"Speculative Fiction" and the Delicate Art of Legitimization and Furthering Agendas with much Honesty and Clarity and Humilty and Earnestness

The quoted passages are from Mikael Co's musings on "speculative fiction" and the unquoted passages are my responses.



Really: I don't understand the term "speculative" fiction. But from what I do understand, I can say this-- and this has been mentioned by others before: All fiction, by definition, is speculative. Even realist fiction-- this sphere that the discourse on "speculative" fiction wishes to set itself apart from-- is speculative. Realist fiction is speculative fiction, because it speculates on what might, or could be, or should be, or actually is (albeit sometimes with the author unconscious of this is-ness) within the bounds of reality. (You see, even that is problematic: what is real, really?)

Yes, but starting an argument with a notion such as “all fiction is speculative” is really just being cheeky about it, and implies a resistance to a level and mature discussion as it simply ignores the pages and pages of discourse written by Alfar, et al, about the said topic, not to mention the history of the term outside its current use in the Philippines, ie Heinlein’s pioneering the term as alternative to “science fiction”, and really, at this point in time – four years after Alfar first publicized it and gave examples of it in his first antho – we all know what Alfar, et al, mean when they say “speculative fiction”.


Now I do know what "speculative" fictionists purport their works to be, or under what genres these fall in. But still. To use the term "speculative fiction" as an umbrella term for genres whose only thread is-- well, what exactly? A willing and presupposed suspension of disbelief? Di ba lahat ng fiction ganu'n din?-- to use it as merely a term, without a clear delineation in form or even intention from the rest of other fictions-- seems, to me, moot.

… edited for continuity …

Except that unintentionally (I guess,) it pigeonholes all the other forms that don't fall inside that umbrella term. The problematic, to me, lies in "speculative" fiction's exclusivity. If a decent argument can be made, though, regarding "speculative" fiction's (exclusive) speculativeness-- or, at least, if it can delineate itself as a form in itself, then, ayun. I will say sorry and go back to eating biscochos.

I first had issue with “speculative fiction” when Alfar first used it as a label to what were initially science fiction and fantasy stories as how Pinoys distinctly wrote them, which had more magical realism chromosomes in their DNA than science fiction and fantasy, but enough to be actually especially idiosyncratic that it maybe seemed to Alfar – who also wrote, and still writes, the magical-realism-science-fiction-fantasy sort of writing - that the stories needed a more accurate term for purposes that seemed to me at that time to be more dictated by the selfishy business side of things than the critical, this notion based on his throbbing purple prosy intro for his first antho that came off to me as a celebration of a genre that hasn’t yet proven its worth, that hasn’t yet yielded the gems that Alfar seemed to be seeing in the odd-dozen or so stories he had in his first antho, and I was a bit turned-off by Alfar’s car-salesmannish crossed with messiah/pariah tones as he championed a genre that seemed to me to have been manufactured around his own bibliography. I read the intro and I read the pieces and to be curt about it: I was not impressed.

I ignored Alfar’s second antho as I assumed it only had more of the same and pretty much skimmed through articles written by/about him and his campaign for the legitimization of “speculative fiction” because (1) I felt the term was genteel and unnecessary (I feel the same way about Milflores’ “creative nonfiction”) and (2) it seemed to me that what it was actually fighting for was for a seat in the house of Literary History, which seemed to me to be half-assed in light of the actual history of the genres sheltered under what was increasingly becoming an umbrella term for pretty much any writing which isn’t “realist”.

I suppose it is easy to forget the transgressive politics of popular fiction seeing as most of them are actually the dreck of the dreck, but no reader or writer of genre fiction worth their salt should forget or ignore genre fiction’s history of transgression, seeing as to how transgression was what fueled the initial salvo of these things, and still continue to fuel the better of these things as the genre fiction locomotive goes locomotioning on towards the horizon. To forget or ignore that simply reeks of laziness and/or a denial of the writer’s/artist’s role in shaping society and culture.

And that was what I felt – and still feel – was wrong with Alfar’s “speculative fiction”: 90% of it is meandering navel-gazing literary bullshit absent of any real politics whatsoever. It’s meandering navel-gazing literary bullshit absent of any real politics whatsoever because most of the initial writers who provided us with examples and blueprints to work off of were meandering navel-gazing literary writers who have no real politics whatsoever. They are writers who write for the sake of writing, which shouldn’t be seen as bad, really, but when you’re pushing an agenda and your only politic is the ethereal notion that it’s weirder than your usual story, and what you’re actually doing to legitimize it is to infect it with literariness, well, then, we have a problem.

