Have you ever wished you were there when, say, the first critic dismissively called a style of blurry paintings that called attention to their brushwork and the surface of the painting rather than a naturalistic depiction of the subject “impressionism”? Or when the first critic dismissively called a style of overly serious plays set in the cramped homes of dysfunctional working-class families “kitchen-sink drama”? Or when the first critic appreciatively referred to a group of editors who purchase material with a particular eye towards experimentation in language, narrative structure and tone as “notorious style monkeys”? Well, Gentle Reader, over at the Chrononautic Log, it’s just moments too late to be in on the birth of a new subgenre of literature. Or a new name for an old subgenre. Or a sub-sub-genre. Anyway, it’s both an interesting and hilarious conversation.
Your Humble Blogger is, of course, a notorious plot freak. I want people to tell me stories. If something I am reading is telling me a good story, I am willing to forgive it a fair amount of other annoyances and problems. If something I am reading is telling me a lousy story, or telling it badly, I am unlikely to be impressed by a fair amount of other virtues. If something I am reading refuses to tell me a story at all, it had better have something else awfully good for me to make up for that lack. Of course, there are lots of things that do make up for it, and lots of things that make up for a mediocre story with wonderful characters, a wonderful world, and a wonderful style. But there are lots of other things that many of my friends and my Gentle Readers like that I find incredibly dull, simply because I’m looking for a story.
Sadly, this doesn’t help me at all when it comes to subgenres. For example, I pick up a book off the library shelf, and it’s fairly easy for me to identify it as “hard” sf. Good, I like the hard stuff. Often enough, a “hard” novel will take the form of a technological breakthrough (or a climate change, or a landing on a new world, or some such) which has unexpected and dangerous repercussions. The inventor (or explorer, or other nearby scientist) and his buddies must fix the problem before the Bad Thing happens. This requires understanding the way the thing works; the bulk of the book is taken up with a variety of attempts to solve the problem, which fail, but which provide new information to make another attempt. Heck, that’s a story right there.
There’s just as much “hard” science fiction that follows the other form, though, where a technological breakthrough (or a climate change, or a landing on a new world, or some such) has no unexpected or dangerous repercussions, the nearby scientists simply continue to study it for a while, or rather spend a while detailing the uninteresting and harmless repercussions, and then everybody talks about the philosophical implications. For fifty pages. That’s harder to tell from the book jacket.
It’s much the same for high fantasy, for cyberpunk, for alternate history, for magical realism, for graphic novels, for space opera, and, I suspect, for infernokrush. In a way, of course, it’s like saying I prefer good books to bad ones. However, I’m not sure I do prefer good books to bad ones. Always assuming, of course, that we can use some definition of ‘good’ that means something more than ‘what I like’. There are lots of people (Gentle Readers, some of ’em) who like things I don’t, simply because they like other things about novels (or short stories or movies) more than they like story. They like, oh, realistic and detailed characters, or relevance to political or social ideas, or stylecraft, or a sense of authenticity, or originality, or wit, or plausibility, or a moose. And heck, I like all of those things too, in their places. I just like story more.
Well, and different people like different things, I suppose, and that’s what makes the world interesting and fun.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.