How 1985 Changed Speculative Fiction

In the genres of science fiction and fantasy it seems as if there should be an infinite number of ways to show the story’s point-of-view. After all, your main character can be a deity from the Norse pantheon (American Gods), a human/starship hybrid (Ancillary Justice), or whatever this thing is:

(Sorry, Cassandra.)

But in actuality, there’s only a handful of framing devices that the author can use to convey the point of view of the characters and tell the story. 

Briefly, (or not) they are:

1^st Person. “I walk into the room and see Fred.”

2^nd Person. “You walk into the room and see Fred.”

3^rd Person Limited. “Betsy walked into the room and saw Fred. If only he knew how he'd broken her heart.”

3^rd Person Omniscient. “Betsy walked into the room and saw Fred, reminding her of his broken promises. He smiled, lips drawn tight, unable to reveal to her his secret identity as the city's caped protector. Neither one of them knew that there was a time-bomb taped beneath the table.”

(Note that in my examples, the 1st and 2nd POV examples are written as "Present Tense," while both 3rd Person pov's are "Past Tense," although for the purposes of this blog post, they could have been written either way.)

There is one more flavor of 3^rd Person point-of-view that I’ll bring up here, “3^rd Person Objective.” This is a viewpoint that asks for “Just the facts, m’am.” It functions like 3^rd Omniscient, but does not let the reader in the on the character’s thoughts and feelings. It’s pretty rare today, but I’ll circle back around to it in a minute, so keep it in mind.

With only five choices, is there one POV that’s the best?

Well, of course you should use the one that best suits the purpose of the story. All of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages (which is a discussion for a whole ‘nother post.) However, there is one among them that has become the 800-lb gorilla that rules genre fiction: 3^rd Person Limited. It is inarguably THE most-used literary POV for modern genre fiction, and a mastery of 3^rd Limited is absolutely essential to new writers.

However, does that mean it is “the best” or “only” choice a new writer should make? Has 3^rd Limited always been so prevalent, or was this gorilla once just a chimp? After all, I read a lot of 3^rd Limited now, but my bookshelf is loaded with titles where Omniscience rules the day.

Thinking about this issue, I began to form a sneaking suspicion that 3^rd Limited rode the late 90’s wave of Young Adult novels that was ushered in by Harry Potter. But, was that true or was it just another opinion, maybe one misinformed by nostalgia? Aware of what I knew, and what I didn’t know, I set out to find out the truth.

Step one was to compile a list of works by different authors from different time-periods, sticking to the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and only choosing highly-regarded novels. No cherry-picking titles, so as much as I enjoy me some old-timey Alan Dean Foster (famous for his novelizations of Alien and other movies) or H. Beam Piper (The "Little Fuzzy" series), they weren’t getting on the list. 

Instead, I turned to a pretty reputable source: NPR. (Full disclosure: I am an NPR listener and contributor, so my opinion of other NPR listeners may be biased.) NPR gave me my first big data-sample: a 2011 poll that asked listeners to cite the 100 best science fiction and fantasy novels of all time, which you can find here. To this base I added other classics and other outstanding SF & F titles from online study website Shmoop.com. All this information was gathered together on one spreadsheet. 

A disclaimer is probably needed here: I did not study nor do I claim to know all of these titles in-depth. In many cases, I simply previewed the first chapter, scanning it to see what literary POV was employed. (This method was suggested to me by the agent of one of authors, advice that was both helpful and not at the same time. Regardless, I will not be sending this agent any further queries.) For some of these books it is entirely possible that the POV changed later on in the novel. Any additions, corrections, etc. would be appreciated. Buyer beware.

With that said, here’s the raw data, and afterwards, what I learned from it.

