What is Superversive Fiction?

[LJ Beck]

I randomly came across a new magazine (Heavy Traffic Magazine) that's looking for "Superversive Fiction" and I'd never heard that term/sub genre before.

So I read a few definitions, and a few blog posts from various people on it, and I think I get it, but would love to hear from my fellow Litopians on it.

What is your take on it? Is it a thing?

 

[Peyton Stafford]

Clueless. Could you post links to some stories in the genre?

 

[Hannah F]

Excellent rhymes?

 

[LJ Beck]

I found this quote in a few places... “As a subversive work strives to bring about change by undermining from below, a superversive work strives to bring about change by inspiring from above.”
They're saying lots of stories we know are superversive, like LOTR, and generally hero-type movies that inspire? The Neverending Story, Stories that build up instead of tear down.

I never knew that was a brand. Or a subgenre. Or a thing. There's awards for this kind of story too. SUPERVERSIVE CREATORS

An interview I found with a writer of superversive stories might answer more.... Superversive Stories — Tranquilo Retreat

From another link... "Such works as John C. Wright’s Moth & Cobweb series and Tuscany Bay Books’ Planetary Anthology series are examples of Superversive works. Brian Niemeier’s Combat Frame XSeed Mecha series and L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Rachel Griffin series also follow the Superversive dictum. Most interesting of all, in advancing the movement, is probaby Declan Finn’s St. Tommy, NYPD series, which features a modern-day saint doing battle with demons and their vassels in the streets of New York City."

Great Fiction Strikes Back- The Superversive Movement and The Pulp Revolution.

While it sometimes seems that every movie made or every book published has succumbed to the "woke", there are in fact many authors out there that are pushing back by writing new and exciting stories in a more traditional and elevated style.

everymancommentary.com

WHO KNEW????

 

[Pamela Jo]

I found this quote in a few places... “As a subversive work strives to bring about change by undermining from below, a superversive work strives to bring about change by inspiring from above.”
They're saying lots of stories we know are superversive, like LOTR, and generally hero-type movies that inspire? The Neverending Story, Stories that build up instead of tear down.

I never knew that was a brand. Or a subgenre. Or a thing. There's awards for this kind of story too. SUPERVERSIVE CREATORS

An interview I found with a writer of superversive stories might answer more.... Superversive Stories — Tranquilo Retreat

From another link... "Such works as John C. Wright’s Moth & Cobweb series and Tuscany Bay Books’ Planetary Anthology series are examples of Superversive works. Brian Niemeier’s Combat Frame XSeed Mecha series and L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Rachel Griffin series also follow the Superversive dictum. Most interesting of all, in advancing the movement, is probaby Declan Finn’s St. Tommy, NYPD series, which features a modern-day saint doing battle with demons and their vassels in the streets of New York City."

Great Fiction Strikes Back- The Superversive Movement and The Pulp Revolution.

While it sometimes seems that every movie made or every book published has succumbed to the "woke", there are in fact many authors out there that are pushing back by writing new and exciting stories in a more traditional and elevated style.

everymancommentary.com

WHO KNEW????

Cool. I aspire to be superversive then. Thanks for posting. Maybe I'll use that in my agent pitch!

 

[Nikky Lee]

Stories that build up instead of tear down.

Becky Chambers immediately springs to mind. I haven't seen her works called this, but on this description I would say they fit.

 

[JohnBertel]

I haven't heard the word before, but I already love it. At least my understanding of it I don't know about the wider cultural and social implications that are discussed in some of the definitions, but according to my own twenty minutes old definition, it is about actively not subverting tropes and expectations.
One of the reasons I set my spy story in a non-real world was that I felt I could embrace the old tropes without it feeling old-fashioned and out of touch. So it seems I'm superverting. Thanks for posting about this.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Becky Chambers immediately springs to mind. I haven't seen her works called this, but on this description I would say they fit.

Under Becky Chambers is HopePunk, thus defined. Hopepunk - Wikipedia

 

[Pamela Jo]

I haven't heard the word before, but I already love it. At least my understanding of it I don't know about the wider cultural and social implications that are discussed in some of the definitions, but according to my own twenty minutes old definition, it is about actively not subverting tropes and expectations.
One of the reasons I set my spy story in a non-real world was that I felt I could embrace the old tropes without it feeling old-fashioned and out of touch. So it seems I'm superverting. Thanks for posting about this.

How does the opposite of apathy and grimdark genre connect with your def. I dont quite get it.

 

[JohnBertel]

How does the opposite of apathy and grimdark genre connect with your def. I dont quite get it.

I decided to keep it simple and take superversive to be the opposite of subversive. But more active, than simply not being subversive. I make no claim to this being the commonly accepted definition.

 

[Hannah F]

Under Becky Chambers is HopePunk, thus defined. Hopepunk - Wikipedia

Yeah, I've heard of HopePunk.. Seems Superversive is very similar.

 

[LJ Beck]

I've not heard of Hope Punk... so many ways to describe stories! I reckon you could make one up and then use it with authority. That's probably how all these came to be.

 

[E G Logan]

"Stories that build up instead of tear down"
– this sounds to me very like Up Lit. (Sadly, I'm unlikely to write either.)

And apparently there's a recent trend in Japanese novels towards 'heartwarming' and 'welcoming' novels that make readers feel comfortable and secure. I wish I could remember the newspaper feature article where I first saw it, but I can't find it again.

However, what makes these novels new and different is that they very often share the same elements: books, frequently in a library, welcoming cafes, and a cat. (Sounds like a writing game, doesn't it? Include all the following...) An example, quoted here from the South China Morning Post, is

"The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa​

This tender story is about a man’s journey around Japan with a wily street cat called Nana. On a road trip, Nana sits in the front seat of a silver fan (presumably some kind of car/van) with his beloved guardian, Satoru..."

