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Speculative Fiction: Astounding, Severance, and Pluribus

 This may be a three-parter. I am fascinated by speculative fiction of a certain type. I would call it Twilight Zone-based. I love the Twilight Zone when I was a child and it imprinted on me. I have not watched many of the episodes now on YouTube, but I remember many of them. The basic aesthetic of a normal person all of the sudden caught in a nightmare world has a lot of possibilities. I have written some short fiction of that ilk myself. One day I need to collect them and self-publish them. I do not want to send stories to contests (costs) or to magazines. People can read them if they want. Perhaps I will start to post them here. 

Anyway, "speculative fiction," according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, citing the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, is

an umbrella genre of fiction that encompasses all the subgenres that depart from realism, or strictly imitating everyday reality, instead presenting fantastical, supernatural, futuristic, or other highly imaginative realms or beings.

Actually, the source says:

a super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating "consensus reality" of everyday experience. In this latter sense, speculative fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but also their derivatives, hybrids, and cognate genres like the gothic, dystopia, weird fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, ghost stories, superhero tales, alternate history, steampunk, slipstream, magic realism, fractured fairy tales, and more.

Science fiction is about futuristic and technologically advanced (or different) settings. I like it and consider it rich for study, which is why I bought and read all of this book by Alec Nevala-Lee:

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction


Yes, that L. Ron Hubbard; the book explains his connection to the pulp fiction magazine Astounding and science fiction writing and how it led to his "diagnosing" people and cleaning out their memories, or some such. It led me to read some other stories I did not know, like "Nightfall" and "Who Goes There?", which was the basis of The Thing, a classic in the science fiction movie genre. 

I enjoyed Astounding and felt quite informed about the genre. However, its focus was that futuristic or other planet/solar system and/or technologically advanced world of classic science fiction. I watched the first three episodes of Andor recently (because it was free on YouTube; I'm not sure I can hook up with some free Disney Plus). It is a Star Wars-world-related story with none of the Star Wars hokum. It deserves its reputation and I hope I can find the rest of it somewhere. Yes, I like "space stories" as long as they are more focused on story than the morals and preaching at our current human state. That was always a fault of Star Trek to me. 

However, the type of speculative fiction I enjoy is not so much space-oriented as "human in a new unexplained" world and that brings me to Severance and Pluribus. 

I have my issues with these shows. First, the long pauses between "seasons." Who knows when we will see the next season of Severance, and will I care by then? Maybe not! Same with Plur1bus (note the spelling, by the way). Second, I can only watch them because I have Apple TV, so they aren't available to many people. That may or may not be such a deal. Third, they really inspire a lot of explanatory videos on YouTube. I for one fell into that deep well and have been able to escape it. The makers of the video seem to have access to a limited number of clips from the shows that they play over and over again. These YouTubers do have insights into the show for a few reasons. In the case of Plur1bus, they were or are fans of Vince Gilligan's other shows. Having never watched those, I come to Plur1bus with no preconceptions. I don't like it because of the director's previous work; I don't compare it, either. Plur1bus is what it is. 

Both shows have to have their gay-themed sub-plots; that is a requisite nowadays, and they have a lot of foul language, so if you aren't interested in either of those traits, I don't recommend them. A friend of mine finished an MFA program at a large university and came up against the LGBTQ issue. His professors wanted more of that but he had no connection to it. He was more or less told it would keep him back from success. Sigh. I can't write about that subject honestly, so I don't. Being a famous writer is less important than my integrity, and I have enough trouble maintaining integrity as it is. 

Beyond that, both shows are intriguing and addictive but are only science fiction in a tangential way. In Severance, the characters who are severed (more on that later) have a chip or some such implanted in their brains, by choice, to keep their work and home lives separate. In Plur1bus, all but thirteen humans on earth are infected by a virus broadcast from space; not the actual virus, but the data for it and for some reason the scientific community recreates it. Lab leak theory takes over; a rat infected with the virus escapes and bites a scientist, and that's (almost) the end. In a matter of days the world is infected either by saliva or by the virus being sprayed by humans who are infected. 

In both cases, then, the "science-fictiony situation" is partly by choice! 

More on this later!

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