It's a Story: Storytelling, Science, and Reader Expectation
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniI've been doing this space opera thing for a good while now. When ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kinzel and I were first plotting out the Liaden books, back in nineteen-aught-eighty-three, we made some deliberate worldbuilding choices.
First, that the stories would be fun. That would be, fun for us to write and fun for our -- hopeful, at that point -- audience to read.
Second, that love, companionship, and partnership are more often than not survival traits. Without a reason to hang on one moment longer; or to make the last, desperate, gamble, most people will fail. (N.B. the crew of a US plane that crashed on the wrong side of the line during the Cold War, and were in exposed conditions (weather, as well as military) for some days before they were rescued. Many had already perished of their experience. Every single man that lived -- was married.)
Third, that the Liaden Universe(R) would be an Equal Opportunity Universe, bearing in mind that not all people are equally talented at all things.
Fourth, that the worldbuilding would be as tight as we could make it, and that we would not contravene the rules of our universe as stated.
******
Digression:
We were slightly ahead of the curve with the whole "romantic SF" thing, our publisher at the time killed the series after three books, and we slid into obscurity for ten years, during which time an entire generation of "romantic SF/F" writers grew up, some of whom like to think that they created the whole sub-genre single-handedly, and without chipping their nail polish. They didn't -- and neither did we. Look thou to Doc Smith, to C.L. Moore, to Katherine MacLean, Ursula LeGuin, C.J. Cherryh, Vonda N. McIntyre... As readers, we are what we've read. As writers, we are what we make of what we've read. Each generation builds upon the works of the generation preceding.
******
Back to the point:
Since we returned from the dead, we've had the opportunity to talk with -- and listen to -- quite a number of readers. Sometimes, we're asked questions, like:
1. How did "we" get to the conditions described in the Liaden Universe(R) from the conditions extant in our world today?
2. Why isn't there any mention of nanotech in the Liaden Universe? Surely a civilization so evolved would have worked out the overheating problems!
3. Whyever do the Liadens adhere to their outmoded breeding customs? Surely a civilization so evolved would realize the benefits of vat-grown children!
4. And so on...
These questions are interesting for the assumptions they make. For instance, there appears to be a touching belief extant among even very sophisticated readers that it is the job of science fiction to predict the future.
In fact, it is not the job of science fiction to predict the future. Science fiction has two responsibilities, as a literary form. First and foremost, science fiction is the literary form that asks the question
WHAT IF?
WHAT IF it were possible to have a star-spanning civilization?
WHAT IF the aliens aren't bug-eyed monsters, but people who look pretty much like everybody else?
WHAT IF the danger-points in alien contact after all aren't different biologies, but slightly different cultural assumptions and mores?
WHAT IF that cataclysmic event that spawned this universe wasn't an act of "Nature" at all?
The second responsibility science fiction has as a literary form is extrapolation. Science fiction is the form that says:
IF THIS GOES ON...
IF WE CONTINUE to rape the resources of our planet...
IF THE POLAR ICE CONTINUES to melt at an accelerated pace...
IF CLONING BECOMES commonplace...
IF. THIS. GOES. ON...
...what might the universe possibly look like? What are the possible ramifications of these events and/or actions? What possible solutions/defenses might be mounted? What possible repercussions might such solutions create? What change might possibly occur and might that be a good thing, a bad thing, or a null-value?
Science fiction is a literature of exploration, not prediction. And while it's an amusing game to point out all the times science fiction has been "right" -- Jules Verne's positing of Florida as the best location for a rocket launch to the moon, for instance -- the fact is that science fiction's prognostication batting average is pretty dismal.
More later...
kinzel and I were first plotting out the Liaden books, back in nineteen-aught-eighty-three, we made some deliberate worldbuilding choices.First, that the stories would be fun. That would be, fun for us to write and fun for our -- hopeful, at that point -- audience to read.
Second, that love, companionship, and partnership are more often than not survival traits. Without a reason to hang on one moment longer; or to make the last, desperate, gamble, most people will fail. (N.B. the crew of a US plane that crashed on the wrong side of the line during the Cold War, and were in exposed conditions (weather, as well as military) for some days before they were rescued. Many had already perished of their experience. Every single man that lived -- was married.)
