We populate in an absurd universe . And once you throw in clobber like meter travel , fiction can get even sillier than material life . But how can you write speculative fable that experience up to our ridiculous world , without being dumb ?
Some of the greatest science fiction / fantasy author are exceedingly silly — Douglas Adams is the golden standard , but there are a number of others . And when you search around and recognise that not too long ago , we were choosing between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden , two undeniably silly people , to be a twinkling away from the American presidency , it ’s strong not to feel as though silliness is the new realism .
Like you just bonk that if you ever really got ageless youth , it would dwell of being adhere in a sentence loop topology where you ’re go to the bathroom over and over again . Or if aliens showed up , they ’d only be interested in the medicine of Miley Cyrus and the performance prowess of Andrew Dice Clay . We live on in a cruel cosmos .
And yet . Only a flyspeck minority of published speculative fiction is really slaphappy , and when you scan interview with editor program , you often see them say thing like , “ I ’d like to see more humour , but it ’s seldom done well . ” sham that unlimited silliness is just a subset of “ humor ” as a category , and you lead off to get a sense that science fiction and fantasy are face up an existential crisis of absurdity . It is the crisis of countless sensibleness . As rare as everybody sound out the Sense of Wonder is , a sense of the utterly ridiculous is even rarer .
One enquire how this could be dead on target , when the lead Light of the global thriftiness sound more like they wandered out of a Stanislaw Lem novel every sidereal day . You could plunk Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner down at the World Futurological Congress , and he would find right at place .
So how do you pen silly scientific discipline fiction without slide over the edge into nonsense or bad ? It ’s a definite challenge . For one thing , humor is a distancing technique , which can have the effect of putting people alfresco of the story . Science fiction , meanwhile , already has a higher barrier of entry , for a set of people , than “ naturalistic ” fiction , which does n’t require you to buy into a world that ’s not entirely our everyday “ consensual reality . ” ( I put “ consensual reality ” in quotes , because to this twenty-four hour period , nobody has ever asked for my consent . )
So too much distancing , and your story risks feeling as though the reader is view it through a telescope . And you have to hang up on to some reprieve of mental rejection , or it ’s no longer fun on some tier .
And it ’s also true that humor is subjective , like sexiness and terror , and you ’re not go to be able to make everybody laugh . There are always break down to be people who think they ’re canny than you are , and some of them will be right .
But here are a few tips , base on my own feeble attempts to be silly :
Keep a uniform tone , and ideally make it a tone of ego - insure control over the cloth . A peck of endeavour at jackass weirdness can fall into the trap of sounding as if you ’re try too knockout to be cockamamie . The aura of despair is lethal to the silly fabulist . ( I ’ve fallen into this hole many times , and have only handle to pitch out of it by using post - innovative literary sentence fragments , in list format , as a kind of ragged pace - ladder . Like so : “ 1 . Ralph Waldo Emerson ’s enamel bone - power saw fetish . 2 . Mandible malarkey . 3 . Zen able - ism . 4 . I ’m so dingy for all of this . ” ) You need a tone that say “ I , the writer , am a aim professional , and any resemblance between my loopy ramblings and the babbling of your five - year - honest-to-god after chugging a two - litre Coke is entirely your five - yr - old ’s fault . ” How do you do this ? Try read your shit out loud — to an audience is better , but to yourself is okay too . Even more than other hooey , the goodness of anarchic prose will show through in a live reading . Think of it as stand - up clowning and cut the weak jokes — and , to the extent that this is n’t just pure comedy , attempt to have some variety of logical flow to it . There should still be a story forget under all these stone of the laughable . Speaking of which …
Silliness often mold well in demarcation to something . If you remember about it , many of musical genre fable ’s most brainsick classics put something at least evenhandedly sensible alongside their most off - kelter elements . In the case of The Hitchhiker ’s Guide To The Galaxy , Arthur Dent is very deliberately coiffe up as a kind of “ everyman ” who stay resolutely ordinary in the face of a deepening outlandishness . In the case of Harry Harrison ’s Stainless Steel Rat volume , “ Slippery ” Jim DiGriz is often the most nonsensical matter in his world , a kind of slicker who dances circles around the stereotypical people he meets . It ’s very , very difficult to do a light-headed admirer in a silly world . I ’ve tried it , and it has n’t turn out well . You ’re quite belike a skilful writer than I am — especially since I traded a boastful chunk of my secular lobe for a sexual urge dreidl that does n’t even whirl on a non - categorical aerofoil — but you may be hard - put to do the “ empty-headed someone in silly creation ” chip . besides , you need to let people catch one’s breath a moment every now and then , and throw in some stuff that hold fast to system of logic , or at least brushes against logic .
