Interstitial Author vs. Insterstitial Stories

[Liosse de Velishaf]

I'm fine with a bit of de-railing in terms of discussing well-known venturers into Interstitial fiction. But my main question is this:

What defines you as Interstitial? Lots of cross-genre? A few interstitial stories?

For instance, I can't think of a single project of mine that stays firmly within one category all the way through. Individual stories, even individual series may be high fantasy. But then you run into all sorts of different stuff further down the line. One example is a project that started off as fantasy, though not necessarily "high". Maybe "epic". And from one perspective, it might even be considered YA. But later stories set in the same universe are sci-fi, paranormal in some cases, and more obviously adult. There are themes from all areas. Environmentalism, religious discussion, war, politics, racism, etc... Another project has a story that is a journey sci-fantasy, which when the reader looks at it through the main character's perspective, is straight fantasy, or even magical realism in the form of a religion. But down the line, it moves towards secondary-world hard-fantasy: in that the science of the world is the basis for getting in and out of situations. It's not fantasy in a sci-fi coat. It's sci-fi in a sci-fantasy coat. (You may have noticed that the genre I most identify with currently is sff... that's mainly because it's the closest thing I could find to fit my work.) Things get weirder from there. I've been advised by several people that this is a dangerous precedent. Have a series that crosses genre markedly. Is it interstitial, though? Does interstitial require ambiguity in a single story/manuscript, or can it be generated across several related projects?

[Shweta]

At Clarion, I was whining to Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman that I seemed unable to write a standard story. Almost all my stories come out interleaved, with multiple voices and stories within stories, even when they're very short; the ones that don't, well, they seem to happen in some odd mixed-up storyteller voice. And almost all my characters can be best described as "between".

So there I am whining, and wondering what's wrong with me, and Ellen and Delia just look at each other. And then one of them -- I think it was Delia* -- said "Yes, but have you thought about who you are?"

And that's it. I exist between cultures. I've lived in India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, Scotland, and California; I'm Indian married to an American. English is my best language but not my first. My academic field is interdisciplinary. I am a between-person.

It would be really damn weird for me to have only one voice, or for any of my voices to match those of people whose lives are so different from mine. When I try to write like them, I'm faking it. And it shows.

That's what makes me interstitial even if interfictions didn't buy my story. This time..



* I think my student interaction with Delia Sherman can best be summed up as:
Me: :e2cry:
Delia: "Yes, dear, but have you considered the obvious?"
Me: :heart:
<rinse and repeat>

[Liosse de Velishaf]

At Clarion, I was whining to Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman that I seemed unable to write a standard story. Almost all my stories come out interleaved, with multiple voices and stories within stories, even when they're very short; the ones that don't, well, they seem to happen in some odd mixed-up storyteller voice. And almost all my characters can be best described as "between".

So there I am whining, and wondering what's wrong with me, and Ellen and Delia just look at each other. And then one of them -- I think it was Delia* -- said "Yes, but have you thought about who you are?"

And that's it. I exist between cultures. I've lived in India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, Scotland, and California; I'm Indian married to an American. English is my best language but not my first. My academic field is interdisciplinary. I am a between-person.

It would be really damn weird for me to have only one voice, or for any of my voices to match those of people whose lives are so different from mine. When I try to write like them, I'm faking it. And it shows.

That's what makes me interstitial.



* I think my student interaction with Delia Sherman can best be summed up as:
Me: :e2cry:
Delia: "Yes, dear, but have you considered the obvious?"
Me: :heart:
<rinse and repeat>


I'm afraid I'm pretty typical in terms of environment. But somehow I find these crazy tangents to go off on. Like the poem I posted in the Poetry lab where I replied to many comments by rambling on about my goals and philosophy. I think my practical responses take up about forty percent of my responses there. And I can;t imagine anyone would know what the hell I was talking about. I don't really write to a specific genre. My stories/poems/ideas are as they came to me. They just often happen to be categorizable.

Great summation, by the way.

[Shweta]

I'm afraid I'm pretty typical in terms of environment.

I would assume most of us are, it being, y'know, typical :)
An odd background is surely only one way of producing a person who cannot squeeze into normal categories.

I just keep hoping the abnormality is interesting.

