Cette question est posée par
Jo Walton (auteure, entre autres, de
La Renaissance du Pan) sur le site des éditions Tor, dans un article qui tente de savoir si la dystopie est un genre à part entière, ou un sous-genre de la science-fiction. L'auteure galloise fait appel à ses lectures personnelles comme aux grands noms de cette catégorie littéraire pour tenter d'y répondre. En voici un extrait :
Dystopias have been written by mainstream writers—they are the form of science fiction mainstream writers are most likely to attempt, and most likely to succeed at. The more I think about this the more I wonder if it makes sense to think of dystopias as a subgenre of science fiction, rather than a mode of mainstream fiction that science fiction writers use from time to time, similar to noir. Dystopia was forged outside of SF, by Huxley and Zamyatin and Orwell. It’s largely been writers outside of SF like Atwood and Levin who have carried it forward. This recent burst of young adult dystopias are mostly written by YA writers and not by SF writers. Dystopias existed when SF was a still very young genre. And when I think of canonical dystopias it tends to be ones by mainstream writers that leap to mind.
Genres are marketing categories, but genres are also useful ways of thinking about things that are in dialogue with each other. We certainly have dystopias from within SF, like Elgin’s Native Tongue or Butler’s Parable of the Sower, but we also have SF noir and SF mysteries and SF romances. Science fiction writers are adept at taking mainstream modes and taking them into SF.
Pour en savoir plus, et lire la suite de ce article, c'est
ici
