‘Boldly Going’, Chapter 5: Science Fiction Sub-Genres -The Best of the Rest

Just like Douglas Adams before me, I’ll spurn any sense of numeracy and present part five in a four-part series on science fiction subgenres.

In previous installations in this series, we’ve covered:

But of course, that leaves many other sci-fi subgenres out there just left hanging. As the Black Eyed Peas might say, “Where is the love?”

Fear not, intrepid companions! While I do not have enough experience to write full columns on other flavors of sci-fi, I’ll share some examples I have been exposed to and maybe give you a hint if that’s a direction you would want to pursue.

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Sci-Fi Horror

You may have guessed from my Evil Dead 2 article that I’m a pretty big horror fan, too. And there is some ground to cover in the blending of science fiction and horror. Like with sci-fi comedy or horror comedy, taxonomy is important.

The novel I think really captures the perfect mix to epitomize sci-fi horror is Dan Simmons’ Hyperion (1989.

Hyperion tells the story of seven pilgrims journeying to the Time Tombs: a place where time flows both forwards and backwards, to confront a terrifying creature known as the Shrike, which guards the tombs. Structured like The Canterbury Tales, each pilgrim gets his/her chance to tell their own story during the journey. The chapters are named the Priest’s Tale, the Soldier’s Tale, the Poet’s Tale, etc… Each chapter is its own self-contained little universe and stands alone as a compelling story in its own right.

But all these stories, and the greater journey the pilgrims are undertaking, pivot on the unknowable Lovecraftian horror of the Shrike. A creature that impales its victims on a tree with razor branches. The novel Hyperion pretty much is just these separate pilgrim’s tales, with some action in between to keep some momentum, but the novel is almost entirely experienced in flashback.

The Fall of Hyperion weaves each of these characters and their backstories into a ponderous contemporaneous progression of events involving AI characters, governmental conspiracies, and fate-of-humanity consequences. It’s truly a lot of balls to juggle, but Simmons pulls it off commendably.

What I really wish I could project into your brain, dear reader, is that sense of foreboding and dread that fills the pages. The sense that something truly soul-crushing is just on your periphery, waiting to strike, invisible but ever present. The real miracle of Hyperion is its ability to take a sci-fi plot and make it give you goosebumps.

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Climate Dystopia

Dystopian novels in general usually are at least somewhat sci-fi in nature, and cover a wide range of examples. However, more recently many dystopian novels hinge on fleshing out what the world will look like in our climate-altered future. Many of these novels lean toward more hard sci-fi elements, while also embracing some amount of speculation.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) and The Water Knife (2015) give a hard edge to what our near- to intermediate- future could look like on a climate-altered planet corrupted by late-stage capitalism.

The Windup Girl takes place in 23^rd century Thailand.

The dung of these elephants becomes an important source of energy in the underground economy, ruled over by a local mafia organization (the “Dung Lord”). In this setting, a factory owner meets a “windup girl” – an illegal sex cyborg abandoned in Thailand, who is herself living a marginal existence trying to understand herself beyond her programming.

The tone of the whole story is dark – the world seems to be entirely populated by victims and predators, and each person has the capacity to be both. But the point that Bacigalupi is making is that this is the world we are creating – economic engines work overtime to satisfy the rich and powerful, and no one else matters except as a resource to be extracted for their benefit. Yes, climate change will make everything worse, but our short-sightedness and deference to a system that’s not working in our interest is what caused us to lose sight of the problem and let it escalate in the first place. The novel is not utterly hopeless – it does end on something of a grace note, but not because anything is changing more than a couple of people finding and helping each other.

The Water Knife shares the pessimism for the future Bacigalupi demonstrated in The Windup Girl, but changes the setting and the stakes.

Water is under corporate ownership, and anybody who attempts to access water outside of that context will suffer both legal and violent consequences. The law and mercenaries work hand-in-hand to ensure “illegal” water supplies are cut off, no matter the consequences to the people who need it to live.

