Wife and I just came back from a cookout with some of our dearest friends. I took the opportunity to practice my "pitching" skills with regard to my recently completed novel. The friend hosting the party proved a good sounding board. I've been thinking a great deal about my hook and while I shy away from referring to this particular work as science fiction, I can't deny the presence of such elements. Kurt Vonnegut once had a similar dilemma.
I think it's in the introduction to Slaughterhouse Five where Vonnegut writes about his reluctance to accept his work as science fiction because such works were typically urinated upon by literary critics. But despite such critical obtuseness - which unfortunately is too common - the genre bears many titans...Vonnegut, of course, being among them. Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Philip K. Dick have accomplished much in making the genre respectable from a literary standpoint; and it would be insulting to discuss such literary success within the genre without mentioning HG Wells and Jules Verne. And who could neglect the woman whom I regard as the mother of science fiction - Mary Shelley?
Science fiction works best when embedded as a sub-genre within literary fiction - meaning, the story attempts to articulate a uniquely human truth which is only discoverable after considering humanity's relationship with technology. And given the accelerated state of human culture, one that changes so rapidly in the face of new means, how can anyone decry as irrelevant the only literary genre which considers the effect such convenience bears on the human condition?
The problem is that the genre is host to much pulp. There are many who would regard such a description as an insult but I do not use the term disparagingly. Pulp exists to apply to most people most of the time. This is to say that it is merely common, not necessarily bad. Comic books are pulp and I don't think I know any avid readers who weren't first introduced to the written word via comic books - avid male readers at least...I tend to find females more attracted to the works of Judy Bloom and R.L Stine.
As we age, our tastes change representing a migration from such humble beginnings toward greater and more complex characters and plot lines. Critics are always looking for that next step forward in identifying new narrative truths which is why they are reluctant to regard Stan Lee similarly to a Ray Bradbury...not that one is better than the other, but they are each experimenting with two grossly different storytelling methods and are therefore incomparable in any literary sense.
There's no doubt that the crux of my novel rests in technological advancement - namely, whether or not the presence of a maintenance assessment application in a robot constitutes an instinct of self-preservation. I'm reluctant to describe it this way because it sounds like the plot of a plethora of pre-existing tales of living machines. Terminator, 2001 - hell, even Short Circuit all deal with this theme. So I need to describe this plot element while differentiating it from existing narratives.
This will be my homework for the week.
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