How Important Is Canon to Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Really?

[MJ12 Commando]

How important is the idea of "canon"-a theological term about what is or isn't holy writ-to science fiction and fantasy? Especially in a world where fanworks and fan interpretations are more and more prevalent and easier and easier to access, is the very concept of a strict 'canon' not as useful? Was it ever useful to begin with? I'm not talking about internal consistency inside a specific work. Rather, the question I'm asking is how important do you think the idea of a single, unified setting that holds your entire corpus of works in that setting together to science fiction or fantasy series is?

I've seen a bunch of works of fiction which don't really have a 'canon,' whether they excuse it by saying that different works are set in different alternate universes, treating each work as a 'reboot' of the same, or just not explaining the contradictions that show up between different discrete works, even though they're ostensibly set in the same setting. Alternatively, there are works where the only thing that holds them together into a coherent unified setting is 'canon,' because each discrete fictional work is so separated in time, space, and (to a great degree) plot from the others that you could split them from each other and enjoy each on its own, with no knowledge of the greater universe, just fine. On the other hand, there are definitely franchises which make use of 'canon' relatively well, like the MCU which owes a lot of its sense of scale and scope to the actual existence of a 'canon.' But even then, the only need for the 'canon' itself is simply broad-strokes "something like this happened in the setting." So even something like that seems to me like it would work even if you didn't have strict care about some sort of unified canon, and you felt free to have things that couldn't quite be pieced together.

 

[Spartakrod]

It depends on the setting and the stories being told in it honestly. Some series need that sense of coherenece and linkage; that all stories within it are ultimately part of greater meta-narratives. Others work fine entirely as episodic series.

 

[Eliar]

I always saw canon as a useful guide on what can or cannot be done in a work of fiction and fantasy?

Not so much the small stuff but things like the limits of say magic and/or technology?

Say does magic exist? If it does what can it do? Not in the sense of where the fire for the fireball comes from but in the sense of can we regrow limbs? How about resurrection? Or the afterlife?

Same principle for a scifi setting.

Is there FTL? How about energy shields? Things like medi gel?

 

[Usandru]

Almost certainly vastly less important than people who obsess about it think it is.

Ultimately I would think it's basically just an expression of the consistency and verisimilitude of a series or franchise on a larger scale - thus it gains importance for the same reasons it is important to be consistent and have verisimilitude within a single work - but equally there is no real requirement that a work has these traits, it's just common because most works are pretty straightforward on some structural level.

However you could easily replace a lot of this consistency-of-events with, say, consistency-of-aesthetic.

On the other hand, as consistency weakens, there's obviously a weakening of the sense that works "belong together". If your works have no commonalities, it's hard to call them a franchise or a series.

I think there are two aspects two whether or not this is important. This first is boring, because it's about the fact that it's easier to sell a franchise. The second is more interesting, because it's about how you can set up your works to ask and answer questions across multiple instances. A reboot, a sequel, a spin-off, these things can gain value and importance because they can be used to ask questions or give answers to something else in the same "canon".

But on the whole I think this is somewhat overblown. Most franchises don't really do this, and while I think that is to their detriment, I can hardly claim that it is a flaw per se.

As an example, C. J. Cherryh's Chanur series of books is ostensibly set in her Alliance-Union setting - and certainly it shares aesthetic-of-technology and how that informs "capabilities" of the different sparefaring species in that series. And if you have read other books in the Alliance-Union series, you can gain an appreciation of where the lone human, Tully, is coming from even as the language barrier and the distance from all human polities makes this fade far into the background. In fact I read the series before I read any of the Alliance-Union books, and when I later reread it, after having read a great deal of Cherryh's other work, I didn't find that knowing more about Tully's situation really changed my impression or appreciation of the novels particularly - I simply enjoyed them enormously on their own merits.

The only real reason the Chanur series can be grouped with the other Alliance-Union books is that it deeply and thoroughly shares consistency-of-aesthetic (and science, but really isn't that the same thing? ). You could trivially say that it doesn't belong in the same canon and nothing would materially change. There's some fun to thinking about "wow, all these things are happening in the same universe, they might eventually intersect", but since they don't, the "canon" is basically meaningless.

On the other hand, and jumping mediums a bit too, Jenna Moran's RPGs, Nobilis, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine and the upcoming Glitch (Kickstarter goes up tomorrow!) are all related - being in the same "setting", being iterations on the same "core mechanics", being essentially a series of responses to the previous version, they have shades of both being part of an overarching canon, and of being works that answer or pose questions about the setting and about the previous works. Likewise, the fact that Fable of the Swan is set in the setting of Chuubo's changes the context and understanding you have of both it and of Chuubo's, as you read both of them. This is of course amazingly pretentious in the very best of ways (as I am sure Dr. Moran would more or less agree with herself), but it also means that each work informs the others in much deeper ways as they allow you to trace out images and stories that exist both across them and sometimes between them.

Since I'm shilling a bit anyway here, I think Hitherby Dragons is also an example of something where canon is an important part of just making it make sense - asserting that there is a canon is necessary for there to be an overarching consistency, although it can be difficult to see

I would suggest Hitherby Dragons is pretentious but honestly anything that includes Christianity/Teletubbies "fanfic" and a mashup of the Halting Problem and Waiting for Godot has gone way further than I have vocabulary to describe

 

[Kokurokoki]

A good example I can see is the Phantasy Star franchise.

To my knowledge all the games are set in the same universe but take place so far away from each other that they have separate canons.

 

[Cunuroi]

It depends on the setting and the stories being told in it honestly. Some series need that sense of coherenece and linkage; that all stories within it are ultimately part of greater meta-narratives. Others work fine entirely as episodic series.

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This is it. You can take a "I don't care about canon" if you're doing standalone books between the main medium's works (I believe this is what happens with Star Trek.?)

But, if you want to maintain something like the Star Wars post-ROTJ EU, where there's stories that span dozens of books, then you need some canon. That canon doesn't actually have to be contiguous with film canon, but for marketing reasons it helps to say they're all one canon (hence why LucasFilm and Marvel Studios both do it)

 

[Spartakrod]

This is it. You can take a "I don't care about canon" if you're doing standalone books between the main medium's works (I believe this is what happens with Star Trek.?)

But, if you want to maintain something like the Star Wars post-ROTJ EU, where there's stories that span dozens of books, then you need some canon. That canon doesn't actually have to be contiguous with film canon, but for marketing reasons it helps to say they're all one canon (hence why LucasFilm and Marvel Studios both do it)

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Some series are very episodic; like saw Spongebob or Law & Order or Mario and at most just have little tidbits for the long term afficianado to notice if they're really paying a lot of attention to the series. And that just works fine for what they do. Others are not only a series of narratives under a single saga but are an overarching metanarrative of various sagas that play off and interact with one another and thus tend to have stricter canon that requires more investment to follow.

 

[Delirium]

Canon to me simply means what is intended to have continuity and it only matters as much as that continuity is useful to me as a reader (I.e. it's enjoyable or enhances a pre-existing enjoyment in some way).

So I'm happy to discard things I don't like in favour of so called headcanon.