posted
I was wandering through the library the other day, craving something new and stumbled across quite a lovely book:
Asimov, I., Greenberg, M.H., and Waugh, C.G. ed. (1979) The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction. Garden City, New York. Doubleday & Company, Inc.
I can't say it better than the front page:
quote:Thirteen tales in which detectives of the distant future roam a galaxy riddled with locked-room mysteries, ciphers to be decoded, and unearthly evidence to be sifted, all by the rules of the 13 classic kinds of mystery story.
It is very fun! I suggest, if they are still going on, that one of the monthly writing contests around here be a mystery.
posted
Asimov wrote several robot mystery novels, as well as a bunch of SF mystery short stories.
One of the problems that Asimov pointed out with writing SF mysteries is that you have to be very careful to avoid having a surprise technological solution.
This could involve either a surprise technology used for commission of the crime (i.e., the murderer could leave the locked room because he had invented a personal teleporter) or in the detection of the crime (i.e., the policeman has just invented a time viewer, allowing him to watch the crime being committed in the past.)
That doesn't mean you can't write SF mysteries that use such technology as part of the story -- just that the mystery should not be solved by introducing a new technology.
quote:It is very fun! I suggest, if they are still going on, that one of the monthly writing contests around here be a mystery.
I know we've already got a list of stories for the next couple of months, but I love a good mystery and think it could be a fun re-write assignment. Perhaps a good ole Sherlock Holmes like The Hound of the Baskervilles (of course that is the only novel length Holmes story so perhaps one of his shorts instead).
posted
The problem with mysteries is that if you agree that Poe invented them, they aren't very old, and there aren't very many of them in the public domain.
If you were to take a "theme" from a mystery solution--say, the idea that hiding something in plain sight is the best way to hide it (from "The Purloined Letter" by Poe or "Silver Blaze" by Doyle)--and write a SF mystery about that, you wouldn't have to worry about rewriting something that might not be in the public domain.
posted
The problem comes with diferentiating a mystery with a regular story. In other words, you don't need a detective and/or a crime commited to have a mystery, so what story isn't a mystery?
An example would be 2001. It's still a mystery, because you only really find out what the monolith is in the second book!
The opposite of that would be Columbo. It is a detective show, but you know the killer from the begining.
posted
I know I keep bringing up George RR Martins books, but he does mystery well.
In A Game of Thrones, you have a character named Jon Snow, the bastard son, of a prominent figure Eddard Stark. At no point does Martin come out and say Jon Snow is not actually Eddards bastard son, but through the course of the three books, it becomes evident from Eddards personality and little tidbits of information that Jon Snow couldn't possibly be Eddards son. A poorer author would be unable to resist flaunting this minor sub plot in the face of the reader to show how clever he is, Martin doesn't do this.
The books read just as well if you don't pick up on this sideplot, but if you do figure it out, it makes the book even better because it throws alot of other things into a completely different light.
This is not an example of a "whodunit" mystery, but since the answers are obfuscated and only hinted at, I think it does qualify as good "mystery" writing.
posted
There are always fuzzy cases around the borders of a genre, but I think that a mystery story is one in which:
1. At the beginning, there is an event (usually a death) which is or appears to be a crime. 2. During the middle, the main character must gather evidence to prove what happened. 3. At the end, the main character has the proof necessary to allow the situation to be resolved.
posted
Actually, I've just realized part #1 of my definition above incorrectly leaves out one major strain of mysteries: looking for an unknown person, even without a crime or the appearance thereof. (For example, looking for a father who abandoned his family.)
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
> Ok. But usually people use the edit button.
I do that for fixing typos, etc. But when the change is larger, it seems like revisionist history.
> Anyway, it doesn't have to be anything > like a crime. There just has to be some > major unanswered question.
Your definition is so wide as to encompass most fiction, which makes it fairly useless. While there are, as I mentioned, fuzzy cases along the borders, if you look at most fiction published in the mystery genre, you'll see that it almost always involves something very much like a crime.
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited January 28, 2005).]
1. Close to or before the beginning of the story, it is discovered that some information is not known. For some reason, it is important to learn this information. 2. The discovery of the information is one of the main character's primary goals during the story 3. It is also a question which the reader wants to answer (this is important as it distinguishes mystery from crime thrillers, where the precise details of the crime are often known and the main story question is whether or not the detective will put the evidence together, usually under some kind of time limit, possibly to prevent another crime) 4. In the end of the story, it is usually answered to the satisfaction of both main character and reader, although doing so may require the reader to think about the story for a while.
