Style in science fiction and fantasy: studies in stylometry

This thesis explores style in science fiction and fantasy by applying stylometry to three case studies. These are genres that are traditionally analysed for the potency of their themes and tropes rather than for their language and style. In each case study, the multivariate method Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied as a data-reduction technique to corpora containing examples of science fiction and fantasy texts. The data-set analysed by PCA includes the proportional frequencies of no more than one hundred of the most common words in each corpus. As such, this thesis analyses the underlying style of texts through common words that are generally overlooked by readers but are ubiquitous and integral to the structure of language. Style is a multifarious term but is defined broadly in this thesis to mean patterned variation in the way language is used, often to artistic effect, such as in genres or between authors. By studying the base strata of style this thesis relates the function of underlying features in language to prominent features of texts and genres. The statistical study of style is presented in three case studies: the contextualisation of style in early science fiction and fantasy; the case of Olaf Stapledon’s style; and the stylistic variation across J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter sequence (1997-2007). The first case study examines late-Victorian texts and asks how H.G. Wells and George MacDonald’s early science fiction and fantasy texts, The Time Machine (1895) and Lilith (1895) stylistically relate to contemporaneous works. The results indicate that Wells’s style is similar to adventure fiction while MacDonald’s fantasy, though it appears highly eccentric to the contemporary reader, does not stand out among peers. The second case study presents an argument for the effectiveness of the style of Olaf Stapledon through computational comparisons with his predecessor, H.G. Wells, and his modernist contemporary, Virginia Woolf. Although, Stapledon is considered a poor stylist and is celebrated on the basis of his visionary imagination rather than his storytelling prowess, the results indicate that his style is relatively distinctive but also consistent with his artistic goals. The third case study explores whether computational evidence can be found for underlying stylistic variation in Rowling’s Harry Potter sequence. The results are then compared with those from two other fantasy book series, C.S. Lewis’s Complete Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956) and Diane Duane’s Young Wizards (1983-2016), in order to ascertain the nature of style in other series. The statistical results demonstrate progressive change in Rowling’s sequence occurring at a level previously unknown to critics. Together these three case studies offer new perspectives on the role of style in science fiction and fantasy through a computational method that has not previously been employed in relation to either genre.