LIterary SF
Aaron Bergman
The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
they have quasi-literary pretentions.
In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
Anyways, starting out myself
Michael Swanwick: _Stations of the Tide_, _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_
Patricia McKillip: The Riddle Master of Hed trilogy
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
Christopher Priest: _The Prestige_
Others I'm not as sure about
Guy Gavriel Kay: _Tigana_, _The Lions of al-Rassan_
David Zindell: _Neverness_
As you can see, this really isn't all that many, so....
Aaron
--
Aaron Bergman
D. Gascoyne
>
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
> I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
> cut it.
I think you're right; quality of writing comes into it as well
(however you judge _that_: usually it's up to some ivory towerers
[like me])
> Anyways, starting out myself
>
> Michael Swanwick: _Stations of the Tide_, _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_
> Patricia McKillip: The Riddle Master of Hed trilogy
> Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
> Christopher Priest: _The Prestige_
>
> Others I'm not as sure about
>
> Guy Gavriel Kay: _Tigana_, _The Lions of al-Rassan_
> David Zindell: _Neverness_
I only really know McKillip and Kay. I would vouch for the literary
merit of both (Kay is attracting attention in young academic circles).
One way to get some ideas is to cruise university web sites to see what
is being taught (a lot of english profs. now have their syllabi on line)
I would add (and this is a very limited list):
Ursula K. Le Guin _The Dispossessed_ and _The Left Hand of Darkness_
Frank Herbert _Dune_ (first only; none of the sequels pass muster)
Marge Piercy _Woman on the Edge of Time_ and _He, She and It_
Tolkein of course; at least _The Lord of the Rings_
Stanislav Lem entire ouvre
Margaret Atwood _The Handmaid's Tale_
Other well known distopias, such as 1984, _Brave New World_
Angela Carter, especially _The Passion of New Eve_
Philip K. Dick _The Man in the High Castle_
While I think about it, interestingly I can think of way more genuinely
literary sci fi than I can fantasy: in my own very humble opinion, only
GGK, Tolkien, Angela Carter and possibly McKillip (but there I'm biased
because I absolutely adore her work) will truly stand literary scrutiny.
On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
- Debbie
Lawrence Person
aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron Bergman) wrote:
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf.
George Orwell's 1984 is a rather obvious choice
Robert Silverberg's DYING INSIDE comes to mind
Dan Simmon's HYPERION might fit the bill precisely for its Chaucerian structure.
Ian MacDonald's EVOLUTION'S SHORE (aka CHAGA), which has both brilliant
literary writing AND brilliant ideas.
Since race and gender issues are all the rage in academia, few (perhaps
none) have handled them better than Octavia Butler in her Xenogenesis
trilogy (DAWN, ADULTHOOD RIGHTS, IMAGO).
Of course, all of this is dependent on what "quasi-literary pretentions"
your target has. If they mean "well-written with three dimensional
characters and adult concerns," all the above and more apply. However, if
their quasi-literary pretentions tend toward second person present tense
interior monologues about how oppressed their protagonists feel in modern
American society, there's probably no hope for them anyway.
--
- Lawrence Person
lawr...@bga.com
Visit the Nova Express Web Site at:
http://www.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
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Glen Engel-Cox
> Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
> to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
> boring? I'd try a big collection of Mark Twain's short works (if it's
> as complete as the two-volume "Library of America" set, there should
> be something for everyone), Evelyn Waugh's _The Loved One_ (Douglas
> Adams only wishes he were this funny--and Stephen King only wishes he
> were this scary), and some short fiction by Kafka (he's more readable
> than most people think, he had a subtle, slightly screwy sense of humor,
> and some of his stories are only a few paragraphs long).
A selection from the Fiction section of the bookstore (I'm leaving out
any magic realists and associational authors):
Robertson Davies, "The Deptford Trilogy"
(not only is it literary, but, hey, these guys write books in groups
of three too!)
