Summer is here, and it's the golden age of reading speculative fiction again!
This year coincides with the 180th anniversary of speculative fiction, and we have specially invited Chu Meng, a senior editor of speculative fiction, to sort out the development of speculative fiction for us. You'll learn in the following article:
What are the general genres of speculative fiction?
What is the difference between these genres?
What are some masterpieces that must not be missed?
No matter what reading stage you are in, whether you are a reasoning fan or a senior reasoning fan, I believe that these contents will definitely be beneficial to you and make you feel the unique charm of speculative fiction
Simple murder art
Author | Chu Meng
2021, Reasoning 180 years.
What is a mystery novel? My answer is – paradox! A man who is smart enough to devise a perfect trick, but stupid enough to solve problems by crime, you say, is this a paradox?!
In 1841, an American named Edgar Allan Poe published a novel called The Mog Street Murders.
In this story, the puzzle becomes the subject for the first time, the reasoning becomes the dominant one for the first time, and a detective named "Doberman" becomes the protagonist for the first time - the subject, the protagonist, and the protagonist, satisfying these three elements, and the world has since added a new thing called "speculative fiction".
It is no joke to say that it is a thing, because to this day, there is no literary form that pays more attention to gameplay than speculative fiction.
Poe had no intention of acting as a pioneer, not even realizing that he had invented the speculative fiction. He called The Mog Street Murders and the four speculative novels that followed "Mini-Games, and unabashedly said that these things were the product of a show off of intelligence. This is also doomed to the most basic qualities of speculative fiction - non-realism, focus on gameplay, and do not have to carry too heavy a mission like other literary genres.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="26">PART/01</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > classicist reasoning</h1>
This speculative fiction by Poe became the absolute mainstream for the next 180 years. In the West, this kind of speculative fiction with logical puzzle solving as its biggest selling point is called "classical reasoning"; today we usually call it "Benge reasoning" in a Japanese word — Benguet, orthodox also. This speculative fiction was founded by Poe, and it was an Englishman who carried it forward. This man was Arthur Conan Doyle, and he created the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes.
Born in 1887, Holmes has been handed down 60 stories, including "The Study of Blood Letters", "Four Signatures", "Bohemian Scandal", "The Redhead", "Spotted Ribbon", "Baskerville Hound" and other famous articles. It is no exaggeration to say that even in 180 years, it is difficult for any detective to replace Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes was born, and the fans were overwhelming. How much energy is the fan' energy? It was so big that it ushered in one of the most glorious times in the history of speculative literature. From the end of the 19th century until the end of World War II, this period has been called the "Golden Age" of speculative fiction. In just a few decades, hundreds of writers who can be called "geniuses" have been born and thousands of classics have been created—and they have written Sherlock Holmesian benthic reasoning.
We all know that there are three giants in the field of science fiction, referring to the three masters of Asimov, Clark and Heinlein; in the golden age, speculative fiction also gave birth to its own three giants, that is, Agatha Christie, Ellery Quinn and John Dixon Carr.
Agatha Christie, the undisputed queen of reasoning, wrote nearly 90 mystery novels in her lifetime, including the first ever "Blizzard Hill + Trailer Murder" work "No One Survives", the first "narrative trick" work in history, "Roger's Doubt", the first "ABC Crime Mode" work "ABC Murder"...
In addition, our queen also created the "Trilogy of Extravaganzas of Sea, Land and Air", namely "Massacre on the Nile", "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Murder in the Clouds".
To put it bluntly, a mystery writer can write any of the above works in a lifetime, which is enough to go down in history, but our queen alone has written so much, it is really not for posterity to live.
Agatha's masterpiece
Ellery Quinn, a pen name shared by a pair of American cousins, was the epitome of the Golden Age.
The representative works of the Quinn Brothers are the "National Name Series" and the "Tragedy Series", of which "The Mystery of the Roman Hat", "The Mystery of the Greek Coffin", "The Tragedy of X" and "The Tragedy of Y" are all rare classics.
"The Mystery of the Greek Coffin" has a fourfold reasoning, from beginning to end, every word can burn through the reader's brain, while "The Tragedy of X" has been hailed as "the most comprehensive speculative fiction in history", and every detail is handled in perfect detail.
Masterpiece of the Quinn Brothers
Unlike Agatha and Quinn, John Dixon Carr, who is also an American, does not pursue all-round dominance, but instead takes a swipe and specializes in "impossible crime" works.
