Every now and then I feel the urge to branch out of science fiction and fantasy more. I generally do that for a bit, but I always return.
I am inspired by thoughts generated after reading Vandana Singh’s “A Speculative Manifesto”, an essay at the end of her collection The Woman Who Was a Planet and Other Stories. She opens the essay by stating that “the modern descendants of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Mahabharata are the genres of science fiction and fantasy, including various sub-genres like magic realism, alternate history and slipstream”. Then she asks the question, “But humanity has grown out of its childhood, as each of us grows out of it as individuals. Why not discard the old myths, legends, tall tales, and their modern counterparts, as we discard other childish things?”
I admit that the impetus for myself asking these questions is that I fall into the pattern of thinking that I
ought to be spending my time on something “more important”.
In her essay, Singh starts by talking about the deep importance of myth for us humans, then discusses the revolutionary potential of speculative fiction, and the use of metaphor in both science fiction and fantasy. She ends the essay by pointing out that this stuff is fun. You can read this essay here: A Speculative Manifesto by Vandana Singh.
She’s right, of course, on all of the above. I continue to return to science fiction and fantasy because other types of fiction don’t deliver the kinds of things I like to experience. The only thing I’d add to what she wrote is that while I do love the touching on the mythological and I deeply appreciate how the genre allows an author to view humankind by presenting something that is outside of humankind, I also just plain love a good idea story. That’s part of what I believe Singh means by “fun”; an exploration with “the universe as a grand stage”.
Poul Anderson on the same topic:
In this day when humankind has at last the power to win the freedom of the universe, astronautics is more than a set of technologies, more even than a magnificent adventure. Spaceflight is potentially the most meaningful thing that has happened since a half-ape first tamed fire, or first looked up at the sky in wonder. Incalculable material wealth, knowledge now unimaginable, growth of the spirit beyond all bounds, can be the lot of every man and woman in our future. Is this not worth thinking about, reading about, and hearing about?
Here I am in my mid-fifties, having read science fiction and fantasy for more than forty years, and I still love it. I hope I will stop questioning it.