All the genres under “speculative fiction” pretty much have been living and breathing and jumping and running and somersaulting in the sky for about a couple of hundred years outside of the Academe, and they’ll still be living and breathing and jumping and running and somersaulting in the sky for about a couple of hundred years more outside of the Academe. It doesn’t need the Academe to legitimize it. It should legitimize itself.

Which was what I said to Alfar when I eMailed him about a week ago as I rationalized the notion that writers working outside the usual system of literary production – “speculative fiction”, “nonfiction”, my own “potential literature” – ought to be producing the creative in tandem with the critical work that our respective campaigns demand to legitimize their existence precisely because these works are being produced outside of the usual means, by people outside of the usual suspects, for people outside of the usual places, and so using the usual standards to measure their achievements seem a bit of a losery thing to do.

After the September 24 UP talk where I heard Alfar pretty much say the same thing I mentioned in the above paragraph and then conclude with a booming “… at sasali na lang kami sa Palanca!!!”, I eMailed him and asked about what is to me to be contradictory statements – the Palancas really is just one of the many ways the Academe reaffirm the status quo - he explained that he actually sees him joining the Palancas and winning them as a sort of a fulfillment of a revenge fantasy he had had for several years, triggered by a workshop panel who claimed that Alfar will go nowhere with his pithy fantasy ditties. And, you know, I didn’t like what he said, it was morally-unsound for me, but I respected it, because it was morally-sound for him.

And I’m at a point in my literary career where when I see when something’s doing more good than bad in simply attempting to make our small basically insular writing world a little bit bigger by providing more venues outside of the academe for more writers outside of the academe – which is, let’s admit it, what Alfar had achieved since the initial antho four years ago, far more than anyone I’ve come across in the past ten years – well, I’m inclined to give that something a little more of my tolerance and understanding, because, really, every little thing counts. And that’s why I’m in the forthcoming anthology. Have you at least seen the names of the writers anthologized in the third antho? It was more or less half-half new writers and old writers. The fourth antho has more new writers in it, ie, writers I didn’t know existed, than old writers, ie, like Carl and me. So, you know: things are changing.

I still have issues with “speculative fiction” with how Alfar seems to be defining it now as, which is really just a bigger umbrella for more things simply outside the usual “realist” mode of writing. Kael touched upon it somewhat when he asked “… what (makes specific “specific”) exactly? A willing and presupposed suspension of disbelief?” Right now, the catch-all definition is veering towards universality to the point of careening towards nothingness.

Alfar (and Kael, too) sets it up most of the time as a fight between David the SpecFictionist and Goliath the Realist, but really, when you actually read up and actually think about it, there is no David and Goliath. There is no fight. There is no sword and shield and stone and sling. There is only This and That, and, you know, they don’t actually need to cross paths, as in the middle of these two things is And/Or, and that’s where things actually get exciting for me.


Moot, because, because, because: nauuwi sa problematic ng publication ang usapan. Just another way to sell books. Which could be problematic, really, since it inserts the market into a discourse of form. When readers look for only those books which fall under "speculative" fiction, when shelves in bookstores are dedicated to this hodgepodge of genres and marketed with posters that say "come, buy me, speculative ako!"-- fiction, as a form, as a plurality, suffers. Because when market forces are put into the equation, and writers begin to fall into the trap of writing just to get published.... You get what I mean.

But that’s what labels and genres really are for: they’re for the booksellers and the bookbuyers and, haha, the bookcritics. We can’t fault them for that. We need a framework where we can hang our notions and standards dictated by our respective tastes and biases as cultivated by our habits and wants.

And the argument blankets a certain sheen of stupidity over the Audience and the Writers that I find to be willfully ignoring the complexity of publishing and the marketplace and us as individual human beings: the Audience will buy whatever they want to buy regardless of genre, they will buy it because they want to buy it. Last time I checked, fiction as a form and as a plurality isn’t suffering from the presence of PSICOM’s reams of horror books or SUMMIT’s sporadic chicklit or VISPRINT’s Bob Ong books or MILFLORES’ dreck nonfic. If anything, it only got more people to read more books. So how can “speculative fiction” specifically be a cause for fiction, as a form, as a plurality, suffer?