 

[Pamela Jo]

This would be very different than uplit. Hopepunk, superversive seem to be meant especially for speculative fiction. There are awards within the genre to recognise. I suspect it is in reply to games like Fallout and The Last of Us and kind of especially in reply to the tropes that nothing you do matters, all people are bad, no good deed goes unpunished.

 

[MattScho]

Hmmm, I was thinking it was when Batman or The Flash were spitting rhymes.

 

[Jonny]

With you on that, Matt.

I thought it might have been relevant to rhyming in some way.

Had never heard of it or Hopepunk. But then again, Steampunk was unknown to me until around 3 years ago.

 

[LJ Beck]

I think it's all interesting in terms of another thing you can use for marketing to sound like you know the biz. Or perhaps to help search for targeted contests.

And as @Pamela Jo said, Superversive seem to be Spec Fic specific? Coming out of a backlash over subversive SFF. Uplit seems to me to be for more "literary" works? If using these terms for marketing I could see how that could go against you if you use them wrong... eek!

I think the (general) public looking for entertainment these days is (generally) more interested in something that will make them feel better not worse? So these new terms sprung up in a response to that? But also... from what I can tell from the examples given on Superversive stories, they aren't all sunshine and roses, they can be gritty, tough, and the ending doesn't have to be happy. It's just that not everything is painted as hopeless, grim, and impossible to overcome. "Lord of the Rings" is considered superversive.

I think most stories, at least that I've read, have an element of hope, that the underdog can win, that one person can make a difference. So I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about. Maybe I just naturally stay clear of stories that will be depressing and hopeless?

 

[E G Logan]

more "literary" works? If using these terms for marketing I could see how that could go against you if you use them wrong... eek!

I started a post on 'literary', but abandoned it. Maybe here is the place to ask the question.

WHAT CONSTITUTES LITERARY FICTION?
I've been researching US agents and publishers recently and I've noticed a definite divergence on what constitutes 'literary' from how the UK industry sees it. (North American colleagues, please forgive me if this is something that's been around for years, and everyone knows it, and I just missed it up till now.)

I was always told, re. British publishing, literary is NOT something you, the aspiring author, say about your ms, even if you believe it is. "It's for the agent to decide if it is or not." And, defining literary was 'writing that might win literary prizes, innovative, maybe a bit experimental, in the language or the narrative organisation...'. I'm paraphrasing here – there are better British definitions, I'm sure, out there.

But in the US there are a lot of ideas, all of them not much like the above. The difference seems to be that many US agents and publishers will categorise a novel that is not straight-up genre (romance, crime, sci-fi, etc) as literary. I'm basing my observations on sources such as Publishers Lunch or Query Manager, where the categories are submitted by the agents or publishers themselves. Not to mention Tik Tok, where a 'trend toward reading literary fiction' has been claimed (see The Bookseller recently), but the books cited are not what I would previously have thought of a 'literary', maybe just not pure genre.

What does everyone else think?? @AgentPete?

 

[MattScho]

So, i've always seen literary as having been defined by Faulkner, in his nobel acceptance speech in 1950. Esp this bit"

"...the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

TLDR version:
Lit that speaks to the eternal verities, and does so in beautiful prose.

 

[AgentPete]

What does everyone else think?? @AgentPete?

The short answer is that self-categorized “literary” fiction on a unsol submission usually means, to the agent, that the writing is likely to be substandard and self-indulgent.

Even quality literary fiction risks minimal sales unless… it wins a prize jackpot.

I think every agent of any experience has been burnt by spending a hopeless amount of time on a lit work they truly believe in, only to see it crash and burn on release.

Yes it’s happened to me, and yes, I’d do it again… but cautiously...

 

[LJ Beck]

"Literary Fic" feels more like self-praise than a genre to me. Saying it's literary is almost like saying it's "very clever and my prose is brilliant." Which will result in the same thing any self-praise gets you (a page-turner, heart-wrenching, imaginitive), eye rolls and "I'll be the judge of that."

From what Pete says, it doesn't generally sell well, so I'm not sure why anyone would want to use the term at all?

There's so many new terms to describe niche sub-genres now, just make up something. Uplit is already one, truth-seeking lit, A-day-In-the-Life lit, life-journey lit, path-less-followed lit, haha. I could keep going...

 

[AgentPete]

It’s worth noting that "sunrise" genres are a great attraction to agents and publishers. As in many things, timing is crucial. Once a new sub-genre has been uncovered (by sales volume) then the race is on to provide manuscripts for it.

Eventually, the new sub-genre will probably become over-published, but if you get your timing right, you can do very well.

 

[E G Logan]

does so in beautiful prose.

That was definitely my understanding of it, that it involved high quality writing, such as might win prizes.

 

[MattScho]

It’s worth noting that "sunrise" genres are a great attraction to agents and publishers. As in many things, timing is crucial. Once a new sub-genre has been uncovered (by sales volume) then the race is on to provide manuscripts for it.

Eventually, the new sub-genre will probably become over-published, but if you get your timing right, you can do very well.

That's really interesting, esp when we put that together with the glacial pace of publishing houses. On the one hand, sell at the peak and the price is probably at it's peak. On the other, as it won't come out for a year or two, sales might stink by then

 

[Jason L.]

You know, when I was reading this, I actually went down a different road--the wildly popular show West Wing would have been superversive. The idea of sincere people in a position of power trying to do something to inspire change, even if they were being frustrated, gainsaid, and otherwise opposed.

 

[Pamela Jo]

You know, when I was reading this, I actually went down a different road--the wildly popular show West Wing would have been superversive. The idea of sincere people in a position of power trying to do something to inspire change, even if they were being frustrated, gainsaid, and otherwise opposed.

That is actually spot on to what I think.