602 – Does Speculative Fiction Have a Canon?

Fantasy has plenty of cannons, and so does scifi, if we include beam weapons. But does either of them have a “canon?” The concept of a literary canon is squishy to begin with, and it is not the gold standard of quality the way some people insist, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. This week, we’re discussing whether speculative fiction has something similar, which books would go in it, and what that even means. ## Show Notes - The Literary Canon - Catcher and the Rye - Lord of the Rings - Frankenstein - Dune - A Song of Ice and Fire - Wheel of Time - Twilight - The Hunger Games - Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice Fires Her Editor - Discworld - The Name of the Wind - The Structure of Romance - The Broken Earth - The Blade Itself - The City We Became - The Witcher - Dungeon Crawler Carl - Legends and Lattes ## Transcript **Generously transcribed by Ace of Hearts.** Volunteer to transcribe a podcast. **Oren:** And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreant Podcast. I’m Oren. **Chris:** And I’m Chris. **Oren:** Recently, I heard someone asking if science fiction and fantasy had a canon, and I thought that was weird ’cause, yeah, like, lots of them. Like, what kind of cannon do you mean? Like, there’s… flintlock fantasy is a whole genre, and if there’s, like, laser cannons, that’s even more! But then I realized they were spelling it with one N, and they meant does it have, like, a literary canon, and I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if it did or not. So that’s what we’re talking about today. **Chris:** I mean, that’s not a formal thing, right? I mean, we do have extended universes, which are generally non-canon. So is it maybe everything that’s not in an extended universe? **Oren:** Well, it may be, but before I answer that, if you’ve been enjoying the podcast, we could use your help. We are currently looking for more transcription volunteers to help us make sure that every episode launches with a transcript, and we are very grateful to our existing volunteers. We just wanna make sure that they don’t get burned out. We typically send an episode every six weeks or so at the most, so if you’re interested, go to mythcreants.com/volunteer. Now, yes, I think that’s actually the answer. We have many canons, because spec fic nerds won’t stop arguing about what’s canon and not canon. But of course, the first question is what is the literary canon? And the answer is it’s very nebulous. **Chris:** Yeah, I mean, this is just the books that people worship, right? **Oren:** I mean, more or less. You know, they are books that people with literary clout both think are influential and also good, right? **Chris:** See, I guess, I definitely don’t always like the idea of having a list of books that we’re supposed to be worshiping. That’s unhealthy, right? It’s unhealthy to hold up these works because a lot of times they’re treated as though they’re perfect in some way, and all stories are flawed, and it’s important we understand that. And it comes along with the idea of “the greats,” right? There’s these people who are destined for greatness, who write great literature, and it’s not a matter of skill so much as it is a matter of cultural clout that somebody is treated like that. And trying to aim for that level is… again, in the end, I don’t think it’s healthy, right? We’re trying to aim for something unattainable that depends on the validation of others. So, you know, I don’t like that idea in general. However, I do feel like we could maybe separate the ideas of what’s influential from what’s perfect. **Oren:** Right. And there are a lot of books that are influential that would never be considered part of the literary canon because they don’t, you know, get lauded in the same way. Like, a book has to be lauded to count. And I’m not asking whether we should have one, I’m just curious if we do have one. I think the answer is yes, whether it should be or not. **Chris:** I mean, I can certainly list books, and I’m happy to do that, that I think would be part of the canon if we were looking at what is influential and has helped shape and define the genre or subgenres. You know, we could definitely go over that list. I would just want to specify: the goal here of this list is not to treat every influential book as though it’s a masterpiece. **Oren:** Right. ‘Cause in the literary canon, these are books like Grapes of Wrath, uh, anything by Tolstoy. If you had to read it in high school literature, there’s a good chance it would be considered part of the canon. People, of course, argue about what books do and don’t belong there all the time. **Chris:** Yeah. I do think that there’s this old idea of there being a set of classic books that all educated people are supposed to have