How about SF?:I need a genre!

Now I had decided I had written a romance and, as far as I’m concerned looking back fifty years and using archives equals history, I had written an historical story.  I now had to address the main strand and have been forced back to Science Fiction – why am I so reluctant? 

I enjoy SF myself, have done since quite young although I have not read much lately.  My heyday was back in the 50s and 60s when I devoured the likes of H G Wells, Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein and EE (Doc) Smith, Arthur C Clarke.  This was the age of space travel in books, hopes and dreams and by the 60s we were up there.  I think in my mind this form of storytelling remains fixed as true SF; no space travel, alien invasions or intergalactic wars, no SF.

In the 70s when I began my travels, in the days before e-readers, I took the classics on my journeys.  War and Peace in the Hindu Kush, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

overlooking Sydney Harbour, that kind of thing.  Although large they lasted me longer and so my suitcase actually had room for a change of clothes! I did once, when stranded bookless in the outback for six weeks, read someone’s collection 30 of lurid covered science fantasy back to back, and as far as memory serves me – enjoyed them.

I discover now that the genre divides continually into more and more subgenres, and the subdivision continues as fast as do bacteria in a petri dish.  The form I read so excitedly in my far distant youth is now labelled hard SF.  This is not the Sefuty Chronicles.  I went to Wikipedia, a site I have always been suspicious of but I hadn’t found my trusty Oxford dictionary up to these subdivisions. 

I was still vaguely avoiding SF as Ellen’s Tale had very little of what I would call fictional science or even speculative science; although friends point out with much eye rolling that men who are manipulated genetically does kind of suggest science!  Any science in the Chronicles is only a continuation of what is possible now and indeed has been tried in some instances.  I never counted it as fiction somehow.  Genetic manipulation has been around for decades now.

I found a new genre to me, Dystopia, with The Handmaid’s Tale mentioned.  I had read this excellent book years ago and somehow never associated Margaret Attwood with SF.  An anthropological story of the future but a very realistic one, I could see how society could evolve thus; by this time I was well into my anthropological studies.  Well, well, Attwood was writing SF?  This was more comfortable, who else and what was this Dystopia? 

It was Gulliver’s Travels, Brave New World, Animal Farm and 1984.  All of these I had read when they came onto the bookshelves but if I had labelled them at all it would have been as political satire and rages against society.  I investigated further now that I had a ‘name’ for what I was looking for.  Maybe, maybe I was writing dystopian tales.  My dystopian world though was tame in comparison to those before mentioned, it had no bite; my government might rule as a dictatorship but it genuinely has a ‘heart of gold’.  As I say, hardly political satire.

Onward and outwards.  In these explorations into Dystopia I came across another subdivision, Apocalyptic.  I was hopeful again, after all hadn’t I single-handedly destroyed 8 billion plus of the world’s population in Ellen’s Tale; this may well be the answer.  

I did have a moment’s hesitation, however, when I found that Neville Shute was supposed to have written a novel in this genre – Neville Shute?  That wonderful author of quiet splendid people in the 40s and 50s, those books that couldn’t get any quieter if one muffled them in a sand dune.  I had read them all avidly when I was younger.  On the Beach I remembered was about nuclear war, it was a idea which exercised us all a great deal post WW2 .  We had witnessed for the first time the horror that man could unleash on man at first hand.  On the Beach  had been chilling and filled with those splendid people behaving with what is best of human nature.  I had read it as a story.  I began to see my problem.  I didn’t really think in genres, a book was enjoyable for its story.  I browse bookshelves like a grazer and never stopped to question what fodder I was eating up.  My mind barely has a cubby hole for genre let alone all these subdivisions.

Margaret Attwood had more than dipped her toe into this subdivision with her Onxy and Crane and The Flood.  I discovered Maggie Gee along the way , then that the old man of fiction,J G Ballard, was known as a dystopian writer, as I say I do not seem to think in genre.  Surprises abounding I began to settle into this search.

Actually these were all post apocalyptic which would have summed up the my chronicles well, after all the Sefuty Chronicles  are set 50 and 100 years after the great climate wars that had destroyed the greater part of the population.  I had moments of doubt as I realised that many of these Post Apocalyptic novels had such as vampires zombies and werewolves in them.  Not the Sefuty Chronicles cup of tea at all so now I had to put a rider into this genre as well;

Post Apocalyptic but without vampires.  Dystopian but with a beneign dictatorship and a hopeful ending.  An historical romance but set in the future!