Kingsley Amis, _Lucky Jim_
A.S. Byatt, _Possession_
glen
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Steven Silver
>
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
> I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
>
>
> Michael Swanwick: _Stations of the Tide_, _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_
> Patricia McKillip: The Riddle Master of Hed trilogy
> Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
> Christopher Priest: _The Prestige_
>
> Others I'm not as sure about
>
> Guy Gavriel Kay: _Tigana_, _The Lions of al-Rassan_
> David Zindell: _Neverness_
I have successfully recommended James Morrow's _Towing Jehovah_ and
Charles de Lint's _The Little Country_ and _Memory and Dream_ in the
situations you describe.
--
Steven H Silver
shsi...@ameritech.net
http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/
Dan Goodman
to be literary sf:
Alfred Bester _The Stars My Destination_
James Blish _Titan's Daughter_
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
jaspe...@hotmail.com
aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron Bergman) wrote:
>
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
> I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
> cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
>
> Anyways, starting out myself
>
> Michael Swanwick: _Stations of the Tide_, _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_
> Patricia McKillip: The Riddle Master of Hed trilogy
> Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
> Christopher Priest: _The Prestige_
>
> Others I'm not as sure about
>
> Guy Gavriel Kay: _Tigana_, _The Lions of al-Rassan_
> David Zindell: _Neverness_
>
Um, okay. I'll bite: some of these probably would be best
classified as something else than sf, but I'm not going to
worry about that.. all books I'd definitely recommend, though
generally speaking I tend to prefer the sense-of-wonder end
of sf..
Philip K. Dick: SCANNER DARKLY, TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER
JG Ballard: HIGH RISE
Ursula LeGuin: THE DISPOSSESSED
Ian Watson: EMBEDDING
Robert Sheckley: JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW
John Brunner: THE SHEEP LOOK UP
Thomas M. Disch: CAMP CONCENTRATION, ON WINGS OF SONG
Paul Auster: IN THE COUNTRY OF LAST THINGS
James Morrow: TOWING JEHOVAH
Kim Stanley Robinson: GOLD COAST
Jack Womack: AMBIENT
Richard Paul Russo: SUBTERRANEAN GALLERY
Michael Blumlein: MOVEMENT OF THE MOUNTAINS
Octavia Butler: PARABLE OF THE SOWER
Jack O'Connell: BOX NINE
Patricia Geary: STRANGE TOYS
Todd Grimson: BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR
Nicola Griffith: SLOW RIVER
Maureen F. McHugh: CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG
M. J. Engh: ARSLAN
Something by Michael Bishop and Brian Aldiss, I'm sure,
would fit here too..
Juha Lindroos / jaspe...@hotmail.com
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Scanrosa
Lawrence Person wrote in message ...
>In article <abergman-090...@tip-mp14-ncs-5.stanford.edu>,
>aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron Bergman) wrote:
>
>> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
>> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
>> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>>
>> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>> you recommend as being examples of literary sf.
>
>
What about: Ursula K. Leguin; CS Lewis; Gene Wolfe; the Father, the son and
the Holy Ghost; Moorcock; Charles Sheffield; Mervyn Peake; Thomas Pynchon;
SP Somtow etc...
My friend got laughed at by his English teacher at high school, when he told
her he loved reading sf. She denigrated it as 'for children'. There really
are ignorant literary snobs out there!
But I hate the term 'literary'. Don't a lot of 'popular' novels deconstruct
'literary' ones anyway and vice versa? Us postmodernists love this kind of
thing....
---
Goblin
Ethan A Merritt
D. Gascoyne <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Aaron Bergman wrote:
>>
>> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
>
>literary sci fi than I can fantasy: in my own very humble opinion, only
>GGK, Tolkien, Angela Carter and possibly McKillip (but there I'm biased
>because I absolutely adore her work) will truly stand literary scrutiny.
More "literary fantasy" candidates:
Peter Beagle - anything really; _The Last Unicorn_ is probably the best
known, but I'm partial to _The Folk of the Air_
John Ford - _The Dragon Waiting_
John Gardiner - _Grendel_
Ethan A Merritt
mer...@u.washington.edu
Stephen Taylor
> Oddly enough, at least two sf books influenced by James Joyce appear _not_
> to be literary sf:
> Alfred Bester _The Stars My Destination_
> James Blish _Titan's Daughter_
I've never heard of the Blish, and I thought I'd read him fairly broadly
- can you tell me more?
