Science Fiction...is Weird

 

Science fiction is such a weird genre. So weird. It's a whole spectrum of weirdness from Very Science to Very Fiction. I want to talk about a super-weird little corner I've been reading in recently, but in order for that to hit the way I'd like, I feel the need to give some context. Spoilers: more than half this post is going to be "context", and I stand by that decision.

Most of science fiction is a part of a family of genre fiction called speculative fiction. Regular fiction is imminently plausible. It follows the rules of the world as we know it; speculative fiction does not. Speculative fiction has dragons and magic and faster-than-light travel and monsters and demons and aliens.  

 Here have a graph:

It's a rough graph. I made it myself. Don't think too hard about it. The point is that there is more overlap between various genre fiction than you might imagine, and as you can see, there's a portion of science fiction that is not particularly speculative, and a part that's so speculative it becomes a little bit more fantasy or a little bit more horror or both. 

The bit of sci-fi that falls completely outside of speculative territory is fiction built completely on known science. It might be out of reach at the moment for various reasons, but it doesn't rely on discoveries that haven't been made yet. The Martian and Artemis, by Andy Weir are good examples of this. They both involve known planets with known technologies and known laws of physics, only a decade or two in the future. The first is about an astronaut stranded on Mars while NASA tries to rescue him, and the other is about a heist, but on the moon, with space gangsters. 

So that's the least weird end of the spectrum. Most sci-fi, though, relies on at least a couple bits of science we haven't reaaallly discovered yet. Only theorized about. Like hyperdrives and subspace, sentient life on other planets, and time travel. Hard sci-fi is the end of the genre that's really serious about making all the applied science super logical and all the theoretical science work...theoretically. A good example of this is To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini. There's no question it's speculative, but Paolini worked really hard to make it plausible. Same with the Illuminae series by Jay Kristoff and Aimee Kaufman. Very theoretical, but with each major element explained thoroughly and logically enough to make it feel like something that could actually happen. 

This is in contrast to something like a space opera, which is a story much more concerned with alien cultures and space battles, intergalactic politics, and weird extraterrestrial phenomena than actual science. This is considered soft sci-fi. We're definitely getting weirder. Examples include Star Wars, Star Trek, and a great number of Ray Bradbury's short stories.  

And theeennn there's the truly weird science fiction/space fantasy, like Escaping Exodus and its sequel Symbiosis, where you have space travel, but all the humans are just parasites living inside space whales. There's very little science involved, and most of it is just made up space whale anatomy, but it still manages to be really serious literature about how for a couple simple reasons, over a few generations a culture can grow up really sick and twisted and find it all not just normal but sacred. 

I'd put Dr. Who here on the spectrum too, if anyone was wondering, in the area where sci-fi, fantasy, and horror all overlap. Not every episode is all of those all the time, but the best ones are, I think. 

But Dr. Who is not even remotely as weird as sci-fi gets. We're finally to what I actually wanted to talk about, which is the science fiction that doesn't care about the science and doesn't care about the fiction. It just wants to mock itself, life, the universe, and everything.  It tends to get classified as science fiction comedy or comic science fiction, but I really wish there was a better subgenre label because it is so much more than just funny. It's savage social commentary and equal parts satire and full-on mocking. It's also one of the only places I've seen literary criticism so thoroughly built into story and such flagrant disregard of the fourth wall. 

The first book I ever read like this, and the most well-known is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This book takes how it doesn't take itself seriously very seriously, and if you don't know what I mean, the answer is 42. The trick is just figuring out what the question is. 

Then there's Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. I didn't actually love this book, but it's still a great representative of the subgenre. Basically all the civilizations in the known universe got tired of fighting over who was sentient and who had rights, so they just decided to make everything a music competition. If you can't hack it in the competition, you probably aren't all that sentient, and Earth, as it turns out, is not all that sentient. I didn't love it, probably because I don't like my sentience being called into question. 

 

But not everything in this subgenre mocks all of sci-fi and life in general. John Scalzi's surprisingly serious book, Redshirts, pretty much exclusively mocks Star Trek, particularly the absurd mortality rate common to, usually nameless, characters wearing red shirts. It's really, really good. 

Speaking of Star Trek, you know how all the inner workings of Star Trek ships contain bio-neural gel packs? There was one particular episode of Star Trek Voyager called Learning Curve (Season 1, Episode 16), where the ship's systems begin to fail and someone runs onto the bridge and says (breathlessly) something like, "Captain, it's the gel packs.....they've caught a virus."

And in that moment all I wanted in all of life was to see an episode where everything on the ship is just going inexplicably haywire and the big reveal and cliffhanger leading into Part Two is a Red Shirt running onto the bridge yelling frantically, "CAPTAIN It's The Gel Packs *panting in shock and horror* They've Become SENTIENT."

Um anyways. The funniest, weirdest thing, I have found in science fiction, and to be honest, fiction in general is the Rex Niholo series by Robert Kroese. Narrated by a near-sentient android named SASHA, who can't have original thoughts, the story is one long joke at the expense of science fiction, literature in general, and you. Not you in general, you personally. If you read the books, the joke is on you. Here is the series, in publication order, in all its glory. 

First we have Starship Grifters, which, while its name is a parody of Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, doesn't actually mock any part of Starship Troopers as far as I'm concerned, except maybe this: The point of Starship Troopers is that even with space travel, aliens species, and all the technology you can imagine, war is exactly the same, and soldiers are exactly the same, and nothing but the scale and the details changes. Starship Grifters is that, but with con-artists, and one in particular: Rex Nihilo, the self-proclaimed, "greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy." 

