User blog:Cerne/What's in a genre?

Hello Conworld Wikia,

Yep, count on me to make a habit out of forgetting to put some things on my blog entries. It figures; by the time I finished that blog entry, I just wanted to get it posted and over with. I never bothered to check back, do a recap, and make sure everything was in there that I wanted in there. And I think I posted that entry really late at night, too. That might have made a difference.

Anyhoo.....

I had forgotten to say in the last leg of my entry that I now have nowhere to ask my questions on geology, planetology, astronomy, and so on. If I want to make any more progress on this aspect of my conworld, I am going to need to ask these questions somewhere. Strangely enough, there was a site URL mentioned somewhere in a book I bought on speculative astronomy. Which would be perfect because it would have been about the area of conworlding that I need help with, and it would have involved speculation. If I were to go there, I would be able to find/get specific answers to my questions and no one would think I was odd for doing so. The author of the book was Neil Comins so I could start there. I could also look for the book and find the URL... There are probably other sites for this sort of thing, too. Lots on Astronomy and terraforming, less on speculation.

Another thing I could do is just wing it. I mean, to try and find information on my own and then put it together myself. This approach has its risks: I may not get something completely right, and on a public site designed for sharing information this can be a rather big deal. It would be more difficult to tell which was based on reality and which wasn't. That got me thinking about the genre of my conworld, and what I intend for it to be. As of right now, it is a science fiction conworld based (preferably) on hard science. But this might need to change now that I might not get everything about my conworld accurate. Plus, I've been yearning to fudge things a little. Invent new elements and such. No doubt many other people who use the Conworld Wikia have and still are doing the same...it would help things to go faster, too.

A while back - I think a year or two ago - I was introduced to a new genre I had not heard of before: Speculative Fiction (Spec-fic). Interestingly, there is an even shorter abbreviation known as "SF" but this brings it into confusion with the Science Fiction or "Sci-fi" genre. They're both fiction but I was surprised to learn that they are not the same type of fiction. I am not going to bring up any sources for the former because Science Fiction tends to mean different things to different people. Some tend to use Science Fiction for anything futuristic, or that has space travel in it, and/or new technologies. Others use Science Fiction to mean anything that is based on real life science but that is set in an alternate present or future setting. Something that could exist in reality but doesn't. And then there are aliens and laser guns and space ships and such. Lots of different ways to define this genre. I'll lend my thoughts on this in a little while. But first: as it turns out, "Speculative Fiction" is any kind of fiction-based genre that entails some form of speculation. Yep, any fictional narrative or suggested scenario that involves asking "What if..." is essentially Speculative Fiction. That's a pretty big genre, with a pretty wide scope to cover. It could even cover Science Fiction as a sub-genre. More importantly, though, it means that you can do more in this genre without stepping outside of its "boundaries" - so to speak - and into another genre like Fantasy.

OK so now I have some explaining and clarifying to do. I'd already mentioned what Science Fiction may mean to other people, and I've also just described what Speculative Fiction could be. Now it's time for some comparing and contrasting. And yes, these will all be my own thoughts, in my own words, and with my own reasoning. I am not trying to change peoples' opinions or reiterate existing second-hand information so I don't want anyone nitpicking or verbally harassing me as they might do if I had posted this elsewhere.

First off, we have...

Science Fiction:
This genre seems to take place in a speculated future where the setting is linked to real life but where new technologies or new uses for existing technologies create new questions ro answer or new issues to think about that cannot or usually would not be encountered in the world right now. It is this new use of technology that primarily seems to drive the genre so there are certain prerequisites that it needs to have. These include


 * 1) humans or some link to them and/or the planet Earth as it exists today or will exist in the future;


 * 1) natural laws and scientific theories that exist exactly as they do in real life or that do not conflict with themselves in their new form (I.e. the theory changes but its previous applications do not change - they only add to the new form);
 * 2) in combination with #2, new discoveries that do not contradict existing natural laws or scientific theories unless they exist to change or add on to our understanding of those natural laws or scientific theories;
 * 3) a plot or sequence of events that differs from our own by a change in technology, how and why we use it, and what the implications are - as opposed to a change in the setting or the timeline (as we know it).

So for instance, if the story involves space colonies and/or finding extraterrestrial life, what gets us there is the invention of FTL space travel and not the presence of these things being somewhere already attainable. Likewise, in stories involving alien visitation and/or invasion, that is made possible by FTL space travel as well. We are simply assumed to not have known about it until the time extraterrestrial contact occurs. The key here is technology; the story progresses or is made possible precisely because the technology is different. The "fuzzy area" of course happens when we get a story about aliens that could possibly exist but that do not come into contact with humans during a hypothetical future. There is no link to humanity or Earth so the doors are still open (so to speak) as to what genre it could be. Since this includes what I am proposing for my conworld, some exploration of other genres is therefore necessary in order to make a more educated guess. So, next we have...