Great summation, by the way.
:D
Thanks.
Clarion does crystallize some things.

[Dawnstorm]

I said in the thread over in the SFF forum, that I'd come here because I like "that kind of story", and that's basically why I'm here. I'm odd, I suppose, in that I tend to like the stories that get published in anthologies or mags that use the terms, but I never like the terms much. (I frustrated my university teachers by loving postmodern fiction but disliking the term "postmodern", too.) Go figure.

A cross genre series would definitely count as a [choose-your-term], IMO, as long as the readers know that their reading one. You're playing less with texts than with the ways to read a text. Try David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas for a single-volume multi-genre interrelation game. I thought the arrangement of the stories was very clever; only through that arrangement did the entire work could have an ending that I read as upbeat/hopeful and devastatingly cynical at the same time. No reason you couldn't do something vaguely like that across multiple volumes.

[Shweta]

A cross genre series would definitely count as a [choose-your-term], IMO, as long as the readers know that their reading one.

Counterexample, maybe. Sharon Shinn's Jenna Starborn. Which is Jane Eyre... IN SPACE!
It's obviously cross-genre. It's a wonderful fun read, the more so if you know Jane Eyre. But is it interstitial? I'd say no.

[Dawnstorm]

Counterexample, maybe. Sharon Shinn's Jenna Starborn. Which is Jane Eyre... IN SPACE!
It's obviously cross-genre. It's a wonderful fun read, the more so if you know Jane Eyre. But is it interstitial? I'd say no.

I tend to agree with you there.

But what Liosse suggested was different: What if you have a series of X books. None of the books themselves are anything out of the ordinary. But if you move through the series you realise that there has been some sort of genre modulation - to the extent that you end up with something that's at odds with the place you started in (say a science fictionally naturalistic world turns by degrees into a meaninginfused meme-run world, or something like this.) So: you don't have a single work that's "interstitial" per se, but you have an "interstitial" series. The hermeneutic circle runs amok.

At least that's how I understood the original question. I don't know anything like that. I thought of two things - Cloud Atlas, which I mentioned. It doesn't modulate, but at least it interconnects for effect. And the other, which I did not mention, is Moorcock's oevre - where even the mainstream books (such as, say, Mother London) take on additional meaning if you know his other - genre - books - to the effect that you're reading different books depending on what you've read. I didn't mention that, because it's very hard to summarise and pin down that effect.

[Shweta]

I tend to agree with you there.

But what Liosse suggested was different: What if you have a series of X books.
Ah yes. We're entirely in agreement then. I didn't know you were responding to Liosse; thought you were making a separate and more general point :)

[Liosse de Velishaf]

One of the factors that creates the sense of genre modulation in my projects is the idea that the way we understand our world isn't necessarily the way it is. I have heard of and read (and am planning to read) several stories where one character sees something as magic, but another sees it as tech, or similar confusion. But in the case of my stories, it seems more like all the characters have one view of the world, but it's not necessarily the right one. I mainly write subjective povs, so it's almost impossible to avoid mistaken impressions. I've only started to play with that conciously very recently.(lol... adverb triad) I find the differences between worldviews and reality very interesting. This is not a common thing in most of the fantasy I read, though some of the sci-fi, such as The Matrix, plays with similar themes; but The Matrix is more about intentional deception. Maybe something like Serial Experiments Lain comes closer. I really dig cyberpunk. But I don't feel obligated to remain within the same framework. As a sort of joke, one of my stories makes reference to the "Free Light" literary movement, which includes several other stories I've written, and the same title is applied to a scientific phenomenon within the story, related to issues of conciousness. There are other similar references within the work, and another work, which addresses the issue more overtly. It's interesting to dip below the surface and get a glimpse of the depths. But it's not something I see often. I'm sure there are plenty of books that do similar things which I have not read; I'm not trying to claim any sort of complete originality.

[Shweta]

One of the factors that creates the sense of genre modulation in my projects is the idea that the way we understand our world isn't necessarily the way it is.
<cut>

This is one of the things I like best -- the sense that we create our understanding of the world, and the tension between reality and understood-reality. It's why a lot of my stories have inner stories, or some storyteller-voice thread, I think -- those are creating the characters' understanding of the events. It's also why I never want it to be clear whether those inner stories are "true".

