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Revolution of the Science Fiction Authors
An anonymous reader writes "85 science fiction authors including Iain M Banks, Larry Niven, Stephen Hunt, Greg Bear and Michael Moorcock have written an open letter of protest to the BBC complaining of disrespect towards the genre, when, during an entire day of coverage of fiction by the BBC, not a single SF, fantasy or horror book was looked at. Here's the original article that sparked the open letter, along with updates. The British prime minister, David Cameron, when asked to comment, said that he doesn't have a favorite genre, so I guess he's not taking Greg Bear books to bed either!"
I have noticed for years that they "respected by the maintstream" book people have never had any respect for SciFi. I keep seeing garbage mainstream books touted over really good SciFi writing.
Fellows just can't get no respect.
Something for children, adolescents, and overgrown man-children who lack the sophistication to appreciate the subtle beauty of the real world. Never mind that that is simply not true, as the genre includes some of the most beautiful and mature artistic works ever published. People who are into "literature" as opposed to "reading books" tend to be elitist snobs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The BBC can just fire up the TARDIS and go back an fix the problem.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I keep digging, but TFA has no links at all, and searches for the program's name don't turn much up, either (though the presenter looks super-nerdy cute in her pics and you'd think she'd be into the skiffy...)
Oh, and the summary neglects to point out that the Beeb has already promised to do an episode on Genre Fiction, so the crowd's already breaking up.
... "It won't make any difference." The literary establishment has not only decided that anything but "serious," contemporary*, mainstream fiction isn't Literature, and any protest from authors in other** genres will not only not change their minds, but will in fact solidify their position. They'll see it as further proof of the inherent immaturity of those who write (and, by extension, those who read) "genre fiction," and be further reassured in their smugness.
* Exceptions may be made for historical fiction, as long as the history in question is within the last century or so.
** Literary fiction is a genre of its own, with rules far more rigid than those of SF and fantasy and at least as rigid as those of horror, romance and Westerns, but you'll never get them to admit it.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
tl;dr
Surely the SF community and authors can devise a suitable vengeance!
"litterature"
"Litter"ature or "liter"ture?
Condolences to the UK, but the US doesn't fare much better. Decades ago, NBC was in on the ground floor of a multibillion dollar franchise ("Star Trek"). They moved its time slot capriciously, as if trying to lose viewership, and cut its budget mercilessly. In its last season, just about every set was nothing but cheapo paper mache boulders. Then they cancelled it at the height of its popularity. In other words, they underestimated the public's appetite for sci-fi by tens of billions, dollars or pounds, take your pick.
Now we have a cable channel dedicated to sci-fi, and they changed their name to "Syfy". How's that's supposed to be pronounced, "siffie"? They used to produce remakes of Dune that were more faithful to the books, but "Syfy" now only makes end-of-the-world and big-animal movies. They've lost faith in sci-fi too, as much as NBC did.
Both sides of the Atlantic, sad to say.
Since the stereotype of the Sci-Fi Boys' Club hasn't been accurate for generations, if ever, that's not really the problem.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
What has Larry Niven ever written that deserves to be discussed on a TV show? His best novel ever was _Protector_ and even that isn't exactly prizeworthy.
like maybe, "His Dark Materials" trilogy?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Sign of the times. Sci-fi is the genre of the innovater and thinker. The current world order does not encourage either.
Asimov is rolling over in his grave.
I'm moderately surprised that Reynolds, Stephenson, Varley, and Vinge are missing from the list.
The quality of writing in science fiction is worse than in any other genre. Most people pick up something and are so turned off that they never want to read another one. I'm saying probably less than 1% of sci fi novels are worth reading. Of the most famous authors, Heinlein, for example, published around 100 novels. But of those 100, only 1 or 2 were good. And so it is for the rest. You pick one up at the bookstore and chances are, it is garbage. There is no filter for sorting through the drek.
The same short-sighted analysis could be made about any genre.
On the other hand, most of Heinlein's books are good, actually; some are very good - "Time enough for love", for instance. Asimov published who-knows-how-many books, and virtually all of them are excelent. Frank Herbert published the Dune series; if you didn't like those, I'd be inclined to distrust your judgement even further.
But by all means, do continue flamebaiting. It's fun to read.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Heinlein benefited from writing most of his stuff in an era where his manuscripts were ruthlessly edited for content and length. His later, unedited, stuff is garbage, as are the "uncut" versions of his older stuff.
Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language since Shakespeare, but for his choice of genre he'll largely be ignored.
99% of Sci-Fi is crud because 99% of everything is crud. This includes "Literary Fiction".
I won a couple of subscription to literary magazines once. You'd think they could go a single issue without having a story about someone doing nothing but observing the gritty world around them, or a story about a child with cancer. Nope.
You want to get published in the literary genre? Cancer children. You gotta write about cancer children.
Really? Worse than _any_ other genre? I think you're exaggerating a bit. I think probably only 90% of all science fiction is crap. Which about matches what i find when i take a look at what's on the shelves in other areas of the bookstore as well. Clearly the bit about Heinlein is just you being a troll or a case of your mileage varying. Personally i've found only about seven of Heinlein's thirty-four books to be "crap." That puts him at about a 75% success rate for me.
And the "filter for sorting through the drek" is the exact same thing you use for sorting through all the drek in other genres of literature, all the drek in television, all the drek in film, and all the drek in every other form of entertainment. You can read reviews, you can read synopsis, you can ask your friends, you can sample a little before investing in the full product, and you can put all that together to make an educated guess.
If you honestly think you can pick up _any_ non-science fiction book at random or just turn on the TV to a random channel and expect good odds of finding something of quality then i think you're bound to be severely disappointed.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Goddamn "BBC America" has been pushing itself as the go-to sci-fi / fantasy station, including both British shows (Doctor Who, Primeval, Being Human) and decidedly non-British shows (ST:TNG, X-Files).
Doctor Who aside, this is not a good thing.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Well, that's perhaps a little superlative, but I'd say he was one of the top ten living writers, in any genre.
... these titles. It's not a revolution. They sent a ranting letter in good ol' British fashion. Period.
They might actually be right about what they say in the letter. But they are very much not revolting. M2C
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
Time enough for love?!@#$! Are you joking? I read several that featured Lazarus Long. There were a few good moments. Anyway, it's been a while, but from what I remember Lazarus Long and Friends all spoke the same. I couldn't tell who was speaking... Never mind, I couldn't get past the rotten dialog. I agree that Dune, the first one, is good. And Asimov, he published around 500 books so. Several are pretty good. I think his quality was much better than the average writer. But still, it is tough for any casual reader to wade through the 99% of garbage scifi novels to find the good ones. That, IMO is why scifi is not very popular.
I think it would help scifi if the BBC would cover it more so that first time sci fi readers would have a chance to find and appreciate the good works that are out there.
Frank Herbert and Heinlein were both proverbial 800 pound gorillas. Both were best when their work was heavily edited. Both later in life got full of themselves and started pumping out works that no editor would dare edit for fear that they'd lose their rock star author.
The first Dune was good, after the first 20 pages or so. It took me about 3 or 4 attempts before I finally got "into" it enough. I wasn't impressed enough to tackle the rest of the series. Just because you happen to think the entire series is great doesn't mean everyone does or even should agree.
Heinlein always struck me as preachy, and his books were a platform for preaching to his audience. Most of Heinlein's followers (and I use that word deliberately) strike me as being very similar to cultists. It could have been Heinlein instead of Hubbard who founded a religion, after all...
As for Asimov... while he's a well-loved author of SF who published over 600 books (Wikipedia claims "over 500," but I have read various estimates from 600 to 800+), it's worth noting a few things. First, Isaac Asimov's best form was the short story, not the novel; the man couldn't do characterization, and it showed in his longer works. Indeed, ideas seem to be the central characters in many of his works. (I have to say, though, The Gods Themselves was a great novel and had OK character development. Not stellar, but not awful either.) Secondly, many of those published works were non-fiction. I don't see this as a detriment, since Asimov is a very entertaining writer with a gift for making complex ideas seem simple. Thirdly, I believe it is because Asimov was so prolific that we have so many examples of his work we can point to as "good science fiction." After all, most of us know he pumped out that many books, but few of us can cite the titles of more than a half dozen to dozen of them.
Am I really? How exactly was I condescending to mainstream literature? I did say that people who were into "literature" as opposed to "reading books" tend to be elitist snobs, but that isn't slandering mainstream literature, or even the realm of literary criticism. I was merely pointing out that, if you characterize yourself as enjoying "literature" as opposed to "reading" you may be an elitist snob. Just say it to yourself: "I like reading books." Now say "I enjoy literature." Which sounded snobbier to you?