And the Writers will write what they want to write regardless of the marketplace’s want and need, they will write it because they want to write it. Last time I checked, the reason why a lot of literary writers aren’t getting any regular publication is because our current mode of literary production demands of writers to be goose-stepping zombie Nazis from space in tailored to fit hand-me-downs from their masters. It is not because of the presence of genre fiction. A lot of literary writers aren’t getting any regular publication because National Bookstore demands for a 40-50% cut from each book sold; because National Bookstore demands that your book be sold at a rate of ten copies per month or else it’d be pulled out of the shelves; because National Bookstore demands from you receipts and bank accounts that add up to having at least 50-100K Php in the bank just so they can write you the money transfers; because a printrun for a regular 100-page book is 75K for 3K copies; because most publishers have crap marketing strategies; because most publishers need to pay for ink and paper and gas; because literary writers aren’t bestsellers.

And it’s always been clear to me that writing is an act of communication, an effort to be understood, and you know, publication is actually the most direct and most effective way to achieve this goal. I firmly believe that writers should be writing for publication. But I think what you meant to say when you said “writers begin to fall into the trap of writing just to get published” was that maybe writers who want to get published will begin compromising their art to write “speculative fiction” because that’s what’s getting published, when really, that’s not what’s been happening. What’s been happening is that more and more new writers – writers who have been writing scifi and fantasy and crime fiction and erotica, etc etc - are getting published in Story Philippines, in the Free Press, in Philippine Genre Stories, because of the pervasive presence and aggro PR campaign of the term. How can you worry about fiction as a form as a plurality is threatened by “speculative fiction” when “speculative fiction” actually showed a lot of people – a lot of people inside and outside of the usual mode of literary production, ie the Academe – that fiction as a form as a plurality is really broader and thicker than what we are initially shown and taught?


I've been reflecting on folk stories-- the diwatas and tikbalangs and lamang-lupas of lore-- and how they're set apart from today's "speculative" fiction. I guess now these stories are merely that-- stories-- whereas back then, they were real. Or as real as fear can be. Or dreams.

See, I was looking for a way to insert today's interest in "speculative" fiction into the wider narrative of our nation's history. (Ayun! Nation! Teka baka matisod ako, lumalalim na itong usapin na ito, a, tapos dadagdagan pa ng nation.) Why? Naisip ko lang na kung sa diskurso lang ng pagiging fiction iaaangkla ang usapin ng "speculative" fiction, magiging manipis at mauuwi lang ito sa propagation ng Western thought. Which is what, I think, this fidelity to formalism (or the way it's been [mis?]understood in our country) in poetry (ay potah panibagong diskurso at mga kaaway na naman ito!) has led to. Epistemic violence, all over again. The colonization of thought. Native forms and methes (shit, methes! Ang pretentious! Saan ko ba narinig ito?) set aside, forgotten in favor of foreign constructs. Masakit 'yun, di ba.

I don’t know what your Que Rico friend told you about the September 24 UP talk but the “speculative fiction” panel actually asserted that our folk stories, our myths and our epics, were evidence that we actually have a tradition of “speculative fiction” in our literary and national history, but it seemed to me to be more retroactive imperialist orientalist pilfering to legitimize the label in question than being absolutely true, but, you know, I can ride with that, because regardless of what I think their intentions are, they do have a point.

And of all the literary transgressions we've had in recent memory, Alfar's "speculative fiction" campaign has been the most successful so far. It is the one thing that has effected a lot of change for a lot of people, for the better of the whole. We at least have to give him that. To ignore that is to be biased.


'Yun lang naman. Pag-usapan pa natin ito, a? Sabi nga ng isang kaibigan, random brain-fart lang. Ikatutuwa ko kung may makadiskurso pa ukol dito-- pero medyo busy pa, e. Baka mamaya. Sa ngayon, babalik na ako sa pagsusulat ukol sa mga double-insertion sa Senado at sa napipintong pag-uwi ni Joc-joc Bolante.

Rakenrol, bok.

So, to further the discussion, aside from all the other questions I raised throughout the post, here are a few more that we might base our next posts off of:

Why should it even be legitimized?

To whom are we legitimizing it for?

Who are we legitimizing it to?

Ayun. Rakdakasba!


UPDATE: Kael's response to my response is here. Read it.


Next post: Adam David reviews
Philippine Speculative Fiction Anthology #3 story-by-story!