Why Do You Read This Crazy Stuff?

[sleigh]

I'm teaching a Lit class looking at SF & Fantasy. How would you explain to those students (most of whom don't actually seem to read the genre) why you read this weird stuff? What is it about sf&f that you love? (Warning: I'm likely to relay your answers to the class -- anonymously, of course!)

Comments

[fireun.livejournal.com]

So many people will wave fantasy reading away as escapism- but honestly many of the times and situations the characters find themselves in I would rather not encounter myself, thank you very much. So it is definitely not that for me.

I think some of what draws me to fantasy and science fiction is seeing how people react to and survive the odds. I read mostly very character driven books, so I am always more interested in how the people make out than the grand plot in general. I read the dark stuff, the stuff that skitters around the edge of horror and flirts with the macab, and I honestly enjoy cheering for the victories even as I twitch and sweat my way through the harder stuff.

I also really enjoy anything where culture meets culture and get to explore each other, and you get a lot of that in both well done science fiction and fantasy.

Hope that helps! I don't think I have ever had to try and determine what it is about the genre as a whole that I enjoy before.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I _love_ culture vs. culture!

Love exploring the differences

[slweippert.livejournal.com]

I read Sci-Fi/fantasy for a look at a different world that the characters take as normal. A world where magic is everyday is so different than ours. The restrictions on what you can and can't do when traveling through space compared to my hum-drum drive to the grocery store. The characters have to think and act differently than we do.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Your comment reminds me of J.R.R. Tolkien's response to critics who derided fairy stories and fantasy as escapism: "Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

When I was a tiny little girl of 6, as a kindergarten graduation present, I was given a compilation of fantasy stories (http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Treasury-Childrens-Literature-Untermeyer/dp/0307165221) that I read endlessly through my grade school years. At the same time, our school readers were classic Dick and Jane simplicity but the final section of each reader was all fantasy, usually some sort of talking animal stories. These were my favorite.

So, I was primed for switching to SF as I got older and finished reading all the fantasy in our school library. I think the switch to SF was easy because it was during the years when we were regularly landing men on the moon and bringing them home again. Space was very much part of the everyday news then.

K.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Me too! I started reading fairy tales, then myths, then science fiction, and then fantasy. The fantastic has always interested me much more than reality.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Good point -- I wonder if there _was_ something about the time... and I wonder what about _this_ time could do the same.

It's late and I ramble...

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

The problem as I see it with present day inspiration is the lack of any. We lack the endless possibilities of space travel having already axed it from our country. I find the number of movies revolving around the human brain/memory/psyche interesting because it's one of the last dimensions not given up on or invalidated.

I miss the optimism of older SF/F. Yes, things fell apart and whole planets were ruined, but we were going places as a species, in big ships that travel the stars and use freaky fuel and astronavigation.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

A while back I realized that I read SF/fantasy for the same reason I read history and travel books: I get enough real life in, y'know, real life; I want to read about things that I would never actually experience.

What SF and fantasy have in common is the "what if": This (faster-than-light space travel, telepathy, magic, living side-by-side with other sentient species...) isn't real, but what if it were? How would it affect us? How do we live with it? What can we do with it? I enjoy stories that show me what life could be like, or might be like if it were different, much more than stories that merely show me what is.

As Death said in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather: "You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Like that!

[parsleigh.livejournal.com]

That is a great explanation. I find it hard to articulate why I love the genre and this sums it up nicely.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I had to sit and think about it, because my visceral reaction was simply, "Because stories about real life can be really boring." That might not be very useful for Steve's lecture. :-)

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

In sf and fantasy anything is possible, the limits of our reality need not apply.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I do like that in sf&f, as a writer I'm not confined by what's actually out there: I can create my own situations and problems depending on the theme of the story.

[grrm.livejournal.com]

Ray guns! Aliens with tentacles!! Spacegirls in bubble helmets and brass bikinis!!! Spacegirls in bubble helmets and brass bikinis WITH RAY GUNS!!!

What's not to love?

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I thought that was Gardner's answer! :-)

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I like SF/F because it tends to do two particular things I enjoy:

1. Teach me about some other place. Yeah, the place is fictional, but still, the whole intellectual exercise of seeing how things are done elsewhere is neat, and since the characters are, if not human, at least relatable-by-humans, then their thoughts about their world are in some way relevant to ways humans might think about their world.

Shorter answer: SF/F demonstrates that one's local space (family, neighborhood, city, country) does not have a lock on "this is how things are done." Once you open to the notion that other people in other places may do things in different ways and that's fine, that's very powerful.

2. Semi-related: SF/F can address issues that exist in the real world without getting bogged down in real-world clutter. It becomes a thought-experiment. The fiction sets control-limits on certain variables and then looks at how things change. Depending on how well the thought-experiment is done, it gives new insights in how our world works.

SF does this through "what if" and sometimes metaphor; Fantasy does this mostly through metaphor.

Another advantage of doing this thought-experiment in SF/F (instead of "realistic" fiction) is that you can offload the baggage of the subject being too close. Want to talk about the effects of war on young soldiers and their relations back home? You can set the story in Vietnam, or you can write The Forever War.

Had TFW been set in Vietnam, (a) it would have been too close to home for some people to be able to look at the points without getting emotionally distracted, (b) it would not be considered as apt years later, despite the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan, and (c) certain issues were pushed beyond the bounds of reality (the relativistic time-shifts) which highlighted the points of the story even more.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Good example with Joe's Forever War. The "thought experiment" idea is what I like about the genre(s).

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Yes, all of this. Good explanation!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Wait, wait. This stuff is "fiction?"

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

hee!

SF&F

[aerohudson.livejournal.com]

I am drawn to SF&F for one overarching reason. There are more detailed answers for me to be sure, but at the end of the day, its because anything is possible. Any setting, technology, magic system, world, civilization, etc. can be created. There's something exciting about plopping some deeply complex characters in the middle of a completely fabricated world and see what happens.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Because it is very often a lot more interesting and imaginative than "regular" fiction. I'll read anything - if it keeps my interest, I keep reading. Mostly, that seems to be this type of stuff.
When the author needs to think about basics, and not just assume them, it makes it a lot more immersive, imo.