Not that I'll always do that, just that it makes some sense of what I have been doing.

Now, I do think one can do multiple understandings/apparent genres within the bounds of accepted genres, even in a sophisticated way. Sylvia Engdahl's wonderful Enchantress from the Stars (http://www.amazon.com/Enchantress-Stars-Sylvia-Engdahl/dp/0142500372) is one example. I'd call it clear SF, though to some of the POV characters it's fantasy. Reason being, they're wrong. What makes your work "between" to me is this:

But in the case of my stories, it seems more like all the characters have one view of the world, but it's not necessarily the right one. I mainly write subjective povs, so it's almost impossible to avoid mistaken impressions.

When the way the reader reads the story afffects what the story is, because there is no single unambiguous meta-framing that explains it all, that's when things fall between to me.

I wonder -- would the order in which people read your stories significantly affect how they end up understanding the world?

[Liosse de Velishaf]

This is one of the things I like best -- the sense that we create our understanding of the world, and the tension between reality and understood-reality. It's why a lot of my stories have inner stories, or some storyteller-voice thread, I think -- those are creating the characters' understanding of the events. It's also why I never want it to be clear whether those inner stories are "true".

Not that I'll always do that, just that it makes some sense of what I have been doing.

Now, I do think one can do multiple understandings/apparent genres within the bounds of accepted genres, even in a sophisticated way. Sylvia Engdahl's wonderful Enchantress from the Stars (http://www.amazon.com/Enchantress-Stars-Sylvia-Engdahl/dp/0142500372) is one example. I'd call it clear SF, though to some of the POV characters it's fantasy. Reason being, they're wrong. What makes your work "between" to me is this:



When the way the reader reads the story afffects what the story is, because there is no single unambiguous meta-framing that explains it all, that's when things fall between to me.

I wonder -- would the order in which people read your stories significantly affect how they end up understanding the world?


Depending on which series, I'd say that it could in some cases.

There's a steam-punk project with a physics overlay I call Temporal Physics, and it makes some use of the Uncertainty Principle, and also deals with issues of subjective time. In that series, it might matter which you read first. The original story, and the one I'm currently working on, doesn't contain any reference to Temporal Physics. The differences are presented in the frame-work of a religion based on slavic mythology and culture. There's talk of divination and some limited magic. No physics. A later tale focuses on the propulsive aspects of the magic for use in space-flight. It's still not exactly science like we have now. After, there's still a half-magic proposal, and while there is limited scientific application in terms of military usage, the religion has not failed, the "magic" is still in use. A pair of later stories deal with the "physics" on the level of hard science. It is basically the "hard" sci-fi of this alternate universe. There are very technical explanations, and modeling equations. It's not space-opera. The technical side is very important and works as part of the plot. There are "explanations" of the magic in later stories that might give someone reading them out of order the impression that what they see is scientific "progress". But that doesn't mean it is. It's just a different perspective. All the ideas are part of the characters, they're not objective parts of the narrative. Just because the order the reader read them suggests one perpsective is "true", that doesn't mean they are correct. Just like our own science, there are fuzzy areas that leave open many possibilities.

[Shweta]

Right, but sometimes the first perspective one encounters colors everything else...

[Liosse de Velishaf]

Right, but sometimes the first perspective one encounters colors everything else...

Yes, that's quite true. But I'm hoping that the subjective narrator can overwpoer those expectations. The stories are in cronological order. That doesn't mean readers will read them that way. But if the narrator's are believable or relatable enough, then their perspectives should shift things a little.


I can't really respond more without knowing what it is you are trying to say. I completely agree that first impressions can be very powerful. Are you saying that if the reader can "make sense" of it all, that it might fit more in sci-fi, since that would be the "obvious" final conclusion?

[Shweta]

I can't really respond more without knowing what it is you are trying to say. I completely agree that first impressions can be very powerful. Are you saying that if the reader can "make sense" of it all, that it might fit more in sci-fi, since that would be the "obvious" final conclusion?

Uh, presupposing I'm trying to say anything here :)
I'm just all interested in changing perspectives and how they affect reader experience, and intrigued by your changing-genre series, and thinking out loud about possible effects of it. That's all!

