How Do You Like Your Speculative Fiction? A Guest Post from Sarah Higbee
How Do You Like Your Speculative Fiction?
During this winter, I’ve been engrossed in desert-based fantasy, all sweaty effort trudging up and down dunes and worrying about where the next drop of water is coming from, which has been an enjoyable escape from the rain lashing down outside. When thinking about it, I’ve coined the phrase Sand and Sorcery – so reading that, did you wince and roll your eyes at yet another stupidly named sub-sub-genre designed to confuse and alienate potential newcomers? Or shrug your shoulders and grin?
As a reader and reviewer, I am very much divided on the issue of sub-genres. On one hand, I am grateful for the kind of nifty short-hand provided by labels such swords and sorcery or fairytale retellings. I’m in the business of trying to cajole folks to pick up this marvellous book I’ve just completed and experience the same magic I did – therefore it’s no good fervently recommending The Hunger Games to someone who hates dystopian science fiction and is somewhat allergic to teenage protagonists. I’d like to think that part of my task as reviewer is to ensure that sort of mismatch doesn’t occur on my watch.
However, I am also uncomfortably aware that by raising these very flags, there will be a number of readers visiting my blog who take one look at the dystopian sci fi and YA genre labels and immediately dismiss the book. However, it is well characterised, the worldbuilding is deft and effective without overdoing the techie flourishes and Suzanne Collins has some lovely barbed humour at the expense of our consumerist society embedded within the dystopia. If that YA label was replaced with something along the lines of Brave New World meets Big Brother in that both these classic books both depict an uprising against an unjust, highly centralised system, then perhaps some of those science fiction fans who won’t go near The Hunger Games might have given it a chance and enjoyed it. But would that frighten off the teenage audience who this YA adventure is aimed at?
As a writer, I am even more ambivalent about this business of pinning a genre-specific strand on my work. In common with most authors I know, I start out with a particular vision of what I’m writing, but somewhere during the weeks and months of the creative process, it always turns into something else. Often I am unsure what I’ve written until I’ve completed at least a couple of editing passes, when I’ve pared back the excess words, got rid of the dead-end plotlines and distilled the character arcs into a coherent journey.
So when I am asked to sum up my own work and put a label on it, that can be a tricky ask. It requires me to have the clarity to stand back from the creative process, ignore the initial impulse that drove me to write the book in the first place and then search through all the sub-genres floating around and find the most suitable. No wonder newbie writers get tied up into such knots over this requirement.
It is crucial for agents and acquisition editors, however, who need to be able to see at a glance whether this submission is going to be yet another one of dozens in a sub-genre they already have covered. Or if this is something fresh and quirky that takes the concept in a wholly different direction, like Sarah’s wonderful Tide Dragons series, which is an epic Japanese fantasy adventure.
What about you? How do you regard the use of sub-genre labels – are you divided about their use, as I am? Or do you have a firm opinion, one way or another? I’d love to hear what you think!
Sarah Jane Higbee
Born the same year as the Russians launched Sputnik, I confidently expected that by the time I reached adulthood, the human race would have a pioneer colony on the Moon and be heading off towards Mars. So I was at a loss to know what to do once I realised the Final Frontier wasn’t an option and rather lost my head – I tried a lot of jobs I didn’t like and married a totally unsuitable man.
Now I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I’ll never leave Earth, I have a lovely time writing science fiction and fantasy novels while teaching Creative Writing at Northbrook College in Worthing. I’ve had a number of short stories, articles and poems published – the most recent being my story ‘Miranda’s Tempest’ which appeared last year in Fox Spirit’s anthology Eve of War. I recently signed a publishing contract with Grimbold Publishing for my science fiction novel Netted, which is due to be released in 2019.
I live in Littlehampton on the English south coast with a wonderful husband and a ridiculous number of books. I can be found online chatting about books at my book review blog https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/ and you’re very welcome to pop onto my website www.sjhigbee.com and my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/sjhigbeeauthor/.
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