> Dan Goodman
Steve
--
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Applied Financial Services
Phone: +61 3 9670 0233
Fax: +61 3 9670 5018
Keith Morrison
>
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
> cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
_The Left Hand of Darkness_ and _The Handmaid's Tale_ work
quite nicely. And, as a bonus, as they are written by women,
those with pretensions of literary knowledge can take comfort
int he absence of decadent male writers trying to exercise
their blasters.
--
Keith Morrison
kei...@polarnet.ca
Dan Goodman
Stephen Taylor <st...@afs.net.au> wrote:
>Dan Goodman wrote:
>
>> Oddly enough, at least two sf books influenced by James Joyce appear _not_
>> to be literary sf:
>> Alfred Bester _The Stars My Destination_
>> James Blish _Titan's Daughter_
>
>I've never heard of the Blish, and I thought I'd read him fairly broadly
>- can you tell me more?
I wouldn't have known about the Joycean influence if it hadn't been
discussed in Blish's _The Issue At Hand_ (collection of his sf criticism;
done at the beginning under the name of William Atheling Jr.)
My memory says this is the same story as _Beanstalk_ The Internet
Speculative Fiction DataBase says _Beanstalk_ was published in 1952 -- but
has no other bibliographical details. (I suspect it was a shorter version
which appeared in a magazine.)
Basically, it's about gengeneered people who are much taller, much
longer-lived, and otherwise different from ordinary humans -- and who are,
of course, resented.
Here's what ISFDB has on _Titan's Daughter_:
For: Titan's Daughter
Auth/Ed: [5]James Blish
Year: 1961
Pub: Berkley
Price: $0.35
Pages: 142
Type: pb
Cover: [6]Barye Phillips
Contains the following works:
n Titan's Daughter [7]James Blish
Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase --
http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb
Bill McHale
: >
: > The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
: > have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
: > they have quasi-literary pretentions.
: >
: > In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
: > you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
: > that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
: > I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
: > cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
Well one of the problems I have with literary standards is that a bood can
be excluded because it does not focus on the virtues that the literary
eleite focus on... After all many of the "virtues" that many literary
critics, particularly post modern literary critics adore, would have been
reviled 50 or 100 years ago. Personally I think sensawnda is one of the
virtues that SF brought back to Western Literature, or rather brought it
back to the forefront. In Science Fiction particularly, that this was
coupled with an essentially objectivist (I am not sure if that is the
right term) world view makes the genre the distinctive literature of our
technological and scientific age. Ok, that rant being said... My personal
recommendations (even knowing that some of these will be rejected on the
basis of "literary merit".
Orson Scott Card --- Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead
Gregory Beneford --- Timescape
Ian Banks --- Pretty much anything, but they better like satire.
Gene Wolfe --- Anything
And most of my other recommendations have already been recommended...
--
Bill
***************************************************************************
The main problem with my job is that they expect me to actually work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home page - http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~wmchal1
***************************************************************************
Rich Horton
>My memory says this is the same story as _Beanstalk_ The Internet
>Speculative Fiction DataBase says _Beanstalk_ was published in 1952 -- but
>has no other bibliographical details. (I suspect it was a shorter version
>which appeared in a magazine.)
I'm pretty sure "Beanstalk" is the first part of _Titan's Daughter_.
(And far and away the best part.)
--
Rich Horton | rrho...@concentric.net
"I am an excellent cook, and anyway when I am fifty I will probably
prefer the breakfast to the girl anyway." - W. M. Spackman
James Rogers
>
>While I think about it, interestingly I can think of way more
genuinely
>literary sci fi than I can fantasy: in my own very humble opinion,
only
>GGK, Tolkien, Angela Carter and possibly McKillip (but there I'm
biased
>because I absolutely adore her work) will truly stand literary
scrutiny.
children's
>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
>
>- Debbie
You would find it very rewarding to look for pre-Tolkien
stuff,
G.K. Chesterton's THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY,Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith,
David Lindsay, George MacDonald, James Branch Cabell are all pretty
literate
stuff. Lin Carter reprinted gobs of this kind of thing in the early
1970s.
