P.D. James once said that she wrote mysteries because it was a way to bring order to a chaotic world, to restore what had come apart into balance again.
Ray Bradbury said that “Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time– because it’s a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.”
Josh Vogt wrote that “Hope gives us strength, and fantasy and science fiction—to me, at least—embody that virtue in many ways… Even if there’s danger or even death along the way, we have the ability to be brave and persevere in the hope of reaching a better existence.”
These three writers describe the quintessential element of genre fiction— the mysteries and explorations and world building give a feeling of what is possible and hopeful in a world that often seems hesitant to embrace either. This is unlike literary fiction—contemporary literary fiction, at least—where there seems a consistent and continuous need to create grim plots, characters who cannot prevail, and bleak settings.
Why else does genre fiction appeal to us so much? Because it is real storytelling, and readers of genre fiction know this. It draws us in and engages us and we find that we are the better for it. When we close the book we feel that something is right with the world and that this is a good thing to know. If some message is in those stories, it is likely disguised, and we do not need to dissect it to appreciate the experience of receiving whatever it is.
All good writing brings escape of some sort, makes time disappear and the characters live for a while in our minds or hearts or both. The marvelous aspect of the detective story, the science fiction journey, or the shimmering fantastic world is that we want to be there, and for a time, we are.
It could be said that all great storytellers write in genres, be they the ancient myths of the gods to Shakespeare’s dramas to all ventures into inner and outer space. The readers know this, too.