Title	Author	Year	POV	NPR Reader Ranking	Notes
Gulliver's Travels	Jonathan Swift	1726	1st Person	Gulliver is the central narrator
Grimm's Fairytales	Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm	1800	3rd Omni	A few 1st Person
Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	1818	Mixed	20	1st and 3rd, told from multiple viewpoints.
Andersen's Fairy Tales	Hans Christian Andersen	1837	varies		1st, 2nd, 3rd Omni, and 3rd Limited
A Journey To The Center Of The Earth	Jules Verne	1864	1st Person	72
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	1865	3rd Limited
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea	Jules Verne	1870	1st Person	37
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Robert Lewis Stevenson	1886	3rd Limited	One main pov, with four supplemental
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes	Sir Arthur conan Doyle	1891	1st Person		Peripheral Narrator
The Time Machine	H.G. Wells	1895	1st Person	36
The Island of Dr. Moreau	HG Wells	1896	1st Person	Central narrator
Dracula	Bram Stoker	1897	1st Person		Epistolary
The War Of The Worlds	H.G. Wells	1897	1st Person	39
The Invisible Man	HG Wells	1897	3rd Objective	varies
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L Frank Baum	1900	3rd Omni
Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut	1922	1st Person	28
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	1932	3rd Omni	9
The Conan The Barbarian Series	R.E. Howard	1932	3rd Omni	68
The Space Trilogy	C.S. Lewis	1938	3rd Limited	100
Animal Farm	George Orwell	1945	3rd Omni	13
1984	George Orwell	1949	3rd Limited	6
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	CS Lewis	1950	3rd Omni
I, Robot	Isaac Asimov	1950	3rd Omni	16	With 1st-Person Frame
The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	1950	3rd Omni	27
The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	1950	varies	3rd Omni and 3rd Limited
The Foundation Trilogy	Isaac Asimov	1951	3rd Omni	8
The Illustrated Man	Ray Bradbury	1951	3rd Omni	91
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	1953	3rd Limited	7
Childhood's End	Arthur C. Clarke	1953	3rd Omni	49
The Caves Of Steel	Isaac Asimov	1953	3rd Omni	94
More Than Human	Ted Sturgeon	1953	varies	1st Person Central Narrator with 3rd Person Limited and Third Person Objective
I Am Legend	Richard Matheson	1954	3rd Limited	65
The Chronicles of Narnia	C.S. Lewis	1954	3rd Omni
The Lord of the Rings	J.R.R. Tolkien	1954	3rd Omni	1
The Once And Future King	T.H. White	1958	3rd Omni	47
Starship Troopers	Robert Heinlein	1959	1st Person	31
Flowers For Algernon	Daniel Keys	1959	3rd Omni	38
A Canticle For Leibowitz	Walter M. Miller	1959	3rd Omni	35
The Elric Saga	Michael Moorcock	1961	3rd Omni	90
The Phantom Tollbooth	Norton Juster	1961	3rd Omni
Stranger In A Strange Land	Robert Heinlein	1961	3rd Omni	17
Harrison Bergeron	Kurt Vonnegut	1961
A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	1962	1st Person	30
The Man in the High Castle	Phillip K Dick	1962	3rd Limited	Rotating POV's
Something Wicked This Way Comes	Ray Bradbury	1962	3rd Limited	79
A Wrinkle in Time	Madeline L'Engle	1963	3rd Limited
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl	1964	Varies	3rd (Limited Omni), 2nd, and a bit of 1st
The Dune Chronicles	Frank Herbert	1965	3rd Omni	4
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress	Robert Heinlein	1966	1st Person	34
The Chronicles Of Amber	Roger Zelazny	1967	1st Person	40
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?	Philip K. Dick	1968	3rd Limited	21	Close to stream of consciousness
Dragonflight	Anne McCaffrey	1968	3rd Omni	33
2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke	1968	3rd Omni	24
The Last Unicorn	Peter S. Beagle	1968	3rd Omni	55	Hero and wizard seem to be aware that they're in a fairytale.
Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	1969	1st Person	19	Blurs the lines between narrator and main character
The Left Hand Of Darkness	Ursula K. LeGuin	1969	1st Person	45	Mostyl, with some chapters experimenting with different POV's
The Crystal Cave	Mary Stewart	1970	1st Person	84	with quirks
Ringworld	Larry Niven	1970	3rd Limited	44
The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula K. LeGuin	1971	3rd Omni
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH	Robert C. O'Brien	1971	varies	Mostly 1st Person with some 3rd Limited
Watership Down	Richard Adams	1972	3rd Omni	32
Rendezvous With Rama	Arthur C. Clarke	1973	3rd Omni	76	?
The Dark is Rising	Susan Cooper	1973	3rd Omni
The Princess Bride	William Goldman	1973	3rd Omni	11	Told from the storyteller's POV
The Forever War	Joe Haldeman	1974	1st Person	56
