Considered one of the greatest authors of modern American literature and quite possibly also one of her hardest reads, Cormac McCarthy has written such critically acclaimed books as Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men. He began his career in 1959 when he left school and worked as an auto mechanic while writing his first novel The Orchard Keeper.
Often compared to William Faulker for his use of Southern Gothic themes, McCarthy has often bended genres completely. Is No Country for Old Men just a dark drama? Or is it a postmodern western? His writing style contributes to the enigma of his works. He likes to use bold statements almost entirely and never uses quotation marks or much punctuation of any kind for that matter.
His novel, The Road, made into a movie adaptation with Viggo Mortensen is no exception. This harsh story runs from all conventions, fooling many viewers of the film into believing that it is anything, but science fiction. For the readers of McCarthy, why would he write something as formulaic and drab as a SF novel? For viewers of the film, nothing about it feels like a science fiction film. However, when stripped of plot and broken down into story elements, The Road fits the SF shoe precisely.
How The Road is Science Fiction
A man with no name realizes that he must move south for the winter or he and his boy will die. Together they traverse a post-apocalyptic American wasteland often in need of food and hiding from horrific cannibals.
The keyword is post-apocalyptic. In every synopsis for either the book or movie adaptation you will find it more often than not in the opening sentence. That's because it is the genre. Any tale that happens in a world where a massive calamity has previously taken place belongs to this genre. However, the post-apocalyptic genre is not a genre per se, it is a sub-genre of science fiction.
The Road-Warrior
Probably the most well known example of post-apocalyptic science fiction is the 1981 Mad Max sequel The Road Warrior starring Mel Gibson. Although the plots of the The Road and The Road Warrior are nothing alike (and neither are their stories for that matter) what clarifies a genre is its elements. As more people look to movies instead of literature for defining traits in genre this area also becomes muddled. In Hollywood a film needs something to connect with an audience that the audience has seen before and loves. Hence many science fiction films display plot points and story lines that have already been seen, they are just being put into a different package.
This does not make them science fiction, it just makes them more marketable. In McCarthy's book the audience is given a man struggling in a barren world after some kind of undeclared scientific tragedy has taken out almost everything. What is left must be treated as precious and guarded from wild groups of brutal scavengers who will hang people from their vehicles and...sounding familiar yet? That's probably because in primordial concept these two stories are exactly the same.
Speculative Fiction
The confusion drawn by all these "science fiction" and "something else" stories is that the definition of what makes something "sci-fi" has changed drastically as the genre evolved. From the intricacy of hard SF to the neon violence of Cyberpunk this vein of storytelling has not only reinvented itself completely, but its expansive makeovers often have very little in common with the predecessor. Yet, if there is one thing that almost all science fiction has in common is that 95% of the time it takes place in the future.
The reason for this is that science fiction has an older name, an alternative name that most modern fans of the genre do not know about. It is called speculative fiction. It is called speculative because the genre mandates a story that speculates what a different world would be like. So if an author writes about the unknown future it is impossible for him or her to do anything, but speculate what it may hold for humanity. Therefore, The Road, is science fiction. No lightsabers, no aliens, and no androids dreaming of electric sheep are needed to make it so.
In fact that is what makes the novel so brilliant. While most writers run to the conventions of a genre to please an audience, McCarthy instead runs opposite and in turn gives his readers something fresh and invigorating. After all, for the writer who is famous for his stark unconventional writing it really would not make much sense to waste all his hard work on conventional storytelling.
Sources:
- Priola, Marty. "Cormac McCarthy: A Biography."CormacMcCarthy.com. Cormac McCarthy Society, 2010. Web. 1 Feb 2012.
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