Psychological projection is the habit of ascribing to others those parts of your own personality that you refuse to accept. I accept that I am opinionated and critical. Therefore, projection is hardly the correct term, Mr. Hanky. Now, are you mad because you characterize yourself as enjoying literature, or is it something more personal?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I went to school for English literature. I read lots. Amazingly, in all that time, I never read the single most successful modern author, Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote Sherlock Holmes. Somehow, the most singularly famous character ever written was not worth serious time in a literature class. A second story. The only reason that we read Washington Irving in my American Literature class was because the students kept demanding that the teacher teach it. That is a remarkable story. 200 years after he was a writer, not only were the students still clamoring to read him, he still had no respect from the establishment.
Asimov published who-knows-how-many books, and virtually all of them are (sic) excelent.
Not really. Much of his awful stuff has been forgotten. "Norby, the Mixed-up Robot" (and its sequels, including "Norby and the Lost Princes"), "Young Mutants", "Cosmic Knights", "Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids", "Still More Lecherous Limericks", "The Subatomic Monster " and "Why Does Litter Cause Problems?" are, rightfully, forgotten. Asimov wrote over 300 books, of which maybe 30 are still read. 30 good books is a decent record for an author, but "virtually all are excellent" exaggerates his average quality.
The quality of writing in science fiction is worse than in any other genre.
Citation needed, but I'm guessing you haven't read much romance, mystery, fantasy, horror, western, or even "literary" fiction if you think that. Nor heard of Sturgeon's Law.
I liked your observation better when Theodore Sturgeon made it: 90% of everything is crap. Of course, you seem to be claiming that the value is more like 99%, but we all know that 95% of all statistics are made up on the fly.
News flash: Most other genre fiction is crap, too. For that matter, most mainstream fiction doesn't pass the test of time and is quickly forgotten, if it ever was considered "literature" in the first place.
As for filters, I would suggest that you start paying attention to book reviews. Analog still does reviews of science fiction novels, for example. Amazon posts both user reviews and reviews by established periodicals. If you need something to inform your selection process, book reviews are a good place to start.
If you don't have reviews to go by, or enough reviews to go by, there's always the reputation of the author himself. (If you happen to not like an author who is otherwise well-regarded, that's fine, but authors tend to work hard to earn a reputation.) And if an author is older, sometimes they fall into the category of authors who improve with age, while others fall prey to the Hemingway syndrome (writing their best work first). Find out which category an author falls into and then consume either their back catalog or their latest works, depending.
Reality Television. Nice troll, though.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Like it or not (and I suspect most Slashdotters will fall firmly into the "not" camp), we're living in an age where people are turning back to time-honored traditions and values. Science fiction is littered with themes and concepts that a growing majority of readers find thoroughly objectionable (e.g., evolutionistic biology, geologic and cosmic timescales on the order of billions of years, multiculturalism, man-made climate change, collectivism/communism, etc.)
If "we" includes USA, then maybe you have a point, though even then it's grossly exaggerated. The rest of the world certainly doesn't find "evolutionistic biology", or billions-old universe objectionable.
I am a long-time SF reader, having cut my teeth on the greats of the 1950s and 1960s. I no longer bother to browse in the SF section of bookstores any more because 99% of the books being sold as SF are pretty much juvenile vampire or Camelot-as-SF books. The only new writers I try out are from the steampunk genre, which has its share of problems as well. If the serious/good SF writers want respect, they need to work with the publishers to clean up the definition of what's SF in the marketplace. As I don't see the publishers, who only care for sales numbers, doing this until a couple of years after Hell freezes over, I'm not optimistic about this problem getting any better.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons
rip, kurt!
Steven Erikson(Lundin) is the most notable pure fantasy writer on there. Moorcock is probably the most notable fantasy author on the list, but he also does scifi(though his most popular works are fantasy).
OK, you've had your incorrect little rant. Now bend over and feel the strapon "returning morality" to where you keep your brains, bitch-boy.
...then Science Fiction isn't a popular genre, it's got one of the smallest shelf spaces. Whereas other genres like crime are several times bigger. Perhaps it's just a case of it being a really niche subject.
when a dying medium ignores a living one?