read, right? And this is a point that I think Wes made in an old episode, where one book would allude to another classic book because that was its way of saying, “Hey, I’m knowledgeable. I have, of course, read the books I was supposed to read.” Right? And that, that group, that list of classic books that everybody who’s educated reads then becomes part of the cultural conversation and how you prove that you’re educated, by having the knowledge of these classic works. And it creates this exclusive literary club. Again, I don’t think this is a great idea, but I kinda wonder if the canon is tied to that idea where, of course, you know, you have to read this set of books or you’re uneducated. **Oren:** Yeah. And I do get the appeal of, like, what if there were certain books that everyone had read? Because then we would have a common base of reference. **Chris:** Yeah, it’d be easier to have examples that people were familiar with if everybody had read the same books. **Oren:** I mean, that is one of the reasons why I use examples from Lord of the Rings so much, right? Lord of the Rings and movies, because it’s much easier to guarantee that a larger percentage of my audience has seen those. Whereas if I’m using, even from relatively popular book series, like, you know, Temeraire did very well, but I have to explain a lot more of the Temeraire example for it to work, right? Whereas with Lord of the Rings, nearly everybody who comes to our site is at least aware of Lord of the Rings, even if they haven’t read it. So I understand the concept. I just don’t really think it’s workable because the moment you try to do that, you are having to exclude a bunch of books, and it’s hard for me to imagine any criteria you would set up that would A) be something you could get other people to adopt, and B) would not be, like, exclusionary along some lines that you don’t want to exclude books on. **Chris:** Yeah, it would definitely introduce a lot of potential for bias. Not that the bias wouldn’t happen anyway, you know? **Oren:** Sure. **Chris:** I think there is a lot of bias when people share around books and what books they worship. There are certain patterns in who the authors of those books are. **Oren:** Yeah, we’ll never know what those patterns are. Impossible to know. **Chris:** So I guess that kinda happens anyway, but I think the problem is when you have a set classic list of books that everybody’s supposed to read. Hopefully in time books will change and you’ll diversify that list, but then it becomes really controversial if people are like, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t read Catcher in the Rye in class.” And it’s like, “What do you mean? It’s a classic!” It’s like, “Okay, but should it be, though? Should it be?” **Oren:** Maybe we should read something else. I mean, because that is sort of the thing. If you’re going to have a canon and you wanna add books to it, you have to take some out, otherwise the concept is meaningless and it’s just all books now. But looking at speculative fiction specifically, it’s pretty clear that we have some books that people do treat the way that literary people treat their canon. **Chris:** Lord of the Rings is probably the most obvious one. **Oren:** Right. **Chris:** It’s interesting because Frankenstein is another one that’s really famous, but Frankenstein is probably less referenced among just speculative fiction fans and more among actually literary fiction. It is science fiction, and it is, I would say, part of the canon, but definitely Lord of the Rings… because its influence, I think, is greater or considered greater or more relevant today anyway, right? That is the one that immediately comes to mind for everybody as being an important thing that everybody knows and everybody references. Even if you haven’t read it, even if you haven’t seen the movies, there are probably some things you know, like that there’s an evil ring in that story, for instance. **Oren:** Yeah. And then there are, like, a handful of others, and then it starts to fracture based on your subgenre. You know, Dune is another one that is, you know, not only influential, but it’s also highly lauded as having a special kind of literary merit. Obviously, I don’t agree. **Chris:** Is it? **Oren:** Yeah, absolutely! **Chris:** Okay. Yeah. **Oren:** For one thing, there’s Dune fans, and they are, like, easily the most pretentious of the fan group that I’ve upset. But just the way people talk about Dune is that it’s, like, extremely deep, right? You have people quoting Herbert’s ideas from outside the book about how a charismatic leader will lead us to damnation. You know, as if that’s very profound and not something that everybody says at all times, and arguably isn’t even in the first book. But that’s the way people talk about Dune, and people talk about Song of Ice