Third, that the Liaden Universe(R) would be an Equal Opportunity Universe, bearing in mind that not all people are equally talented at all things.
Fourth, that the worldbuilding would be as tight as we could make it, and that we would not contravene the rules of our universe as stated.
Digression:
We were slightly ahead of the curve with the whole "romantic SF" thing, our publisher at the time killed the series after three books, and we slid into obscurity for ten years, during which time an entire generation of "romantic SF/F" writers grew up, some of whom like to think that they created the whole sub-genre single-handedly, and without chipping their nail polish. They didn't -- and neither did we. Look thou to Doc Smith, to C.L. Moore, to Katherine MacLean, Ursula LeGuin, C.J. Cherryh, Vonda N. McIntyre... As readers, we are what we've read. As writers, we are what we make of what we've read. Each generation builds upon the works of the generation preceding.
Back to the point:
Since we returned from the dead, we've had the opportunity to talk with -- and listen to -- quite a number of readers. Sometimes, we're asked questions, like:
1. How did "we" get to the conditions described in the Liaden Universe(R) from the conditions extant in our world today?
2. Why isn't there any mention of nanotech in the Liaden Universe? Surely a civilization so evolved would have worked out the overheating problems!
3. Whyever do the Liadens adhere to their outmoded breeding customs? Surely a civilization so evolved would realize the benefits of vat-grown children!
4. And so on...
These questions are interesting for the assumptions they make. For instance, there appears to be a touching belief extant among even very sophisticated readers that it is the job of science fiction to predict the future.
In fact, it is not the job of science fiction to predict the future. Science fiction has two responsibilities, as a literary form. First and foremost, science fiction is the literary form that asks the question
WHAT IF it were possible to have a star-spanning civilization?
WHAT IF the aliens aren't bug-eyed monsters, but people who look pretty much like everybody else?
WHAT IF the danger-points in alien contact after all aren't different biologies, but slightly different cultural assumptions and mores?
WHAT IF that cataclysmic event that spawned this universe wasn't an act of "Nature" at all?
The second responsibility science fiction has as a literary form is extrapolation. Science fiction is the form that says:
IF WE CONTINUE to rape the resources of our planet...
IF THE POLAR ICE CONTINUES to melt at an accelerated pace...
IF CLONING BECOMES commonplace...
IF. THIS. GOES. ON...
...what might the universe possibly look like? What are the possible ramifications of these events and/or actions? What possible solutions/defenses might be mounted? What possible repercussions might such solutions create? What change might possibly occur and might that be a good thing, a bad thing, or a null-value?
Science fiction is a literature of exploration, not prediction. And while it's an amusing game to point out all the times science fiction has been "right" -- Jules Verne's positing of Florida as the best location for a rocket launch to the moon, for instance -- the fact is that science fiction's prognostication batting average is pretty dismal.
More later...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
sf's prediction record
Date: 2004-09-21 09:03 am (UTC)Re: sf's prediction record
Date: 2004-09-21 10:06 am (UTC)Possibly true. But the point stands that it's not the job of science fiction to predict. And those readers who labor under the delusion that SF is a predictive literature, which will lay out How The Future Will Be, are doomed to disappointment.
Granted, there are SF writers who deliberately and conscientiously construct near-future worlds based on best predictions -- their own and those of professional futurologists. But those worlds, are, IMHO, built in the service of "What If," "If This Goes On," and general good storytelling -- from a desire to explore, as opposed to predict.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 10:18 am (UTC)Add to the general confusion the fact that the meaning of the categories keeps changing, and you've got a Right Mess. Listen to Dave Hartwell, and you'll discover that the Liaden books aren't Space Opera at all, though what they then exactly are is left as an exercise for the student. Since the intent of the authors is to write Space Opera, that's what we persist in calling them (insert genteel auctorial raspberry here).
I once had the ...humbling experience... of listening to a young man at a convention tell his friend that said friend had to read Conflict of Honors. When the friend -- reasonably enough -- wanted a Little More Information, the first young man hesitated for a moment, obviously flipping through his available cubbyholes and finally came up with:
"It's Military SF."