The Mote In God's Eye	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle	1974	3rd Omni	61
The Dispossessed	Ursula K. LeGuin	1974	3rd Omni	78
The Female Man	Joanna Russ	1975	mixed	1st Person Peripheral narrator, plus 3rd person omniscient
The Xanth Series	Piers Anthony	1977	3rd Limited	99
The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever	Stephen R. Donaldson	1977	3rd Limited	58
The Silmarillion	J.R.R. Tolkien	1977	3rd Omni	46
Lucifer's Hammer	Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle	1977	3rd Omni	96
The Shannara Trilogy	Terry Brooks	1977	3rd Omni	67
The Stand	Stephen King	1978	3rd Limited	25	Multiple POV characters.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy	Douglas Adams	1979	3rd Omni	2
The Riftwar Saga	Raymond E. Feist	1982	3rd Limited	66
The BFG	Roald Dahl	1982	3rd Limited
The Belgariad	David Eddings	1982	Loose 3rd Limited	41
Neuromancer	William Gibson	1984	3rd Limited	14
Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson	1984	3rd Omni	26	Strong central narrator
The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985	1st Person	22
Contact	Carl Sagan	1985	3rd Limited	50	w/3rd Omnii framing
Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card	1985	3rd Limited	3
Watchmen	Alan Moore	1986	Graphic Novel	15	3rd Omniiscient with bits of 1st and 3rd Limiteded
The Culture Series	Iain M. Banks	1987	3rd Limited	83
The Vorkosigan Saga	Lois McMaster Bujold	1987	3rd Limited	59
The Legend Of Drizzt Series	R.A. Salvatore	1988	1st Person	73
The Hyperion Cantos	Dan Simmons	1989	3rd Limited	51
The Wheel Of Time Series	Robert Jordan	1990	3rd Limited	12
The Outlander Series	Diana Gabaldan	1991	1st Person	89
The Thrawn Trilogy	Timothy Zahn	1991	3rd Limited	88	Multiple POV characters.
The Sandman Series	Neil Gaiman	1991	Graphic Novel	29
Doomsday Book	Connie Willis	1992	3rd Objective	97
Small Gods	Terry Pratchett	1992	3rd Omni	57
A Fire Upon The Deep	Vernor Vinge	1992	3rd Omni	93
The Mars Trilogy	Kim Stanley Robinson	1993	3rd Limited	95
The Mists Of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1993	3rd Limited	42
The Book Of The New Sun	Gene Wolfe	1994	1st Person	87	The narrator remembers everything and the story is his past.
The Sword Of Truth	Terry Goodkind	1994	3rd Limited	62	Multiple POV characters.
The Dark Tower Series	Stephen King	1994	3rd Omni	23
The Farseer Trilogy	Robin Hobb	1995	1st Person	69
Wicked	Gregory Maguire	1995	3rd Limited	80
The Diamond Age	Neil Stephenson	1995	3rd Omni	75
A Song Of Ice And Fire Series	George R. R. Martin	1996	3rd Limited	5
Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman	1996	3rd Omni	48
Harry Potter Series	J.K. Rowling	1997	3rd Limited
Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson	1999	3rd Omni	53	Strong central narrator
Stardust	Neil Gaiman	1999	3rd Omni	52	POV bounces around a lot
The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series	Steven Erikson	1999		81
Perdido Street Station	China Mieville	2000	Loose 3rd Limited	98
The Kushiel's Legacy Series	Jacqueline Carey	2001	1st Person	77
The Eyre Affair	Jasper Fforde	2001	1st Person	82
American Gods	Neil Gaiman	2001	3rd Objective	10	3rd person objective narrator
Artemis Fowl	Eoin Colfer	2001	Tricky		2nd and 3rd Person Omni
Feed	M T Anderson	2002	1st Person	Unreliable narrator
The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger	2003	1st Person	70	From the POV of two characters
The City of Ember	Jeanne Du Prau	2003	3rd Limited	2 main characters
The Wee Free Men	Terry Pratchett	2003	3rd Limited		Discworld Novel
Sunshine	Robin McKinley	2003		92
Inkheart	Cornelia Funke	2004	3rd Limited	Mostly the main character, with other POV's sprinkled in
The Codex Alera Series	Jim Butcher	2004	3rd Limited	86
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke	2004	3rd Omni	64
Going Postal	Terry Pratchett	2004	3rd Omni	60
Old Man's War	John Scalzi	2005	1st Person	74
The Book Thief	Markus Zusak	2005	1st Person	Limited (Death)
The Uglies	Scott Westerfeld	2005
World War Z	Max Brooks	2006	1st Person	54	but told through an interviewer (1st Peripheral)
Fablehaven	Brandon Mull	2006	3rd Limited	Split between two siblings
The Mistborn Series	Brandon Sanderson	2006	3rd Limited	43	1st Person bumpers
The Road	Cormac McCarthy	2006	3rd Limited	63
The Kingkiller Chronicles	Patrick Rothfuss	2007	3rd Objective	18
Anathem	Neal Stephenson	2008	1st Person	85
Leviathan	Scott Westerfeld	2009	3rd Limited	between two characters
The Way Of Kings	Brandon Sanderson	2010	3rd Limited	71
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald		1st Person
The Invention of Hugo Cabret	Brian Selznick		3rd Limited	Narrator
The Golden Compass	Phillip Pullman		3rd Omni

