With the prosperity of online literature and science fiction, in recent years, traditional literary creators have begun to take the initiative to absorb genre literary narrative resources, and the phenomenon of literary integration in novel narrative has emerged. Yu Hua's novel "Wencheng", some critics said that this is a "pure literary cool text", with the narrative characteristics of online novels. The collection of short and medium stories published by young writer William Wang, "Wild Future", is also a series of pure literary works with the characteristics of science fiction narratives. There is also the author's latest novel, "Echoes", which also borrows detective narratives to tell traditional emotional themes. Ah Yi's latest collection of novels, "The Liar Comes to the South", in which "Harsh Facts" and other articles began to return to tradition, using allegorical styles and folklore to tell. There are also many related works, such as Qiu Huadong's historical martial arts novel collection "Ten Heroes", Li Hongwei's pure literary science fiction novel "Guide", Ai Wei's suspenseful "Past" to explore the hidden hearts and so on. These writers, who were originally engaged in pure literary creation, have learned expressive techniques from science fiction, suspense and other genre novels, and are exploring a new literary style.
Not only is the traditional pure literature learning from the genre novel, but also the writers and some authors who have been more prominent in the genre narrative techniques have also transformed into relatively traditional pure literary creations. Mai Jia's novel "Life Sea Sea" no longer has the espionage and suspense style of works such as "Dark Calculation" and "Decryption". Cai Jun, who has always been known as a suspense novelist, although his latest "Spring Night" still has a suspense story, when making a new book recommendation, the concepts of "realism", "semi-autobiographical" and even urban literature as the main evaluation discourse are basically separated from the suspense discourse. Xiu Xinyu, who has written many science fiction novels, also attracted attention with a pure literary work "In the First Aid of the North of the City". Li Xiaocang, who had previously devoted himself to online literary creation, began to publish pure literary works in traditional literary journals under his real name Li Minrui after obtaining a doctorate in literature.
There are many writers who are committed to breaking the genre and carrying out style transformation, such as Huang Qiantao, Pompeii, Wang October, Jin Jinming, Chen Chongzheng, etc., who have begun to create science fiction novels many years ago; Xu Yigua, Tian Er, Shuang Xuetao and other writers, their works have always had clear suspense narrative characteristics. In the field of online literature writing, breaking the division of genres and writing in the fusion of genres is a common narrative phenomenon. Romance narratives spread through almost all online novels, detectives, immortals, history, crossing, and even tomb robbery are inseparable from the theme of love; the elements of traditional martial arts novels have also spread throughout the major online literary creation genres. For example, the "Lord of Mystery" completed by the squid who loves diving last year is not only mysterious and magical, but also historical and suspense novels; the angry banana has been adapted into the film and television drama "Son-in-law", which is crossing and romance, and is a costume and a commercial type. Constantly breaking through the existing genre division and integrating various types of popular literary elements has almost become the most convenient way to innovate in the online literary industry.
New Wave of Literature: Strengthening the sense of reality, improving readability and enhancing literature
Pure literature learns from genre literature, genre fiction writers approach pure literature, and the common genre integration in the online literary circles shows that today's literary creation is no longer stuck to the traditional view of the portal, and has begun to actively learn from other genres and genres for self-innovation. This kind of "self-innovation" can be linked to the topic of "novel revolution" discussed in the literary circles in the past two years.
In recent years, critics and writers such as Wang Yao and Yang Qingxiang have explored how to understand and carry out "novel innovation". The indirect reason why the traditional literary world has the impulse to carry out self-innovation may be that the market space of traditional pure literature is squeezed by online literature and newly emerging suspense, science fiction and other genres, but the fundamental reason is that traditional pure literary writers themselves seek breakthroughs.
Stepping out of the comfort zone of writing, facing a new social reality, and expressing the spirit of the new era are the creative missions of contemporary Chinese writers, and it is also the only way for Chinese writers to complete self-innovation since modern literature. The history of Chinese literature since the twentieth century tells us that whenever writers stick to tradition and are unwilling to look directly at the new reality of the new era, literature will be "narrow" and readers will slowly be lost.
Literary creation since the new century, in addition to the rapid rise of online literature, traditional literature also has an important development trajectory: the kind of personalized writing that developed in the 1990s has gradually disappeared; the creation of writing that integrates individual spiritual expression and the reality of the times has increasingly become the dominant style, but also because this kind of writing pays attention to the deep expression of reality and the subtle disclosure of the inner spiritual level, it is difficult for ordinary readers to understand, so the influence has not broken the circle; literary creation with a strong sense of realism. Non-fiction writing with outstanding documentary characteristics has gradually received attention, and such works have become an outlet for some writers to get rid of their writing difficulties; writers have drawn more and more on suspense, science fiction and other genre narrative elements, as well as the phenomenon of drawing on traditional Chinese popular literature resources. These phenomena, especially the latter two, are the exploration and expression of writers' self-innovation, and behind this self-innovation is of course the innovative thinking of the entire literary circle. Non-fiction, genre narrative, and popular style, which belonged to the exploration practice of a small stream at the beginning of the new century, have become the current creative trends in the literary world for many years.
