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Nov. 3rd, 2011 04:19 pmI'm engaged in self-definition today.
While my time travel novel is certainly science fiction, it doesn't fit with other time travel novels. In fact, at this moment I'm not at all certain that time travel novels fit with each other. I spent a bunch of time last year identifying what other novels did when they explored time travel. I took notes on it. I dreamed about it. And now I've decided I have no idea where it fits in my dissertation.
A taxonomy of time travel novels is something I still need to think about, about, obviously, but isn't relevant to me right now. Pity. I have lots of very thoughtful notes*.
Anyhow, although I'd established what went into other novels, I couldn't fit mine in. Despite obvious period choices, it doesn't even match Crichton or Willis. My tropes are different. My underlying assumptions about character interaction and arcs are wholly different. I'm closer to Willis than Crichton, but still, I wasn't certain that I was in the same sub-genre. This was disconcerting. I set out to write an answer to their novels, in a way, why their history was not our past and could not be our past, and my answer took me out of the sub-genre I'd expected to write in. And suddenly I had 3/4 of a novel and didn't know where it belonged. I knew it belonged somewhere. My gut feeling was that I was writing something that was still very science fictional. But what sort of SF? Where does this creature belong? Where did it fit, if not with the time-travellers?
Just now I remembered H Beam Piper. I think I'm writing an alien encounter novel. The moment I thought 'alien encounter' the choice to focus on the characters and their interplay became standard, not exceptional, and the politics and implications of the scientists' choices became an aspect of the sub-genre. Thank you, Fuzzy Sapiens!
I still don't know if I need this for the dissertation, but I certainly needed it for myself.
*You know you're doing advanced study when lots of very thoughtful notes turn out to be entirely irrelevant to the whole.
While my time travel novel is certainly science fiction, it doesn't fit with other time travel novels. In fact, at this moment I'm not at all certain that time travel novels fit with each other. I spent a bunch of time last year identifying what other novels did when they explored time travel. I took notes on it. I dreamed about it. And now I've decided I have no idea where it fits in my dissertation.
A taxonomy of time travel novels is something I still need to think about, about, obviously, but isn't relevant to me right now. Pity. I have lots of very thoughtful notes*.
Anyhow, although I'd established what went into other novels, I couldn't fit mine in. Despite obvious period choices, it doesn't even match Crichton or Willis. My tropes are different. My underlying assumptions about character interaction and arcs are wholly different. I'm closer to Willis than Crichton, but still, I wasn't certain that I was in the same sub-genre. This was disconcerting. I set out to write an answer to their novels, in a way, why their history was not our past and could not be our past, and my answer took me out of the sub-genre I'd expected to write in. And suddenly I had 3/4 of a novel and didn't know where it belonged. I knew it belonged somewhere. My gut feeling was that I was writing something that was still very science fictional. But what sort of SF? Where does this creature belong? Where did it fit, if not with the time-travellers?
Just now I remembered H Beam Piper. I think I'm writing an alien encounter novel. The moment I thought 'alien encounter' the choice to focus on the characters and their interplay became standard, not exceptional, and the politics and implications of the scientists' choices became an aspect of the sub-genre. Thank you, Fuzzy Sapiens!
I still don't know if I need this for the dissertation, but I certainly needed it for myself.
*You know you're doing advanced study when lots of very thoughtful notes turn out to be entirely irrelevant to the whole.