Fictional Realism:
This genre is very simple to explain. It encompasses many more works of fiction than we may realize, yet this is only because we don't know exactly what defines it and how extensive this definition can be. Basically, Fictional Realism is reality but with a different sequence of events. Nothing exists in the genre that could not have existed in reality. What makes the genre fictional is what happens in it to make it different from real life. That's it. If these events alone are to be regarded as the key to this genre, the prerequisites must then be Fictional Realism is probably the easiest genre of fiction to work with if you are willing to do a lot of research into real life history. People work with this genre all the time. In fact, there is a whole online bulletin board dedicated to it here. The Conworld Wikia is full of these kinds of projects, too, so if you are new here and are reading this entry then I recommend you check them out. Most of the projects here are collaborative, though, so they do tend to get quite elaborate and extensive. Just so you know.
 * 1) a setting on Earth that is (more or less) virtually identical to what it was like at any given time in real life, unless and until it changes as a result or side-effect of the different timeline;
 * 2) a history that is identical to Earth's history up to a certain point, but then differs from that of Earth after that point;
 * 3) any changes in the setting that do occur in the different timeline occurring because of that changed timeline - anything inevitable will either create the same effect that it did in real life or will contribute to a different setting altogether;

I should also say that this genre has several sub-genres within it. They are distinguished from each other by the extent of the changes in the alternate timeline and their implications on later events. We have alternate histories, which have just been described, where Earth's timeline is changed in a big way at some point in the past. We also have alternate realities in which the setting is basically the same but everything happens differently, to such an extent that nothing resembles real life even though the setting may still be the same. However (and here we get into another fuzzy area), since there is no historical connection with real life, this sub-genre could just as well be considered Speculative fiction as well. I don't know what to make of this, myself, which is why I am leaving the question open.

Then there are the multitude of works in which everything else is real but the story itself is fictional. This can still be considered Fictional Realism, even though history pretty much remains the same, because a small part of reality has changed for the sake of the work.

If the timeline changes during or after the present then the following additional prerequisites that determine whether or not the work still counts as Fictional Realism (and not some other genre) will be
 * 1) any major changes in the world or the setting in particular being possible today;
 * 2) a connection to a recognizable past so that it can be recognized as the future of something instead of its own distinct reality;
 * 3) no technological innovations that we are not already capable of in reality right now - bringing in new technology turns it into Science Fiction.

OK, next in the list of genres we have...

Speculative Fiction:
This genre, which I have already described to some extent earlier in this entry, is closely related to Fictional Realism. The difference between the two is still quite simple and straight-forward, though. Whereas Fictional Realism relies on what is different in the "plot," Speculative Fiction relies on what is different in the "setting." More specifically, this genre is driven by what exists in the setting of the work in question that isn't there in real life - something new that is added, something we are familiar with that is taken away, or something that has changed. This genre is the "poster child" of the Fiction supergenre because it asks "What if..." about everything. You could even say that the other two genres could be sub-genres within this genre. Or not. I'll get back to that later. In the meantime, the prerequisites for "spec-fic" are Depending on how serious and/or scientific you plan to be, there can be three additional prerequisites. They are So, yeah, the scope of Speculative Fiction can be vast and variable. It differs from Science Fiction in that an actual change in the setting may create an alternate reality that may prevent or discourage the scenario from happening in our future, whereas the whole purpose of Science Fiction is to ask those questions that could very well arise in our future. Speculative Fiction also differs from Fictional Realism in that the alternate reality being created is a result of more than a mere change in the timeline; the actual setting is different in one way or another, and an alternate reality is created in spite of any change in the timeline. I said earlier that I would return to the idea of Speculative Fiction being considered a supergenre wherein lie the two other genres of Science Fiction and Fictional Realism; I don't think this is correct, and I have given my reasons for saying so, but the question is still open to personal opinion so it depends on what you yourself think about it.
 * 1) the "What if..." question being applied to parts of the setting to make it different somehow ("What if the Earth were closer to the sun?" or "What if the mammoths never died out?" for example);
 * 2) implications that result from the change in setting being used as a plot device to drive or affect the story somehow.
 * 1) a set of natural laws and scientific theories that can be identical to that of reality or be partially or wholly different but that must be all-encompassing (they exist everywhere), universal (they exist all the time), and internally consistent (no contradictions);
 * 2) a theoretical framework for every "What if..." question as such that they rest on existing proponents of truth instead of being formulated right out of the blue (e.g. "If X and Y are true than Z should be possible" as opposed to "What if Z existed?");
 * 3) a use of analogy to something that is already true in real life in order to bolster and encourage the idea of it happening elsewhere (e.g. "If Mars has two moons then Earth could have had two moons as well").

