Vintage Tales discussion

JRR Tolkien's classic 'Lord of the Rings' is one of the most appreciated pieces of speculative fiction. I'm too dull to understand why.

What makes speculative fiction stories great?

I think all great stories, no matter the genre, have the same basic characteristics: a gripping plot, flawed characters who are not stereotypes, high-quality writing, etc. I think speculative fiction appeals to those who like to let their minds wander a bit more and aren't afraid to take a leap of faith in believability. Believability itself is a separate element both within and outside the context of the world that is created, and each should be judged separately. That's my take, anyway.

My opinion is pretty much the same as Roderick's. The qualities that make for great speculative fiction aren't essentially any different from those that make for great descriptive fiction (they both involve an imaginative, made-up element --that's why they're both fiction, not nonfiction).

But where a writer is employing a completely invented fantasy world (which Tolkien's Middle Earth basically is), he/she has to work much harder to convincingly bring it to life, and give it character and texture, than a writer would who's setting the work in the world readers already recognize. The never-equalled depth to which Tolkien does this in the LOTR saga is one factor in the enduring appreciation it commands. Another factor, IMO, is the moral quality of his vision.

Well put, Werner!

I often choose the term "speculative fiction" to describe what I personally like, as it seems broader. I'm sure there are definitions somewhere of each type, John, if you need to know this for some sort of assignment (you haven't said, but it seems likely...) so these are just my views, which might not be in line with official genres.

Like Roderick, I think it allows the mind to wander. I much prefer a "what if?" sort of book to a dreary saga. Something I can ponder over and use my imagination a bit. So for me, it's the ideas.

I tend to find more of this in Science Fiction, but then some speculative novels would not count as Science Fiction - and there are different sorts of SF anyway - hard SF, steampunk SF, cyberpunk SF, and so on. I get a bit lost :/

With Fantasy - which seems to have lost its prefix "Science" over the past few decades, there is as Werner says, a "completely invented fantasy world" - so there is more of a structure already laid down. For me, that means fewer exciting ideas to think about, but more imaginative elements to just soak up and immerse myself in. I'd put J.R.R. Tolkien's work, including The Lord of the Rings in this category, and also all the mythology he invented for England (as we don't seem to have any for ourselves.)

Both enjoyable, yet appealing to different facets or moods of the reader, I think.

Speculative fiction is that like those really weird books like the tentacle books and stuff? If so, then I don't read those. LOL.

I read fiction, fantasy and Science fiction books that have really good stories and that sends me on a rollercoaster ride until I stop reading them.

I'm already quite confused with all the different "genres" of fiction. This term "speculative fiction" just boggles the mind even more :(

If we think of fiction as being something like a great tree with a trunk that forks in two, we can see descriptive fiction as the fork of the tree that takes the real world of commonplace, agreed-on reality as its setting, and sets out to "describe" that reality, using fiction. ("General" fiction, mysteries, historical fiction, Westerns, historical and contemporary romance, etc. all branch out from this fork.)

Speculative fiction, on the other hand, is the fork that speculates about "what if?" something about our reality were (or actually is) different from the agreed-on picture of it: for instance, what if magic really worked? Or if space travel were possible? Or if this or that scientific breakthrough happened? Or if vampires or werewolves or both were actually real? If it's based on a naturalistic explanation, that kind of speculative fiction is science fiction, one big branch on this fork. The other big branch posits the idea (at least, as a literary conceit) that the supernatural is real. This branch divides nicely into fantasy, set in an invented world that's not our own, and supernatural fiction --the latter set in this world, but with a supernatural component to it imagined (ghosts, witches, vampires, the fae, etc.).

That schema and those definitions of the terms aren't universally accepted; some people would differ about this or that. But it's a system that makes sense to me, and I think is fairly widely accepted. Hope that helps!

Werner wrote: "If we think of fiction as being something like a great tree with a trunk that forks in two, we can see descriptive fiction as the fork of the tree that takes the real world of commonplace, agreed-o..."

Thanks, Werner, for the clarification. Just wondering: which branch of speculation fiction would "Frankenstein" fall under, science fiction or supernatural fiction?