I don't think that cutting up the genre into yet more sub-genres is the way to go. On the other hand, I don't really think that a push to redefining SF as the Mythology of the Future, or some such, is going to fly, either...
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 01:37 pm (UTC)I've always thought of the Liaden books as straight space opera, but I suppose space opera belongs more to the huge Good versus Evil conflicts of things like Star Wars. What you seem to write (and I do, as well) is Science Fiction Romances... not in the marketing sense, but in the literary definitional sense: "works with extravagant characters, remote and exotic places, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love or mysterious and supernatural experiences." (From my copy of A Handbook to Literature). In particular, the definition includes: "A work relatively free of the more restrictive aspects of realistic verisimilitude."
If you take the traditional view of science fiction as being hard, crunchy extrapolations of what might happen based on what actually could happen, then books like the Liaden series that seem to float above that would seem to qualify as a hybrid thing, a science fiction romance that uses some of the tropes and settings of science fiction without dwelling on the verisimilitude.
My view, anyway. I like romances, of the literary variety. People reading my stories hoping for the hard and crunchy will be sorely disappointed, but my stories aren't fantasies as marketing defines the term.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 10:19 am (UTC)I suppose coming from a perspective as someone who largely reads fantasy rather than hard science fiction I just accept that the author's world isn't going to be our future unless that's actually the premise of the story. It kind of confuses me that people do expect SF to reflect real life to such an extent.
That being said, I've always wondered the how/whys of dramliza (sp? I don't have the books available to check) so maybe I'm just more prone to pick apart the more fantastic elements than other people.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 12:46 pm (UTC)Speaking to my own set of protocols, I make the distinction between "people who live in books" and people who don't live in books, which allows me to believe in multiple-worlds-that-are-not-this-one without even breaking a sweat.
I was once part of a panel which was charged by con programming with discussing whether science fiction stories needed characters. The panelists being all of one mind on the subject (Yes. Science fiction stories need characters. Stories are about people. Next question?), it was looking like becoming a Very Short Panel, when someone spoke up from the audience to put forward her point of view. And her point of view was that all that character stuff got in the way of the cool science problem, which is what she was reading science fiction for.
Clearly, this lady is not an ideal reader for Liaden Universe material *g* -- and yet she wants is what we'll agree are science fiction stories. The problem is that the filter is so coarse ("Sci-fi?" says the bookstore clerk. "Oh, sure, yeah. Right over there." Points and goes back to reading his magazine.) that she has a hard time reliably finding Her Sort. And imagine her dismay, should a well-meaning friend who is in it for the characters, the romance or the adventure, loan her a Really Good Read...
Matching readers to what they want to read is, rather astonishingly, difficult. And people want to read 'way different things, many of them filed under the exact same subject in the bookstores.
I've always wondered the how/whys of dramliza...
The dramliz? You'll be wanting Crystal Soldier, for sure, but moreso, Crystal Dragon.
Back later. Gotta go write
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 01:40 pm (UTC)The dramliz? You'll be wanting Crystal Soldier, for sure, but moreso, Crystal Dragon.
Back later. Gotta go write
Oooh, that's a nasty tease. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 02:04 pm (UTC)Who thought up that panel? You can't have a story without a people involved otherwise nothing would ever happen. You can have a story with flat people, obviously, that don't get in the way of what's happening in the plot but I've really never seen the point myself. One of the reasons I don't read really hard sf is because the science gets in the way of the story. So I guess I'm basically the reverse of the woman you mentioned.
Of course that's why your books and I get along so well :-)
That Really Good Read...
Date: 2004-09-24 07:57 pm (UTC)This brings to mind the enduring question--where to direct people to the Liaden Universe? I have been, for various reasons, suggesting people start with AGENT OF CHANGE and its two hatchlings, either in my old 3 volume set or in the MMP trade, and then let them go in whatever direction they'd like from that point. Another friend (whom I infected with the Liaden virus) insists on starting chronologically, with LOCAL CUSTOM. I say there's a risk, especially with guys--they're not in love with the universe yet, and the character interaction might overwhelm them. (As her spouse said, "It's a romance. It's a GOOD romance, but it's an SF romance.")