The so-called impossible crime refers to crimes whose appearances are completely contrary to scientific common sense and basic logic, such as the secret room, the alibi, the disappearance of footprints, and the evaporation of the human world in full view of the public.
This genre of speculative fiction is full of incredible appearances and eerie and terrifying gothic atmosphere, and is highly sought after by readers.
Carr's "Three Coffins", "Window of Judah", "The Girl She Died", "Burning Court", etc., are all masterpieces in the field of impossible crime.
Carr's masterpiece
Of course, the Golden Age was not just the Big Three, but also countless talented writers and classics. For example, Anthony Berkeley's "Poison Chocolate Murder", Clayton Lawson's "Death Flies Out of the Top Hat", Van Dyn's "Bishop Killing", Dorothy Sayes's "Whose Corpse" and so on. These works, without exception, are intrinsic reasoning, and detectives and puzzles are absolute selling points. It can be said that the golden age was a beautiful period of "miracles every day, and gods walked everywhere".
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< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="147" > Japan's full-fledged reasoning</h1>
Benguet reasoning is not limited to Europe and the United States, but also takes root in Japan. The founding master of Japanese reasoning is the famous Edogawa Rampage, and the name of the "death elementary school student" Edogawa Conan we all know comes from the master.
After the Edogawa chaos, the greatest Benge writer in the history of Japanese speculative literature appeared, that is, the Yokomizo Masashi who created detective Kaneda Ichi.
He created a series of works featuring Kazunosuke Kaneda, among which "Prison Gate Island", "The Devil Blows the Flute", "Honjin Killing Incident", and "Eight Tombs Village" are all classics written into the history of speculative literature.
Yokomizu Masashi's honge reasoning is more local to Japan, and each word exudes a strange beauty, which makes people creepy to read but can't stop.
Under the guidance of Masashi Yokomizu, Japan also experienced a ten-year golden age of Benge, and representative writers include Takagi Binguang, who wrote "Tattoo Murder Incident" and "Noh Face Murder Incident", Tetsuya Kakegawa, who wrote "Lilac Manor" and "Black Swan", "Mask of Tengu", "Restless Fairy Tale" and so on.
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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="151" > Tough Guy Reasoning & Social Reasoning</h1>
However, neither Europe nor the United States nor Japan can escape the law of development that is extremely counterproductive. At the heart of Benguet's reasoning is trickery, and trickery is exhausting and routine. Once the ruse fails to attract the reader, benguet reasoning cannot continue.
Poor people think about change, and speculative writers begin to think about the way out of this type of literature. Since the gameplay of the story has been squeezed to the extreme, there is only one way left - to improve the reality and literature of the story, and to turn the intellectual game into a spiritual storm.
In this way, represented by the American writers Dahir Hammit and Raymond Chandler, a group of writers set off a big storm in the field of reasoning, and beat Benguet's reasoning into eighteen layers of hell. Hammet wrote Black Hawk of Malta, and Chandler wrote Sleepless, The Long Goodbye, and High Window. These works no longer sell puzzles, but focus on the collision of people and the environment.
The detective is no longer as calm as Holmes, but has been beaten by society again and again, and his head is broken and bleeding again and again. We call this revolution the "Black Revolution," and the fruits of that revolution are called "tough guy reasoning"—by the way, the film noir we know today was created by these people at this time.
Coincidentally, the same revolution took place in Japan. However, Japan's new-style reasoning is not as "tyrannical" as in Europe and the United States, and the characters are not so angular, but pay more attention to exposing the dark side of society and the sinister nature of human nature. This kind of speculative fiction is similar to tough guy reasoning and is called "social reasoning".
The founder of social reasoning is Kiyoharu Matsumoto, a generation of literary heroes, who have become the "three masters of world reasoning" along with Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie because of his creation of new schools of reasoning such as "Point and Line", "Focus of Zero", "Sandware", and "Black Leather Notebook".
In Japan, Matsumoto Kiyoharu has numerous disciples, the most familiar of which are Seiichi Morimura, who wrote "Proof of Human Nature", and Miyuki Miyabe, who wrote "Imitation Prisoner", "Train", and "Reason".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="152">PART/04</h1>
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="153" > new authentic reasoning</h1>
Everything is spiraling upwards, and no one can stand on the end. Whether it is Western tough guy reasoning or Japanese social reasoning, this kind of realistic reasoning is too much, and readers inevitably feel saturated. By the end of the 20th century, more and more people wanted reasoning to return to its essence and return to the starting point of the "intellectual game". Where there is demand, there is production, so 30 years after social reasoning became popular, a large number of Japanese writers began a movement called "Benge Restoration".
