Adventure Mystery
Entry posted by bonesiii
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Today the Bones Blog brings you an explanation of my term for the style of writing I love best -- the 'genre' I write. I consider LOST and Bionicle itself to be the best examples of this "genre". Scifi? Fantasy? Mystery? Thriller? Drama? No -- it's the best of all of those wrapped up into one awesome style -- Adventure Mystery!
There's a newer breed of story that began with LOST (and, I would argue, with Bionicle). Take a look at the "genre" section on Wikipedia's LOST page and you'll see that's it's a mess. A joke. LOST doesn't fit into any one of those genres -- so what is it?
This entry is fairly easy to write (for me
), because all I need to do is list the pros and cons of the various genres it's similar to -- and then take out all the cons and keep the pros. 
Most definitions will be taken from Dictionary.com, then put into my own words. By no means are these definitions or pros/cons exhaustive.If you really must, feel free to skip down to the Adventure Mystery section.
Also added a Summary section at very end -- I promise it really IS short. 
Science Fiction
science fiction
–noun
a form of fiction that draws imaginatively on scientific knowledge and speculation in its plot, setting, theme, etc.
Origin:
1925–30
I've taken a whole college class centered around trying to define scifi vs./and fantasy, and the one thing everybody agrees on is that nobody agrees on how precisely to define or categorize the two genres, especially scifi. Some say scifi is a category under fantastic fiction, others say fantasy is a category under scifi. Just about every scifi author has their own definition and many have core components such as addressing a key aspect of culture or human nature, or taking place in the future. Yet other scifi invariably violates such definitions.
What I've put forth on my blog before is that scifi and fantasy form two ends of a spectrum of "physics fiction", with science fantasy in the middle. All three genres are generally distinct from "normal" genres in that they in some way tie the fictionality to physics. (See Bones Blog: Science Fantasy = Bionicle.)
Scifi tends to explain the physics of its universes, and usually to make it sound plausible within real physics.
Now if you're wondering where Adventure Mystery fits in the spectrum, well, it doesn't. It can actually fit in any of the three genres, and technically it could somewhat fit with stuff like CSI: Miami. But more on that later.
Pros:
- Scifi is the most believable of the "physics fiction" genre
- Many of its scifi concepts can be (and have been) later actually done in the real world
- It tends to be "grounded" better and thus more relatable to for humans
- It tends towards long-winded boring explanations
- Often feels very "out there", plausible but still hard to believe could actually be true
- Stereotyped -- often fairly -- as pessimistic and dark
- Grounded perhaps too much in that it usually can't do anything innovative with physics without an "explanation", wheras fantasy can do fictional physics to make a more important psychological point.
Literature. an imaginative or fanciful work, esp. one dealing with supernatural or unnatural events or characters
Fiction with a large amount of imagination in it
I define fantasy as the opposite end of the "physics fiction" spectrum. Fantasy doesn't worry about -- and often bans -- the explanation of its made-up physics. Fantasy and scifi are both often about culture and human nature primarily, but fantasy approached it from a more direct route.
Pros:
- More free to be "about" human nature
- No limits to what is plausible; throws the traditional physics rules out the window
- Virtually no "explanations" needed.
- Tend to be optimistic or "fanciful".
- Mostly unbelievable except as something like a different universe entirely or as secret aspects of the real world
- Generally useless to real world science
- Difficult to relate to as humans; not grounded as much as scifi
- Stereotype as being "escapism"
Science fantasy is a mixed genre of story which contains some science fiction and some fantasy elements.
See the aforelinked blog entry for more on how I see this as being defined. Essentially, it can mix and match anything from scifi and fantasy in any way.
If Adventure Mystery fits in any other genre, it's this one.
But I raise CSI: Miami (and shows like it) as a possible "fringe example" of something on the edges of this genre because it tends to be highly advenurous (more so than most crime dramas including the other CSIs IMO, though I don't watch much of CSI: NY so not sure), and obviously it's mystery, yet it's not "physics fiction." It does tend to brush the edges of scifi, though, touching on new technology often (of course, many other such dramas do that too, esp. NCIS and Numbers).
Pros:
- It's freer to be grounded and yet also focused directly on human nature.
- Any of the pros from either scifi or fant, it can have.
- It's more nebulous even than scifi and fantasy -- pretty nebulous already -- so it's difficult to define beyond "mix".
- Any of the cons from the other two.
mys⋅ter⋅y
/ˈmɪstəri, -tri/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [mis-tuh-ree, -tree] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -ter⋅ies.
3. a novel, short story, play, or film whose plot involves a crime or other event that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end: a mystery by Agatha Christie.
Mystery is the main thing that Adventure Mystery is about, so you might think it goes in this genre. Unfortunately, though, "Mystery" has a deeply engrained stereotype as being specifically about real-world-style crime drama. Esp. Murder Mystery. When you say "Mystery", people think "Sherlock Holmes."
