C O L U M N
TRAVELS WITH BRUCE
t r a c k i n g m a g i c a l r e a l i s m t h e w o r l d o v e r
HAS MAGIC REALISM ENTERED A NEW TURF WAR?Travels with Bruce highlights various public efforts by Margin publisher Tamara Kaye Sellman and Bruce Taylor, founder of the Magic Realist Writers International Network, as they hit the road to promote understanding of magical realism and its writers.
by Bruce Taylor, aka "Mr. Magic Realism"
OryCon 26 Science Fiction Convention, Portland, OR, Nov 5-7 2004RustyCon, SeaTac, WA, Jan 13-15 2005
"Usually, I lead a panel on Magic Realism at these conventions. This year, at OryCon, they included a panel on magical realism (MR) in the survey for registering artists and professionals. When the actual convention came to be, I discovered to my dismay that I was not included in the program book as an MR panelist, nor were there any panels on MR.
The same was true for RustyCon: though I had indicated my interest in leading such panels, nothing came to be. At both conventions, much of the MR literature I left out for participants to take vanished almost as soon as I put it out.
The interest was there. Regardless, it seemed as if MR didn’t Officially exist.
There are only two explanations for this:
Volunteer-run programming
I wasn't the only one left out of the OryCon program book, and at RustyCon, I noted that my one separate reading had been scheduled at four different times. Some disorganization regarding programming does happen at science fiction and fantasy Cons (conventions). These events are coordinated through the efforts of volunteers; mistakes will be made, oversights will occur. It's entirely possible. The cons have sought me out in the past because of my MR expertise, and I know I get rave reviews at these events from the people who attend my panels. When I hand out literature, people snatch it up immediately. And I have contemporaries among these folks, such as Bobbie duFault, Jay Lake, Patrick Swenson. Still—I have to wonder whether some folks might be threatened by the concept of MR muscling in and taking over the turf of science fiction and fantasy writers. I suspect some writers imagine that the science fiction and fantasy genres are in danger of being relegated as subsets to the growing popularity of MR. I've heard it mentioned casually, and it's bothered me.
I make every effort, when I talk to folks about MR, to show how the mode serves as a bridge between classical fiction/contemporary fiction and similar forms of expression within science fiction and fantasy genres, areas that have been called slipstream, among other terms. If competition with established forms of science fiction and fantasy is at the heart of the issue, you would think that folks would be honored and validated by the possibility: that all forms of imaginative writing could be viewed not within the 'ghetto-ization' of genre, but on a level playing field with all literature.
However, there are folks in the science fiction and fantasy world who seem to become rather defensive around such trends. I credit that to a genre-wide and lingering sensitivity to the historical roots of science fiction and fantasy literature as it was popularized in the ‘30s and ‘40's 'pulps' ('pulp fiction'—so called because the publications were printed on cheap paper en masse and became equated with fiction oriented toward adventure and lurid covers rather than 'good' writing and aesthetic covers).
Such writing was perceived by academics as beneath contempt, while august writers of 'imaginative literature'—HG Wells, George Orwell, Edward Bellamy, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, CS Lewis, and JRR Tolkien—were regarded, not as so-called 'pulp' writers, but as imaginative literary writers on par with folks like Franz Kafka.
Unfortunately, a case can be made that 'pulp' writers sort of did this to themselves—there is nothing in science fiction or fantasy that demands card-board characters, banal dialogue or endless, predictable spin-offs of Arthurian legend, though they continue to exist. But certainly the fields at the time (and even into today) were such that new writers found fertile soil in which to root and grow to become the fine imaginative writers of our day: Doris Lessing, Ursula K. LeGuin, Phillip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, not to mention some absolutely brilliant work in the television series, Star Trek (on any given evening, somewhere around 55 to 60 million people watch some spin-off variation of that original series).
This should alleviate fears among science fiction and fantasy writers about being taken over by anything or anybody, one would think.
Unfortunately, the turf hasn’t changed much. As late as l995, there was a battle raging within the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) as to whether the F in SFWA should stand for Fantasy. The other option: Should the organization be called SFFWA?
Ye Gods! …that such turf battles should rage. And they rage. AND have raged. For years.
Is it inevitable that MR will be the target for the next territorial war?
While I don't want to believe that MR was purposefully excluded from the panels at OryCon or RustyCon due to some simmering new turf war, I really can't be positive. For now, I'll chalk it up to misdirected mail, keyboarding errors, late nights and simple oversight."