and Fire the same way. That’s a much more recent one that I would say is treated the same way that literary canon books get treated. **Chris:** Yeah. So what do you think about Wheel of Time, since Wheel of Time is clearly derived from Dune? **Oren:** Derived from Dune and derived from Lord of the Rings. **Chris:** Very true. **Oren:** Personally, I don’t think Wheel of Time is there, and this isn’t a quality judgment. As I’ve stated, I don’t really think that being considered part of the canon makes a book better. But I don’t think that there is the same attitude towards Wheel of Time as you get for, like, Dune or Lord of the Rings or Song of Ice and Fire. **Chris:** So you’re judging this not by, like, how many books have imitated this book, but by the worshipfulness with which people talk about it. **Oren:** I think it’s both. I think it is a combination, and I think one often causes the other. You know, for example, Twilight was hugely influential, but no one is ever gonna talk about Twilight the way they talk about the literary canon. They might do that for Hunger Games. Like, Hunger Games is starting to get there. Gut check here, right? I can’t scientifically test this, but just the way people talk about Hunger Games as, like, how important its messages are and how insightful it is. And, you know, I like Hunger Games. It’s a good book. I’m glad to see it getting recognition, and I think that it might get there, and it’s also extremely influential. **Chris:** Yeah. I mean, with Twilight, I think Twilight is influential, and I hope someday it will be less disparaged. Not that it’s a perfect book, right? I just don’t think that there’s anything about it that deserves the kind of ridicule it gets. At the same time, we can go back to Twilight and see, well, I would say The Vampire Chronicles are the ones that would be considered part of the speculative fiction canon, the Anne Rice vampire series. **Oren:** Oh yeah, that’s definitely one. I should’ve thought of that. **Chris:** Because that influenced Twilight, right? So if we go back, that’s what started our paranormal romance vampire subgenre, it started with Vampire Chronicles. **Oren:** Yeah, and it has the veneer of awe, right? The way people talk about Interview with the Vampire, which is extremely funny in the context of Anne Rice firing her editor on Facebook. **Chris:** Because her every word is perfect. **Oren:** That’s such a crass thing to do for the author of a series that people talk about the way they talk about Interview with the Vampire. Chris: Yeah. But it speaks to how much he was worshiped that she just didn’t feel like she needed to be edited. There’s a lot of arrogance in that move that probably comes from being worshiped too much. **Oren:** Yeah. And Discworld, people talk about Discworld in a similar way. I just don’t know if Discworld has reached the level of popularity that I would say is required to make- **Chris:** Really? **Oren:** Uh, yeah.  **Chris:** Well, maybe I just hang out with a bunch of Discworld fans. **Oren:** You do. **Chris:** ‘Cause it feels like Discworld definitely, as a whole entity, is there. It’s definitely worshiped. It’s very popular. I would be surprised. **Oren:** I mean, you definitely do hang out with a certain subgroup, but also, you’re not wrong. Like, Discworld is popular, and people both rightly and wrongly laud Discworld for its supposed brilliance. It’s just to me, I don’t think we’re quite at the worshipful level yet. But I could be wrong. \[sarcastic] Maybe we are, and I just don’t see it because of how amazing and beautiful Discworld is. It’s outshining the way people worship it. **Chris:** Yeah. Well, let’s just say I think we still have a plugin, it’s possible that I had to disable it on our website, that is a tribute to Terry Pratchett ’cause it sends messages over the interwebs that represent the clacks messages. **Oren:** Mm-hmm. **Chris:** Right? Like, you know, that was one of those things that I feel like people had a great deal of reverence for, calling him Sir Terry Pratchett, so yeah. **Oren:** Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that very well could be right. **Chris:** And he was knighted, right? I do think that speaks to a certain level of cultural reverence. **Oren:** Yeah, he did get plenty of recognition. He was not toiling in obscurity. **Chris:** One book that I have to say, you know, I might begrudgingly put on this list is Name of the Wind just because I’ve seen enough knockoffs of Name of the Wind now. I can’t point and say Name of the Wind started this specific subgenre, but people definitely speak of it in very worshipful tones, which annoys me. And again, we’ve seen a couple of extremely blatant knockoffs, one of which is its own bestseller, which again speaks to the fact that people are inspired by it and are copying it, and so it definitely has some level of influence. **Oren:** Yeah, it’s possible. Name of the Wind did pretty well for itself. It sold a lot of books, and certainly a lot of people talked about how brilliant it was. At the moment, I haven’t seen the kind of extra-textual discussion that I associate with people talking about canon works. Like, you know, I haven’t seen anyone quote lines from the book as wisdom the way they do with Lord of the Rings and Dune. And Pratchett, honestly – and so I think that that speaks to your point actually that Pratchett probably does count. **Chris:** Yeah, in fact, I think I quoted Pratchett myself in one of my blog posts. Um, although actually the funny thing was I was quoting another author quoting Pratchett. **Oren:** I haven’t seen that sort of tributes for Name of the Wind, but maybe. **Chris:** Yeah, and maybe it’s a little new and it will get there or something like that. You know, we’ll see what happens with its cultural influence if it spreads. What do you think about Narnia? **Oren:** Yeah, I would say so. **Chris:** I mean, it’s very popular… I feel like almost everybody has been exposed to Narnia or was when they were kids. I’m kind of struggling to think about what books were inspired by Narnia. I mean, it is a portal fantasy, so we’ve had other portal fantasies. It’s probably not the first portal fantasy. We’ve got Wizard of Oz, it’s also a portal fantasy. **Oren:** Yeah, I don’t think Narnia had the same kind of effect that, say, Lord of the Rings did. But it popularized a subgenre, and we have The Magicians now, which is grimdark Narnia, so, like, that exists. And there are a lot of other portal fantasies that have come and gone. I just don’t think most of them have achieved the same level of success that big epic fantasies have. **Chris:** Yeah. **Oren:** One of the things that’s actually really interesting is that if you’re looking specifically at the science fiction and fantasy canon, a lot of the things that fill that role are actually not books. Like, if we’re talking about a literary canon, it by definition has to be books, but in the genre that we’re talking about, a lot of that role is filled by movies and TV shows, which is, you know, one of the reasons why we often use them as examples. **Chris:** Yeah, ’cause people have seen more of them. Yeah, it can be tough sometimes when I’m looking at this list. It’s, because again, it’s almost like a self-fulfilling cycle where people are much more likely to venerate works that are written by, you know, white men and talk about them in this worshipful tone, and then they make our literary canon list because people worship them, right? And looking at how fast, for instance, women get eliminated from this list. Romantasy is really big right now, and it’s really new. We can trace back what are some of the influential books in creating current romantasy trends, but they’re not worshiped. **Oren:** No. **Chris:** And maybe someday they will be, but they’re certainly not right now. **Oren:** I actually have a pet theory that romantasy is responsible for the fact that almost nobody comments on our critique posts now to say that “it must be good because it’s popular.” I think it’s because romantasy is super popular, and also because it’s for women, people are allowed to point out that it’s bad despite being popular. And so now people have much more internalized the idea that something can be really popular and still not be good. And of course, that was true way back when we started Mythcreants, right? People would still get really flustered if you brought up Twilight when they made that point, but it was less obvious. Like, all of the big famous fantasy stories that were selling well were still primarily by men and primarily for men. And now we’ve got romantasy, which has completely upended the genre in that way. And so now everyone’s kind of internalized, “yeah, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s good.” Which is true, it’s just funny that it took romantasy to get people to see that. **Chris:** Yeah. Yeah, it’s very true. Now the tension that has arisen on the blog is, first of all, we have the occasionally grumpy person, which is like, “romantasy isn’t fantasy.” It’s like… yes. Yes, it is. It’s both fantasy and romance, and they’re mad that we’re covering it on the blog. And other people who are like, “oh, well, you know, I don’t really like the romance posts that you put on the blog as much, but I’ll tolerate them.” And this is the thing, I have tons of people in my classes that are writing romances, which is honestly kind of a tough thing to deal with because romances aren’t just tension-based, and they’re like… actually, how they work structurally is actually very complex. I know they seem simple, but it’s very complex. And so now I’ve got tons of romantasy students, right, that I’m trying to coach through all the different things they have to do in a romantasy. So yeah, there’s some tension between the people who are romance fans in the speculative fandom and people who are not. **Oren:** That’s rough, buddy. **Chris:** Have you seen a lot of works influenced, that you can think of, by The Broken Earth? **Oren:** Not yet. **Chris:** Hopefully we will have some. **Oren:** I mean, Broken Earth is… obviously it won three Hugos. It was very lauded. It’s a work of dark fantasy, but it isn’t like what I would normally think of when I say the terms dark fantasy. When I say dark fantasy, I almost immediately imagine medieval-ish, everyone’s dying of the plague. **Chris:** The Witcher. **Oren:** Yeah, The Witcher. The, what was the one, the, the Joe Abercrombie book that I critiqued a while back? **Chris:** The Blade Itself. **Oren:** Yeah, The Blade Itself. That sort of thing, right? That’s what I think of as dark fantasy, and of course, The Broken Earth is completely different than that. **Chris:** Jemisin’s work seems to be very much in the, often in the epic fantasy or have some epic fantasy elements. I mean, not all of them. I’m assuming… The City. What was the one about the city? The City We Became. **Oren:** Yeah, that’s kind of its own beast.  **Chris:** That’s its own unique butterfly.  **Oren:** Yeah. But I mean, Broken Earth is very dark, right? It’s just also not realistic, right? And by not realistic, I mean it does not resemble anything from the real world.  **Chris:** Not high in realism at all.  **Oren:** Yeah. Whereas dark fantasy tends to distinguish itself by trying to be as much like at least people’s popular understanding of what a medieval society would be like as possible. Broken Earth goes in a completely different direction and is extremely fantastical and has lots of very complicated magical worldbuilding, and then is also really dark. **Chris:** Yeah. I mean, I would say The Witcher is actually pretty low on realism too. It is however smaller in scale. It’s more like the sword and sorcery… **Oren:** That’s true. **Chris:** …scale, right, of one muscly hero going around bashing in heads from town to town, and that gives it kind of a different feel to something that’s more of an epic fantasy like Broken Earth.  **Oren:** Yeah, so far I haven’t seen a lot of books that feel like they are super influenced by Broken Earth. But again, Broken Earth won its three Hugos only 10 years ago. **Chris:** Yeah, so it has time. Speaking of The Witcher- I have never had so many people mad at me, I feel like, who are actually fans as when I critiqued The Witcher. And I guess I don’t read enough dark fantasy to… ‘Cause we’d also have a look at, okay, when was it published? Does it have any precursors? But certainly it feels like people are very inspired by The Witcher, and it has its own video game franchise and everything. **Oren:** It’s hard for me to draw that line just because I haven’t read as many books in The Witcher’s genre. You could also say that sword and sorcery has a lot of overlap with dark fantasy but is not necessarily the same thing. **Chris:** Or with The Witcher anyway, ’cause The Witcher is like if you re-skinned Conan to make it dark fantasy, kind of. Yeah, I don’t know. Listeners, if you read a lot of, like, super grimdark dark fantasy, tell us how influential you think The Witcher is. Have you seen lots of books that are clearly inspired by The Witcher? We wanna know. **Oren:** And it’s hard to trace The Witcher’s evolution in itself, because of course its author is Polish, right? So he’s probably got a different frame of reference than most Anglophone writers. Or maybe he doesn’t, I don’t know, I’m not Polish. **Chris:** Yeah, I mean, it’s hard because there are a lot of works… I mean, the US has a really huge publishing market, and so there may be more cultural interchange. Probably a lot of people in… I think it’s probably easier for our works to get across the seas than vice-versa, if I were to guess, just because it’s already… The downside of having a huge market is it’s extremely competitive. So some people in smaller countries… your work is not gonna sell as much if you just go with a local publisher, but it’s also easier to get published with a local publisher. That’s what we’ve been told by various people. **Oren:** Yeah, who do publish in smaller markets. **Chris:** Yeah. Whereas in the US, if you break through, there’s a very large market, but because there’s a very large market, there’s also lots of authors competing to get in. So it might be that people in Poland have read a fair number of works that are translated from the United States, but it’s hard to say for sure. **Oren:** I’m sure they have, I’m just not sure if that’s the big influence for The Witcher author or not, right? And I just don’t