{"id":1378,"date":"2010-09-17T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2010-09-18T17:51:41","modified_gmt":"2010-09-18T05:51:41","slug":"being-a-nz-specfic-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/09\/17\/being-a-nz-specfic-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Being A NZ SpecFic Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve already mentioned in earlier posts this, this is NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week<\/strong> 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<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 “speculative fiction”—so “check” again.)<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n

Yet what, then, of UK author, China Mi\u00e9ville<\/strong>, whose novel The City & The City<\/em><\/strong> has just jointly won this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel<\/strong> and is set in the fictional East European city of\u00a0 Beszel\/Ul Qoma. Does that mean that China Mi\u00e9ville is not writing UK speculative fiction, or is not a UK spec-fic author? Or his Hugo co-winner<\/strong>, Paolo Bacigalupi<\/strong>, who is American and a spec fic author, but whose novel The Windup Girl<\/strong><\/em> 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<\/em> speculative fiction?<\/p>\n

And where does Neil Gaiman’s<\/strong> American Gods<\/strong><\/em> 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?<\/p>\n

Or what about when Japanese anime director, Hayao Miyazaki<\/strong>, made the film of UK author Diana Wynne Jones<\/strong>‘ novel Howl’s Moving Castle<\/strong>,<\/em> 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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So what about you? Do you agree? Disagree? Don’t care?<\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1405,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}