James
rbm...@library.syr.edu
aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron Bergman) wrote:
>
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
> I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
> cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
_War of the Worlds_ and _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ by H.G. Wells
_The Demolished Man_ or _The Stars My Destination_ by Alfred Bester (the
latter was Bester's rethinking of _The Count of Monte Cristo_, I believe;
both show the stylistic possibilities sf writers are privy to)
_The Man in the High Castle_ by Philip K. Dick (or _Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep_ to build on their possible acquaintence with "Bladerunner")
_The Lathe of Heaven_ by Ursula K. Le Guin
_Against Infinity_ by Gregory Benford (Benford's reworking of Faulkner's "The
Bear" in science fictional terms)
_On Wings of Song_ by Thomas Disch
_Forever War_ by Joe Haldeman
_Neuromancer_ by William Gibson
Whoever mentioned foregoing a novel or two for story collections made a good
point. You have to figure that between Wells and the 1950s, sf was mostly
written in short forms for magazines. If that's a viable alternative, I'd
suggest volumes 2 and 3 of James Gunn's _The Road to Science Fiction_. _The
Norton Book of Science Fiction_ editted by Le Guin and Attebury (Attenbury?
-- do I have the name anywhere near right?) also carries good work; though it
has an agenda, at least they put their agenda out in the open for us to
dis/agree with. Anthologies might also help balance male-heavy lists like
the one above.
Other possibilities: include an anthology of non-British/American work; don't
forget Stanislaw Lem, the Strugotsky brothers, etc.; I'd like to add work by
women writers but have to admit I went brain-dead before I could think of
anyone besides Le Guin -- Kate Wilhelm, maybe? Judith Merrill? How about more
recent writers like Pam Sargent, Octavia Butler, Connie Willis and Pat
Cadigan?
Good luck. I'm glad this is your headache and not mine. :)
Randy Money
Diana Tixier Herald
Aaron Bergman wrote:
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
> that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
> I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
> cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
>
In no particular order.
Candas Jane Dorsey _Black Wine_
Terry Windling _The Wood Wife_
Charles deLint
Lisa Goldstein
Elizabeth Willey
Terry Bisson
Will Shetterly _Dogland_ only marginally fantasy. In fact so marginally
fantasy that Kirkus reviews even liked it. It kept my interest but I would
have prefered more sensawunda.
--
Happy reading,
Di Herald
dhe...@wic.net see the Genreflecting page at http://www.mancon.com/genre/
Rosenberg's First Law of Reading "Never apologize for your reading tastes."
brett harris
for example
j.g. ballard
james morrow
kurt vonnegut
harlan ellison
michael swanwick
jeff noon
michael bishop
george orwell
aldous huxley
christopher priest
the sf section nominees from me are
philip k. dick
ursula k. le guin
stanislaw lem
steve erickson
edward bryant
dan simmons
patrick o'leary
walter m. miller jr.
terry bisson
kate wilhelm
theodore sturgeon
sean stewart
Aaron Bergman (aber...@pantheon.yale.edu) wrote:
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
[cut]
> Aaron
> --
> Aaron Bergman
brett harris
> very often literary sf is found in the "literature" section
> for example
add will self and tom robbins
Nancy Lebovitz
Ethan A Merritt <mer...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>More "literary fantasy" candidates:
>
>Peter Beagle - anything really; _The Last Unicorn_ is probably the best
> known, but I'm partial to _The Folk of the Air_
>John Ford - _The Dragon Waiting_
>John Gardiner - _Grendel_
John Crowley usually turns up on lists of literary fantasy.
_Moonwise_ by Gilman might work--I pretty much missed the poetry references,
but enjoyed the book a lot by getting the fantasy references. Perhaps
someone who only got the poetry references could enjoy it at least as
much.
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Nancy Lebovitz
Lawrence Person <lawr...@bga.com> wrote:
>
>Of course, all of this is dependent on what "quasi-literary pretentions"
>your target has. If they mean "well-written with three dimensional
>characters and adult concerns," all the above and more apply. However, if
>their quasi-literary pretentions tend toward second person present tense
>interior monologues about how oppressed their protagonists feel in modern
>American society, there's probably no hope for them anyway.
Give them some Malzberg, and maybe a little Bunch.
