Response to Spider Robinson on the State of Sci-Fi

Garund writes "A day or so ago Slashdot posted a story on Spider Robinson and his lament for Science Fiction. Well, other people, including Mark Oakley, publisher of one of my favorite independant comics, posted a response to Spider on his Thieves & Kings website (scroll about a third of the way down the page). Interesting take on it, I thought."

Comments

Re:Spider Robinson on SF? Huh?

[srmalloy]

What makes Spider Robinson a commentator on SF, Sci-Fi or anything else other than pablum?

You mean besides winning a Locus award for Best Critic? Besides being book reviewer for Galaxy, Analog and New Destinies magazines for nearly a decade, and continuing to write occasional book reviews and a regular Op-Ed column, "Future Tense," for The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper.? Nothing, I guess...

And as for the 'Speculative Fiction', well, he isn't a writer of that either.

The people who voted to award him three Hugo awards (science fiction's top honor), a Nebula award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the E.E. "Doc" Smith Memorial Award (Skylark), the Pat Terry Memorial Award for Humorous Science Fiction, and a second Locus award for Best Novella would appear to disagree with you. But you can always define 'speculative fiction' to be whatever you want, and set up your definition to exclude what he writes.