The primary characters are a “water knife” – a covert operative working for the water authority who will bomb a water system that is not under their control, an East Coast journalist covering “collapse porn” in the Southwest just as people now may cover Detroit, and a pair of climate refugees from Texas who make their way to Las Vegas through increasingly desperate travails. Again, trust is hard-earned and rare, and everyone is both victim and a predator to survive. Like The Windup Girl, this novel makes a pretty clear statement about predatory capitalism and climate consequences. Both are dark but engaging to read.

If you want more of a curveball in climate dystopian fiction, I’d suggest Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.

And you should know Margaret Atwood never disappoints:

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Science Fantasy

The genres of science fiction and fantasy are often lumped together, but hardcore fans of either generally eschew lumping them together.

It’s like when I was younger: record stores (remember them?) would put jazz and blues together in the same section.

If you’re maybe not entirely clear what’s the difference between science fiction and fantasy, I’ll provide this quote from Jericho Writers that sums it up nicely:

“The main difference between fantasy and science fiction is that fantasy deals with the impossible, whereas science fiction deals with the possible.

Fantasy features magic and monsters, the realm of the imagination, and science fiction is grounded in scientific principles.

Both genres need internal consistency and logic, but in fantasy, the writer creates the rules, whereas, in science fiction, nature and physics dictate the rules.”

https://jerichowriters.com/science-fiction-vs-fantasy/

So in a nutshell, the difference between a dragon and an alien is the backstory – is there an attempt to make the creature exist in our understanding of science, physics and the universe?

Of course, like anything, there’s never a perfect line that can be drawn between the two genres, and authors frequently like to blur the lines. So there is such a thing as “science fantasy” – as defined by Wikipedia:

“Where science fiction does not permit the existence of fantastical or supernatural elements, science fantasy explicitly relies upon them to complement the scientific elements.”

There was some controversy at the time because a small but loud cohort of angry white men tried didn’t want a black woman to win this prestigious award for writing a queer- and trans- positive story. Those jackasses’ opinions merit no further consideration.

Jemisin’s award-winning Broken Earth trilogy quite neatly falls into the science fantasy box. There’s enough science to sink your teeth in, but enough that’s really beyond scientific explanation to fit into the fantasy range.

The Broken Earth series takes place on a planet with a single supercontinent, that experiences catastrophic climate change on a recurring basis (the “fifth season” in question). The planet has a small number of people who are “orogenes” – who have the ability to control energy, particularly within the ground, a power which can easily kill people nearby if not well-controlled.

They are tightly controlled by “guardians” who keep them on a short leash. As a new cycle of climate crisis emerges, The Fifth Season tells the stories of Damaya, a young girl discovering she has orogene powers, Essun, a middle-aged woman pursuing her husband after he killed their son and abducted their daughter, and Syenite, an up-and-coming trained orogene, forced to have a child with a higher ranked orogene despite their mutual loathing.

The later books build out a story of people with powerful abilities attempting to restore balance to the planet and end the cycle of fifth seasons, against the will of other powerful forces. The apocalyptic climate change and its effects on society are very sci-fi, while some of the magical powers that come to be understood are definitely more fantastical.

Sci-fi fans and fantasy fans alike have a lot to enjoy, and while the story is largely pretty dark, the “found family” themes and openness to every type of person give it hopepunk vibes at times. 

There are many science fiction subgenres I could not cover for lack of time or lack of exposure (e.g. cyberpunk, military sci-fi, time travel, zombies, alternate universe, steampunk, etc…). And really, very few works of science fiction fall cleanly into a single category – they may resemble several different subgenres at once. The more the merrier I say! There are so many universes out there to explore, I wish I had access to some sci-fi solution so I could live hundreds of years and read all these wonderful books. Or maybe I should be careful what I wish for…

Final call in the comments for any and all sci-fi recommendations you’d like to share that you didn’t in the previous installments.

I am always looking for new material to devour before my glasses shatter.

End of series.

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