So in an attempt of the BBC to apparently encourage more people to read novels, they failed to mention any novels in the genres of THE most read authors of the last few DECADES.
Twilight has been a monstrous success in getting books into the hands of tweens, with Harry Potter before it. Before JK Rowling came along, Terry Pratchett was the best selling author in the UK, so Fantasy has been the single best way of getting the people of the UK to read, I'm sure closely followed by both Sci-Fi and Crime, all three genres well represented in this open letter.
Partly it's because they are staffed mainly by arts graduates (who don't like being made to appear ignorant, with concepts they don't understand) , and are more concerned with the creativity and partly because they are financed by a mandatory TV license, so are open to calls that their programming must reach everybody. And that requires aiming for the lowest common denominator.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I have noticed that the writers of sci-fi, fantasy and the same have more or less some scientific or engineering background. This exclude them for the "mainstream" literature. There lives the opinion that only the classic education makes you a "real" writer. I am very curious how many "real" writers could mend their own computers? One more thing. Just ask how many from the Apollo crew got in to engineering because Asimov or C. Clarke. The face of today was molded by the sci-fi writers of the '50s, '60s and '70s.
I've been assured by Space Nutters that SF is not fiction, it is a carefully thought-out engineering blueprint for a credible, realistic future. Space elevators, even though we don't have a shred of evidence that we can build such a thing, or indeed, that such materials even *exist*, are actually very simple and trivial devices, vitally important to the important vacuum market of the future.
You should check again if you think these are trending upwards. Very little of the rest of your rant had anything at all to do with "morality". (What does unemployment and gas prices have to do with morality?)
Try coming to live in the real world with us -- it's one of the safest times to be alive in the history of humanity.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
To be fair, for the longest time his Lucky Starr series was written under the name Paul French, and they were written for kids and teens.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I see this every single time I walk into a bookstore. They have multiple bookshelves for contemporary fiction; multiple bookshelves for romantic fiction. But when it comes to science fiction? One bookshelf - and most of the contents is fantasy, not science fiction. One bookshelf for sci-fi/fantasy in an entire bookstore? What a joke.
my 10th grade english teacher gave me a ration of crap for choosing the Lord of the Rings trilogy for a literature essay topic. she said, in no uncertain terms, that LOTR is Not literature and should not be considered for a serious topic. i did it anyway and got a good grade, so nyah.
Authors who have written successful books in these genres often have their non-genre works marginalized. Michael Moorcock wrote Elric and other stories BEFORE the genre even existed. He has numerous non-genre books that outshine Elric, such as King of the City (written under the influence of steroids prescribed for neuropathy), Glorianna and Mother London. You can chat with him at his website: www.multiverse.org
Science Fiction doesn't fair much better. Its ironic because the stories of the bible are just as fantastic and incredible as modern science fiction and fantasy, yet it is the longest-running #1 best seller (of fiction, IMO) but people actually consider it all historical fact.
Literature critics seem to be as tight as art critics. These people seem to think they can define what is consider as "good" fiction, but they really have no idea what constitutes quality fiction, so they can only compare works to other works to quantify quality.
The great part is that these people really have no say in the matter. If it was not for artists like Jackson Polluck, who went against the established fine grain, then art would be still in the dark ages. Just as the same would be true for fiction.
My definition of contemporary epic science fiction is the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card.
My definition of contemporary epic fantasy is Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.
The origin of both is the epic Odyssey and Iliad by Homer. Science fiction is just fantasy plus science. There is not a dichotomy between the genres as some people may think.
Some people may put Dostoevsky's (and other's) work in a different league as the work mention above, but that is incredible (as in not credible) in my opinion. I by no means say that their work is better than Dostoevsky, but their works are certainly derivatives of such fiction. If purists question the quality of these novels, then I question their ability to read. Subjectivity is a sharp tool that is better left in the shed.
Hasn't the BBC always hated SciFi? There is no point having tax payer money and zero accountability if you aren't going to create pretentious crap and sad reality tv. The Python days have long since been over. The last Brit sci-fi I remember that was any good was Red Dwarf back in the '80s, and that was Channel 4. The only long-running TV sci-fi was Babylon 5... and that was Channel 4. Pretty much everything since (Star Trek / Stargate / etc) has all been Sky.
Does anybody watch the BBC any more for anything other than the news and Top Gear?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Wouldn't it be "Revolution __by__ the" or "__Revolt__ of the", rather than "Revolution of the"?