Alice, I'd definitely classify Frankenstein as science fiction (in fact, it was required reading when I took a Univ. of Iowa correspondence course in science fiction back in the 90s, and Sam Moskowitz devotes a chapter to Mary Shelley in his excellent book, Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction. There's nothing supernatural about Victor's creation; it's presented as a strictly naturalistic, scientific project.

To be sure, it's "soft" science fiction (that is, the SF branch that doesn't try to extrapolate its premises from actual scientific knowledge, or actually explain how they work in those terms). The premise is just a literary conceit that lets the writer explore something he/she wants to explore, and we have to take the author's word that it's naturalistically possible --even if it isn't. (Shelley, by her own statement, didn't believe something like the creation of the Creature in the novel was possible in real life.) That contrasts with the "hard" SF tradition, in which every premise and development is strictly based on and extrapolated from actual known science, and the writers go to great lengths to explain how their premises are realistically plausible based on what we already know or already can do. Compared to this, some "soft" SF tropes (like FTL space travel, astral projection, psi powers, gravity-cancelling substances, etc.) may seem like they might as well be magic. But they aren't presented as magic, but as something that's within the structure of the rational, materialistic, cause-and-effect universe; the underlying world-view is conceptually vastly different from one that incorporates the idea of genuine magic. Does that make sense?

I get the drift of it. Thanks, Werner, for the detailed explanation. Boy, is the world getting too complicated or what! I must be getting old :)

Werner - I love your image of the tree! I knew in myself that what I meant by "speculative" was broader, but wasn't sure that was a universal description.

(And funnily enough Chris and I were only yesterday arguing about whether "soft" SF was actually ever used as a term. According to the statistics most couples argue about money. I don't think we've ever done that - neither of us can remember doing so anyway, but we have some great - er- "discussions" about myriad things...!)

I suppose just as the Ancients used the term "Natural Science" for what we call Philosophy, rather than Science, the terms within fiction have changed over the years. Some of the earliest time travel or spaceship stories now don't really seem to fit under SF and are more generally thought of as "classics".

"Classics," IMO, can actually be works from ANY genre, including science fiction, if they've stood the test of time and spoken to the thoughts and imaginations of generations of readers. I'd say that several SF works have fairly earned the status of classics, starting with the fountainhead of the genre, Sir Thomas More's Utopia back in the early 1500s. (That's SF of another sort, sociological SF, where the writer is speculating about social arrangements that don't actually exist in the real world --both "utopias" and dystopias.)

Yes, terminology in literary and book trade circles has evolved over time. (Our modern concept of "genres" in fiction really dates mostly from the 1920s, when the publishing industry got into the relatively new idea of "niche marketing.") In the early days of what we now think of as SF, for instance, there was no agreed-on name for it; H. G. Wells' early novels were marketed as "scientific romances."

He's actually the author I was thinking of ;)

Werner wrote: " In the early days of what we now think of as SF, for instance, there was no agreed-on name for it; H. G. Wells' early novels were marketed as "scientific romances." "

Hilarious! I don't remember any romance in his books, but I could be mistaken...

Oh come on Roderick! What about The History of Mr. Polly or Kipps (which I tend to get mixed up. Both about fantasy-fuelled young man with thoughts of love though, as I remember!) Then there's Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story, which I haven't read, but sounds a very different kettle of fish. H.G. Wells is one of my favourite authors, but I prefer his speculative works to the humorous whimsical ones.

Werner of course meant "romance" in its true sense.

So there really are tentacles?!!!

LOL! Thanks for the link Stacie. I wondered cuz one of my gr friends has been reading some really weird stuff like there's a tentacle stuck in my butt so I wondered if that was speculative fiction cuz I don't read stuff like that. LOL. :)

Okay awesome and everyone is fine. :)

Er - yes, but bemused but fine. Background/references?

And where is John??? Of message 1...

OK :D

Jean wrote: "Oh come on Roderick! What about The History of Mr. Polly or Kipps (which I tend to get mixed up. Both about fantasy-fuelled young man with thoughts of love though, as I r..."

Jean, I don't think I'd be caught dead reading "Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story" :-) I have read "The Food of the Gods" though, and I don't remember anything but overgrown cabbages, and big babies. Maybe there was "big" romance creating those "big" babies, but this memory of mine is diving in a cave if that happened :-)

@Stacie, overgrown cabbages, green tentacles? There was a reference to 'The Metamorphoses' by Kafka in that article. If we combine romance and speculative fiction what do we get when the caterpillar transforms to butterfly?

