Being A NZ SpecFic Writer
As I’ve already mentioned in earlier posts this, this is NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week and there have already been several interesting posts on what it means to write speculative fiction in New Zealand and as a New Zealander. (By the way, you can check this week’s blog posts out here.)
I don’t think I have a lot of profound insights to offer, but the theme of the week has caused me to pause and reflect. For a start, I am a writer (check), I am a New Zealander (check) and I write Fantasy-Science Fiction (which falls within the aegis of “speculative fiction”—so “check” again.)
But what does that mean, to be a New Zealand speculative fiction writer, any more than to be, for example, a British, American, or Japanese speculative fiction author? Does it mean that one “should” write self-consciously New Zealand stories, with NZ characters, and NZ cultural themes and settings, i.e. with the speculative literary equivalent of buzzy bees and No. 8 wire on every other page?
Yet what, then, of UK author, China Miéville, whose novel The City & The City has just jointly won this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel and is set in the fictional East European city of Beszel/Ul Qoma. Does that mean that China Miéville is not writing UK speculative fiction, or is not a UK spec-fic author? Or his Hugo co-winner, Paolo Bacigalupi, who is American and a spec fic author, but whose novel The Windup Girl is set in a dystopian future Thailand, with many characters therein who are not American, although a handful are. But is this enough to make it American speculative fiction?
And where does Neil Gaiman’s American Gods fit in? Some would claim it as the quintessential American spec-fic novel in a cultural sense, but although now resident in the US, Gaiman was for a long time a UK author. So how does that work?
Or what about when Japanese anime director, Hayao Miyazaki, made the film of UK author Diana Wynne Jones‘ novel Howl’s Moving Castle, which is about a Welsh wizard in a Fantasy world—doesn’t that just make your head hurt when trying to tie nationality to story?
It makes mine ache a fair bit, I have to say. So maybe I just need to keep things simple. I’m a writer. I write Fantasy-SciFi, which is a form of speculative fiction. I also happen to live in New Zealand. By and large, I like living in New Zealand (although like everyone else in Christchurch I’m ready for the whole earthquake and aftershock experience to be over; about now would be good) but I am not personally convinced that my place of residence and what and how I write are deeply or intrinsically linked. I certainly don’t feel the need to consciously include the literary equivalent of buzzy bees or No. 8 fencing wire in my books—in fact, I find the whole idea of actively tryng to do so decidedly naff.
As a writer, I try to tell the best stories I can, in the best way that I can. If others, reading my writing, find elements they consider distinctively New Zealand, then I’ll be very happy about that as well, because these associations will have arisen naturally, out of who and what I am. And for this Kiwi writer, in NZ SpecFic Blogging week, that’s exactly the way it ought to be.
So what about you? Do you agree? Disagree? Don’t care?
Agreed and double agreed from this Kiwi import 😉 Happy to call this lovely country home, but well aware that I’ll never be a ‘real’ anything. Stories don’t have to have passports, thankfully…
I like that: “stories don’t have to have passports”. Thank you for putting it in a nutshell …
I think the importance of local colour, or local flavour, depends entirely on what kind of story you write, and it may well be that speculative fiction (which, as often as not, involves an otherworldly setting) is intrinsically less ‘regional’ than is ‘literary’ fiction. Other than that, I think it’s mainly a matter of community–it’s a relief to know other people in the broader vicinity are trying to do something similar, even if waving the flag per se isn’t a part of that.
And I’ve sometimes used a NZ setting, when it worked for the story. But always because that was what the story seemed to require, not out of some feeling that I ‘should’.
I agree that the story you are telling should be the driver of setting, as it should be of many other—if not all—aspects of story telling. If setting is forced, then I think that lack of authenticity very quickly becomes apparent to readers.
In terms of community, that is why I have been supportive of the SpecFicNZ concept from the beginning, although not a member of the “core”, as I think that collegiality amongst writers is really important and there’s not nearly enough of it happening.
“I certainly don’t feel the need to consciously include the literary equivalent of buzzy bees or No. 8 fencing wire in my books”
That’s exactly it. There’s being a writer whose stories may or may not be informed by New Zealand and then there’s being a kind of travel agent for a New Zealand that doesn’t exist any more than the Wild West did. The buzzy bees and No. 8 wire are lazy shorthand, but they don’t really describe the authentic New Zealand.
I’ve written stories set here, but I’ve also written ones set in the UK, the States – and of course so many spec fic stories are set somewhere that doesn’t exist at all. Wherever it’s set, I think the most important thing is to describe the people and places with as much authenticity as you can.
I have found this more in NZ literary-genre fiction than SFF, but there have been definitely been times where I’ve read stories where the use of “kiwiana” is so self-conscious and heavy-handed that it’s “faux”. Conversely, I love the “ah yes” moment when you encounter genuine authenticity. In terms of NZ fiction and NZ setting, the first time I can recall having that moment was when I began reading Witi Ihimaera’s Whanau (the original version). I had spent 10 years of my growing up in a very remote, predominantly Maori settlement on the West Coast of the North Island, and when I read Whanau’s opening sequence describing the settlement and getting on the local bus I had that little shock of: “Ah, yes. This is real.” A moment that seriously rocked my world. More recently, I also found Charlotte Grimshaw’s short fiction collection, Opportunity, compelling reading, with no question that this was NZ and NZ fiction, but the setting and cultural aspect “just was” in a way that was also “ah, yes” for me.