The Elements Of The Genre Of Speculative Fiction

As new genres in the world of novels fade out of the public eye, new ones arise just as fast. A genre that has taken the world by storm is the dystopian trope. Many new young adult novels have this new genre incorporated into the story, often weaving in themes of sadness or conformity being overcome by rebelliousness and hope. It is one of the newest genres, yet one of the most widely varied compared to older ones. Even novels from 70 years ago, such as Ayn Rand’s Anthem share similarities with the same types of stories from only 20 years ago, like The Giver by Lois Lowry.

As a black man, Samuel Delany has experienced discrimination and racism in a number of settings. However, as a Science Fiction writer he mostly explores racism in that community. Samuel Delany’s, “Racism and Science Fiction” explores how “Racism is a system. As such, it is fueled as much by chance as by hostile intentions and equally the best intentions as well. It is whatever systematically acclimates people, of all colors, to become comfortable with the isolation and segregation of the races, on a visual, social, or economic level”(31). Delany blames social traditions, and material and economic conditions for supporting the system. And not actual individuals. Delany supports his argument by giving three examples of when he has experienced racism in science fiction. The issue of racism in science fiction is presented by Delany when he tells his readers of an encounter with Isaac Asimov, his convention book signing partner, and his habitual panel placement with a fellow writer.

The act of connecting life through fictional stories can be described as reasoning. This method is effective because it confirmed by logic and consistency; however, this method can be a timely process. Unlike revelation,

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.

Racism is a big part of this book. It shows the absurdity of what people thought back then, which is an important lesson. It is important for us to learn what people’s views used to be, and how important it is not to go back to that mindset.

Ever since the invention of language, humans have been obsessed and intrigued with the aspect of storytelling. Each story, whether written or spoken, holds an important theme within its creative words and exciting plot. While each story is special and unique, over the course of history, different periods of literature have formed where authors tend to focus on similar themes and messages. One of which was the American Romantic era, where authors used their stories to challenge the boundaries of society, and delve deeper into what makes people inherently human, both the flaws and perfections. Some of America’s greatest works of literature were born in this period, like those of Poe, and Hawthorne. A very common literary theme during the romantic period was that of good versus evil, in both individual characters and society as a whole; this theme is especially evident in works such as The Tell Tale Heart, The Raven, and Young Goodman Brown.

In its broadest dimensions Afrofuturism is an extension of the historical recovery projects that black Atlantic intellectuals have engaged in for well over two hundred years (sdonline). Black authors such as Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Charles Saunders, and Jewelle Gomez of the past fifty or so years have collaborated with the sci-fi world “because it so effectively captures the experience of living in a high-tech world (Yaszek 2002: 97)” which is our world today. Coupling that with a political mission, creates the activist genre of Afrofuturism. In Eshuns Further Considerations on Afrofuturism he talks about how everything we do and have is built upon the slaves and their oppressed history. Every school, bank and restaurant we have were all possible by the capital gain from the slavery era. Afrofuturism writers and works make these truths know and force readers to look into the future to see what could become. The way these works incorporate the truths of the past and possible realities for the future, categorizes it as more than just science

In these novels the theme I chose was racial prejudice, were it also gives a message racism and how far it could go. Further into “From An Ordinary” it's

Through a number of important essays, Marleen Barr’s “Afro-Futurism” opens up a conversation about racial autonomy and collective agency in a literary space that seems to have been reluctant to even whisper about such things: namely, Science Fiction. Maybe that is not all that surprising given the genre’s predominantly white(ned?) literary categorization that, while it has no outright barred people-of-color, has not in turn seemed to make any meaningful space for them, either . Indeed, there is such an implicit racial claim of science fiction by White Culture that when a person-of-color is cast in one of the starring roles of a major Science Fiction production – oh, let’s say “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” – that there is a massive outcry and calls for boycott and existential fears of white erasure.

In 2014, growth has been made but there are new hindrances that stand in the way of Black representation. One problem is in the use of ethnic recasting, make normally white characters and casting them as people of color, which works in theory but has downsides in practice. Another is a form is representation that is not truly representation. Now, instead of creating stories that have black heroes, many stories have biracial characters. Others have characters whose race is not easily clear, or purposefully left undefinable. These characters are then called a

Much of the appeal surrounding science fiction is the fact that a lot of the genre exists far from what we experience in our own world, and far from what exists within our own imagination. The phrase, “cognitive estrangement” has been used to describe the way that a lot of science fiction makes us feel. In his essay, “Estrangement and Cognition,” Darko Suvin describes cognitive estrangement and its relationship with Science fiction as a genre. He writes, “Thus it is not only the basic human and humanizing curiosity that gives birth to SF. Beyond an indirect inquisitiveness, which makes for a semantic game without clear referent, this genre has always been wedded to a hope of finding in the unknown the ideal environment, tribe, state, intelligence, or other aspect of the Supreme Good (or to a fear of and revulsion from its contrary). At all events, the possibility of other strange, covariant coordinate systems and semantic fields is assumed,” which explains that the strange is what drives interest in Science Fiction. He emphasizes that it’s the weird that sets science fiction apart from other genres, including fantasy. This sentiment has been echoed by many other writers. In the same essay, Suvin writes, “The effect of such factual reporting of fictions is one of confronting a set normative system—a Ptolemaic-type closed world picture—with a point of view or look implying a new set of norms; in literary theory this is known as the attitude of estrangement.” This statement

Without fiction our imaginations will never be achieved, everything will be boring and too real.

Ethnicity is all around us in the world. It has a special mark on every person in the world because it is what makes everyone different in their own ways. Ethnicity has different topics that branch off into others. Examples of these are Nationality, Race, Diversity, and Culture. Each of these topics have an impact on every person and group of people in good and bad ways; the top major 2 being Race and Ethnicity. Ethnicity and Race is crucial to determine who a person really is and what also brings out the light to the rest of the world.

Fiction is, and has always been a mirror for the real life. Therefore, literature, as the artistic tool used to deliver works of fiction, has been parallel to history from past to present. As the ideas evolved, the cultures evolved, and as the cultures evolved, literature evolved. However, there have been times when this evolution had help. In its core, this is what happened in the Renaissance era. As people rediscovered the ideas and cultures of the past civilisations, Middle Ages, in which the evolution of thinking was going backwards, came to an end with a leap in thinking style. People realised they have been stuck at one point because of twisted religion and blind violence between people, and learned to look through individual glasses. These new individual glasses gave huge importance to human, rather than vast kingdoms and large groups, and focused on the core. They moved on from their one-sided viewpoint in life, which was giving the ultimate importance to the afterlife, and gave themselves to discovering