This is a lot more vague than your points, and I think encompasses a few stories you've missed so far. Is Asimov's "Pate de Foie Gras" a mystery? I think it is, and it does fit the above pattern. I think it is also quite useful because I can't think of anything that does fit that isn't a mystery. I think point 3 is the critical one for rejecting most stories.
posted
Oddly enough, I had this same conversation IRL not too long ago.
I pretty much took EJS's point of view. I parsed out the definition of a mystery per se somewhat the way Jules has, though with slightly varient criteria. I agree on the parts where the main character is primarilly concerned simply with discovering the information and all that. But I add another criterion which may or may not be reasonable. Structurally, a story isn't a mystery unless the information being sought is revealed at the climax of the story. If the information is revealed immediately before the actual climax (some kind of personal battle between the hero and the revealed villian) then the story wasn't a mystery as such. In other words, if revealing the information doesn't immediately resolve the main tension of the story, then the nature of the hidden information wasn't truly the central dramatic question. It was only a sub-tension.
Now, that doesn't mean that there can't be other minor tensions resolved after the climax, it just means that these are in the nature of wrapping up loose ends.
Because of this structure, there are three major common elements in mysteries. First, because the revelation itself must be capable of resolving the tension, it must be taken for granted that the law (or some equivalent) will be brought to bear with full effect. In a criminal mystery, this means that that police will automatically arrest the perpetrator, no matter who it turns out to be. In a science mystery, this means that a strong and ethical scientific community will automatically accept the proven results of the investigation, no matter how hot the previous contraversy. In the social mystery, this means that the social group will automatically react appropriately to the revealed information. And so on (you can tell I was getting a bit vague with that last one, though).
It follows from this that the hero of the story is primarily a detective. The skills brought to bear by the hero are concentrated on revealing the information, not on things like making sure the enforcement will work or stepping in to do the job when it fails. The hero acts with confidence that revealing the information will be sufficient.
Also, the villain of a mystery must take a more passive role. The villain cannot win by force, and is forced to win by stealth. This is also true if the villain is entirely passive, such as in many science mysteries.
One major objection to this sort of definition is that many stories that are usually considered mysteries are not mysteries if we're this strict about calling something a mystery. This is fine by me, I've never stood by the idea that there are really hard and fast lines between one genre and another. I'd suggest that this is more of a template of how to make something purely a mystery as such, rather than relying on elements from dramas that depend on action, magic, romance, gadgetry or so forth.
In the end I'll agree with ArCH that it doesn't have to be a crime, but specify that the unanswered question is something that the hero/detective is seeking to find out, without prejudice as to the answer. Any story where the hero is trying to make the answer come out one way rather than another is not a proper mystery.
posted
Ah, but why not? Does this not happen in Caves of Steel to some extent? Of course it only starts out this way, as Daneel grows on him and he slowly figured out who did it.
It's still very much a mystery, and quite a proper one too.
What's important is only three things:
There is a major unanswered question.
The story focuses on the main character trying to answer that question.
The question is answered in the end (as there are some mysteries where the hero dies, and another character solves it).
> The story focuses on the main character > trying to answer that question.
Doctor Y keeps trying to find a cure.
> The question is answered in the end (as > there are some mysteries where the hero > dies, and another character solves it).
Doctor Y discovers that Compound Z is the cure.
That story does not belong in the mystery genre; it's a medical thriller.
> There is a major unanswered question.
Does A truly love B?
> The story focuses on the main character > trying to answer that question.
B tests A's love.
> The question is answered in the end (as > there are some mysteries where the hero > dies, and another character solves it).
B discovers that A's love is true.
That doesn't belong in the mystery genre; it's a romance.
It's not just any question that will do; it has to be the right type of question. And the right type of question almost always involves a crime, or at least the appearance of a crime. There may be some which do not, but they are on the borders of the genre, not part of its center.
posted
No, I think that any question will do if the moment the question is answered the story is effectively over and finding the answer is more important than what the answer is.
The medical thriller is clearly a form of mystery as long as the discovery of the cure resolves the story. If, after the cure is discovered, there is then some further question of getting it to the afflicted or whatever, you have a medical thriller that is not a mystery. The same is true if the medical thriller plays on our desire for the afflicted to be treated, since then it is important that the answer not be that there isn't a cure or something like that.
A romance is almost never a mystery because whether or not the love is true or whatever is nearly always more important than the means by which this is discovered. Also, in most romances, there are additional obsticles to the relationship after the question of "true love" has been answered.
I agree that there are constraints for what is the right type of question, of course. And generally, the right type of question has to be about something that has already happened, not something that will happen. And the answer to that question should be preferred mainly on the basis of it's "truth" rather than it's convenience. So crime mysteries, where the crime has already been committed and we are mainly interested in seeing the actual perpetrator be caught, do tend to occupy the center of the genre.
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