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7/10/2008 10:23:02 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 2725
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There's been several SF authors known for writing about small towns and rural communities. The main names springing to my mind are Ray Bradbury and Clifford D. Simak, but there's probably many others up to our own era. The varied incarnations of The Twilight Zone, particularly the original, used small towns a fair amount. Although there's some tendency for idealization TZ did have episodes like The Monsters on Maple Street where small towns, or neighborhoods, are seen as seething with an undercurrent of paranoia and mutual suspicion. Likewise Bradbury had a few tales of horror or death in small towns. I believe Minnesota produced a few "New Wave" writers that dealt with small towns in a sardonic way.
Do you like this kind of stuff? Who among us live in a small town and what would a "small town" mean to you? For me I guess it's a town under 5,000. Maybe a bit higher than that, but I've never lived in a town with more than a 1,000 people. I know of people who consider any place with less than 50,000 people to be a "small town", which would mean I rarely even visit places other than small towns. (Nor could I do so often as few would be nearby) I heard of someone who deemed 20,000 to be "too big a city" and others who felt a town of 100,000 is "a boring small town" so in some ways this topic is kind of open to interpretation.
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To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow His chance is tonight it might be thine tomorrow - William Dunbar
I don't lend money to eight-year-olds, at least not anymore. And if you see Billy tell him I'm looking for him - Coach McGuirk
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7/10/2008 10:59:23 AM
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EThomas
Posts 898
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I think interesting fiction can definitely be set in small towns. The first author who came to mind for me on this topic is Shirley Jackson. It does seem that a lot of SF stories tend to be set in cities or out in the country, though, not in small towns. In SF, part of this might just be an assumption that with urban sprawl, small towns are not going to be around in the future.
--
~THE REPORTS OF MY DEATH
ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED!
LOVE, SCIENCE FICTION~
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7/10/2008 11:11:40 AM
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Tom Purdom
Posts 604
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Some people will say they live in a small town nowadays when they really live in a suburban type of milieu. To me, a true small town is a compact place with its own shopping district, some businesses of its own, and streets with houses that are close together. We still have some places like that in Pennsylvania. But many of them are surrounded by modern, suburban-style developments. Bradbury and Simak grew up in true small towns. The essential quality to me is the compactness. not the number of people. (I'm using the term suburban-style, by the way, because many of these developments aren't really suburbs, in the sense that they are associated with a city or a town. They are essentially regions composed of housing developments, shopping malls, and office centers spread over a large area.)
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7/10/2008 11:32:27 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 2725
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I think of the two towns I lived in as small towns, but they might not fit what you're saying. To me if it has it's own shopping district it's just a regular town, not a small one. The place doesn't strike me as that compact, people have good sized lawns and such. We have a couple diners, a bed-in-breakfast, and after 18 years we have a grocery store again. However there is no mall, no Wal-Mart, and no fast-food restaurant. The place is about 150 years old with my house being about 120.
I guess technically it was a village as most of the labor was agricultural until a few decades ago. This is no longer true, but maybe "village" is closer to correct. The town I lived in when I was little was certainly not compact as it was spread over a mountain valley. I don't think it was "suburban" though in any real sense of the word. Again it might've been a village. (Although in the states I've lived in they were called "towns" anyway even if they were mostly inhabited by farmers, preachers, and/or monks)
edited by Thomas R on 7/10/2008
--
To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow His chance is tonight it might be thine tomorrow - William Dunbar
I don't lend money to eight-year-olds, at least not anymore. And if you see Billy tell him I'm looking for him - Coach McGuirk
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7/10/2008 11:52:37 AM
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Clint Harris
Posts 657
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I used to live in a small town.
How small was it?
It was so small that out shopping district was in another small town! 60 miles away! (Laramie, WY was the nearest place at around 25,000) 
Now I live in a small city, that still thinks it's a small town. It dumbfounds people that our crime rate is so high for a small town of 100,000.
--
Is that you John Wayne? Is this me?
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7/10/2008 11:57:37 AM
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StevenLP
Posts 498
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Here in the UK we live in fear of finding ourselves in a small, isolated village as dusk settles, having said the WRONG THING. The locals gasp and draw back, some start pointing their barley forks at you, one steps forward and looks at you askance and - more as a declaration than a question - says ... "you're not from around these parts, are you".
