Why I dislike the use of period-specific gimmicks, redux

I just finished H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and it’s helped me realise why I dislike the use of narrative elements bound to a specific time period.

Today’s dreck, tomorrow’s classics

Today, I was discussing a number of canonical works of British literature that me and a friend are going to be tested on tomorrow. We discussed The Turn of the Screw, Tess of the D’Urbevilles, Great Expectations, Alice in Wonderland, Wuthering Heights, Lord Jim, Silas Marner, and Sherlock Holmes.

Alien Promises, by Janni Lee Simner

Listen to it at Escape Pod.

When Steve Eley announced on this week’s Escape Pod that the story was YA science fiction, I got excited. I’m a big fan of YA fiction, and not just because it wasn’t that long ago when I was in the target demographic for that particular genre. I believe that children’s fiction and YA fiction contains some of the strongest messages you’ll find in literature. These genres aren’t afraid to tackle the most universal and difficult themes. Lewis Carroll’s Alice books are mostly about the question, ‘Who am I?’ Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is about the question, ‘What is right? What is wrong? What should I believe?’

Oh dear, genre

I had a conversation with someone about literary genres the other day.