In the comments of my recent post, Jeff VanderMeer took me to task (quite rightly) for appearing to say that speculative fiction should be divorced from personal experience. Apropos that discussion, I just came across this post by Alma Alexander on SFNovelists.

In it, Alma discusses some recent cases of alleged plagarism, and the possibly-fine line between plagarism and research. As I started to read it, I thought that perhaps it might be relevant to my response to Jeff, in which I argued that it was ’shared’ rather than ‘personal’ experience that defines contemporary writing, in the sense of ‘ours’ versus ‘mine’, rather than ‘mine’ versus ‘no-one’s’. Indeed, Alma effectively states that research—whether historical study or just looking out a window—is all about developing a story within the human condition. I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that Alma is casting research (and its attendant benefits and pitfalls) in terms of ’shared experience’.

In the Clarkesworld opinion piece that prompted my previous post, Richard Bowes said that SF wrriters are “proud of the fact that they do not draw on personal experience.” But he might as well have said the same thing about not doing research. Alma’s point is that research is (a) important, since it helps to put things in terms relevant to the readers’ own understanding of the world, and (b) worth doing well, because if one tries to avoid having to do it at all, one just ends up doing it badly.

In my response to Jeff, I was trying to say something slightly different. I said that I see a lot of ’shared experience’ creeping into my writing. In particular, I meant the kind of shared experience that is mediated by news, movies, television and the Internet; the kind that begs to be subverted by the writer. The danger is one of ’subvert or be subverted’. If one does not subvert this kind of shared experience, it might well subvert the story instead. Moreover, Alma warns that although playing with readers expectations takes a deft hand, it is also is one of the chief tasks of the writer, so it should be done well.

I might conclude by saying that I don’t think any of this preculdes originality, even if it’s true that there are no original tunes, just original arrangments. As Alma puts it, “We have all met research. And it is us.”