Yet recently, the risk the other way shows up as well--a literate new friend (a physicist taking time out to raise and home school three daughters) was being hit from both me and a different mutual friend (another infectee..I'm such a virus...) and read AOC. She was rather disappointed, after our build-up (perhaps first book syndrome, which any series can have--after all, we're just getting started with our ideas? Perhaps Del Rey's insisting on a rousing Space Opera was too much for our reader?) but after talking with me at a party about the universe, what I found interesting about the characters, etc. she decided to give the second book a try.
She just finished the last one this past week. I gave her the "Crystal Warrior" link. (Heh-heh-heh) She's waiting for the mutual friend's chapbooks to arrive.
So--where do you usually suggest fans start? Or do you ask what they enjoy reading, and try to pin down part of the time line from there?
This brings up other thoughts, which I will take to my own LJ.... (I think that's a "which"....)
Re: That Really Good Read...
Date: 2004-09-25 02:09 pm (UTC)I usually ask if they prefer to read things in "universe" or in publication order, and go from there. OTOH, veteran Friends of Liad seem pretty adamant that the Core Three (_Agent of Change_, _Conflict of Honors_ and _Carpe Diem_) must be read first, but even there some disagreement creeps in between those who think it best to start with _AoC_ and those who favor starting with _CoH_.
The controversy over where to begin reading Liaden books started immediately upon publication of _CoH_. There are a good number of readers who just plain like Shan and Priscilla better. (Including one fan who cornered me at a con for a time that probably wasn't nearly as long as it seemed,demanding to know why we had gotten "sidetracked" into writing about Val Con and Miri, who this particular reader felt were a cruel and malicious waste of trees. I pointed out that Val Con and Miri move the action; I pointed out, dern it, that we wrote them first and that _CoH_ was an afterthought, an accident; I pointed out that it would have been a Whole Different Story Arc with Val Con and Miri excised. Nothing I said made the least impression...)
Ace thought it was a good idea to start reissuing the series in mass markets with _Local Custom_, so they'd begin with something "new" and also, I think, to try to entice the Romantic SF and SF Romance readers to try the series. With the result that we've been told that (1) _Local Custom_ is the weakest book of the series (2) _Local Custom_ is wonderful (3) Did we know that _Local Custom_ and _Scout's Progress_ read like Romances? We did it on purpose? Why in Ghu's name would we have done that?
Not to mention the woman who wrote me a raging email because we had killed her Favorite Character Ever in the second book, which she felt to be a Betrayal of the highest order, and she Absolutely Refused to read anything else in a universe from which this character had departed.
Funny, how we all have different tastes and opinions *g*.
Re: That Really Good Read...
Date: 2004-09-25 10:43 pm (UTC)Okay, I am totally brain dead from meds, LBb and conference. Which book does she consider the second, and whom is she so upset about losing?
I mean, all the cats and the Tree are all right, as well as the turtles... %^)
Re: That Really Good Read...
Date: 2004-09-26 06:29 am (UTC)It was kind of a wonderful compliment gone horribly wrong. I mean, we want readers to connect with our characters and believe them to be real people, right? This reader had obviously bonded closely with the character, or she wouldn't have felt so betrayed and angry. But her reaction -- that she refused to continue having a relationship with a universe from which that character was absent was -- upsetting. To the extent that fiction is "practice" for so-called Real Life, you gotta wonder if she'd ever lost a "real world" friend; and, if not, how in Ghod's name she was going to handle the loss when it came...
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 02:38 pm (UTC)Write on.... {VBG}
I'll
Date: 2004-09-23 02:07 pm (UTC)hmmmm..not toe self when lottery is won - must create my own publishing house just for books *I* like...
Re: I'll
Date: 2004-09-24 07:43 pm (UTC)Writer Beverly A. Hale's dream is just that--to found the perfect YA/children's book house.
I just buy my tickets and hope... %^) I'd like to create a grant for people to apply for--only requirement you have to have written one book I really adored. If you win the grant, you get something like $25,000 to write the next book--and then something like 1% of your royalties (when you sell the ms) you pay back into a grant trust, so eventually it might support itself. Writer gets a supplemental living wage while writing, gets lion's share when sells, and gives back to future writers.
Or something like that.
The bigger the lotto win, the bigger the yearly grant...