Science Fiction, SF and Genre Mixup
Monday, September 6, 2010 at 8:00AMContinuing the theme of Genres - In the post cyber-punk SciFi world Neal Stephenson has emerged as one of the most influential and respected writers of Speculative Fiction. His books including Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age and, in particular, the 3-book, 3500 page epic The Baroque Cycle, offer a scale of fiction narrative that is rarely seen in 21st century publishing. His books deal with big concepts - logic, cryptography, philosophy, alchemy, physics - and yet never loose touch of character driven (often action-packed) storytelling.
The video below is taken from a lecture Stephenson gave at Gresham College and in it it paints a compelling argument for collapsing Science Fiction as a problematic genre - confused too often with fantasy - and aligning a broader but more definable grouping under Speculative Fiction with Science Fiction as a sub-genre of Speculative Fiction rather than the other way around. His argument carries weight as much for Cinema (including gaming) as it does for literature; and he is a wonderfully articulate and insightful speaker to listen to.
He also writes his novels by hand with a pen….!
Reader Comments (1)
Or The Mongolian collaborative shared world project with Greg Bear.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/01/mongoliad-is-live-ne.html
http://mongoliad.com/