Still here? Great. 

Studying the chart reveals a number of things. First of all, it looks pretty clear that different periods of time tended to feature certain types of POV. Therefor, we can roughly divide all of genre fiction into the following eras:

• Pre-Victorian. Prior to this time, authors employed a wide variety of styles.
• Victorian. First Person viewpoints dominate.
• 1900-1985. 3^rd Person Omniscient is the POV most frequently used.
• 1985-Mid-90’s. 3^rd Person Limited dominates.
• Mid 90’s-to today. Although 3^rd Person Limited still holds the largest share, an increasing number of novels have other viewpoints.

Going back to my original assumption about 90’s YA novels and how they might have shaped trends in POV, I could see that I was both right and wrong. There was a great shift in genre fiction as the vast majority of the market moved towards 3^rd Person Limited. However, the shift happened much earlier than I’d thought, around 1985, well before the YA explosion. (Who or what might have sparked this change is a question for smarter people than myself.) 

So I was wrong about that, but compiling the titles reassured me that my memories of titles that I read as a wee young lad in the 70’s and 80’s were correct. Books that were published before 1985—both great works like Dune and guilty pleasures like Alan Dean Foster—were all largely 3^rd Person Omniscient works.

And finally, while my research was cursory at best, it did suggest something about the changing nature of the novel, something that touched on ALL viewpoint schemes. As I reread chapter excerpts from “Pre-Shift” novels it was clear that authors and readers simply didn’t place as much value on identification with a main character, on seeing the story through their eyes, feeling their emotions, etc. Where a “Post Shift” novel might languish in pages of describing one character’s sensory impressions, a Pre-Shift work would briskly want to hurry things along to keep the plot moving forward.

This brings me back (finally—see, I told you we’d circle back) to 3^rd Person Objective, the more journalistic, pared-down, non-mind-reading version of 3^rd Person. That viewpoint seemed to color all 3rd Person POV's, making a Pre-Shift 3^rd Limited a very different reading experience from a Post-Shift 3^rd Limited. 

So that about sums up what I learned. I grew up reading during science fiction’s great “New Wave” of the late 60's and early 70's when authors were pushing the boundaries of what the genre could be and what stories we could be told. And, gauging from the data, it looks like Novels and POV are continuing to change and evolve as writers experiment with characters, explore different POV's, and forge new styles. 

Maybe the possibilities in speculative fiction are endless, after all.