Of all the things we've done in this
class, the "unknown genre project” was the one thing I was most excited
about. My only problem was to pick a genre that was, well,
"unknown". See, I'm a reader, and have been one all my life: a
day without me reading a book of some sort is a very unusual one indeed.
I've got hundreds of books in my personal library on all sorts of subjects ranging
from science to math to literature to history. Most of all, however, I enjoy
books in the science fiction genre: at any given time, I’ve probably got at
least one SF book in the backpack I carry around with me at all times, and if I
don’t have an actual book, I have either the latest Asimov’s
Science Fiction Magazine, or Fantasy
and Science Fiction Magazine, both of which I subscribe to.
So
when it came to picking an unknown genre, I was a little stumped, seeing as I’ve
got some experience with many kinds of genres.
I considered romance, but gave that idea up pretty quickly as being wrong for me.
The same with mysteries: I don’t like them and never have. I love science fiction, and I thought about
doing something in that genre, but what?
And then it came to me: steampunk.
Steampunk
has been around for about 30-40 years, but as genres go, it’s fairly new. I’d read about it in a vague way in the SF
columns, even read some unknowingly. But
in the end, it was just a term I kept stumbling across again and again, but I hadn’t
a clue as to what it really was: thus, I chose it as my unknown genre.
In some
ways, this was an easy project for me, and in some ways, it was difficult.
I was
able to find some very good steampunk anthologies at the local Barnes and Noble:
I chose anthologies rather than novels figuring that they would give me a multi-textured
bird’s eye view of the genre from the viewpoint of many writers as opposed to
just a few. I assumed I would enjoy what
I read, and I was correct: I found both value and pleasure in my consumption of
the genre: thus, did I squirrel away many happy hours trudging upon the muddy London
streets breathing in that peaty smoke-filled air and dodging carriages,
airships, and robots alike. By the time
I was done with the reading part of the project, I’d read over 25 short stories
and one novel, and still I hungered for more.
But who has time? There are those
pesky term papers to do…
I began the project with the question: what is
steampunk? The answer is, in a nutshell,
history and technology combined. Steampunk
is alternative Victorian-era history, of course, but alternative history is history, if only for the time it
takes to read the story. And once I had the
answer to my question, I was able to start my own steampunk piece.
Writing my own piece was a little
more difficult than my reading in the genre.
The Victorian era was a very long period of time filled with very important
people and concepts. In all that, what was I to focus upon? Unable to come up with a totally original
concept, I instead chose to “rewrite” a literary legend, namely Dante Gabriel
Rossetti’s exhumation of his wife’s remains to retrieve a book of poems he had buried
with her. In the late 80s, I was able
to go to London, and while there, I visited the Tate Gallery where the original
Pre-Raphaelite paintings are displayed, and also the overgrown Highgate cemetery
where both Karl Marx and Elizabeth Siddal are buried; thus, I had some visual
details in the back of my mind while I was rewriting the story from a steampunk
perspective. Along the way, I also
retroactively reengineered our American history: in my story, the South wins
the American Civil war, and the General-Shermanesque Abraham Lincoln is a far
cry from the “Great Emancipator” that we know and revere today. Once I
had the concept of the story and had worked out a general outline, it was just
a matter of putting my fingers to the keyboard and writing it out.
Another difficult part of the project
was writing the “how-to” book. Steampunk
is so new, there aren’t that many resources devoted to the history of the genre. Thankfully, I was able to find some in the
print sources I had purchased, and once I had that piece of my puzzle, I was
all set to begin the writing part of it.
I decided to do “the book” via a powerpoint presentation, and that led
to another difficulty: I’d learned how to do powerpoints on a Korean version of
the program, and much to my dismay, I quickly found that things are different
in the American version. It was
touch-and-go there for a while, but I was able to make thing work out (I’m more
digital literate than I thought!). It
wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked, but I prefer stark-and-simple to
confused-and cluttered-with-annoying-sound-effects-and-visuals any day.
One of the things I love about
steampunk and science fiction in general is the total freedom in which to
play. A SF playground is much wider and
deeper than that of normal fiction. Take
E.M. Forester’s A Room with a View
for instance, one of my favorite books.
The writer can do what he likes with Cecil and Lucy, but he is ultimately
bound by time (in this case, the Edwardian Era), place (Italy and England) and
humanity, by which I mean the limits of being human. A steampunk writer has no such constraints
upon him: he can change the location-details and the circumstances of the time
at whim. As for humanity, one of SF’s
greatest assets is being able to show the reader “alternative humanity”. An example of this is Ursula Le Guin’s rightly
famous novel The Left Hand Of Darkness,
where an alien race similar to humans can change gender over time.
SF has a lot to say about us, things
that we can’t say easily, prettily, or happily otherwise, and that is a definite
strength. In my writing workshops at Novi High School, the teacher has been
focusing on Bradbury and Clarke, and I hope that I will be able to do the same:
SF offers choice and alternatives to students in their writings that other
writings do not.
I didn’t really find out anything “new”
about myself doing the unknown genre project, but I confirmed and strengthened
things that I suspected all along: things such my worth as a writer, being able
to teach writing to students and make it enjoyable, and that the SF genre
offers a myriad of possibilities both as a reader and writer. “Ophelia,
Drowning” was not my first toe in the water of genre writing, but it gives me
confidence that I have it in me to do more of it, and do it well at that.
No comments:
Post a Comment