Fiddlers & Whores

[kindermord]

Unlike Uber, Xaosseed & the rest of the gang over at blogcoven.com, I rarely update my blog. Mainly, I suppose, because those of you who might be interested in the mundane details of my life already live with me and because I'm an obsessive monomaniac who takes little notice of the world outside his sphere of interest

Comments

[kindermord]

Should historical novelists live down to their peers' standards and run, not walk, to the bank?

No, they should aspire to be as rigorous as they can be. But they're novelists and their overriding duty must always be to tell a story. Is War and Peace a great novel because of its historical accuracy? It's great because it is a superb piece of storytelling, which frames its narrative in the context of great events.

Is there a tacit contract between a writer of historical fiction and their readers that "historical" is not just a label to help reviewers?

There is an understanding, the reader has taken the book from the fiction section and has the right to expect that he will be entertained. He has no right to demand to be educated. He can reasonably object if the author misleads him regarding the grand narrative, but so long as the Grande Armee marches back from Moscow in a bad way and Napoleon isn't shot dead by Pierre Bezukhov, and the reader is entertained, then the novelist has done his duty.

Is it the same in any genre fiction - do science fiction writers have a duty to get the science right?

You're a story teller first.

Science fiction is an odd category as it is (in my opinion) more the literature of ideas than of science.

"Flowers for Algernon" is one of the finest science fiction stories ever written. It's crammed with ideas, but there isn't much science. I'm sure there are fine science fiction writers who get the science right, but I'll be damned if I can think of one. Ksandr could probably name a few.

Here's one for you: do historians have a duty to educate? Should they allow themselves to be driven by the same narrative impulses as a novelist

I never suggested they didn't, of course historians have a duty to educate, but historians are not novelists. A good historian can make use of the novelists craft to improve his work, but if he shapes the facts to suit his narrative he is as guilty of neglecting his duty as the author who writes an educational, but ultimately boring novel.