Bear with me. I’m suffering some existential angst.<\/p>\n
A friend e-mailed me on Friday afternoon. I’d written her about some recent doings in my life, and in her reply she asked a basic question.<\/p>\n
“Why are you writing science-fiction?”<\/p>\n
She didn’t put it quite<\/i> like that. But that was the point she danced around.<\/p>\n
The reason for the question was obvious. I’d written about myself, and I’d written it like a story. I’d painted a picture, and somehow that picture, for her, became evocative and genuine and moving and, above all, real<\/i>.<\/p>\n
So why was I describing myself as a science-fiction writer?<\/p>\n
Why didn’t I go mainstream?<\/p>\n
I’ve been asked this before. “Make-Believe<\/a>” prompted the question two years ago, and I’d always brushed it off — “I don’t think I’d have any faculty there.”<\/p>\n Yet, this was a friend, someone who has known me for the better part of a decade, asking the question.<\/p>\n And, for the first time, I find I’m really considering<\/i> the implications.<\/p>\n I’ve always thought of myself as “genre.” But truthfully, I sometimes feel I have nothing to say<\/i> in the genre.<\/p>\n It’s curious.<\/p>\n Hence, the existential angst.<\/p>\n Thinking aloud. Just thinking aloud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bear with me. I’m suffering some existential angst. A friend e-mailed me on Friday afternoon. I’d written her about some recent doings in my life, and in her reply she asked a basic question. “Why are you writing science-fiction?” She didn’t put it quite like that. But that was the point she danced around. TheContinue reading “On Existential Angst”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[4093,4102],"class_list":["post-2225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-life","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}