"On Science Fiction Detective Stories."
Article (10 pages).
First appearance: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1979.
Illustration by Alex Schomburg (1905-98; ISFDb HERE).
(Note: Text faded but not badly.)
"With the passing years, there is less and less emphasis on the rules of the game in genre fiction, generally to its benefit. But in the pure detective story, still a viable form, the most basic of these rules, involving fairness to the reader, continues to apply."
IF you've been reading this weblog for a while, then you've probably noticed what Jon L. Breen has also noticed, that many mystery writers are science fiction authors—and, furthermore, that some of them like to mash the two genres together. In this short essay, he surveys the scene as of circa 1979 and sees the trend continuing into the future—with the intervening forty-seven years of hindsight available to us proving him basically right.
Excerpts:
"While the overlap of writers is great — and greater for example than the overlap, say, of Western writers with either field — there is reason to think that the overlap of readers is also considerable. Mystery fiction has not had an active 'fandom' until recent years (excepting the always-busy Sherlockians), and it is doubtful mystery fans will ever become as highly organized, sociable, and vocal as science fiction fans."
"Why do detective and science fiction so often attract the same writers and readers? In their most basic forms, they both concern problem-solving and appeal to the reader’s intellect in a way that Westerns, adventure stories, and pure romances do not."
"Creating a science-fictional setting is a tremendous challenge at any time — how do you do it without boring the reader and stopping the story cold on the one hand, or skimping on details and leaving unanswered questions on the other? Once a writer can perform this feat, throwing a few mystery clues into the pot should not be that difficult to do, though admittedly creating a fair-play mystery plot is no cinch either."
"As one might imagine, the mysteries in an SF detective story are often on a grander scale than those in a mundane detective tale."
"Though the question of the killer’s identity is often not one of the main factors in the plot of a crime story today, for many classical writers, fooling the reader on this point was a principal aspect of the game. . . But the science fiction writer can carry the whodunit one step further and pin the crime on murderers that were simply not available to Agatha Christie (and I don’t mean Martians)."
"But there is one kind of mystery-SF hybrid that I as a reader am uncomfortable with: the story which starts as an apparently mundane mystery but comes up with a science fictional solution. It is very difficult not to leave the reader feeling cheated in such a process."
Typos: "The Lost Word"; "Feburary".
References:
- Too many to list. You're on your own.
Resources:
- Concerning the possibility of producing a genuine science fiction mystery, Isaac Asimov proved his editor was wrong; see (HERE) for his reasoning. You might also consult Robert Lowndes's "The Futuristic Detective" (HERE) and Sam Moskowitz's double take on the subject (HERE).
- Breen briefly discusses James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars as a science fiction mystery; so does dfordoom, but at greater length, on The Vintage Pop Fictions website (HERE).
- Jon L. Breen exercises his parodic predilections with "The Pun Detective" (HERE) and his scholarship (HERE).
The bottom line:
Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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