Nancy Lebovitz
Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>Oddly enough, at least two sf books influenced by James Joyce appear _not_
>to be literary sf:
>Alfred Bester _The Stars My Destination_
It's flashy, but is it Joycean?
>James Blish _Titan's Daughter_
Wilson and Shea's _Illuminatus!_ is also influenced by Joyce, but is
hardly literary.
Maskull
Bergman) wrote:
>
>The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
>have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
>they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
>In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>you recommend as being examples of literary sf.[...]
( This question should definitely go in the F.A.Q. )
What you need is for a bunch of French critics to begin lionizing
SF, or a particular sub-genre of SF. At this point the Americans, ever
ready to appear de rigueur, will parrot the French while sipping their
crappuccino. In no time at all you'll see handsomely bound Library of
America reprints. You know, like what happened with romans noir.
Maskull
<mas...@pop3.concentric.net>
"The realists turn our words to gravel..."
--Yeats
Robert Barrett
: ( This question should definitely go in the F.A.Q. )
: What you need is for a bunch of French critics to begin lionizing
: SF, or a particular sub-genre of SF. At this point the Americans, ever
: ready to appear de rigueur, will parrot the French while sipping their
: crappuccino. In no time at all you'll see handsomely bound Library of
: America reprints. You know, like what happened with romans noir.
Give us American academics and critics a chance! :)
There's a good number of us now teaching SF and writing on it--and I don't
just mean Wells, Orwell, and Huxley (with Atwood thrown in for late 1900s
sensibilities). In fact, the influence of French philosophy and cultural
criticism is one of the factors helping us get all sorts of SF into the
Academy.
I promise you you'll get your Library of America Heinlein, Weinstein,
Moore, and Le Guins yet.
Best,
Rob
P.S. My first SF course is running right now. You can get to the web
site I've established for it by going to the URL in my .sig file.
--
Robert W. Barrett, Jr. * E-mail: rbar...@dept.english.upenn.edu * World
Wide Web: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~rbarrett/index.html * Garden
shrugged. "I see no reason to give the Heroes priority. The world is a
One Twist Ring: we affect the Mist, the Mist affects the real world.
Stories from one get told in the other." - Sean Stewart, _Clouds End_
Coyu
>Date: Fri, Jul 10, 1998 15:35 EDT
> In no time at all you'll see handsomely bound Library of
>America reprints. You know, like what happened with romans noir.
Yeah, now I have a nice travel-sized hardcover with _The Big Clock_
and _Nightmare Alley_. I'm happy.
M. Wesley Osam
aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron Bergman) wrote:
> The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
> have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
> they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
> In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
> you recommend as being examples of literary sf...
> The main thing,
> I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
> cut it.
I have to admit that this doesn't cut it for me, either. No matter
how cool an idea is, if the characters are dull, lifeless, or unbelievable
(although unrealistic is something else entirely, and completely okay),
then I get bored pretty quickly.
> Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
> Christopher Priest: _The Prestige_
I'd agree with these, and add:
Alfred Bester, _The Stars My Destination_ and "Fondly Farenheit."
Philip K. Dick, _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_, _Flow My Tears,
the Policeman Said_, or _A Scanner Darkly_.
Ursula LeGuin, _The Left Hand of Darkness_.
Any volume of _The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror_ would be good.
James Morrow, _Only Begotten Daughter_ or _Towing Jehovah_.
Also, point out books which are accepted as literature but still fit
in either the science fiction or fantasy genres. Books by Borges or
Calvino would work, and you should keep an eye on the "general fiction"
or "literature" shelves, as a lot of science fiction (i. e., Matt Ruff's
_Sewer, Gas, and Electric_) and fantasy (i. e., Ben Okri's _The Famished
Road_) turns up there.
If you really want a challenge, use the Dr. Who novel _Damaged Goods_
by Russell T. Davies to convince him (or her) that TV tie-ins are
literature. Warning: Do not alert him to the existance of Star Trek novels.
Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
boring? I'd try a big collection of Mark Twain's short works (if it's
as complete as the two-volume "Library of America" set, there should
be something for everyone), Evelyn Waugh's _The Loved One_ (Douglas
Adams only wishes he were this funny--and Stephen King only wishes he
were this scary), and some short fiction by Kafka (he's more readable
than most people think, he had a subtle, slightly screwy sense of humor,
and some of his stories are only a few paragraphs long).
