In Regards to Chapter 6 of
Nicola Griffith's The Blue Place
21 April 1999
In this chapter, we learn of that someone is blackmailing Honeycutt, which gives us another level of discourse and attempts to renew interest in a not very interesting book.
The beginning of the book was slow. Some parts of this chapter seem to pick up the pace. Although there are still slow scenes providing descriptions, the action is fast paced.
At this point the book seems to make the transition from a character study to a generic detective novel, albiet it one about a lesbian. Perhaps for a die hard feminist or for a hick whose never encountered a lesbian or feminist literature before, Aud's sexuality is an element of interest. To me, I can hardly care about the sexuality of the average person I meet. I care that much less for that of a fictional character in a plot whose story doesn't arouse me.
I am not in favour of a wide definition of science fiction. Labels are too ambiguous without human attempts to further convolute matters. If someone tells me a book is science fiction, I want to be able to make at least a few assumptions about it. It's true that genre's can create marketing problems, but diffusing a genre doesn't solve the problem so much as create communication problems. Personally, I don't think there is anything about Aud or the story that removes it from third rate detective novels. Aud may not be your typical woman but she isn't Wonder Woman either.
As for genre seepage, I may not have heard the name before, but the concept is nothing new to me. Half my class on Nineteenth Century Gothic fiction was squandered by looking at the works of the Bronte sisters for the excuse that Gothic supposedly influenced them because they had certain traits in common. Although I did not make a case of it, it could be argued that Gothic Fiction merely had a common origin with the work of the Brontes. Marquis de Sade is widely recognized as a direct influence for Gothic Fiction. It is my own conjecture that he was a direct influence for the Brontes. Jayne Erye is obviously a mild plagerism of Justine and the "ineffible" Heathcliff is obviously a Sadesque Hero. One can just as easily argue that both feminist SF and feminist detective novels can be culturely rooted in the feminism of this decade. And just because an author writes SF, doesn't mean he or she brings that to every one of his or her works. My own works travel an entire range, including science fiction, but I would not argue that this makes me a science fiction writer or that it is present in all my work.