Converse

There is a type of logical fallacy which is referred to as the converse accident, a.k.a. "reverse accident" (or the simpler "hasty generalization", though that's specifically an inductive thing, not deductive). It is the logical fallacy I think I see the most often in my day-to-day dealings with humans; but nowhere have I seen it more in evidence than I see it in discussions about speculative fiction.

To spare you having to read the Wikipedia article, the converse accident fallacy is when one interprets a fact gleaned from a very small sample set (the aforementioned "exception") as being universal to that sample set's paradigm: "That swan is white, therefore all swans are white". I don't need to belabor how this works--I think we have all experienced this kind of reasoning, if from nowhere else than from small children who are still learning how the world works, and I have certainly misapplied, say, the laws of convection (I still maintain I can cook a casserole with the oven door open...)--but I do think we need an example of its prevalence in how people approach speculative fiction.

In college, I took a course called Intro to Horror Film (yes, really). Naturally, one of the first films we watched was F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, which is a fantastic piece; and naturally, at our next session, we began to discuss it. Most of the discussion was about the metaphors for disease, metaphors for sexuality, etc. And then, one student raised their hand, and announced they felt it was a bad movie.

Our professor, shocked, asked him why he felt this, and he told us that the ending was unrealistic, "Because if he was a real vampire he would have known it would be daytime soon".

The worst part of it is, in broad technicality he's not wrong.

Nosferatu did not carry this with it as a conceit; however, if I recall correctly, there have been several vampire mythologies which have included the capacity to know when daybreak is coming as part of the vampire package, which I suppose makes sense. But then you get into mythologies where sunlight doesn't kill vampires (Dracula and its precedents), where sunlight does kill but very slowly and it can be stopped with a blanket or tin foil (Buffy, Near Dark), where sunlight makes them sparkle like some kind of living disco ball (a noxiously boring book series), etc., etc., etc. And all of these various vampire myths could be interpreted as "correct". And all of them could be interpreted as "wrong".

Now, nowadays, this is not going to happen often in spec-fic discussions; genre-savvy readers know that any given story involving vampires will have new rules set out for them and use some old ones. But what about stories involving werewolves? Silicon-based lifeforms? Fairies? Janni/Djinn/Genies (all of which are, generally speaking, slightly different!)? You will get someone who will tell you that you are doing it wrong (or better yet, that you've ruined it). And God forbid you write something a little off-beat about the Great Old Ones...

Speculative fiction invites this sort of false reasoning, because the reader quite often has even less of a leg to stand on as far as understanding what is going on. It is easy to assume, in the absence of evidence, that these vampires will be vulnerable to sunlight, that this genie will grant wishes, that the psychic over there will be able to hold telepathic conversations; and even easier for the sudden, un-telegraphed breaking with those traditions to feel like the writer cheating.

Avoiding this is what leads to some of my least favorite tricks of the trade, like paragraph-long expository "dialog" or the main character taking a moment while there's a gun at his head to consider the precise physics of how his superpowers work. Unfortunately, the (just plain better) alternative is risky: it requires taking a certain amount of "sink or swim" attitude toward one's readers, and while treating the reader like they're intelligent is certainly desirable, it is easy to slide from "the reader is intelligent" to "the reader knows everything I know", and to wind up frustrating or even alienating the readership. It probably doesn't help that a great many works of fiction that are generally considered deep are known for producing a deep feeling of confusion in the audience.

My point in all this is not just mental masturbation. My point in all this is, I am coming to recognize this as one of my own pitfalls; and even if my page hits for Not Providence never soar to their previous levels, I will consider it a valuable experience for teaching me to watch out for that.

And to cleanse your palate, a relevant update from Dinosaur Comics.