Sherlock Holmes

I'm reading my way through the Sherlock Holmes canon - I just finished "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" - and I'm finding Doyle's writing style and choices very interesting.

He's made the choice to use one person as narrator - mostly Watson, occasionally Holmes - and to have that person only write down what they witness. This lack of omniscient narrator, combined with Doyle's interest in revealing Holmes' thought processes, leads to a truly astounding amount of exposition.  Doyle's writing style is  remarkably modern - in the sense of short declarative sentences and word choice, and lively enough to almost render the tell-not-showness invisible, or at least acceptable to modern eyes.

I'm enjoying his descriptive passages - he has quite the eye for landscape - and his characters.  He manages to give enough defining characteristics to make them interesting and individual to the mystery.

Characteristics of Science Fiction and Why I Read It

I read SF for a number of reasons:

• I love that SF encourages me to look at the world differently.
• I love the sense of wonder that infuses so much SF.
• I love that SF stretches my mind and my heart.
• I love that it’s sometimes so bizarre and yet manages to stay believable.

Characteristics of SF:

• Literature of ideas, full of thought experiments.  'What if' is a very important question.
• Speculates on science - hard and soft - and technology, and humanity’s relationship to them.
• Explores ethics - often through a good cautionary tale. Perhaps just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
• Tells a good story with lots of interesting characters, settings, and events.

Ultimately, Science Fiction is about us - human beings - who we are, what we are, and our relationships to other life, society, technology, and the world around us.

Science Fiction Readers' Advisory

Doing Science Fiction (SF) RA can be intimidating, as can RA in any genre you don't read. SF is filled with concepts unique to the genre, but the place to start is to remember that SF is literature.  Therefore, a lot of the basic RA questions apply – especially those pertaining to emotion and style.

• Mood – humor, drama, etc.
• Length – long, short, series.
• Storyline - Character-driven vs. plot-driven, complexity of the plot.
• Pacing – fast-paced, steady, leisurely.
• Writing Style – minimalist, lush, extensive description, etc.
• Characters – strong female, children, pets, etc.

However, some of the questions and many of the answers are unique to SF:

• Storyline - Character-driven vs plot-driven vs idea-driven.  An idea-driven story is one where the story and plot are generated by an idea - generally a thought experiment the author wants to explore.
• Setting - Past, present/near future, future, all of the above, space, alien planet, alternate universe.
• Characters – alien, robot, artificial intelligence.

The point of the next several posts in this blog, which talk about SF tropes, is to give you the vocabulary and understanding to be able to ask those questions, and be able to come up with a meaninful answer for your patron when they ask "What SF book should I read next?"

SF or Fantasy? - Genres

Is it SF?  Fantasy?  Something else?

• Stories that mix elements of SF and Fantasy so it’s sometimes hard to tell which genre the story belongs to.  
• This is only a problem if you feel you need to label. Mostly an issue for those who like splitting hairs for one reason or another; like if your library decides to label fantasy for your patrons’ sake, or for academics.  Your readers may or may not care, as long as they get the elements they want in their reading.
• Many common story elements could go either way, depending on how they’re used.  Dragons - magical beings or genetically engineered constructs? Time Travel - Magically or scientifically motivated?  Moving from point to point instantly without the aid of machinery - teleporation or apparation?
• Some stories are both - magical and technological universes intersect, for instant, and the fun is seeing how members from one universe operate in the other.

Books/Series
Pern series by Ann McCaffrey (also Lost Colony, Psionics)
Warlock series by Christopher Stasheff (also Lost Colony)
Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny

Utopia/Dystopia - Tropes

Utopia/Dystopia

• Utopia - perfect society, especially as regards politics, social structure, and the economy.  An environment that makes it easy for each person to be fulfilled and happy.
• Dystopia - the opposite of utopia.  A society in which the conditions are extremely bad.  Very difficult to be happy and/or fulfilled. Very possibly repressive society with strict rules that don’t necessarily make a whole lot of sense, and tend to make people miserable.  A lot of fear, hate, and possibly violence.  Often carries a current trend to extremes; cautionary tale.
• The reason I grouped them together is both that they are the two extremes of the same continuum, and that dystopias often masquerade as utopias.  Brave New World, for instance.  Everyone’s happy because they’re drugged.  In fact it’s a crime to be unhappy. Free thought is discouraged. People are prepared through genetic engineering and behavior modification to be happy in whatever role society assigns them to.  Not the utopia it appears in the beginning.
• Long history going back to Plato’s Republic 360 B.C.E.  
• Explores the question of happiness and fulfillment - can you have a society where everyone achieves those states?  Does it require a loss of freedom, and if so, is it a worthy trade?
• Have we outgrown Utopias as a society?  When I think of Utopias, I either think of an unacceptable number of strictures - personal happiness subsumed in the happiness of the whole, or I think the author is naive, and I tend to be a pretty optimistic person.
• Explores human reaction to repression and unhappiness.
• Explores methods of obtaining control.  

Books
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (also Post-apocalyptic)

Post-Apocalyptic - Tropes

Post-Apocalyptic

• Takes place in a world/place that recently suffered an apocalypse of some sort - ecological, disease, total war, alien invasion, etc.
• Can involve the destruction of Earth - no one can live there any more.
• Society might have broke down completely, be in disarray, or just profoundly changed. Circumstances for living have changed drastically.
• Can involve the destruction of most of the human race, savagery, slow death for everyone who survived the initial blast.
• Explores humanity’s relationship with and reaction to certain death, society building, grief.
• A story where the apocalypse happened long ago and society recovered would still technically be post-apocalyptic, but it doesn’t usually have a direct bearing on the story - only part of the explanation for why the society is the way it is.  
• Tend to be dark/depressing.
• If the apocalyptic society is space-faring, it almost always results in a spurt of moving off-world, maybe resulting in colonization.

Books
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (also Classic)
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (also Classic)
Feed by Mira Grant (also Horror)
This Time of Darkness by H.M. Hoover
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Time Travel/Manipulation - Tropes

Time Travel/Manipulation

• Something/someone traveling through time or time not traveling as it usually does – speeding up or slowing down.  Sometimes living your life out in real time is considered a form of time travel – traveling through time on the slow path.
• Many stories explore the implications of paradoxes or changing history.  What effect would saving that life have on the future?  Can time be changed? One of the more famous paradoxes is the Grandfather Paradox - what would happen if you went back in time and killed your own grandfather?
• The rules of time vary from story to story.  Can you change the past or not? Is time self-correcting or not? Can you travel into the past and the future?  It depends on what the author needs for the story.
• Time can get very complex.  Sometimes I don’t try to understand; I just go with the flow.  
• SubTropes:
• Lost in time – Stuck time travelers who can’t get home
• Individual time travel – often accidental, alien device, inventor
• Time travel organization – sometimes protecting time, sometimes mining/exploiting time, sometimes exploring time.
• Mission in time – time traveling with a mission to correct an error.
• Colonizing in time – settlements in other time periods – post-apocalyptic or prisons – usually in the deep past.

Books
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (also Humor)
Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov (Short Story)
Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle