Blog of Author Paul S. Kemp - Why Authors Grow on Different Trees

R. Scott Bakker writes bad non-shared world speculative fiction. Robert Jordan writes bad non-shared world speculative fiction. Gene Wolfe writes bad non-shared world speculative fiction. Therefore J.R.R. Tolkien writes bad non-shared world speculative fiction.

Doesn’t work, does it? Make it a string of fifty names in the premises and it remains a weak argument.  The reason it's weak is the same one that prevents us from concluding anything about the taste of a Granny Smith on the basis of the taste of a McIntosh – the premises lack any significant relation to the conclusion. It’s true (solely for purpose of this illustration) that all of the named authors in the premises write non-shared world speculative fiction and that they write it badly. But the only relation the authors named in the premises share with Tolkien is that he, too, writes non-shared world speculative fiction. And the quality of “writing non-shared world speculative fiction” is not enough to allow us to make an inductively strong claim that Tolkien’s non-shared world speculative fiction is bad solely on the basis of the other named authors writing bad non-shared world speculative fiction. After all, based on our experience in the real world, we know that authors vary a great deal in terms of talent, style, and tone. We’re trying to conclude something about the taste of a Tolkien-McIntosh on the basis of the taste of Bakker-Braeburn.

I’ll bet all of this is non-controversial (except to philosophy majors, who are even now critiquing my misuse of various terms like inductively strong and deductively valid; to all of you, understand that I had logic and symbolic logic as a an undergrad almost ten years ago; cut me some slack; I’m operating from memory here :-)).

This brings me to my point (finally; sheesh!).

Notwithstanding the foregoing, exactly that kind of inductive reasoning is applied with alarming regularity to shared world speculative fiction writers. I frequently hear/read comments that are one variant or another of the following: “I read a few bad shared world fantasy novels back in the 80s. Therefore all shared world writing is rubbish.”

This kind of flawed reasoning is commonplace with respect to shared world speculative fiction. It is also nonsense. The mere fact that a piece of speculative fiction writing is set in a shared world has no relevance to the question of its quality. As with non-shared world speculative fiction, the quality of the author is the determinative factor as to the quality of the work. An example to further highlight the point:

Paul S. Kemp wrote a bad shared-world speculative fiction novel set in the Forgotten Realms. Tracy Hickman wrote a bad shared-world speculative fiction novel set in the Dragonlance universe. Timothy Zahn wrote a bad shared-world speculative fiction novel set in the Star Wars universe. Therefore William King’s shared world speculative fiction novel, set in the Warhammer universe (nay, all speculative fiction set in a shared world) is also bad.

Doesn’t it seem absurd to so generalize, both across lines, across authors, across subject matter? We’re all different apples. Hell, even within the same line (say, the Forgotten Realms) authors vary so much in terms of talent, tone, and style, that concluding anything about the quality of one author’s work on the basis of the work of another author in the line is silly. It’s tantamount to drawing conclusions about all speculative fiction writers who write for Tor on the basis of one speculative fiction writer who writes for Tor.

Again, it is the author’s individual talent that determines the quality of the work. Nothing else. And here's the critical point:  There is no more connection between the abundance of an author’s talent and whether or not they write in a shared world, than there is a connection between the abundance of an author’s talent and whether or not they write New Weird stories as opposed to Epic Fantasy, whether they write for Tor as opposed to Baen.

Now, I do not want to venture into the briar patch of why so many readers (and even, I’m sorry to say, so many, many, many other authors) engage in this kind of flawed reasoning. Analyzing human nature is not the purpose of this short essay. My purpose here is simply to expose the underlying weakness in the all too often repeated claim that all shared world speculative fiction is bad. It’s not. Not by a long shot.

I am, of course, not claiming that all shared world speculative fiction is good (any more than I’d claim that all types of apple are good; McIntosh apples stink; curse you, Mcintosh! Cuuuurse yoouu!). It isn’t, any more than all non-shared world speculative fiction is good. The quality of shared world and non-shared world speculative fiction varies by author. By author. By author. And those who dismiss one or the other with a hand wave and unjustified generalization tell us more about their own biases and personal psychology than they do about the category of fiction they purport to be commenting on.

Here’s my plea to those who do not read shared world fiction based on the conviction that it’s all bad – take a bite of the apple, a different apple than you’ve tried before. And if you read a bad shared-world speculative fiction novel, treat it the same way you would a bad novel set in a non-shared world speculative fiction setting – put it to the side and don’t read that author again. But don’t make the mistake of generalizing the quality “bad” to an entire category based on such a small sample size. If you didn’t like the McIntosh, try the Fiji.  If not the Fiji, maybe the Gala.  There are plenty of good apples out there, believe me.

(Postscript: I am aware that “bad” as I’ve used it above is not self-defining. Further, in the context of art, which is what we’re discussing, “bad” is a slippery concept. But defining “bad” is not necessary to the argument.)