This rant got set off by a thread from Xitter, whereupon a person in an English lit grad program was openly mocked by a prof for their dislike of a particular white male author in the sainted canon. Publicly. And said person was also dismissed with the comment that they were a speculative-only reader and couldn’t appreciate the good stuff.
What? People are still saying and thinking such things in 2024? I was gobsmacked, not only because said prof made this statement in a public setting (apparently academia is free from the myriad of trainings that k-12 teachers go through about such behavior) but because this attitude is…so out of date. Archaic, even. Speculative fiction has moved beyond the so-called Golden Age of pulp fiction and into its own lyrical, eloquent modes of storytelling. I defy said prof to be that dismissive of Ursula K. Le Guin, to start with an older example that said prof might actually have some awareness of. But then there’s Ann Leckie, Nnedi Okorafor, N.K. Jemisin, and, and, and…that’s just a start. Oh wait. My examples are all women. Perhaps that’s really the issue with said prof. Only a certain type of white male experience is valid.
To which I say hah!
Furthermore, the assumption that writers of speculative fiction only read within the genre is rather discouraging, shall we say. And not exactly the case, even with the Golden Age writers. As I recall, Heinlein in particular referred to classical literary readings once in a while, and I’m sure he’s not the only one, just the writer that immediately comes to mind. Then there’s Cordwainer Smith, who undeniably has a literary readership background.
I can’t speak for other writers but my reading has always extended beyond genre. One of my early influences was John Steinbeck, thanks to a high school teacher who used Travels with Charley as a textbook for an advanced writing class. We studied Steinbeck’s word choices and imagery, and reading Charley led me to the rest of Steinbeck’s work, including some of his early writing which…verges on the speculative side.
Then, in college, I spent time reading not just Tolstoy but several other Russian novelists, as well as the more traditional contemporary literary options. I suppose it says something that I don’t remember most of the work. If anything, I veered back to American literature, particularly authors with western settings. Willa Cather. Ken Kesey. Ivan Doig. Norman Maclean. Molly Gloss. Jamie Ford. Luis Alberto Urrea. H. L. Davis. James Stevens. And many others over the past forty-some years of post-college adult reading life.
Contemporary western authors have had more of an influence on my writing most recently, including the development of The Cost of Power trilogy. I’m not talking about the pulp version of westerns but the more literary elements that set their work either in the recent past or modern era. Part of that influence has to do with the reality that I’ve lived in Oregon my entire life. It’s a setting I know well, both the Portland and Willamette Valley variants as well as the many different aspects of the world east of the Cascades. Not only is it a big landscape, but there’s a lot of stories that can be settled in the vastness of the western ecosphere–from the rainforests on the Coast, to the oak savannas of the Valley, to the logging towns of the Cascades, both east and west sides, to the wide open grasslands with the westernmost edge of the Rockies poking into the state. So why not include this setting in my work?
I’ve told cyberpunkish tales (The Netwalk Sequence), mostly set in the Cascades and Portland area. High fantasy (Goddess’s Honor) that happens primarily in an alternate world version of the Columbia Plateau and the north Willamette Valley. Contemporary fantasy (Klone’s Stronghold, Becoming Solo) that happens in an alternate world version of the Blue Mountains (Klone’s Stronghold) and an alternate world version of the west side Portland metro area (Becoming Solo). And then there’s the Martiniere books, also set in an alternate world version of northeastern Oregon.
My most significant influences are the writers (both well-known and not-so-well-known) who use a western setting. Who go beyond standard cookie-cutter tropes to tell stories based in the environment I know and love. The foundation for the Martiniere books was a talented but struggling rancher looking for funding to create her vision of biobots that could improve disease resistance and water uptake in grain crops. The Netwalk Sequence played off the notion that adventurous skier types might be able to create wireless communication implants (and there are a couple of stories that feature dust skiing on the Moon as a means for dealing with a crisis). Goddess’s Honor took the quest and hidden hero tropes and placed them in the Columbia Plateau/north Willamette Valley.
But to get to where I did with these books, I had to read beyond speculative fiction, to the literature of the region.
Am I successful? Well, one recent reviewer of the first book of The Cost of Power, Return, commented that he wanted to photograph some of the settings I describe. That’s a high compliment and one which I cherish (check out what Paul Weimer has to say about it here).
Hmm. Looking back over this post I guess it’s not as ranty as I feared it would be. Nonetheless, I still say “hah!” to any antiquated literature professor who thinks that speculative fiction writers only read within the genre.
Guess what, bub. We don’t.
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