--
Wesley Osam "Everyone knows history moves in circles;
wo...@avalon.net the surprise is how big the circles are."
--Greil Marcus, _Lipstick Traces_
Phil Fraering
> _Against Infinity_ by Gregory Benford (Benford's reworking of Faulkner's "The
> Bear" in science fictional terms)
Interestingly enough, it wasn't until Benford mentioned that that I realized
that he's dealt with other Faulknerian themes in his literature.
_Furious Gulf_ seems to me to echo Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_, as well as
some of Twain's stuff. Probably others I can't recognize.
--
Phil Fraering "I invented the term /object oriented/, and I can
p...@globalreach.net tell you I did not have C++ in mind." - Alan Kay
/Will work for *tape*/
Arthur Wohlwill
>From: wo...@SPAMBLOCKavalon.net (M. Wesley Osam)
>Subject: Re: LIterary SF
>Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 18:38:30 -0500
>Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
>to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
>boring? I'd try a big collection of Mark Twain's short works (if it's
>as complete as the two-volume "Library of America" set, there should
>be something for everyone), Evelyn Waugh's _The Loved One_ (Douglas
>Adams only wishes he were this funny--and Stephen King only wishes he
>were this scary), and some short fiction by Kafka (he's more readable
>than most people think, he had a subtle, slightly screwy sense of humor,
>and some of his stories are only a few paragraphs long).
Maybe some Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath or Cannery Row, if they want something
shorter.
Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Sinclair Lewis Arrowsmith
For something more modern Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian (but not for the
squeamish)
My reading of rec.arts.books suggests that Hemingway (and possibly Steinbeck)
aren't always taken seriously as " literature" either.
Olson Citycat
>
> Robert Barrett wrote:
>
> > I promise you you'll get your Library of America Heinlein, Weinstein,
> > Moore, and Le Guins yet.
>
Yá'át'ééh Sea Wasp et al,
I've been thinking for several years about starting a petition to get
LOA to publish, at the very least, HPL, Dashiell Hammett, and D'arcy
McNickle; all of whom are, IMHO, major American writers, as worthy as
Hemingway or Faulkner, and all have been dead long enough. They actually
did publish Chandler and a two-volume set of American Noir recently, so
at least they're on the right track. And how about The Complete Poetry
and Prose of Clark Ashton Smith? Anybody have any thoughts on these and
other possibilities, and actually starting a letter-writing campaign?
I'm sure they must have at least considered Lovecraft!
Scott N.
Scanrosa
Aaron Bergman wrote in message a while ago...
>
>The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
>have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
>they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
>In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
Now there is too much to reply to in this thread! Argh!
---
Goblin
Robert Pearlman
[snip]
>While I think about it, interestingly I can think of way more genuinely
>literary sci fi than I can fantasy: in my own very humble opinion, only
>GGK, Tolkien, Angela Carter and possibly McKillip (but there I'm biased
>because I absolutely adore her work) will truly stand literary scrutiny.
> On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
>
>- Debbie
It possibly means that the editors who pick books for children don't
like science fiction. This was notoriously true of Heinlein's editor
at Scribner's. It could also just mean that those editors, whatever
their own likes, think that parents will think their kids won't like
sf. The editors could very well be right.
--
Pearlman
Sea Wasp
> I promise you you'll get your Library of America Heinlein, Weinstein,
> Moore, and Le Guins yet.
How about my Libarary of America Doc Smiths, Robert Howards, and H. P.
Lovecrafts?
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;;
_Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at http://www.hyperbooks.com
Sea Wasp
>
> In article <wosam-10079...@dial8.avalon.net> wo...@SPAMBLOCKavalon.net (M. Wesley Osam) writes:
> >From: wo...@SPAMBLOCKavalon.net (M. Wesley Osam)
> >Subject: Re: LIterary SF
> >Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 18:38:30 -0500
>
> >Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
> >to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
> >boring? I'd try a big collection of Mark Twain's short works (if it's
> >as complete as the two-volume "Library of America" set, there should
> >be something for everyone), Evelyn Waugh's _The Loved One_ (Douglas
> >Adams only wishes he were this funny--and Stephen King only wishes he
> >were this scary),
I tried it. It was okay, but I didn't like it much.
and some short fiction by Kafka (he's more readable
> >than most people think, he had a subtle, slightly screwy sense of humor,
> >and some of his stories are only a few paragraphs long).