Early science fiction as represented in the pulps was unquestionably crude from a literary standpoint, which is the brush the whole genre is still being painted with - which makes for a nice SF trope in of itself.
It's very amusing to me that this Forever War is still being waged; didn't the New Wave and fellow travelers establish back in the 1960s that SF could be writing full of complexity, involved plots, rich characters, all that? And then you had writers like Greg Egan whose work exists on almost another plane from all these drab concerns, it's so alien, in various senses of the word.
50,000 titles available for streaming, 154 of them are sci-fi. mostly really crappy sci-fi at that. sure there's Blade Runner and a couple of other classics, but mostly it's the bottom of the barrel older movies and the new stuff is "mega shark vs giant octopus". Occasionally better things like Dune appear, but usually only for a limited time. I guess it doesn't matter that much since i have a huge sci-fi dvd collection, but it's sad to see it so under-represented.
There's two entirely separate issues at hand here:
Firstly, sci-fi is a niche genre. Those of us that love it and study it and understand that it's mostly a way of doing the fun, speculative side of Real Science know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm betting at least half of them are already formulating an angry response to my use of "sci-fi", arguing that it should be "SF". My point being that "we" can't even agree on what "our" genre is. So it's not a genre, it's a mindset, and we can't agree.
Secondly, it's really difficult for somebody without a basic grounding of scientific method and the history of science to properly get a grasp on what sci-fi (or whatever) is actually trying to do. Their closest reference point is literature, because SF (or whatever) is often done in book form. Scify (or whatever) doesn't do traditional literature well, in fact it often ignores the standard, conventional techniques of plot and character development because scific (or whatever) is so fundamentally grounded in explaining wild and extravagant ideas via a story. In that respect it is poor literature by any standard.
So science fiction and literature are simply two different things that happen to share a medium. The literature types don't get scifi, and the speculative fiction folk usually don't get literature. No biggy. Let just keep doing what we all do and not try to stop the other. One day somebody will do both in spectacular fashion (I'm looking at you Stephenson) and we'll all get over it and wonder what the fuss was all about.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
And bear in mind as you do so that you stand in the shadow of the Kids in the Hall.
I feel sorry for the country you live in (you didn't say which one it is).
"Fahrenheit 451", by Ray Bradbury, then.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/default.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qyyb
Science Fiction has become reality. Reality is scary. It hurts! the deltas just want it to go away! Or stay in the arcades.
Damn! My Self-filling Soma-Cup is empty! Whatever happened?
All of the stuff Science Fiction has ever written about *is* going to get done, sooner or later. You do know that, don't you? You have already seen it happening. It's like religious literature. Humanity's collective (un)conscious is incapapable of resisting it. It's too powerfull. Worse than the terrible pull of Martian Perfect Metal. And that's baaaad!
None of those authors saw it coming
“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network.
This is not a new argument. It's an uphill battle to be taken seriously. From the horse's mouth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s23dZCZ2vk
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
For sci fi old school authors would actually be Jules Verne, HG Wells, etc; maybe for fantasy Bram Stoker, etc. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke may be more of a "classical era".
FWIW, the "literary snobs" might recognize Verne, Wells, etc. Perhaps the "literary snobs" of the next century will recognize Asimov, etc.
"Classic: a book which people praise but don't read."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Vernor Vinge eh? Marooned In Realtime was very well-received by yours truly. However, as often happens with a musician where I like one album or one song, I haven't gotten more.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Of the really great books I'd put Kafka, Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, The Glass Bead Game) and those which shaped the way I think about things. Some of these could be called science fiction, they use settings removed from the real world, but also provide some commentary on how we live now.
So much si-fi does fall into a formulaic adventure romp. There is little to learn from these, indeed they can be dangerous - as the characters can be idealised heros, setting unrealistic role models. One exception to this was Moorcock's eternal champion, initially a hero but by the end just a slaughterer of half the population. Perhaps a truer view of conflict than most.
Yes a bit of escape can be fun, but there are other reasons we read fiction. I like books which give me something I was not expecting, and shed a bit of light on life. Its been a while since I read a modern science-fiction book which has done that.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Niven gets a lot of respect for his ideas. He has come up with a ton of great concepts, and he really understands some of the science better than most writers.