Of course, this is not to say that non-fiction and genre narratives will replace pure literary creation, but that the entire novel industry has presented a stage of narrative integration and style transformation. It's not who replaces whom, but every type of writing is accelerating change, and it's a comprehensive change that breaks down barriers and borrows from each other. Traditional pure literary creation will draw on the narrative resources of other types of creation, emphasize more realistic and readable, enter the times more, go deep into the scene of life, and strive to obtain a wider range of readers. Non-fiction and genre fiction will also further emphasize literature, and non-fiction writing will not be the reportage literature of the past, and genre literature will not be the popular story of pure entertainment in the past.
Online literature will also take the initiative to learn from traditional classic literature more actively and deeply under the background of all-round network culture construction, and constantly break through the genre narrative mode while also paying attention to the polishing of language. These new changes mean the arrival of a new literary era, which is not the state in which many people in the past think that different types of writing will be barrier-divided, independent, and unrelated, but the era of "literary communion" in which various types of writing learn from each other and constantly break through boundaries.
The exploration of genre integration in creation and the exploration of theoretical novel innovation, so that the two synergies constitute a new wave of literature that cannot be ignored. This wave takes the genre fusion of novel creation as the main innovative way, with the direct goal of strengthening the sense of reality, improving readability and enhancing literature. Yu Hua's "Wencheng" was rated as "Pure Literary Shuangwen", the reason is also because the character image in the novel is too clear, especially the protagonist of the novel has the divine power of "fighting monsters and upgrading", and the "cool feeling" is infinite. But in the end, the novel does not conform to the heroic model of online literature, and the protagonist dies without the reader's defense, which will not be the "glitch" that the readers of the online novel are willing to see. Ah Yi uses allegorical narratives such as "Harsh Facts" and "Anger" to explore new literary styles, with the aim of "inheriting the story tradition of Chinese novels and returning novels to fluency and readability", and also emphasizing the importance of novel readability while completing the observation of reality.
Fusion Narrative: Science Fiction Narrative, Realistic Writing and The Ability to Cross Boundaries
In the current genre fusion narrative, perhaps the most popular and worthy of discussion is the fusion of science fiction narrative and realist writing. In the literary world, there have been expressions such as futuristic realism, technological realism, sci-fi futurism, and "pure literary science fiction", which come from both traditional pure literary writers and science fiction novelists. They all want to use science fiction narratives to expand their imaginations and use a more futuristic story to reveal the problems of the current world. Like the youth in William Wang's "Wild Future", will the future they imagine through science fiction have something to do with their future destiny as individuals? Using science fiction to fictionalize a grand and romantic future, comparing confused individuals in the real world, there are both realistic criticisms and technical reflections. Science fiction writer Ri Wen's "The Girl Who Stole Life" is a traditional realistic style as a whole, and the writer tells the story of the future very simply, imagining what kind of moral dilemma we will face when people can copy the minds of others through high-tech devices. There are many more writers who use the possibilities of future life to reveal the propositions of current reality, or use stories of reflection on technology to confront some eternal human problems.
For science fiction narratives, Yang Qingxiang once had a judgment: "Science fiction literature cannot be regarded as a simple type of literature, but should be regarded as a 'universal genre'." Just as the novel once became a universal genre with the quest for various problems, in the current context, science fiction literature, because of its own 'transgressiveness', makes it most likely to become a comprehensive text. Treating science fiction literature as a "universal genre" may not be true for science fiction literature that was used as a popular science propaganda text in the early days, but for science fiction literature under the trend of today's science fiction narrative and pure literature, it is entirely possible to be a "universal genre" of future literature.
Science fiction narratives have a super ability to cross the line, and their text synthesis ability will become more and more prominent. This is not only a new phenomenon in the current Chinese novel creation. Among the latest translated foreign novels, such as McEwan's "Machine Like Me", Thomas Pynchon's "Deadly Tip", Shinichi Hoshi's "Artificial Beauty", Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro's "Clara and the Sun", Tokarczuk's "Anna Yin in the Grave of the World", etc., these novels are also using science fiction stories to explore the possibility of future human nature mutations. The latest creative dynamics of these important contemporary writers will serve as an external force for new trends in world literature, influencing the genre integration choices of Chinese writers.
The influence of science fiction narratives on the current Chinese novel industry can be linked to the avant-garde literature of the 1980s. The avant-garde writing of Ma Yuan, Yu Hua, Ge Fei, Su Tong and others at that time was often reflected in the experiments of narrative structure and novel techniques, and some of these techniques also originated from detective suspense novels. For Chinese literature since the 1990s, the influence of avant-garde novels in both the language of the novel and the way of narrative has been profound and long-lasting. Today, the mutual integration between traditional writing and science fiction literature and more genres of fiction has brought about novel innovations, and we look forward to the "integration" of "fusion" in the era of "literary communion" and will be transformed into "prosperity" and "glory".
Author: Tang Poet (Lecturer, College of Literature, Jinan University)
Editor: Fan Xin
Planner: Wang Xueying
Editor-in-Charge: Li Ting
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.