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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Social Relevance of Speculative Fiction

In our country, it seems that the stances of the literati fall under one of two choices: either your work of fiction is socially relevant, or it's popular and enjoyable. As if the two were mutually exclusive to each other, and reading one means you're not reading the other.

Rick Kleffel from The Agony Column had a short interview with Jeffrey Ford more than a year ago. What struck me (and I'm just paraphrasing it) was the part when Ford mentioned how speculative fiction can be a vehicle for ideas and beliefs. His latest novel (at the time), The Girl in the Glass, did just that. And how can we forget George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984. Don't they belong to the speculative fiction genre as well?

Of course today, my friend Cindy pointed out a relevant column by Keith Olbermann in reaction to what's happened so far, five years after 9/11. And again, he uses as an example the moving yet genre TV show The Twilight Zone, at how the episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street is a metaphor for what's going on.

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