Paranormal romance --> H.G. Wells returns in 2000x?...

Run away.... :-)

PS> Monty Python did some gigs in London recently and they sold out in 30 seconds.

LOL Roderick - not a good title, I agree, but it sounds very forward-thinking about the emancipation of women for its time. As you would expect from Wells ;)

Ha! "Romance + Speculative Fiction + Metamorphoses=Silence of the Lambs! Thththththththththth!!! :-)"

Very good. I could picture the fava beans and Chianti with that! :-)

RE> Monty Python. I've heard they taped it and played it on Arte. Maybe it will show up on youtube soon.

Stacie - yes, on Kindle but not free there, so it will have to wait its turn :D

For what it's worth, I don't personally think of naturalistic horror, such as The Silence of the Lambs, as part of a common genre with supernatural horror; and I definitely wouldn't think of the former as speculative fiction, since it has no speculative characteristics. I know a lot of people in the book trade, and a lot of readers, think of "Horror" as a genre and lump anything horrific together. But for my part, I think genres are more usefully grouped by their subject matter (which is objective) than by their intended emotional effect, which is subjective. All supernatural tales, IMO, have much more in common with each other (whether they're horrific or not) in their essential ethos than they do with any kind of naturalistic horror.

This is a good example of the truth that genre classifications are subjective, and there's no one set system of universally agreed-on definitions! :-)

Good point Werner. I suppose I would think of it as "thriller" or "crime" if I had to choose a one-word genre, but those categories include novels which are far "cosier" (much as I hate that term!)

Yep, I've looked at what I shelved Red Dragon as, and it's mystery-crime in my own "system". But I do also say it's very, very dark. I suppose if I read the stuff more often than once in a blue moon, I might find a more specific term, but it wouldn't be "speculative", as the fantasies in that novel are all in the mind of the perpetrator. Maybe a term including "psychological"?

I missed Michael Dirda's review of classic horror stories which he published in the American Scholar last fall, but I just saw it today when I was reading a really good article on Sibelius in that journal. The link to Dirda's article is below.

"Of course, those with a limited amount of time or money might prefer a single-volume sampler. Among many notable anthologies of the uncanny, five are particularly outstanding: The Omnibus of Crime, edited by Dorothy L. Sayers (half the book is devoted to spooky stories); The Supernatural Omnibus, edited by Montague Summers; Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Wise Wagner and Herbert Fraser; The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Richard Dalby; and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert."

https://theamericanscholar.org/thirte...

Larry, when time permits, I'll definitely check out that article; thanks for the link! I've only read two out of the five anthologies he cites, the Wagner/Fraser one (which is actually divided into two parts, tales of purely natural terror and tales of the supernatural, terrifying or not) and the Oxford one; but I'd definitely echo his recommendation of both! A companion volume to the latter (with no overlapping content), The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, is also well worth a read.

Werner wrote: "Larry, when time permits, I'll definitely check out that article; thanks for the link! I've only read two out of the five anthologies he cites, the Wagner/Fraser one (which is actually divided into..."

The lurid cover is definitely over the top, but it's really the fact that he truly is "the grandmaster of the locked-room mystery" that makes me want to read The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr. This is the next to the last of the non-anthologies that Dirda recommends. Modern horror has little appeal to me. I much prefer the classic English tales that Dirda also seems to prefer. About the only modern horror stories that I like are Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot and a few by Dan Simmons, especially Song of Kali.

Larry, I join you in greatly preferring the older-school "horror" rather than the current crop of popular splatter-punk and schlock-fests. (Personally, I prefer the term "supernatural fiction" over "horror;" and if I'm reading something horrific, I'd rather it be supernatural than realistically natural --I find reality nowadays horrific enough.)

You might be interested in a couple of insightful articles by Christian thinkers, if you can get them through interlibrary loan. The older one is "Of Heroes and Devils: The Supernatural on Film" by Paul Leggett, from the Nov. 18, 1977 issue of Christianity Today (it deals with books as well as film, since much of the latter was inspired by the former), and a more recent one is "The Truth That Is Out There: The X-Files and the Return of Metaphysical Horror" by Lint Hatcher, from the October 1993 issue of Rutherford.