Sci-fi sneaks in under the literary radar

People who wouldn’t be caught dead browsing the science fiction section at their local Borders are nevertheless gobbling up Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, a wonderfully heartbreaking story of a romance made more difficult by the fact that one of the lovers spontaneously time travels on a regular but unpredictable basis. The time travel is a metaphor, of course, for the things that separate even the most devoted of couples, of the mysteries inherent in getting to know someone, of the impossibility of ever fully knowing another person, of the secrets we keep from each other.

But the fact that it’s easy to find yourself sobbing by the end of the novel doesn’t make the book any less science fictional. Nor does the fact that the book was a selection of The Today Show Book Club. The SF in every novel actually labeled SF and stacked on the shelves in the SF section of bookstores is metaphoric, too -- no book succeeds that does not speak in some way to who we are here and now. Some reviewers understand this:

This is an extraordinary novel with a unique premise, an exploration of the unknown in this expanding century, where the impossible becomes possible, if not routine. In the vast prism of the universe, there is much that remains to be discovered. Who can know the secrets of the future?

[from Curled Up With a Good Book]

Most don’t:

This is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum, but a heartfelt love story of two people who must live with this curse as part of their lives.

[from ReviewsOfBooks.com]

And though it's about time travel, the book is more literary romance than science fiction.

[from BookPage]

Unfortunately, this aversion to calling a spade a spade is all too fathomable. The term "science fiction" is so bogged down with images of nerds in Spock ears and unkempt, antisocial types that few people can see past the stereotypes when a counterexample is right before their eyes. It’s a shame, because those people are missing out on a ton of books they might otherwise enjoy.

Like Robert J. Sawyer’s Flashforward, which I read just before I picked up The Time Traveler’s Wife. The two books have some startling thematic similarities: Flashforward also involves characters who get a glimpse of their futures, as the chronically displaced Henry does in Wife; the difference in Sawyer’s book is that it’s the entire human race who gets a peek, not just one man. Sawyer is techier; his novel is more concerned with big ideas than with the hearts of only two people... but as he explores the dramatic effect the look at the future has on global society, he does so through the eyes of a handful of people. The result may be less "literary," but it’s just as thought-provoking, and just as haunting. But it’s no more science fictional just because the spine actually has the words "science fiction" on it.