More reading needed into these, it seems I was following some kind of a pattern and then there was a mysterious subgenre I have found - soft SF.  Ah well, back to the research.  Somewhere, somehow I will find a place to nestle!

Food, fibre & fleece book tour hosts, are you out there?

The Sefuty Chronicles are on tour  September 18th - October 10th.  While host bloggers concerned with the writing and author aspects are filing in nicely, and a few romance hosts have also volunteered I am now looking for bloggers who are concerned with all matters concerning eco-green issues- traditional crafts- food preparation- organic etc who would be willing to host me and either participate in a Q&A sessions on these matters and/or allow me to guest blog on aspects of them.

The Sefuty Chronicles are set in a future where due to climate change and wars relating to resources the world has been left with a tumbling population and no modern resources to speak of.  In lands littered with old mines and devoid of modern transport or communication links, the Chronicles have quite a lot in them about food, fleece and fibre production - there is the uncertainty of food security when completely dependent on the climate with no modern aids in growing food.  How the original survivors had to relearn old skills in a great hurry or die.  How well would we fare? How many skills do we possess?

 If you are interested I would enjoy the debates.

Also anyone willing to be a little more near the knuckle the decisions to be taken when food supplies are limited and survival on a knife edge - how far can we carry our modern day ethics and beliefs - this maybe too raw for a book tour but I would like to show the dilemmas facing extreme survival.  Who has followers who would like the debate?

Want to see what they are about? 

http://www.albertaross.co.uk

http://sefutychronicles-albertaross.blogspot.com

contact e-mail

rossalberta44@yahoo.co.uk

Receipe for a Ria Baha

Fellow Writers Blog: Second Tuesday

Well now, I was a trifle flummoxed at this subject.  Did I have a favourite and how did I create a character?   Um.   Difficult.  Talking it out with my friend the conclusion was that Ellen, my first heroine of The Sefuty Chronicles, although everything that’s perfect was not my favourite.  Too good.  No, my heart belonged to her bad-tempered, ungrateful, quick-tempered, suspicious companion Ria!

I have a soft spot for this deeply flawed character.  She’s an impossible girl, especially on her first outing.  Why would any group of people want her around is a good question and where on earth did she come from?  I suspect she came from decades of my interest in (a) children and (b) the brain.

I wandered into childcare when I left school in the 60’s by accident and with no clear idea of what it would entail.  I stayed for decades because, although I am singularly lacking in any maternal instincts, children intrigued me.  I loved watching their minds evolve, their personalities develop.  I loved watching how they made connections and sense of their different worlds; marvelled at their ability to absorb entire grammars and languages.  They are tiny and amazing.

Before I trained in childcare back in my teens I had begun to read books on mind development and brainwashing/persuasion techniques.  During the 50’s and 60’s, brainwashing/mind control began to create a deal of interest and debate which has simmered on over the ensuing years.  In school history lessons I had wondered at the seemingly odd behaviours of people and populations; tried to work out superstitions.  Did my dyspraxia feed this interest I have to wonder now?  Impairment in socialisation skills being part of my problem, I must have spent many years trying to figure out how to fit in, many years people-watching trying to work out the skills needed.  Who knows?

When I began travelling, of course, I was to come across many variations on childcare, creating much food for thought.  I developed an abiding interest in social anthropology, as an equal partner to my interest in the development of the brain, and which years later  was to form part of my science degree.  I was, and remain, interested in how children could be influenced by their culture and the society around them as well as their fit within families; a never-ending stream of thoughts and ideas bubbling within my brain over years.

In Ria the circumstances of her childhood forms the flawed character she has become and in truth will probably always be.  The claim of the Jesuits that if they had a child for its first seven years the child was theirs for ever, is not so far away from truth.  Those first few years are crucial.  I would worry often that I might inadvertently damage a child in my care by some unconsidered action or remark.

In The Sefuty Chronicles civilization, as we know it now, has broken down and the survivors have had to create new societies and new cultures.   After only fifty years, there has been no time for relaxation of survival rules to creep in.  Ria is a victim also of this rigid new way of life.  A child born in the wrong time, to the wrong family, to the wrong social life.  With no chance to invent a pleasant niche for herself, as children do, she becomes the outcast.  The natural instinct of all animal life – we are but animals at heart! – is to drive away the outsider.  Ria is the outsider. 