Watch the auctorial intrusion . Douglas Adams is god . And being god , he ’s able to pull off an omniscient narrator that stay put in gross ton of snark and zany asides and weird observation , without his readers / worshipers rebel . But even Adams uses the machine of the Guide to couch a heap of his tale usurpation . If you have a third - person narrator , and it ’s just you , as the author , butting into the story with wacky observations and especially authorial opinions , then a little chip probably pass away a long way . The readers may be on gameboard for your topsy - turvy world and your lunatic characters , but they may balk at having to drop a few hundred pages trapped with the dotty - eyed source . Also , I think that this derive back to the “ not seeming too desperate ” matter . When the author , via the third - somebody teller , set out trying too toilsome to convince me that she or he is a very funny soul , I jump to marvel if that ’s possibly not genuine . On the other bridge player , I intend Christopher Moore and A. Lee Martinez sometimes manage to have zany third - person narrators that do n’t make me want to cast matter . So it is doable . ( This is off the top of my foreland — I do n’t have either source ’s book at my fingertips . )
If you ’re doing satire , know what you ’re satirise . There ’s absolutely nothing wrong with barmy nonsense for the saki of barmy nonsense . There are fish - men impersonating the Village People and run around huge mouton chop shot facial hair to cover their lamella while they do a massive choreographed interpretation of “ Go West , ” just because it ’s a neat set firearm . Great , rock ‘n’ roll on . But a deal of fictional logorrhea does have a satirical point to it , and there ’s nothing more deadly than not knowing what you ’re satirise . You may detest bureaucrat , pushful customer , indolent retail workers , or whatever — just pass some time think through what / who you ’re really wanting to flay . If you learn the original Hitchhiker ’s Guide back - to - back with Eoin Colfer ’s Hitchhiker ’s book , And Another Thing , you ’ll notice a huge difference . The original book is full of spleen , and the Colfer book is spleen - free . Colfer does n’t really seem to have it in for anybody . He seems to quite like all of his fellow beings , which makes his mockery so good - natured , it ’s actually a morsel flat .
ascertain the puns and other markers of “ low ” humour . This is perhaps where my inner snob amount out , but it really only takes one or two pun before I stop giving a teller the benefit of the dubiousness . This probably is a topic of personal preference , but it ’s why I ’ve never been able to get with Piers Anthony . I can only carry on with insanity when it feels as though the writer is really trying , and puns find too cheap . Also , here ’s a rule of thumb : If your character names and other proper noun sound as though they could have come from an radius - blackleg porn spoof on Skinemax , then your humor may go unappreciated . This particularly kick the bucket for naming your starship captain Quirk or Spork or knickknackery .
The thing that make the mankind nonsensical are often not flaky at all . you may get as much silliness out of a scuffed number of carpet as you may from a charwoman traveling back in clip and marrying all of the Beatles , all four of whom turn out to be her grandfathers , thanks to compound sperm . ( Although my narrative “ Call me Yokolinda , Granddads ! ” will be in the September issue of Thrilling Tales of Incest , Plus Wonder , But Mostly Incest . ) Seriously , I can still recollect the day I realize how much comedy atomic number 79 you’re able to get out of a broken radiator . And stand by a piffling chip of insanity into an otherwise serious position can be queer than the other way around . Picture Captain Harriman fighting off the Destructivator fleet , in a whole deadpan , life story - or - decease situation — except that the flexible on his rule underwear has just given out , and they ’re cluster up inside his spacesuit . He ’s about to undertake a life - or - death manoeuvre , fly his ship decent into the mouthpiece of the Destructivators ’ blast carom , when one side of these skivvies starts sliding down into one leg of his flight suit . For added weirdness , these undies could be from the abbreviated period when they experimented with artificially intelligent elastic , for add comfort , the A.I. on the briefs ’ waistband could be attempt to give Captain Harriman strategical advice . It does n’t seem too ludicrous , given all we have it away about the hubris of the garment diligence , that we could be stick with top-notch - intelligent underwear at some spot .
But yeah , as I said way back in point # 1 , there still has to be a story in there somewhere . The character still have to sense like people , and there still has to be something for the great unwashed to grab onto , or else you ’re left with a sort of loose - floating insaneness that goes nowhere — secure for sporadic bathroom reading , unsound for any sort of free burning attention . And do n’t forget to have merriment with it !
flesh magazine cover icon byTwincovercollector , ToyranchandKocojimon Flickr .
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