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Kegewa nita li alana!

I'd hate to get all post-structuralist, or whatever, here, but there is something that is "mainstream" fiction; I'm not sure what it is because, like Whiteness in America, it is never defined by what it is, only by what it isn't (Black People).

It is my feeling that Zerrakhi's comment about speaking with an accent is actually pretty close to the point.

Pretty much any historical story that appears on film, TV, the radio, a book, etc., is going to be fictitious. We can't possibly know everything that person or those people did every waking second, so to fill up the story the author or narrator makes up the parts of the story not told. Therefore, I would put Quo Vadis, Julius Caesar and Romulus Augustulus all into historical fiction.

Pretty much the only way you are going to get a true historical drama is if the story was told by someone who was actually in it. There are many WW2 stories that count as historical dramas because there are still people around today who can give you an eyewhitness account of what really happened.

Biographies can also be historical dramas if they are significant or exciting/extraordinary enough.

As for historical records, I suppose they could become historical dramas if the story was faithful enough to what actually happened. Take Marco Polo, for instance. If he had written enough about his travels, you could potentially use his writings to produce a film or a (short) television serial. You just wouldn't be able to fill it in very much to control sequence or episode length.

I had been tempted to call my stories historical dramas because the way in which I was going to set it up would resemble a collection of first- of second- person accounts of events that actually happened to them, or events that they were there to witness. I don't know how far I will get with this, but the point being that it is very difficult (if not even possible) to put in "fillers" when you are not writing in the third-person perspective. Thus I believe, if my stories really did happen, that they would count as true historical dramas. Then again, my entire conworld is set in a fictional place...that is when it gets confusing.

I was thinking more about the mythos-logos distinction and its relation to speculative fiction these past few days. It occured to me that science fiction seems to focus on working out the implications of technical problems. Typical questions include what impact artificial intelligence would have on society or whether quantum physics could allow faster than light travel. More generally, science fiction can examine the future of society, our definitions of humanity, or anything else one can debate logically. Works like 1984 or the Left Hand of Darkness don't really pay much attention to technology as such. But they fall under the science fiction banner because they examine and develop premises in a "scientific" manner.

Fantasy, by contrast, focuses more on "spiritual" questions, ones that don't really lend themselves to empirical analysis. These might include the meaning of true love or the nature of divinity. One can't really analyze the temptation of evil in a scientific manner, but they can portray it through metaphor and archetypes. The one ring of LotR, for example, gives concrete form to a metaphysical concept.

As a corrolary, fantasy seems less literal to me than science fiction. The ring in LotR, for example, serves as a symbol of power rather than a concrete device. We aren't supposed to worry about the mechanics of creating evil rings, but rather the temptation of power that they embody. Most writers of fantasy don't worry much about the economic impact that functional magic would have or how the hell dragons fit into a working eco-system. I'd almost say that magic differs from physics precisely in that its mechanics don't matter but rather its thematic role and effect on plot.

This doesn't rule out the possibility of ambiguity or hybrid genres, however. Plenty of science fiction addresses moral questions that technically lie outside of science. Similarly, nothing stops a fantasy writer from examining the effects of magic on society and portraying a realistic ecology.

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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."