[Liosse de Velishaf]

Uh, presupposing I'm trying to say anything here :)
I'm just all interested in changing perspectives and how they affect reader experience, and intrigued by your changing-genre series, and thinking out loud about possible effects of it. That's all!


rofl :roll: Okay. :) Just curious.
But now I have to find that damn book you noted... My "to read" list is enormous, now.


I have a lot of stories that change genre. Mainly because of presentation. Or extremely large time periods. The time between the first story here, and the last story is only a few hundred years. I have one that covers thousands of years, with crazy-detailed history and some seriously wacky world-construction. Because I mix my conworlding with my writing, most of my projects tend to expand rapidly, and cover a lot of territory. I had a thread in SFF titled "The Weaponized Laser", that deals with a hundred years or so of time change, and is sci-fi in presentation for the first half, but full of fantasy tropes and mythology for the second. All set on Earth. It also happens to involve some alternate history. Another genre jumper.

One of the things that interests me about stepping outside of strict genre boundaries is the idea that in real life, no story or place really follows the conventions of genre. So the worlds I create for my stories don't tend to either.

[Dawnstorm]

Yes, that's quite true. But I'm hoping that the subjective narrator can overwpoer those expectations. The stories are in cronological order. That doesn't mean readers will read them that way. But if the narrator's are believable or relatable enough, then their perspectives should shift things a little.

I have a hunch that the key component is the perceived reliability of the narrators. Or if people think there's anything in your novels against which reliability could be measured (e.g. a "nature" to reality). Real-world bias and reading order together might well have a "weighting" effect; i.e. a reader might believe one of the narrators more than the others.

[Esopha]

What defines you as Interstitial? Lots of cross-genre? A few interstitial stories?

Mmmkay. I will try to answer this very big all-encompassing question with brevity but that may be difficult because I am sick and I tend to get verbose when I am sick (and studying AP Lit vocabulary - wooo!).

Sophie as interstitial: Like Shweta, I have a lot of cultural mushy-gushy in my genetic make-up, so blurring cultures together and stuff never really bothers me. I have a lot of love of history and culture so I tend to mix them up anyway. I have varied interests. I feel like people are all interstitial in general, anyway, so. I'm going to stop talking about this.

Stuff I write: I think that when you write MG/YA stuff, you get a lot more leeway into incorporating elements from one genre into another. (I am perpetuating the 'kids are more open-minded than adults' thingy.) However, I don't set out to do this, I just sort of throw things into the plot that I think will work. Often this means that I do a lot of political commentary. Environmentalism is a big theme. I like to think about taking elements from genres that aren't necessarily blended frequently -- instead of fantasy and sf, I'd like to blend steampunk and humor with some nonfic stuff about tomato plants and fairy tales involving bird people, but unfortunately this does not have a plot yet and also I would need to research gyrocopters.

I guess I started thinking about story before genre, and that opens up a lot of possibilities. Genre always seemed kind of annoying to me, because I didn't understand breaking up big genres into little ones (like, sf into cyberpunk and space opera or whatever... confuses me) because I thought the story was the most important part.

*does not rant about genre does not does not*

I don't generally play with unreliable narrators, because I prefer reading reliable ones. I like reading about reliable people in an unreliable world, because I feel like that's shaped who I am. (I had my big coming-of-age moment when I was 10 years old; hit puberty around the time the Twin Towers fell -- nasty way to enter "adulthood.") And so that's not generally what I like to do.

I feel like the world is a delicious and messy place that doesn't lend itself to one genre or the other, so I like to make my stories like that.

[Liosse de Velishaf]

I always start with something besides genre first. Genre, or by certain interstitialist definitions category, is a marketing tool. People tend to read books that are similar to other books they liked. So from a commercial standpoint, category makes sense. A lot of "sub-genres" are related to movements or fads. Cyberpunk was a very concious movement from some perspectives. Steampunk was as well. It was such a serious movement that it expanded to many other forms of expression. These movements had goals and ideals. Many people in them were trying to say something, or make commentary. These are the real "genres". SFF is more of a category. It was created for marketing puposes by lumping together superficially similar books.