These writers believe that there is nothing wrong with the original reasoning of the year, but the tricks in it are of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the reader needs the gorgeous tricks of the 21st century. As long as this problem is solved, Benguet reasoning can be revived.
The first to carry out this idea was a writer named Shoji Shimada. At the end of the 20th century, he published two works that changed the course of speculative literature, one called "Astrology Killing Magic" and the other called "Leaning House Crime".
The story content is not a spoiler, but just from the title of the book, everyone can feel a huge shock. Shoji Shimada has comprehensively upgraded benguet reasoning, and its amplitude is like coming directly from the little bully red and white machine to the PS5.
These two works were controversial at the time, but they were admired by many young people. A large number of young writers responded to Shoji Shimada's call and began to create a new type of Benge reasoning. Among them, it is represented by Ayatsuji's "Ten Corners Hall Incident", Yusukawa's "Two-Headed Demon", Maya Yumatsu's "Crow", "Summer and Winter Sonata", my grandson Takemaru's "The Disease of Killing", and Nijido Tsuruhito's "Human Wolf City Series". This "Benguet Restoration" movement met the needs of a new generation of readers and eventually overthrew the dominance of realist reasoning.
Since then, more and more new elements have been incorporated into speculative fiction, Kyogoku Natsuhiko invented yokai reasoning, representative works include "Summer of the Birds" and "The Box of the Rays"; Yasuhiko Nishizawa invented fantasy reasoning, representative works such as "Disintegration of The Causes" and "The Man Who Died Seven Times"; Mori Hiroshi invented the science and engineering reasoning, representative works include "All Become F"... These writers have ushered in another new era with a series of gorgeous and bizarre works, which we call the "New Benge Era".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="154">PART/05</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="155" > other types of inference</h1>
From gameplay to reality, and from reality back to gameplay — after such a process, whether in the West or the East, the extension of speculative fiction has been completely broken, and countless "sub-projects" have emerged - spy novels, suspense novels, thriller novels, and even light novels can be regarded as derivatives of speculative fiction. No reader cares whether the work should pay attention to gameplay or reality, as long as the rhythm is compact enough, only the ending is exciting enough, only the characters are vivid enough, it is an excellent mystery novel.
Driven by this idea, a large number of super writers who cannot be classified but are highly respected have emerged in the East and the West. The representative of the West is Dan Brown, who wrote "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Devils"; the representative of the East is unintentionally Keigo Higashino, who is known as the "reasoning printing machine" - his masterpieces "The Dedication of Suspect X", "White Night", "Malice", and "Relief Grocery Store" can be said to be unknown to everyone. In addition, writers such as Jeffrey Dever, Kotaro Isaka, Shusuke Mizuo, Yi Yi, and Nishio Areshin are all hot stars in the current reasoning market.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="158">PART/06</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="159" > Chinese mystery novel</h1>
Having said such writers from the East and the West, the next thing I want to say is that in fact, speculative fiction has never been dominated by foreigners, and Chinese writers have never been outside the above process.
As early as the Republic of China era, a large number of writers represented by Cheng Xiaoqing and Sun Yihong have begun to translate and create speculative novels, among which Cheng Xiaoqing, who created the "Hawthorne Detective Series", is known as the "father of Chinese speculative fiction". After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a large number of anti-special novels and public security novels with speculative colors came out; after the reform and opening up, a large number of new speculative writers came into being.
After entering the Internet era, a group of cutting-edge writers represented by Zijin Chen, Remy, Zhou Haohui and Chen Haoji can be described as overwhelming, writing excellent works such as "The Long Night Is Difficult to See", "Bad Boy", "Psychological Crime" and so on. These works are not only wonderful in content, but also closely integrated with film and television, which has brought Chinese speculative literature to a new height.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="160">PART/07</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="161" > conclusion</h1>
I talked about it for half a day, but in fact, I could only hang a leak. Reasoning for 180 years, excellent writers and works are like stars. The above few texts are only based on the axis of time and type, and list some of the most representative works.
Whether you like the benguet, the cold and hard, the social, or the new benge, whether you like Europe, the United States, Japan or domestic, in the long river of reasoning, you can always find your own "true destiny".
If you want to understand one of these categories or a certain writer, then the works I mentioned are undoubtedly a shortcut. If you chose that book because you read the above text, that is my greatest honor.
Well, the truth is in front of you, detectives, it's time for you to appear!
Starting today, the Kindle suspense and mystery season officially begins! Come and pay attention, reasoning fans don't miss it