Nov 11, 2009 06:20 AM
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San Francisco, 11:32 PM
Tue Feb 9
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Just because most science fiction and fantasy is read by humans (well, probably almost all of it) doesn't mean our stories must have human protagonists, pleads Monster author A. Lee Martinez. Where are the robot and monster narrators?
Writes Martinez, who also wrote The Automatic Detective, over at Orbit Books:
A big reason I don't read much fantasy / sci fi is because I want the weirdness, the monsters, the inhuman, and for the most part, that stuff is shuffled to the side. Almost all fantasy / sci fi is from the human perspective because almost all of it is aimed at a human audience. (Very few dinosaurs buy books these days.) But I don't want to read about people. I know people. People are everywhere, and while they're generally pleasant and I have nothing against them (for the most part), I'd much rather read about the ogre than the knight, the robot than the astronaut. That probably goes a long way toward explaining why I write what I write.
It's really true. People are ass. (Or at least, a significant proportion of people is made out of ass. If you follow the rule of nines, we're about 18 percent buttocks and lower back.) We can't get away from them in reality, so all the more reason to banish them from the central place in fiction. There should be a literary movement, with a fancy name. Any ideas? [Orbit Books]
Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.
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