There is some similarity, and obviously the mystery of murders and the search for clues can be major aspects of AM. Ex from my stories, Mindfire was the winner of the Epics Murder Myster Contest, and Epic 2: Agents of Surrender was all about a CSI-style investigation of clues about the hidden enemy. As a Bionicle example, I'd give Greg's original Tuyet story on BZP, and from LOST the whole Season 1 issue of "what Kate did" before the crash.
But Adventure Mystery is definately not limited to crime mystery, and so it cannot fairly be put under this category. Bionicle is certainly not a crime drama. The LOST Monster wouldn't fit in a Sherlock Holmes story.
Pros:
- Mind puzzles up the wazoo
- Also clearly about human nature and the like
- Sense of "who can be trusted?" most famous from this genre
- Seen as optimistic or realistic generally; the crime is usually solved, the bad guy caught, etc.
- A specific genre that doesn't have the vagueness problems the physics fiction tends to
- Not as thrilling or suspenseful; feel small-scale and perhaps "quaint"; hard to feel the threat of the enemy
- So specific it sort of chains up "mystery" into a lesser form of mysteriousness
- Not as directly about human nature as fantasy or scifant can be, though lacking the stereotype against this
- Limited (in the usual definition) to real-world physics
thriller
noun
a suspenseful adventure story or play or movie
Thriller best example I would give is the Bourne Trilogy. Matrix, etc. Heavily about action adventure, which is a major aspect of Bionicle and Adventure Mystery, but not necessarily focused on mystery. It's about fighting. Kung fu. Yadda.
And the genre name to me brings to mind real-world settings, not generally scifi or fantasy. Ex: I wouldn't classify Bourne as scifi, though maybe on the fringe of it. Pros:
- As the name implies, thrilling and heavily into suspense
- Just plain fun
- The threat of the enemy tends to be VERY felt
- Can be very about human nature
- Explosions.
- Stereotype as NOT being about human nature, "just a buncha fighting", and sometimes deserved
- Can be in the "physics fiction" genres but stereotyped as being "real world"; spy/conspiracy movies, etc.
- Mystery is often merely to aid suspense, not about the feeling of mystery itself
- Tend to feel like characters are dragged through it, not exploring willingly.
dra⋅ma
/ˈdrɑmə, ˈdræmə/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [drah-muh, dram-uh] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a composition in prose or verse presenting in dialogue or pantomime a story involving conflict or contrast of character, esp. one intended to be acted on the stage; a play.
2. the branch of literature having such compositions as its subject; dramatic art or representation.
3. the art dealing with the writing and production of plays.
4. any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results: the drama of a murder trial.
5. the quality of being dramatic.
sensational in appearance or thrilling in effect
highly effective; striking
All fiction is drama to some extent. As a genre name it can also mean a wide variety of things but tends to refer to "real world" fiction. Esp. "Daytime drama" cheese on television.
The main weakness I would say is the opposite of the strength of fantasy according to Tolkien -- fantasy can show human nature much more clearly than "real world fiction" by taking it out of context. It can take away all the 'excuses' of setting that we tend to use to avoid understanding ourselves in the real world. Drama often seems to me to ironically have less emotional impact than "physics fiction" because it tries too hard, and is stuck in the whirlwind of the everyday. If we do not see our own nature clearly in the mundane that we already live in, using that setting in fiction tends to have the same mind-numbing effect.
Pros:
- The most direct human nature theme
- Generally the most grounded and easiest to relate to; often about normal lives and situations.
- Stereotype as limited to 'real world"; imagination is limited
- May be directly about human nature, but incapable of focusing on human nature out of context; limited in HOW it can do so
- Soap opera cheese stereotype (generally deserved ).
- Tends to have 2D characters who are essentially emotional see-saws stuck into real life situations; the drama can become overdone ("melodrama" is the fancy term for that). So can ironically lose realism.
Adventure Mystery
So here's how I define Adventure Mystery (in general), taken right from my BP collection topic intro I wrote last week:
A science fantasy 'genre' that focuses on the intense thrill and adventure as the characters unravel deep, grandious mysteries, with innovative science fiction and character-focused secrets behind the mysteries.
AM is fantasy, science fantasy, and/or even real world on the surface, but tends to be science fiction in the secret hidden level that must be uncovered by the characters. Instead of long-winded explanations of the mysteries, they are slowly explored throughout the story. So the discovery is actually fun, not just pushed on the reader in summary to "justify" what is being done. You don't know why what is happening is happening, and that just makes it all the more fun.
A recent complainer said something about Bionicle and I pointed out how it was true in 2001 that is relevant here -- he whined that in Bionicle, there is "no clear justification" for why there are females among the Matoran, when they have no apparent need for gender at all. I pointed out that in 2001, we had "no clear justification" for robots being on a tropical island, or for the characters to have masks of power. Indeed we did not even get the slightest hint about masks until 2009, IMO, when now we know the island of Mata Nui was a mask on Mata Nui's face all along. It was a huge clue, and in hindsight I wonder how the heck we didn't see it.
