Literary Fiction

   David Lubar says you can tell the difference between literary fiction because your eyebrows are closer together when you get done reading it. While I do enjoy keeping s/f as hard as possible within its own system of science, making the experience as true to what could happen as possible, I am also fascinated by the boundary between fiction and reality, and I sometimes like playing with it. So I dig both.

   It's not like those literary fictionists who do mostly literary fiction and then sojourn into science fiction, only with a disdain for it, just using the tropes of science fiction and then discarding the empty shells, not even bothering to check if they're saying anything new at all or if their idea is unoriginal, which is almost invariably is. I try to make it not, like so many lit-fic writers, about how clever it is that I'm saying whatever it is I'm saying, (which generally works only in satire.)

   But I'm focused on how we say the things we say, which makes that line confusing. You know, style and substance. If I came straight out and discussed that, though, it would be missing the point of itself, since it's a rejection of writers who bring up clever ideas just to point out how clever they are (I'd insert a dig about Mamet here, but it's just too darn impossible to stay mad at the guy.) So they have to be incorporated and disguised into the storyline itself. Which is even more clever, you know. Once again, I'm still working on getting that implemented 100%, beginning with a clear goal in mind is good.