Then you have Aye, Robot, in which Rex takes the concept of space piracy to a whole other level. It's title is of course a nod to I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (absolutely nothing like the Will Smith movie), which is possibly the only work of science fiction whose ideas on robot psychology Kroese treats with actual respect by mining and then repackaging them throughout the series.

And then we have the shockingly satisfying conclusion, The Wrath of Cons, which is of course named for the second Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan, which I remember as a terrifying film involving ear worms that I have never ever had the nerve to watch in its entirety after accidently being exposed to it  at not an appropriate age. And no, I have absolutely no idea why Blogger refuses to let me justify this paragraph left. 

Oh you thought that was it? No, there's a prequel called Out of the Soylent Planet, which has nothing to do with the first book in C.S. Lewis' sublime space trilogy, which is arguably not sci-fi at all, but rather richly allegorical fantasy that happens to take place on first Mars, then Venus, only to spend the significantly-longer third book entirely on Earth. 

Out of the Soylent Planet, gets tired of making fun of sci-fi and takes a swing at dystopian fiction instead, and it's great. And that's literally every science fiction comedy I've read. If you know of others, please tell me, I'm one hundred percent down for it. 

What about you? Have you read any of these titles? Is there a part of the sci-fi spectrum that you especially enjoy? Any books I should add to my list? I've been trying to read more sci-fi across the spectrum, so I'm definitely open to suggestions. See you next week!

Up Next (probably, I might change my mind): Unfinished Business, Part the Second. 

Loud Books and an Advent Calendar Reading Challenge

Loud Books

Do you have anything in your house that just screams at you constantly? Not out loud, of course, but in your mind? A pile of mess begging for attention? A dirty carpet demanding a vacuuming? A sink full of dishes asking what's wrong with you? 

There's this old Japanese idea that everything in your house has something to say: sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative, sometimes it's motivating, and sometimes it's just reminding you of basic responsibility. The theory is that the quality and tenor of your home life are highly influenced by this silent noise. If you have a lot of things sending negative messages and not much that has anything nice to say, it can drag down your mood and dim that feeling of peace and security that ideally fills a home. 

An example of something that sends positive messages in my house is my book collection. I have shelves filled with some of my favorite books in the whole wide world, and just looking at them makes me happy. Mostly.

An example of something that sends negative messages in my house is my book collection. Really it's just the ones I haven't read and the ones I was intending to reread a year or two ago but didn't. It's not that each book calling out to be read is a negative thing. I like getting excited about reading a book. The problem is that right now too many are yelling too loudly, and it's not just the physical ones on my shelf, it's the ones on my audiobook wishlist too. The longer I've owned them or had them on my list, the louder they yell. The more series I have going at a time, the louder they yell, and so on.

You'd think I'd be thankful knowing that I'm not going to run out of quality entertainment anytime soon, but instead the cacophony of books and series, things my friends want me to read and things I'm dying to start but I won't be able to for months, just creates stress. Isn't that stupid?

It's the most first world of first world problems, really shameful if I think about it at all, but that doesn't change the fact that I need my stress levels to go down and they're not going to go down unless I zero out my TBR shelf and the old end of my lists as quickly as possible and find a way to start over and start purchasing/borrowing/ogling books at a much more manageable pace. 

 

The Advent Calendar Reading Challenge

Toward the end of February, I took note of which books were the loudest and which were causing the most stress, and I created a challenge for myself. I pulled out my Advent Calendar with its 24 little doors, each door corresponding to a day of the month of... March. I wrote loud book titles on 31 slips of paper, and assigned each to a door. Doors 1-8 doubled as March 25-31. And then I set myself some rules and some prizes. 

I had to open a door each day and start the book written there. I didn't have to finish it, but, in an effort not to fall behind, I did my best. When selecting the books, I went for a variety of genres and themes as well as a balance of audiobooks (majority) and physical books including a couple of Manga. The goal was to complete as many of the titles within the month as possible, with the prize being out of reach until the end. 

Here's how it went: I followed the rules. I planned the challenge far enough in advance that I had no idea which books where where in the calendar, so each day was a pleasant surprise. Audiobooks I generally finished within 12-36 hours of opening their door. Physical books took closer to a week apiece, but they were spread out, so it worked. I ended the month with only two books incomplete, so I call that win.

Did the yelling stop? No, because I had much more than 30 books yelling at me, but the yelling is significantly diminished, which is all I could hope for. I expect it'll be a couple more months until I've really got it under control and peaceful, but I'm really happy with how much the challenge pushed me to accomplish. Here are the some stats:

I finished the Death Note series (two volumes), the Shatter Me series (three books, two novellas), the Rex Nihilo series (three books, will talk about in an upcoming post), the Edge Chronicles (two books), and a couple more at one book apiece. I caught up on five more series that haven't been fully published yet including Gilead (Question for all of you who read and adored Gilead, did you go on to read Home, Lila, and Jack? If so what did you think? I need someone to talk to about this).

I also read five sequels, getting myself closer to finishing up some more series (can you tell I had waaaay too many series going?) and nine one-offs including a little nonfiction. I want to stress again here, if you ever do a challenge like this you will need the variety. Too much of the same theme, genre, tone, character type, format, book length, etc. is likely to burn you out. 

Anyway, I finished, and I got to open my prize yesterday (which I ordered mid-month and left in the boxes). The prize was books, which in hindsight was a bit counterproductive. It probably should have been candles. Or yarn. But I did pick books that wouldn't add to the negative noise: continuations of series I've already committed to, and a couple I read from the library that I knew I wanted to own. 

So that's it! A fun, productive reading month. What about you? Do you like having lots of unread books on your shelf? Do you do reading challenges or marathons? Do you get yourself into multiple series at once? Does it ever feel like drowning? Let me know!

Coming Up Next: Sci-fi that Parodies Itself: Rex Nihilo, Red Shirts and More