I have read virtually ALL of Kafka (through the unfortunate necessity
of having to proofread a collection of his work) and found none of it
likeable.
>
> Maybe some Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath or Cannery Row, if they want something
> shorter.
> Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
> Sinclair Lewis Arrowsmith
> For something more modern Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian (but not for the
> squeamish)
>
> My reading of rec.arts.books suggests that Hemingway (and possibly Steinbeck)
> aren't always taken seriously as " literature" either.
So far, nothing in the suggestions is working for this SF fan.
Now, SHAKESPEARE works for me. Especially "The Tempest", "The Taming of
the Shrew", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", etc. Keep the tragedies away,
please, I had all of them in high school.
Maskull
Barrett) wrote:
>Maskull (mas...@pop3.concentric.net) wrote:
>
>: ( This question should definitely go in the F.A.Q. )
>: What you need is for a bunch of French critics to begin lionizing
>: SF, or a particular sub-genre of SF. At this point the Americans, ever
>: ready to appear de rigueur, will parrot the French while sipping their
>: crappuccino. In no time at all you'll see handsomely bound Library of
>: America reprints. You know, like what happened with romans noir.
>
>Give us American academics and critics a chance! :)
>
Yeah, some of you eggheads are OK. Besides, I was thinking more
of affectedly fashionable consumers when I wrote that.
>There's a good number of us now teaching SF and writing on it--and I don't
>just mean Wells, Orwell, and Huxley (with Atwood thrown in for late 1900s
>sensibilities). In fact, the influence of French philosophy and cultural
>criticism is one of the factors helping us get all sorts of SF into the
>Academy.
>[...]
Isn't it ironic that the very post-modernists who are doing their
best to abolish genre based discrimination are being subjected to
apish derision by so many SF fans? Ingrates.
Scott
D'Arcy McNickle was probably the first really major Native American
novelist. His major works are The Surrounded and Wind From an Enemy Sky,
as well as the short stories collected in The Hawk is Hungry. Anyone who
has enjoyed the work of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, or Sherman
Alexie should try McNickle. Not even remotely on topic for either NG,
but he and Hammett and HPL strike me as three of the most glaring
absences in the LOA catalog, as all three were major writers of the
first half of this century, even if not regarded as such in their
lifetimes. I agree on Dick and Bester, but they're both more recent, and
most of their major works are still in print and readily available.
Bester should definitely be at the top of their list for SF writers, if
they ever do include one.
As for C.A. Smith I wasn't always convinced either. I had to read at
least one whole book of his stories before his work clicked for me. But
when it did, it did.
Scott N.
Ernest Sjogren
five of his current favorites, I'm sure we'd have a field day trying
to suggest books that might suit his taste.
If stuff has to be _hard_ to be good, as the bad girl said -- that is,
if one has to work a bit to discover the author's meaning, I'd
recommend:
Gene Wolfe; Samuel Delany; some of the New Wave stuff from the late
sixties, incl. some Harlan Ellison, I suppose;, M. John Harrison.
For just plain literariness plus goodness I'd recommend:
Ursula le Guin THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS (or THE DISPOSESSED, which
won the Nat. Book Award, after all, and is definitely SF), and later
stories.
Samuel Delany, NOVA.
John M. Ford, GROWING UP WEIGHTLESS
something by Peter S. Beagle
Keith Roberts, KITEWORLD
C. S. Lewis, TILL WE HAVE FACES
For just plain goodness:
Walter Miller, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ
James Blish, A CASE OF CONSCIENCE
something later by Octavia Butler
John Barth's GILES GOAT-BOY is SF in my book, although SF was not what
it was after; William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES or THE INHERITORS;
H. G. Wells. or some Kipling stories, of course.
But tell us what your friend thinks is good, and we'll go at it again,
I'm sure.
