Does fantastic fiction need answers? mysteries? secrets?
I wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I have written, hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old secrets and some new ones; but there are some I shall not put down at all.
-Arthur Machen, "The White People" (1899)
Is there a Cylon God? Are alien super-soldiers behind a government conspiracy? Why isn't Tom Bombadil affected by the Ring?
We could expand this random list of questions almost indefinitely; there are many mysteries in fantastic fiction (no definition required--you know it when you see it; your eyes don't lie)--many old secrets in fantasy and some new ones in science fiction. So here's my question: do we need answers?
This was part of my problem with Kelly Link's stories; each only had, to quote an out-dated Clive Barker, "a twentieth century conclusion--all ambiguities." Chris was right when he noted the dream-logic that marked (not quite "ruled") those stories, so he and I agree that far; the difference comes in the fact that I disliked the ambiguities, but now I wonder if I was too hard on them as pieces of genre fiction.
Maybe to represent the strangeness--the newness--the unknownness of the fantastic, maybe fantastic fiction should contain mysteries and secrets (insofar as mysteries and secrets can be contained).
To take the topic of the second question that I started with (because I've finally finished my epic rewatching of The X-Files, including The Lone Gunmen): one of the criticisms of The X-Files was that the alien conspiracy seems somewhat incoherent, but maybe it should be incoherent--why would an alien conspiracy be coherent to us? Why should we have all the answers by the end?
Shouldn't the fantastic make us wonder?
-Arthur Machen, "The White People" (1899)
Is there a Cylon God? Are alien super-soldiers behind a government conspiracy? Why isn't Tom Bombadil affected by the Ring?
We could expand this random list of questions almost indefinitely; there are many mysteries in fantastic fiction (no definition required--you know it when you see it; your eyes don't lie)--many old secrets in fantasy and some new ones in science fiction. So here's my question: do we need answers?
This was part of my problem with Kelly Link's stories; each only had, to quote an out-dated Clive Barker, "a twentieth century conclusion--all ambiguities." Chris was right when he noted the dream-logic that marked (not quite "ruled") those stories, so he and I agree that far; the difference comes in the fact that I disliked the ambiguities, but now I wonder if I was too hard on them as pieces of genre fiction.
Maybe to represent the strangeness--the newness--the unknownness of the fantastic, maybe fantastic fiction should contain mysteries and secrets (insofar as mysteries and secrets can be contained).
To take the topic of the second question that I started with (because I've finally finished my epic rewatching of The X-Files, including The Lone Gunmen): one of the criticisms of The X-Files was that the alien conspiracy seems somewhat incoherent, but maybe it should be incoherent--why would an alien conspiracy be coherent to us? Why should we have all the answers by the end?
Shouldn't the fantastic make us wonder?