A while ago, my friend Becca Rothfeld asked me if I’d be interested in writing a column for The Point—four articles with some link among them. I was! (I did: here’s the first installment.) I decided to write about four “genre” stories. By “genre” I really mean what is loosely called “speculative fiction,” the umbrella term that covers weird fiction, science fiction, horror, and fantasy.1
Something I’m always trying to do when writing about stuff I’m into on here, whether it’s pop stuff or more niche material, is transcend the “slobs vs snobs” dynamic. The Point seemed like an ideal place to take this project elsewhere because it’s a little further along the snob side. And to make things a little harder and a little more interesting for myself, I decided to impose the following rule when selecting my four stories: they could not be stories by “crossover” writers.
I made this decision because I think most people will agree that a story by (spins wheel) Ray Bradbury is good. But they might say it’s good in a way that “transcends genre” or they might be sort of unable to regard a Bradbury story with fresh eyes. What I wanted to do was find a way of writing about my chosen stories as works of genre that realized their genre potential, in a way that worked both for fans and for people who had no real attraction to genre as such.