eating cucumbers without permission...

To try and ensure I take useful notes this semester, I’m planning to write them up here. Any points I want to argue about, at least. Given that I never know what I think until I write it down, it could be a valuable experience.

First-week lectures didn’t go deep enough to be worth much comment, so I’ll only bother with one of them.

ENGL2075: Speculative Fictions

Naturally enough, the course started with a definition of “speculative fiction”. In this context it’s not a slightly-more-pretentious synonym of “science fiction”, but (supposedly) a superset of it. It’s intended to encompass all of gothic fiction, science fiction and magical realism; I say “supposedly” because I’m not sure that it does.

To quote from the course guide:

Speculative Fictions focuses upon these three fictional genres that introduce touches of the fantastic into a realistic milieu. […] Its guiding thesis is that in such modes the aim is not to provide imaginative escape to dreamlike fantasy realms, but rather to undermine faith in conventional notions of what is credibly real […]

Gothic fiction challenges us by suggesting that there are Bad Things out there, in the dark and nasty regions, where nobody goes: it’s right to be afraid of the dark, because that’s where the monsters are. Magical realism is similarly subversive, contrasting grimy realist narratives with deadpan mentions of angelic visitation, magic and the supernatural. We’re comfortable in our knowledge, here in the information age, and speculative fiction challenges that knowledge. A lot of science fiction does seem to fit well. “The Matrix” is an obvious example, spawning as it did a new wave of pop-philosophy on the nature of reality and the credibility of the senses.

The problem is that “science fiction” is incredibly hard to define. It’s an umbrella term covering everything from “Buck Rogers” space fantasy to realistic extrapolations from current technology. One end of the spectrum is just realist fiction with faster computers; the other is pure fantasy: there’s no science in “Star Wars”. The middle ground is better, but still far too broad. Stories about artificial intelligence question what it is to be human; stories featuring alien life threaten humanity’s place at the top of the food chain; and a lot of New Wave science fiction questions contemporary social mores. They’re undermining certain preconceived notions, yes, but it’s a stretch to say that they “undermine faith in conventional notions of what is credibly real.”