Now I would like to introduce one more genre...

Fantasy:
This is another vast genre containing many sub-genres like Original Fantasy, High Fantasy, fables, fairy tales, folk tales, and so on. It is different from the other three genres in one major aspect: imagination and belief always take precedence over inference and educated guesses which are dictated by existing factors. As grounded as some works of fantasy may seem, if they are entirely limited to what can happen in real life or to the natural laws and principles of an alternate reality then they are not fantasy. The word "Fantasy" itself implies a freedom of the imagination or the depiction of a far-fetched ideal. So if that is the case, we then have the following prerequisites Fantasy works are like other forms of fiction in that they entertain and they very often make you think about things that go on in real life, but the scope of what you can do in this genre can be enough to turn some people away, particularly if they don't feel they are very imaginative or creative, or if they prefer to be governed by pre-existing rules. This latter factor is often the reason why many writers turn to "fanfics"; the rules are already in place so you don't need to do as much work.
 * 1) no restriction on what you want to happen in the story or scenario;
 * 2) a preference for what you want to happen rather than what you think will happen given the circumstances placed there by your readers and/or audiences;
 * 3) in-world rules that conform to the story's plot or that are intended to work as a plot device rather than as a tool to shape how the story will turn out.

.....

I remember watching Disney's animated film The Pagemaster when I was a kid. Fantasy was the name of the animated book character voiced by Whoopi Goldberg. The names of the other two animated books were Adventure and Horror. Now, while Fantasy is a true genre of fiction, the other two actually are not true genres at all. Rather, they are themes and styles that a work of fiction can be written in. For example, Horror can be applied across the four genres that I have described: it can work in Fictional Realism to give you something like George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it can work in Speculative Fiction to give you something like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, it can work in Science Fiction to give you something like James Cameron's Alien quadrilogy, and it can work in Fantasy to give you vampires, werewolves, zombies and demons. The same sort of thing can be done with the Adventure theme, as well as other themes like Romance, Suspense/Thriller and Comedy.

Likewise, there exists the thematic dichotomy of Utopia and Dystopia. These pertain more to the setting than to the theme or style of the work but they can accompany the genres of fiction in much the same way. It is better (and therefore more idyllic) to make someone happy but it is easier to make them unhappy, so we tend to see utopias more often in works of Science Fiction where some fantastic new technology has been developed to make peoples' lives easier whereas dystopias tend to be found more often in works of Fictional Realism where something has gone terribly wrong with the way things are going right now. Then again, we can also see dystopias in Science Fiction as well as utopias in Fictional Realism; for the latter, we can easily imagine some philosophy(-ies) being developed to improve peoples' relationships with one another.

And then there are the hybrid genres, like Science Fiction Fantasy (Star Wars being a classic example), which tend to blend the two parent genres together into something new. In these cases, exactly which parts should comprise what element - fantastical, speculative, etc. - of the new genre becomes even more obscure. There is even more controversy involved and you are less likely to arrive at a consensus. I would also need to go into even more specifics so I won't bother getting into any more of that here. It's really something that is better left for your readers/audiences to decide, anyway.

.....

After all of this consideration and deliberation, I now arrive back at the question of what genre my own main conworld is in. It isn't Science Fiction - at least not in the stricter or more concise use of the title - and it definitely isn't Fictional Realism because we can't possibly verify that something like it exists, even if it does have a good possibility of existing. Putting aside the notion that I feel it is an insult to the integrity of the conworlder to call their work Fantasy when you don't think it could exist at all, I only prioritize my imagination when I think I can get away with it without breaking any of the laws of our own reality. Otherwise I follow a strict process of cross-examination (right word?) whenever I come up with a new idea. That is largely what is responsible for my lack of progress on the Conworld Wikia so it can't be Fantasy. The only genre left is Speculative Fiction, and I think my conworld goes well in there.

In their list of fictional worlds, the Conworld Wikia has (or used to have) three categories into which all of the Wikia's projects were organized. They were: Realism, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. All of the alternate and futuristic histories were probably sorted into the Realism category (and rightfully so) but on occasion I also see projects like this one being put in there as well. I can understand that some people are proud and/or confident enough about their conworlds to call it Realism but the fact remains that if it has no actual ties to reality then it isn't Realism. It is that link with reality that we are looking for. As for my own conworld, I will probably put it into Science Fiction if only because it is the genre that is closest to what my conworld seems to be genre-wise. If we are not able and/or not permitted to choose how we want our conworld projects to be categorized then I will probably request a placement in the Science Fiction.

.....

Alright, looking back I can see I have just typed one hell of a long entry so I better stop now instead of using up more time thinking of a better way to end it. For reference, I didn't plan on the entry being this long. But now that it is, I'm going to post it anyway. This is not how I typically approach blog entries. With that said...

Thanks for reading.