Levar Burton (and other Heroes) and Speculative Fiction

Levar Burton is up there among the national treasures we should all treasure.  He's up there with Fred Rogers, Bob Ross, and Alex Trebek on my list of good folks.  (Who did I forget?)

I have, of late, binge-listened to several seasons of his podcast, "Levar Burton Reads."  In each episode, he gives a little intro and reads a short story (for adults, the kids -- including me -- got years of Reading Rainbow).  After the story's over, sometimes there are author interviews, but I far prefer the episodes where he talks about what the story means to him.  Through it, you get glimpses into his history and current life.  He talks about his background, his family, and his career.

I have learned, through listening to those codas, that he got into science fiction as a kid because he couldn't find many books with protagonists who looked like him.  His podcast, accordingly, has a lot of science fiction and speculative fiction.  (Plus I've learned other fun facts, like that he was born in Germany and at one point was going to become a priest.)

Prior to listening to this podcast, I'm not even sure I had heard of speculative fiction, let alone would I have been able to define it.  According to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia for Literature, it "has three historically located meanings: a subgenre of science fiction that deals with human rather than technological problems, a genre distinct from and opposite to science fiction in its exclusive focus on possible futures, and a super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating "consensus reality" of everyday experience."  So, yeah.  That's what it is.  It seems to me that mostly when my friend Levar uses it, he's talking about the first category.

I'm not sure I would have listened to a heavily sci-fi podcast if it had been read by someone other than Levar.  But wanting to hear him read stories encouraged my marathon listen, and the marathon listen gave me an appreciation for the creativity demonstrated by speculative fiction writers.  It is incredible what strange and clever things their brains come up with.

Two of my favorites had very similar story lines:

One was a story about a man who bought a coat at a secondhand store.  It turns out it was God's coat, and his pockets are always filling with little fortune-cookie-sized slips of paper containing the prayers of the people who are near him.  Concisely titled, "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets," by Kevin Brockmeier.

The other was called "Chivalry," by Neil Gaiman.  An elderly British woman buys a cup at a secondhand store, and it turns out to be the holy grail.  Galahad, clad in armor and arriving on horseback, arrives at her house on his apparently never-ending quest to locate the grail.

And no mention of speculative fiction would be complete without Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie."

All this is by way of suggesting that, if you -- like me -- have written off the whole sci-fi section of the bookstore or library as "not for me," you might want to reconsider it.  Have a walk-through when you next have some time to kill and see if you can find something that strikes your fancy.