[WARNING: For those who haven't read T.C. Boyle's "Admiral" and want the experience to be a novel one, this entry contains spoilers. Not very many, and certainly none which will take away from the ending of the story in anyway, but spoilers nonetheless. You have been warned.]
“Admiral,” a short story by T.C. Boyle, is contained in the most recent Best American anthology. I picked it up yesterday, and read the story in less than a day. I was a little shocked by what I found.
There’s a bit of a stigma in the literary community when it comes to genre fiction, which includes but is not limited to Science Fiction and Fantasy. While some people are working against this, bending genres together (Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem to name a few), by and large the stigma remains.
So when I got far enough into “Admiral” to realize what was going on, I had to stop and wonder. Since this year’s anthology was guest-edited by Salman Rushdie (who, unfortunately, I haven’t read, but will put him at the top of my list now), it shouldn’t really be a surprise that more borderline, genre-bending stories would find their way in the collection.
What comes as a shock is that T.C. Boyle is not a genre-bending author, not specifically. His stories seem solidly literary (what I’ve read). “Admiral” is a literary story by definition–a tight focus on characterization, the presence of a traditionally literary plot–but it is also a science-fiction story. And I have to wonder if anyone actually realized this in planning the collection.
I am certainly not far enough into the collection, which includes Jonathan Lethem and George Saunders, both belonging to that breed of cross-genre writers, to pass judgment on Rushdie’s choices (nor would I even after finishing the collection). It is a nice change to see something more akin to genre fiction in such a prominent position.
Science Fiction, at least as I was taught, is all about people dealing with some aspect of future science, whether it be near-future (as near as tomorrow morning’s headlines) or far-future. Either way yields science fiction. “Admiral” centers around an eponymous Afghan pup, the product of commercial cloning (which is not widespread now, but most likely will be sometime soon). And, like any true artist, Boyle relates the cloned pup to our everyday life. In doing this, he succeeds at something that should be the goal of every science fiction writer: making the possible plausible, and the plausible seem commonplace.
I’m not going to launch into an article on why science fiction writers need to take a lesson from literary writers and vice-versa. Nor am I going to go into the reasons why the barrier between genres should be much more pourous now than in the past (cloning being one evidence of this–okay, so a small spiel). That’s not what this is about. For once, science fiction is creeping its way into literary circles, and I for one am proud of the fact. Genre fiction exists for a multiplicity of reasons, and it’s about time it’s recognized as an art form.
