BOOK: The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The curious case of cultural appropriation of The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

(This is/is not a science fiction novel and this is why.)

You’re probably familiar with this book (soon to be a major movie as they say) but I’ll go over its premise anyway. Henry possesses a gene which causes him to time travel involuntarily when placed under stress. He arrives there naked and returns naked. He has no control over where and when he goes. He can not change the past. He may revisit the same scene (such as his mother’s death) numerous times at different ages. Henry is 28 when he meets Clare for the first time. Clare is 20 and she has known Henry all her life.

(There, a science fiction trope, pure and simple. Yet the author has clearly stated she has not written science fiction. The SF community, I’m given to assume, believe that she has.)

From Clare’s viewpoint (the novel changes frequently from hers to his) the narrative is linear. From Henry’s viewpoint it is not. This is made clear by the heading at each change of scene, viz Henry is 40, Clare is 16. The story is narrated by both in the present tense and I notice I have adopted the tone of the narrative in order to describe it. The story is told with great clarity. It is well and sensitively written, the characters (all of them) are interesting. I found myself completely absorbed in it, the ending approaching with a sense of almost unbearable sadness and poignancy. I didn’t think I’d like it but quickly couldn’t bear to put it down.

Now the topic here is actually: what is the nature of SF? Is a novel/story/movie automatically science fiction because it uses science fictional tropes such as time travel. I have noticed a tendency (and I’ve been guilty of it) to claim just about anything as SF whether or not the author agrees. I suspect part of this is SF’s inferiority complex –see SF is literature, you snobbish bastards! Whatever, what it is is cultural appropriation, the desire to enhance the standing of SF by including items from outside the genre.

The view I’ve come to is that it depends on what the individual novel does with the SF tropes. If it uses them in a science fictional sense, then, yes, despite what the author says then they have written SF. For this reason Margaret Atwood’s "Oryx & Crake "is SF no matter how much she claims otherwise.

And for this reason, Audrey Niffenegger is right. The SF element is not even a metaphor, it is a device. She has not written a science fiction novel and to claim it as SF is to misunderstand the nature of this particular novel which is, above all, a love story –a very complicated love story which uses the SF trope to create a heightened sense of realism and view a deep relationship from an unconventional angle.

It works superbly, but it isn’t science fiction.

You may or may not agree with me and I probably haven’t argued my case all that well. But you can’t in all honesty take a point of view on the matter without having read it.

Go on, you won’t be wasting your time.


POST SCRIPT

Don't misunderstand me on one particular point as I want to make it absolutely clear: Science Fiction can also be Literature as well as being SF. And a literary novel can also be SF, but just because it uses SF tropes doesn't automatically mean that it is SF.

Clear?