Genre Fiction

The first stories that I wrote when I was young were science fiction and horror tales imitative of the ones that I read in the genre magazines that I loved. My older brother, John, shared my love of writing and science fiction, and, as time passed and we both accumulated reams of enthusiastically written fiction, it seemed only natural (if not inevitable) that we tried our hand at collaborating on a short story. As I recount in the introduction to Binary Tales, the first successful story that we wrote together—so long ago in 1980—was a clever little piece titled “Above the Pitch”. The story described the invasion of the mortal world from the denizens of Hell, and was humorous as well. My brother, known for his heroic fantasy in such publications as Dragon and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, has always had a talent for fictional humor, and I followed his early example as closely as possible. Several of the stories in Binary Tales are humorous, and their style and execution have their roots in these early efforts.

I continue to write genre pieces from time to time, and invariably when we find the time to collaborate on the writing of a new piece of fiction. Since we both have families and careers of our own, these efforts come more infrequently than I would like, but that only makes me appreciate the process all the more. Binary Tales contains fifteen shorts stories, five collaborations and five solo efforts from each of us. They range from the outright lunatic (“Mayhem Is Our Business”) to the horrific (“The Soul Birds” and “The Hiding Place”), and every fantastic realm in-between. The final story in the collection, the science fiction novella “Reproduction Rights”, is a hilarious look at the legal ramifications of cloning and the monumental ethical questions that arise when cloning collides with the free enterprise system. We hope to expand this story into a novel in the future.

My solo contributions to the collection are “The Natural History of the Kraken”, “The Man Who Saw Himself”, “Politics”, “Gray Matters”, and “Clouds”. “The Natural History of the Kraken” is a light-hearted cautionary tale meant to evoke a karmic double take from anyone who has ever become too comfortable in his or her workaday lives. “Gray Matters” and “Clouds” are comic examinations of unchecked hubris. “Politics”, though light-hearted in tone, is a somber reminder that dangerous academic research is not always under the tightest controls. And “The Man Who Saw Himself” is the frightening story of one man’s schizophrenic odyssey into his own psyche.

Binary Tales is a superb collection of fiction, and a wonderful example of how two different writing styles can synthesize into a unique style that exhibits the best traits of each.

Writing genre fiction—that is, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, horror, or any hybrid thereof—is identical to writing other forms of more realistic fiction, with one important difference: in realistic fiction, the story follows from human circumstances that are readily identifiable by the reader, whereas in genre fiction the story follows from human (and sometimes non-human) circumstances that are not readily identifiable. The circumstances in genre fiction are often completely inexplicable, and that is the great strength of it. I have always read that the most important aspect of the genre story is the “idea” of it, and by idea I mean the fantastic circumstances in which the characters of the narrative find themselves. In effect, the idea behind the conflict of the story—whether it is a bizarre future society, a supernatural reality, or an unbelievable situation—becomes the most important aspect of the story.

But in too much genre fiction writers take this maxim for granted and give short shrift to the characters in the work. Sometimes this is inevitable, since many writing programs instruct writers to bend their characters’ motivations to the idea of the story, instead of having character motivation dictate the idea of the story. This difficult conundrum for writers of genre fiction has produced some memorably bad fiction over the years, and continues to instruct the production of one weak novel after another. But the writing of genre fiction—like the writing of other forms of fiction—need not leave “character” in the waste heap of story construction. I need only refer to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to verify the belief that genre fiction can include a fantastic attention to character development and motivation while exploring exotic and alien societies. Other examples include James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside, among others too numerous to list. The best genre fiction combines unique ideas with meaningful character development.

Let me say, too, that great genre fiction makes demands on the writer that more realistic fiction does not—that is, in realistic fiction the conflict may be directed by well-established human paradigms. In genre fiction the orchestration of human motivation with the underlying idea that creates the conflict is often much more complex, and requires due diligence to artistically execute. Often it is easier for the writer to let the idea take the stage and to manipulate the characters’ involvement accordingly. The measure of excellence in any piece of genre fiction clearly lies within the degree to which the idea of the story is balanced by the human interest (or what passes for human interest in more exotic stories).

For more on the writing of genre fiction, see the Binary Tales website (still under construction).

I am including a short science fiction story titled “A Miracle for Every Occasion”, and a short horror tale titled "Autophobia". In tone and humor, these are similar to several of the stories in Binary Tales. The first, a fairly short epistolary story, illustrates, in a small way, how character motivation can balance out the exotic ideas of the narrative; the second, a slightly more involved tale of psychosis, presses uncomfortably at the fragile membrane of rationality.

Please click on the link to access the pdf versions.