But he can't WRITE well. His characters are caricatures. He can set up a short story adequately, but plotting an entire novel is beyond his capability.
But I gotta admit that Puppeteers are still my all-time favorite race of aliens!
I've got the impression that back in the day, around the 18th and 19th century, realism was simply one of the literary genres. You could tell an equally serious and compelling story in the form of fantasy or romance, for example. Then for some reason, realism was singled out as the only serious genre, and thus the definition of literature/fiction was considerably narrowed down.
IMHO, this is a form of being "comfortably numb" and limiting yourself to something familiar. I am already living in a world of boring kitchen-sink realism, and when I go out to the theatre, for example, I expect something more.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Are you seriously citing Heinlein as a counter-example to the thesis that science fiction is crap? And "Time enough for love", in particular? Holy cow....
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Sturgeon's law is to be recursively applied to the 10% categorized as non-crap after the first application....
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
200 posts trying to praise the literary virtues of science fiction and no one mentions Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz"? Guys, form a line and leave the room in an orderly fashion, returning your geek cards at the entrance.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Most people are not curious any more about what makes up their surroundings, or envrionment, or space. They do not care about how the universe works. They only care about either having a good time or how to satisfy their "spiritual needs".
This is the result of the world turning into a chaotic place without clear definitions of who is the bad and who is the good guy. Before the fall of communism, things were clear: the West was the good guys, the East was the bad guys. Now, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and after 9/11, the world is a blurry place with no definitive bad and good guys. This makes people scared and introvert: they no longer want to reach out and explore the world, they want to stay back and get confy, dealing with things they are familiar with and not the unknown.
And since sci-fi is about the unknown, its populairity goes down the drain.
Science Fiction is Satanic Fiction - the fantasy of Satan, which is why its boycotted by the BBC. Nevertheless they still push out Satanic Fiction through doctor WHO and so forth, so as usual the resistance is - weak-minded and hopeless.
The world is a corpse
I hereby cancel my membership in Art. - Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys said it best when people kept fighting over what constituted Art and what didn't. Curiously enough, today it's the academic crowd that's defending him and the non-academics shaking their heads in bedazzlement. ... As you may expect, he isn't taken for granted by the lit crowd either.
I'd say SF authors and their likes should do the same as Beuys. Don't bother and be happy that you gain better attention and sell more than the average lit-writer.
I recall Neal Stevenson wrote a nice piece on this subject, it might be somewhere on his website. Steven King has spoken up on this issues at times aswell.
If literature critics only define themselves by not writing or speaking about SF, Fantasy or other genres i.e. Star Trek and Star Wars are the same thing - they have spaceships in them., then let them do it. It doesn't hurt anyone. I recall people thinking Pina Bausch was crazy and yet some people thinking she's the worst thing that happended to modern dance. Yet that didn't stop her from going to 'some nutcase doing dance choreographies somewhere in the Ruhr area' to 'best coreographer ever' in the time of her life. The same will happen with todays SF in a few decades of time.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Mainstream literature is extraordinary characters in a ordinary environment, where as science fiction is a ordinary characters in an extraordinary environment.
[...]but "virtually all are excellent" exaggerates his average quality.
Well, he exaggerated first, Mr. Animats!
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Are you seriously citing Heinlein as a counter-example to the thesis that science fiction is crap? And "Time enough for love", in particular? Holy cow....
Yes.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Just because you happen to think the entire series is great doesn't mean everyone does or even should agree.
Just because you happen to think the entire series is not worth it doesn't mean everyone does or even should agree. Let us please not get into yet another discussion about subjective and objective value in artistic work. Please, not again.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Beowulf is one of the oldest pieces of (pre)english literature in existence, and would probably classify as fantasy. Is the BBC going to banish that into the depths of obscurity as well?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
..have you ever read "Ficciones" and "El Aleph" from Jorge Luis Borges? Yes, the writer that everybody says has not received the Nobel because of his political opinions.
All but a couple of dozen of Asimov's books (not counting the many editions of others' work that he edited) were non-fiction / opinion, and these were generally mere collections of facts with some opinion filler. He could write them in his sleep, and judging by the uneven quality, he sometimes might have.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
It's not Heinlein's best work, perhaps, but it's certainly a better read with more interesting ideas than National Book Award winners such as the mawkish, PC "The Color Purple", and Sontag's unreadable "In America: A Novel".
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
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