Friday, April 22, 2016

Oryx and Crake

I do not think that there is much of a difference of writing in genre and using elements of a genre in reference to writing literature. Writing inside of a genre does not take away from the literature per say. A good example is this book and The Martian. True that they use elements of science fiction but they use them well. I think that the only way that people would really start classifying them as genre pieces is if they starting using the elements of their genre in a cliche way. That's what I'm really trying to get at here. Usually pieces that become overshadowed by their genre are pieces that really on the genre for the structure. So for example if a book uses genetic mutation as a tool to progress a story and make a point that creates entertainment than it is literary. The entertaining point is not the mutation, the mutation is a tool used to reach this entertaining point. When a story uses the mutation as the point of entertainment that's when it becomes overshadowed by its genre. For example half of the bad sci-fi. In bad science fiction the story is about the tool which gives a feeling of shallowness. But using these tools I will reiterate does not create a shallow story in itself. I don't like to this question because I believe that it takes away from the texts. It turns a good story into a story of re-used idea, even when it's not really about that. Granted there are other stories with corporation states, there are other stories with mad science and mutants. But what makes this story is how they use it. For another example in The Witcher series its not about it being fantasy, its about the fantastical elements are used to create a realistic and entertaining story, and its the same with this story and all of sci-fi.

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