A couple of online discussions made me consider just what rocks my writing self. While I love technically-accurate science fiction that ‘works’ on realistic levels, I respond most deeply to stories that can blur the line between fantasy and science fiction.
Space Opera. Sword & Planet. Planetary Romance. Not all the same thing, but they have distinct lineages connecting back to the adventure tales of the 19th Century and early 20th Century. (Note: here, the ‘romance’ pertains to stories of adventure, not love/lust.)
‘Space opera’ is a formerly pejorative term that was re-purposed in the early seventies by publishers eager to counter intellectual, inner-space, experimental fiction and get back to more fundamental story-driven tropes. Easier fare, if you will. ‘Star Wars’ gave those publishers legitimacy and a huge boost, as did the popularity of Tolkien and his disciples/copiers.
Consider ‘Sword & Planet’, or ‘Planetary Romance’ to use the more currently-popular label. Wikipedia defines it thus: “Planetary romance is a type of science fiction or science fantasy story in which the bulk of the action consists of adventures on one or more exotic alien planets, characterized by distinctive physical and cultural backgrounds.” Wiki has this to say about the subtle differences between the two labels: “In general, planetary romance is considered to be more of a space opera subgenre, influenced by the likes of A Princess of Mars yet more modern and technologically savvy, while Sword & Planet more directly imitates the conventions established by Burroughs in the Mars series.”
I remember being in my early teens, at that magical age to really discover sf&f. I remember summer afternoons spent reading reprints of Burroughs and Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, and Doc Smith; or new works by Tanith Lee, Jo Clayton, Christopher Stasheff, and C.J. Cherryh – and finding myself at home in worlds that appeared low-tech and fantasy at first, but were revealed to be much more. Sometimes they were lost colonies or trapworlds settled by marooned star-farers. Sometimes they were set in alternate dimensions or histories. Unlike urban fantasies, they were set in different, strange places where the setting seemed almost as much a driving force as the characters or plots. The ‘magic’ was psionic, or half-forgotten high tech, or Ancient handwavium…or magic just worked on the bloody planet, and the reader had to accept it.
They all fed a deep wanderlust within me, and probably did as much as Tolkien did to jump-start my inner map-making, world-building geek.*
I’m glad to see they’re sort of coming back into fashion again, as subtle crossovers between mainstream science fiction and epic fantasy. This is the next big era of genre mash-ups, yes?
That I’m putting graphic sex into the mix isn’t that new, either.
Thinking back, a lot of sf&f from the seventies and eighties had sexual themes or scenes; a lot more than the nineties, I recall. No long-term reader in sf&f will probably be unaware of John Norman’s Gor series (Ugh. Just – ugh. Any woman who used her hair to clean flagstones would quickly look less like a pampered sex-slave and more like a bag-lady after a dust storm. Sexy? Not so much.) I used to use Norman and Karl Edward Wagner as benchmarks for determining who was and who was not safe to date, among fellow college geeks.
Samuel R. Delany’s work functioned equally-well on adventure, intellectual, philosophical, and amazingly hot levels, most of which I couldn’t appreciate until I’d grown up and experienced enough of life to understand them. Thanks, Chip.
From the early eighties, I remember Andy Offutt’s (writing as John Cleve) hilariously pornographic 19-book space opera series Spaceways: (http://www.amazon.com/Spaceways-Of-Alien-Series/dp/0425060616) I wonder how many of the current crop of erotic sf&f romance authors have ever heard of these? The books are hard to find now, and they were often nearly as exploitative as Norman’s stuff. But they dared to embrace plot as well as passion, and spent some time in the characters’ heads as well as beds. At any rate, most of the books were a lot more fun and more believable to me than the same attempts made over in the mainstream romance world around the time. I’m not naming books, but some of those authors drove me away from sf&f romance for years.
I’m glad I found my way back.
* Add to that, my bad-art-making geek. This is a watercolor done sometime between 1981 and 1983. There is no attempt at scientific accuracy or plausibility, just ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you had one planet that was high-tech and one that was fantasy, and they were backgrounds for dragons?’
Fun post. I didn’t know all these terms, but know the variations within the genre. Your take and your book sound interesting.
Thanks, Lucie!
A clarification: the book I published last year, ‘Moro’s Price’, is an erotic m/m romance space opera.
The big planetary romance I’m hoping to publish sometime in the next few years, ‘Bloodshadow’, may or may not have as much sex – straight, gay, or both – as ‘Price’. It depends on which publisher likes it. If I can get a mainstream publisher like DAW, Tor, Del Rey, Orbit, or Pyr the book will likely be considerably cleaner. If one of the erotic romance e-publishers wants to take a chance on it, I can cut loose with most of the possible sex. If I have to self-publish then I’m putting it all in and slapping a warning label on it.
I was always drawn to that intersection between science fiction and fantasy… though my entry was mostly though Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffery, and Joan D. Vinge. (Come to think of it, my first stories were sword and planet… I wonder if I could resurrect those..)
My first foray into reading erotic SF/F was in college when I discovered Elf Sternberg’s works on Usenet… oh how the somewhat sheltered mind was open…
I’m very glad you’re writing what you write!
Thank you. I’m glad you’re reading it. And yes, sword & planet rocks!
Anne McCaffrey blew my mind with Actual Though Veiled Sex in fantasy books when I was probably too young to be reading such things. Early in college I discovered Tanith Lee and the aforementioned Spaceways books. Misty Lackey’s books might have started me thinking about writing m/m stories, but I wasn’t good enough to tell the tales I wanted to read.
It took a friendship with some fanfic writers in the early nineties, plus stumbling onto Elf’s work online, to awake the goal of writing (or attempting) a legitimate mix of science-fantasy and erotica.
I like that we’re getting back to a time when the writers that are making history are the writers who dare to ask “what if?”. I’ve been playing around in SF and Fantasy for years, but it was always such a hard sell. Now, the market seems to be more open to it, although the comptetition is getting tougher too.
And lol on using Norman as a litmus test for potential dates! Totally appropriate!
I’ve played in the SF and Fantasy sandbox for nearly 40 years, and that has always been the case. It’s been a harder sell than romance because the market has been smaller for decades.
But whatever the current flavor or trope, somebody always pushed the limit. When it was good work AND they got lucky, it became a best-seller, or at least a cited reference. I read ‘Neuromancer’ for the first time last year. 30 years after seeing it referenced EVERYWHERE, it still gave me the chills. So did Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One – which sold a tiny amount compared to the leading titles in Romance.
I’m still not as familiar with the romance and erotic romance fields, but I’m happy to see them opening up to new sub-genres.
Don’t forget on the date thing: Norman AND Wagner. For some reason the combo was always bad news in college boys. Oddly enough, I never had a problem with the ones who loved Clive Barker…