BH: In one of your previous interviews, you said that all fiction is speculative. Could you elaborate?
KL: Im not a fan of genre boundaries. I think genres are often used as a shorthand to dismiss works in a facile way. For example, if some work is labeled chick lit, theres an automatic distaste for it by the presumed serious readers that doesnt allow an examination of the works merits. Labeling a work with a genre tends to cause people to react to it differently.
BH: Some speculative fiction writers who have famously resisted such labeling come to mind: Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison
KL: Right. For fiction to be effective, it cant be a mere depiction of realitynot a photograph. (Well, even photographs dont really depict reality in a strict sense.) Realist or mainstream fiction is not merely reflective of reality, but re-presents it. Fiction of all types takes some aspect of reality and maps a symbolic or metaphoric logic to it, no different from how what we call speculative fiction does it. Whether you are talking about aliens or illegal Mexican immigrants or robots or office drones, the metaphorical logic is the same. You can take any speculative work and replace its science fiction or fantasy tropes with a mainstream trope, and itll be exactly the same work at a deep level.
But people have different expectations, somehow, when its robots versus office drones. When you are talking about people acting robotic, its seen as a symbolic and meaningful critique of modern life. But when youre talking about robots having sentience, then its childish science fiction. I think thats silly. Mainstream fiction isnt about reflecting reality exactly the way it is. Its about transforming it though the application of a map of metaphors. So I treat all fiction as speculative, because the really speculative element is always how fresh and how interesting the applied metaphorical logic feels, and how transformative of reality the vision is.