Bear (2005), Jay Lake (2004), Wen Spencer (2003), Jo Walton* (2002), Kristine Smith (2001), and Cory Doctorow (2000), all came out of an early background that included quite a bit of science fiction and fantasy, if not outright involvement in fandom. Regardless of whether or not their fiction is a direct “hi how are ya” to the favorite authors and stories of their personal golden era, they come with existing conceptions of what genre fiction is and is not, and their own fiction is going to participate in that dialogue.
Which, in part, is what I think keeps genre fiction in their individual ghettos. So as fanfic is not approachable from the mainstream non-fan or casual fan, genre fiction, in many ways, is not approachable by those who do not have an entry point into the dialogue. (Especially as heated as that dialogue can get at some points.)
So, to me, that means genre fiction must strike a balance. The critical commentary and dialogue inherent in genre fiction–assessing and responding to the work of the previous generation–is absolutely necessary, yet it is just as necessary to provide points by which the mainstream can access genre. As it seems to me that culture balkanizes to some degree–genres and subgenres being carved out of what had once been “general fiction”–it becomes that much more important to be able to reach across those lines and draw in people who do not ordinarily consider themselves science fiction or fantasy readers.
But that’s just me. What about you?
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*I think. Probably.
Topics: science fiction, writing | 8 Comments »
November 10th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Yep, Jo Walton was a fan before being a pro. Though I don’t think she wrote fanfic, since her current view on it is pretty negative.
November 10th, 2006 at 11:22 am
I have nothing against fanfic in any of its forms, but what your hypothesis doesn’t appear to note is that the kind of fandom that forms the background for many of us has nothing to do with writing or reading fanfic.
You’re certainly right that fandom, and a background in it, can act to reinforce genre preconceptions. It can also instil a nuanced understanding of the genre’s strengths and best effects. Everything’s a tradeoff.
For that matter, the strain of SF fandom that some of us have been in for years is one in which the participants’ reading habits tend to broaden out from a strictly genre diet as they get older. I go to SF conventions to, as much as anything else, talk with old fannish friends about mainstream novels, current science, politics, literary controversies, etc. We’re friends because of our shared background as SF buffs, but it’s been a long time since any of us read only SF. There’s a real extent to which SF is more of a “ghetto” in professional circles than in fannish ones.
November 10th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Well, I wasn’t trying to say they were all fanfic authors before they made it big, just all fans, even if just little “f.” Which makes them part of the dialogue.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
It’s funny that Jay Lake brought me here, ’cause it exactly echoes something I said to Jay just a few weeks ago: When I started to write in my own universe and have my own copyrights and all that, I didn’t think of myself as a writer, but as a fan of a niche genre so small that other than one obscure series (Offut’s Spaceways) and a desperate release now and then, there was nothing like it available unless I wrote some of it.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Patrick:
No, I guess I didn’t really address that, but I know it’s something that I’ve experienced in fandom as well. SF fandom certainly does seem to have a character where nearly anything goes; at the last Penguicon in Detroit, itself a self-conscious hybrid of SF fandom and adjacent interests, my wife was able to attend a programming track that focused mainly on medicine–stories from the ER, the straight dope on bird flu and so on. The WorldCons I’ve attended tend to be even better for that kind of thing, and I know one of my first exposures to fandom, through the Lois Bujold fan mailing list, drove that point home quite well.
But aside from that, part of what I’m trying to say is that, akin to Brunching Shuttlecock’s Geek Hierarchy, fanfic and “serious” genre fiction sit along the same spectrum, where some of have tried to erect concrete barriers between the two, even though they tend to spring from similar sources.
November 12th, 2006 at 10:27 am
People write what they like to read. When you get SF written by people who don’t like to read it, you usually get things like Lessing’s _Shikasta_ and Piercy’s _He, She and It_ (_Body of Glass_).
I agree that people who read nothing but SF and write from that position can be in danger of disappearing up their own blaster muzzles, and I agree that this sort of thing does exist, but I don’t think it’s pandering to the expectations of fandom that causes it or Niven et al’s _Falling Angels_ would be the most popular book among fans, instead of generally causing them faint embarrassment.
Most SF writers I know read widely in and out of genre. If SF is in dialogue with itself, it’s in dialogue with a lot of other things too — including science, politics and history. And really any book is in dialogue with something — with the possible exception of _Islandia_.
Delany has talked about SF reading protocols, and there was a thread on Making Light about Link’s _Magic for Beginners_ talking about how for an SF reader a zombie really is a zombie, and might additionally be symbolic, but for a mainstream reader a zombie is symbolic first. I think this protocol issue is what can make SF challenging for someone who doesn’t have it, but I don’t think the correct answer is dumbing down the SF.
Also, with most genres, there’s a lot of similarity. Every romance, every mystery is, if not just like the next, recognisably a close cousin. This is becoming true of some kinds of fantasy, but with SF, inside that spaceship cover you could be getting anything. It’s not surprising that while this is a big part of the appeal to some readers, others are disconcerted when they find that _Dune_ and _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ have the same cover. (In the old British editions this was literally true.) The things SF writers learn from reading each other and which new readers find challenging are not the same old stories in new colours (which a lot of readers like) but complex techniques of communicating information.
I think it’s quite legitimate to write for a reader who doesn’t need you to stop to explain that a space station is in orbit around a planet (as opposed to kept up by fairy spider dust) because the reader knows that — and the reader who doesn’t know it isn’t the reader you have in mind.
Also, as people have already said, having a background in fandom doesn’t necessarily have much or anything to do with fanfic — my views on fanfic — strongly opposed until after the author’s death unless with permission — haven’t changed, and I have been and remain a fan.
November 12th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Jo Walton:
Well, again, no argument, and I’m not exactly standing up as a defender of fanfic, per se, it’s just a notion that occurred to me, that if you accept Henry Jenkins’ premise, then you can also apply that “critical” construct toward the more mainstream of genre literature. Which isn’t to say that science fiction does not enter dialogue with a lot of other things; I think your own novel Farthing adequately expressed such a dialogue with its originating political milieu.
The question, to my mind, is what makes Farthing, for instance, a book of a different genre than Robert Harris’s Fatherland. Superficially they are not different–both of the subgenre “alternate history,” both of a popular sub-subgenre that imagines WWII and its outcome differently. yet your novel is embraced by fandom, while Harris’s does not seem to be. Now, it could be argued by a critic (which I’m not) that Harris does not engage in as much of a dialogue with political science or culture or his present-day milieu, but I think it can also be said that he does not engage with the legacy of the alternate history corner of genre and genre fandom, which I think you do, perhaps in part by virtue of your own legacy within it. You (and I and every other writer or aspirant out there) writes what they like to read, on balance, and what we’ve read tends to creep into what we’re writing.
Which, again, is not to say that it’s fanfic, as the term is generally applied. Just that one could, perhaps, extend the definition to apply to a lot of things, and in doing so create a multidimensional spectrum in which individual works are more or less influenced by the fannish inclinations of their authors. In one most extreme corner you might have the Crichtons and Vonneguts and Harrises who write genre fiction, but aren’t generally acknowledged to do so, and in the other extreme are folks who write the sort of derivative, unlicensed fiction that attempts to most slavishly copy the source material. Arrayed through the middle ground are all those works that dialogue with or access their forebears to greater and lesser degrees (with probably another axis for more or less tangential).
November 12th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
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