So here, five decades on from when I first read about Bowlbys Attachment Theories, I have produced Ria Baha, flawed but dear to me.  She has been created from a mix of Bowlby, seasoned by brainwashing techniques, Jesuits, world travels and a career in childcare.   

How about romance:I need a genre!

So how am I going with the question of historical romance?  Sure myself that my definition of historical is correct but I am out of step with the world I turned my attention to the next question. Have I written a romance?  Well I wasn’t immediately sure; being an old woman my definition of romance is a little broader than seems to be the case these days – and it doesn’t start with love affairs. Thinking I may be wrong I went back to the dictionary.

 Oxford Dictionary

Romance is defined thus

1  a: Latin derived languages

   b:Medieval vernacular verse or prose narrative relating to legendary or extraordinary adventure of hero, of chivalry

  c: Extravagant fiction – wild exaggeration

  d: Historical ballad, short epic poem (in Spanish context)

  e: Fictitious narrative depicting setting and events remote from everyday life especially 16th & 17th century

   f: Literary genre with romantic love and highly imaginative events or adventures forming central theme

   g: Romantic or imaginative character – prevailing sense of wonder or mystery surrounding mutual attraction in a love affair and/or suggestion or association with adventurous or extraordinary events.

Romantic

 2 a: Narrative etc having the nature or qualities of romance in the form or content

    b: Tending towards or characterised by romance in stylistic basis

    c: Pertaining to movement or style of late 18th and early 19th century in Europe - marked by emphasis on feeling, individuality and passion

    d: Of a story, novel, film etc having romance or love affair as a subject

    e: Characterised by idealised fantastic or sentimental view of life, love or reality appealing to imagination and feelings

    f: Influenced by imagination

    g: Fantastic, quixotic, impractical project

Romantic love between unmarried man and woman does appear in the list, but it is not the first or even the second definition.  The definition of romance that I grew up with is the wide one.  It is the epic narrative, the natural, emotion and feeling driven; fantastical, wild and adventurous.  I cut my reading teeth on novels of a hundred or more years ago.  I read and thrilled to Sir Walter Scott and Herman Melville later reading James Fennimore Cooper and Washington Irving and, of course, all those wonderful epic narratives such as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Arthurian legends.  These merged effortlessly into works from Dante and Spencer.  Romance, but not I fear in today’s terms

I discovered historical romances with the likes of  The Scarlet Pimpernel and, as I grew,  discovered the newer definition of romance in William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens, with their huge sweeps of life.  Then George Elliot, the Bronte’s and Jane Austin.  If I had realised it at the time the definition of romance was growing ever narrower.

I realize that romance is now equated only with love between man and woman although it means I have to re-file all those great novels and epic narrative poems I grew up with to different areas, a little sulkily I admit because the very word romance conjures up to me wonderful vistas of excitement and adventure, larger than life heroes and heroines, amazing deeds and splendid sweeping tales straddling every known emotion.  Feasts indeed.

But reading, on the advice of many, the guide lines of Romance Writers of America I also realize that the world has not only captured and caged the bird of romance but has clipped off its wings and de-beaked it as well.

Guide Lines

            Plot must revolve around two people as they develop romantic love for each other and work to build a relationship with each other.

            Both conflict and climax should be directly related to that core theme, developing romantic relationship.

            Must have emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Although they have allowed, for instance, that Romeo and Juliet is a romance because the focus of the story is romantic love.

            As long as these basic guide lines are followed there are many sub genres allowed into ‘Romantic Fiction’.  They include amongst them:

            Paranormal

            Sci-Fi

            Fantasy

            Time Travel

            Futuristic

            Pirate

I’m thinking these ones should be in the main genre and the romantic love between man and woman, not married, should be a sub genre – but hey, that’s this old woman wondering where the excitement in romance has gone!! My, what a straitjacket romance and romantic writing has been tied into.

Well the first two of my series could just about be shoe-horned into this definition , just about because I hope they are more than romantic love. 

My books need something else, they I suppose belong to a sub genre - dreadful expression! So it seems I must turn my attention to Science Fiction which many of my readers say is what I have written.  This turns out to be more sub genre divided than romance.