The Plausibility Chestnut

     We who write speculative fiction are regularly besieged by critics over plausibility. “Is that really possible?” they ask. “Could it happen in the ‘real world?’” Sometimes, the answer is “No.” At others, the answer is “No, but that’s irrelevant.” And at others, the answer is “What’s this ‘real world’ you’re talking about?”

     Speculative fiction is fiction that speculates! I should have thought that was obvious on its face. But then, obvious really means overlooked, doesn’t it?

     Critics and their hangers-on do a lot of overlooking.

     I got lambasted for Christine D’Alessandro. I got it again for Althea Morelon. The exceptional nature of those characters seemed irrelevant to my critics’ determination to pick nits. I can’t help wondering what kind of crap Malorie Cooper has had to put up with.

     Now, there is a downside to depicting super-competent female warriors. Most women simply aren’t equipped for combat, whether melee-style or ranged. They have disadvantages in strength, speed, endurance, and the ability to tolerate serious injury and keep fighting. But there are exceptions, whose exceptional nature ought to be obvious… oh, there I go again. A full-scale, lifelong dedication to physical conditioning and the acquisition of combat skills might conceivably result in a warrior as capable as Charlize Theron’s Lorraine Broughton, though we wouldn’t expect it of Taylor Swift or Sydney Sweeney.

     We certainly shouldn’t expect it of the Girl Next Door. Nor should we expect the Girl Next Door to be ready and able to protect herself against real-world male predators.

     The Girl Next Door should carry some defensive equipment, to be sure – a pepper spray, a Ken Onion assisted folding knife and a KelTec P11 with two extra mags strike me as about right for ladies in the beleaguered Northeast – but she should also expect the assistance of masculine help and call out for it at once. She should not carry a broadsword. (Do you know how hard it is to accessorize those things?)

     But we were discussing fiction.

* * *

     Genuinely entertaining, uplifting fiction cannot be about dead flies in the bottom of cracked teacups. It also cannot be about someone’s angst or his unfulfilled yearnings. Things must happen. Characters worth paying attention to must be challenged, must rise to the occasion, and must prevail, albeit at a price. Anything else is too dreary for me, and – I suspect – for most other readers of fiction.

     My sort of fiction requires heroes: characters of great stature, or at least great potential. Such people, male or female, are exceptions. You won’t find them on streetcorners. And if they cluster in a wholly fictional county, what of it? Birds of a feather and all that, remember?

     So plausibility, in the strict, real-world sense, must sidle over to make room for fictional heroes. There are some in the real world, to be sure, but they’re few. They don’t get a lot of air time or column-inches. Which, semi-ironically, is why there’s a stronger demand for fictional heroes than in many years.

     Of course, for those who disagree, there’s always “literary” fiction.