A little lateryou find yourself participating in a rite which dates back to before the human race commonly walked upright, a rite you will not reach the end of.
edited by StevenLP on 7/10/2008
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7/10/2008 12:21:28 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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Wicker Men are SO expensive to build these days, though...
Edgar Pangborn wrote a good deal set in small towns, and had a great deal of sympathy for the people who lived in them. As, in his own strange way, did R.A. Lafferty.
Even I once wrote a story set in Skowhegan, Maine, which I think is small enough to qualify (or was at the time, anyway).
Many of the writers of the Futurian generation, like Damon Knight, started out in small towns but got the hell out of there as soon as they possibily could and headed for The Big City, usually Manhattan, and tended to write about futures or worlds that were like Big Cities writ large; that was what was romantic to them, not the small-town life they'd left behind. Simak was rare in actually feeling nostalgia for his small-town days; most of them did not. (In a strange way, this head-for-the-Big-City thing may even be true of Fred Pohl and Isaac Asimov, who grew up in Brooklyn, which was practically a small town in those days, and as soon as they could escaped to the Big City of Manhattan.)
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7/10/2008 1:18:24 PM
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Clint Harris
Posts 657
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I always loved that Jack Finney story, "The Third Level" where people find they can take a mysterious train to a small midwestern town in the early 1900's, where they can raise their kids in the simple, healthy small town of the past.
It was very cool to see a break from what Gardner mentions as romanticizing the Big City.
--
Is that you John Wayne? Is this me?
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7/10/2008 2:33:02 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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Of course, that "simple, healthy small town" is itself a romanticization, and may well have never existed. See THE GOOD OLD DAYS--THEY WERE TERRIBLE! for confirmation.
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7/10/2008 3:25:55 PM
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Clint Harris
Posts 657
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Very true on the romanticization of small-town America, Gardner. Half the kids I went to school with spent their weekends trying to get alcohol poisoning while gunning down fuzzy animals at night, the other half got their kicks out of trying to avoid teen pregnancy. I believe prayer and abortion was the preferred method of birth control. When they "grew up" things changed very little. My dad says "you don't get divorced in this town, you just lose your place in line." You would need a flow chart to figure out how many families swapped spouses back and forth in some cases.
Not much in the way of work or career opportunity, even less in terms of art or culture. But I miss the scenery and it was almost worth it to not have to deal with traffic.
--
Is that you John Wayne? Is this me?
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7/10/2008 3:41:11 PM
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EThomas
Posts 898
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It seems that a lot of the examples of SF in small towns are set in a secret hidden past or deal with time travelling. It makes me wonder if SF writers don't see a future for towns as they were known in the past. Almost all of the stories that address small towns, even the ones where the people of the town come off as negative, seem to have that nostalgic, "quaint" quality about them.
--
~THE REPORTS OF MY DEATH
ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED!
LOVE, SCIENCE FICTION~
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7/10/2008 4:04:53 PM
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fotsgreg
Posts 316
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Stephen King tends to write most of hist stories set in small town settings with only a few set in larger cities.
I grew up in a town that had a population of about 400 people at the time (Carroll, OH). I currently live in a city that's trying to maintain it's small town flavor and failing miserably (Antioch, CA - Pop 100k+).
Small towns tend to be insular, but secure with interconnections between their residents that allow a story to focus more fully and carefully on a select group of people within that town. Towns and cities everywhere are about people, not the populations or the buildings, and people everywhere are alike. Everyone has problems, dark sides, secrets, and skeletons in their closets. Using a small town in one's writings allows one to focus on those individual characters and people and to bring those things out in full view easier than in a big city IMO and those secrets, skeletons, dark sides, etc., etc. can have a much greater impact on the rest of the population as a whole than they would in a larger population.
For example, Jenny has a dark secret - 20 years ago she got pregnant in the town of Wilders, NC, a small town of 1500 people at the time. She left town and high school and returned only after having the baby and giving it up for adoption. Nobody in town knows why Jenny left town for a few months and have always assumed it was as she said, to take care of a sick aunt (though some have their suspicions). Now, twenty years later, the town of Wilders has grown to around 2500 citizens and Jenny is married, has two wonderful children of her own, and is a typical soccer mom ferrying kids around in her minvan. One day, she notices that she's being followed everywhere she goes by a mysterious stranger. He flees before she can confront him, but then the police show up at her front door that evening. A man's been murdered and the evidence points to her having something to do with the crime. When the police question her they identify the victim - her old boyfriend from twenty years ago - the guy who got her pregnant. He was found clutching a locket - the one she left with the foster parents of her baby when she gave it up for adoption and which has a picture of her in high school inside it. What's going on? Who's the stranger following Jenny. What's the connection between her past and the murder of this man? What does her past have to do with the murder and how much does everyone involved really know?
As the threads begin to unwind and then re-entangle it's much easier to have the story impact a population of 2500 than it is a population of 25 thousand or a million.
(Just came up with that off the cuff so there are obvious problems with the scenario - it would be quite easy to throw in a scifi element or three hough)
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7/10/2008 4:05:41 PM
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themasterknitter
Posts 425
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Sometimes, and this is classic in literature, you can use the small town as a metaphor for something else, or in the case where I've used it, a reflection of another community entirely. It is especially handy if you want to lodge a criticism of that given community.
That said, most folks these days pass through small towns. They don't live in them and their experience is usually Andy Taylor and Mayberry, which isn't accurate at all.
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7/10/2008 9:58:32 PM
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Thomas R
Posts 2725
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Actually the small town I live in I'm desperate to leave someday. It's dominated by one rich and corrupt family, plus full of racists and two-faced people. I like the greater diversity of a bigger town.
Although by "bigger town" what I mean is something that might count as a small town for most of you. I'd like to be in a town that has a shopping district, university, movie theater, and take-out place. I used to want to live in a big city for awhile, but enough time in one kind of made me realize I wouldn't like living in one. I'd be scared of the traffic.
Still there are towns the size of the one I live in that I consider pleasant. If I had no history here I might even like this town as visitors often find it charming. (They did not find it as charming when my parents moved here. Then it was known for drunks and full of collapsing buildings)
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To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow His chance is tonight it might be thine tomorrow - William Dunbar
I don't lend money to eight-year-olds, at least not anymore. And if you see Billy tell him I'm looking for him - Coach McGuirk
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7/10/2008 11:05:01 PM
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Sue
Posts 285
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You know what Marx said about the idiocy of rural life . . .
Had to get that in.
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7/10/2008 11:10:18 PM
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themasterknitter
Posts 425
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I've lived in both places, Sue and what I have noticed is that most urban folks have a near unbelieveable lack of basic common sense.
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7/10/2008 11:43:52 PM
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Sue
Posts 285
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Murph, I've lived most of my life in small towns with air bases located next to them so I know small towns. I've also lived in big cities. I prefer big cities and would live in Toronto if it weren't for the ridiculously high cost and pollution. I just like the energy of the city, the diversity and the opportunity.
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7/10/2008 11:54:14 PM
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themasterknitter
Posts 425
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I like the Starbucks and the Panera breadshops (you don't have Paneras in Canada, too sad for you). Outside of those two things, I could give a shit less about living in a city. I ever get to the point where I can afford to, I will most certainly move out of the city.
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10/4/2009 5:47:35 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 2725
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I wonder who here in the Forum lives in the smallest town? gdozois
Maybe not appropriate to this thread, but I live in a town of 663 people. There is not a "metropolitan area" within 90 miles or so. Although the town I'm more connected to is a college town that was once mentioned in Asimov's.
--
To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow His chance is tonight it might be thine tomorrow - William Dunbar
I don't lend money to eight-year-olds, at least not anymore. And if you see Billy tell him I'm looking for him - Coach McGuirk
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10/4/2009 9:03:25 AM
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Marian
Posts 2178
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Having grown up in Los Angeles, I now, by choice, live in a town of under 100,000 people. It's big enough to have a full complement of restaurants, movie house, shopping mall, big box stores etc and still have the quality of constantly running into people you know.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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