know. This is like getting into much more speculative territory even than we’ve already been doing, but I am curious whether Dungeon Crawler Carl signals a mainstreaming of LitRPG or if it will be a fluke. **Chris:** Yeah, that’s gonna be interesting. **Oren:** Because, you know, Dungeon Crawler Carl has broken containment in a way that I don’t think any other LitRPG book has. There’s obviously a very passionate LitRPG fandom, but it’s fairly self-contained. You don’t see a lot of LitRPG books being discussed at award shows or having online discourse among the general fantasy community. But that’s definitely not true with Dungeon Crawler Carl. Everyone’s reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. Are we gonna see more now? It is going to require some more books, right? Because Dungeon Crawler Carl is above and beyond much better written than most other LitRPG I’ve encountered. And it’s possible that I’ve only encountered bad LitRPG, but the other ones that I have read, even if people are interested in the genre, I don’t think are gonna do the job. **Chris:** Yeah, I mean, it might depend on, for instance, whether traditional publishers decide that they wanna pick up LitRPG, because it’s popular enough. And also, again, if some of these young men, boys even, who read LitRPG are just very young, some of them might age up, right, and become better writers. **Oren:** That’s true.  **Chris:** And so we might see in time that the pool of writers who are writing LitRPG becomes more skilled, right? And we have more works that can kind of mainstream and break out. But that will be interesting to watch, or maybe we do have some authors who are already writing who like Dungeon Crawler Carl enough they decide to write LitRPG, right? So, you know, it could happen. We’ll see. Speaking of new genres, it’ll be interesting to see how Legends & Lattes ages. **Oren:** Yeah. I mean, at the moment, Legends & Lattes is in that odd space of being extremely influential but, like, not lauded. So it doesn’t meet the classic definition of a canon book because, you know, most people think of Legends & Lattes as, like, a fun beach read or alternatively an existential threat to literature. **Chris:** I mean- This is, again, an issue that Terry Pratchett faced extensively in his life where people do not take light books seriously, whereas people take works that are darker more seriously. And it’s unfortunate. I wish it was not true. But Pratchett definitely had this issue where, you know, he had very serious messages in his work, but because his works were light and funny, people often overlooked that and did not take his work seriously. And so of course it’s worth saying the same thing with cozy fantasy, where Legends & Lattes did get nominated for a Hugo. Did it win? I can’t remember. **Oren:** I don’t think so. **Chris:** But generally it’s definitely harder for a cozy to be nominated, I think, because people don’t revere them. And there were cozies before Legends & Lattes, for sure, right? It was not the only cozy, but that seems to be the one that made it a lot more popular and became famous. And we’ve seen, just like Court of Thorns and Roses changed what the titles of all of these other romantasy books are so that they were all “X of Y and Z” or something, we saw tons of books come out that were “This & That,” right, that were like cozies or designed to be appealed to the cozy audience, that were just fashioning their titles after Legends & Lattes. **Oren:** That is true. **Chris:** So it speaks to how, like, you can already see its influence there, right? Because of the way that people are titling and packaging their books to make them as close to Legends & Lattes as possible. So I don’t know, maybe it being as light as it is and being a cozy will keep it from being revered, but maybe, again, people revere old things more than new things. **Oren:** Yeah, that’s true. Maybe once it gets old. **Chris:** Once it gets old, we’ll overlook the fact that it’s light because it’s old. **Oren:** Yeah. Maybe when it’s old, people will start to talk about the brilliance of paying the mafia boss in goods and services instead of money. It really subverts the traditional economic paradigm. Yeah, all right, that’s gonna be a think piece in 20 years, just watch. All right. Well, with that, I think we can go ahead and call this episode to a close. **Chris:** So this podcast is never gonna be in the speculative fandom canon, but we might get .00001% closer if you became one of our patrons and helped us out. Very motivational, right? It’s a very big difference, your contribution! Just go to patreon.com/mythcreants. **Oren:** And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, we have Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then we have Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.