And that is essentially what Adventure Mystery does -- it uses clues and adventure to explore the imagination of the author, not "clear justifications."
Ex: My Paracosmos is not just science fantasy; everything in it other than the fantasy physics it takes from Bionicle as a given is actually rooted in a science fiction explanation. The physics consequences of the Big Secrets lead to clues, and are actually somewhat mathematical in some areas. But I NEVER waste time on long-winded scientificey explanations, and when they DO uncover scifi aspects to the world, the characters have emotional reactions to every bit of it. Indeed, all of it is fundamentally rooted in psychology, because none of it would ever have happened if not for the motives and characterization of a certain classified founding character.
My non-Bionicle fiction is also Adventure Mystery. In that, though now is not the time to reveal any details, I basically take a revolutionary scifi approach to all the big mysteries of the real world, with plausible scifi 'semitheories' about just about everything. Example, my first episode introduces a scientific explanation for spirits that nobody else has apparently thought of (readers of my old Wacky Physics topic may remember an earlier version of it), but I do this through exploration and mystery, not preachy explanation, so it's fun.
By the end of the planned series such semitheories will "explain" everything from why I believe God not only exists but HAS to exist to wave-particle duality of light to what the Greek myths could have been founded on to many mysteries of ancient culture to how superhero powers like telekinesis could actually work for normal human beings. Also with plausible scifi ideas for cool fictional mysteries just made up for the fun of 'em, heh, and to focus on human nature, yadda.
If I were to sum it up, I'd say that people usually claim the "magic" or supernatural in stories like Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter, etc. can't be explained with science, or shouldn't be -- my fiction quite simply throws that rule in the trash compactor where it belongs and opens up anything to LOST appears to be doing things similar to both of the above. Ex: The hatch had a scientific explanation behind it, but it was teased and slowly revealed over two whole seasons. Traditional scifi would have wasted that brilliant concept on a paragraph or more of long-winded explanation as soon as the hatch was found -- and probably would have opened the hatch way, way sooner just to try to impress the viewer with the imagination of it. But the sense of mystery would have been lost, and frankly a lot of people would have been bored. (But then maybe it SHOULD have been opened a biiiit sooner
-- Season 1 had the opposite issue of teasing things too long, as Greg has pointed out)Of course, doing Adventure Mystery juuuuust right is the hard part. So we DO have to list some pros and cons:
Pros:
- All of the pros listed for all the above genres
- Thrilling action and mystery yadda yaysies!
- Extremely difficult to pull off in a consistently captivating way
Ex: LOST Season three lost (eheh) some of the mystery and a bit of the adventure. It became too nebulous, seemed to be feeling around in the dark for a theme, and as a result it lost (There's that pun again!) a ton of viewership. I constantly struggle with maintaining that balance in my fiction, and I always worry that I'm failing at it when I start a new story or saga.
One of the biggest reasons I'm doing the BP in the first place is so that I can test out different approaches while also trying hard to maintain that balance. Adventure Mystery as a series can NOT become too established as about a certain mystery (ex: many 2001ists seemed to think the whole tropical robots thing was "Bionicle's mystery", and complained when Bionicle moved on from it/answered it). The hardest part is holding your reader's interest with each new central mystery as much or more than you did with the last one.
The basic answer seems to be twofold:
1) Make sure fans are captivated about an over-arching series mystery, like the Event with the Paracosmos, or the Island/Crash with LOST. Bionicle lost sight of that to a degree at times, and I think that explains some of the disinterest or sense that it's lost its mysteriousnes with some years from 2003-2008 or so. Thankfully, it seems established now as being the larger conflict the Great Beings are involved in, relating to the Shattering, and/or about Mata Nui's mission.
2) Make sure you have innovative smaller-scale mysteries and secrets behind the mystery that can form dots in the larger "connect the dots" grand mystery, with one taking the forefront in each major section of the arc (saga). LOST didn't really have anything like that in Season three; in Season 1 it was the Monster, in Two it was the Hatch, in Four it was the Boat, and in Season Five it's the Moving of the Island. In three it was all over the place; ended up being about getting off the island, but frankly that shouldn't have been the theme because of Gilligan's Island -- nobody actually thought they WOULD get off. It was really cool as a twist, but the theme should have been something clearer.
So anyways. This has been a non-exhaustive guide to what I mean when I use the term "Adventure Mystery."
Final note: I define it as being in science fantasy, but again, it doesn't have to be per se. So far all clear examples I know of are, but likeisay things like CSI: Miami could be considered on the fringe of the genre. Also, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean stand out to me as other possible examples.
Summary
Adventure Mystery:
A science fantasy 'genre' that focuses on the intense thrill and adventure as the characters unravel deep, grandious mysteries, with innovative science fiction and character-focused secrets behind the mysteries.
ION: Lotsa art for Twisted Island and the Altacosmos Chronicles done. Hopefully later today the second AC and an artwork topic for both Chronicles will be up.
Will include how I imagine Toa Helryx's Mask of Psychometry to look.-
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