-- Ernie Sjogren
aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron Bergman) wrote:
>
>The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
>have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
>they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>
>In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>you recommend as being examples of literary sf. I'm not really sure what
>that means, so feel free to interpret it however you want. The main thing,
>I think, is that solely being based on sensawunda or cool ideas doesn't
>cut it. Thus, for example, while I love Greg Egan's books, they're out.
>
>Anyways, starting out myself
>
>Michael Swanwick: _Stations of the Tide_, _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_
>Patricia McKillip: The Riddle Master of Hed trilogy
>Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
>Christopher Priest: _The Prestige_
>
>Others I'm not as sure about
>
>Guy Gavriel Kay: _Tigana_, _The Lions of al-Rassan_
>David Zindell: _Neverness_
>
>As you can see, this really isn't all that many, so....
>
>Aaron
>
>--
>Aaron Bergman
Ernest Sjogren
-- Ernie Sjogren
nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>In article <lawrence-090...@apm4-208.realtime.net>,
>Lawrence Person <lawr...@bga.com> wrote:
>>
>>Of course, all of this is dependent on what "quasi-literary pretentions"
>>your target has. If they mean "well-written with three dimensional
>>characters and adult concerns," all the above and more apply. However, if
>>their quasi-literary pretentions tend toward second person present tense
>>interior monologues about how oppressed their protagonists feel in modern
>>American society, there's probably no hope for them anyway.
>
>Give them some Malzberg, and maybe a little Bunch.
>
Ernest Sjogren
>On Thu, 09 Jul 1998 17:42:33 -0700, aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron
>Bergman) wrote:
>
>>
>>The VLS thread go me thinking of the following scenario. Let's say you
>>have a friend who believes that SF is juvenile crap. Let's also say that
>>they have quasi-literary pretentions.
>>
>>In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>>you recommend as being examples of literary sf.[...]
>
> ( This question should definitely go in the F.A.Q. )
Super suggestion.
We could have SF that deconstructionists would like, Non-SF that
_really_ is SF, &c. Of course, if we did we'd never be able to agree
on categories and so would never draw up the lists, so scratch that
suggestion.
> What you need is for a bunch of French critics to begin lionizing
>SF, or a particular sub-genre of SF. At this point the Americans, ever
>ready to appear de rigueur, will parrot the French while sipping their
>crappuccino. In no time at all you'll see handsomely bound Library of
>America reprints. You know, like what happened with romans noir.
>
It is to be dreamed of.
-- Ernie Sjogren
Mike Arnautov
>In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>you recommend as being examples of literary sf.
I was going to avoid recommendations already made by others, but this
thread has branched too much and I am too lazy to take notes. I choose
to interpret you as asking for "well written" (or even "pretentiously
written" :-) SF, rather than for "good" SF.
So here's my list of suggestions, drawn entirely from scanning my
bookshelf, in no particular order:
1. Joy Chant -- anything.
2. Guy Gavriel Kay -- anything (though _Lions of Al Rassan_ ain't SF)
3. Ray Bradbury -- most things.
4. Patricia McKillip -- the Hed trilogy and everything since (and
including) the Firebird books.
5. Peter S. Beagle -- anything, except _The Last Unicorn_
6. John Crowley -- _Little, Big_ (surprised nobody seems to have
mentioned this!)
7. Judith Tarr -- the Avaryan Rising series
8. Christopher Priest -- _Inverted World_
9. Roger Zelazny -- _Lord of Light_, _Creatures of Light and Darkness_.
10. Robin Hobb -- the Farseer trilogy
11. Tanith Lee -- the Flat Earth series
12. C.J.Cherryh -- _Ealdwood_ etc..
13. Stanislaw Lem -- _Fiasco_, _Futurological Congress_
14. Lord Dunsany -- _At the Edge of the World_
15. LeGuinn -- _The Left Hand of Darkness_ and the Eearthsea trilogy
16. Michael Moorcock -- _The War Hound the the World's Pain_
17. Stephen Donaldson -- the Thomas Covenant saga.
18. Barbara Hambly -- _Dragonsbane_.
--
Mike Arnautov
m...@mipmip.demon-co-antispam-uk
Replace dashes with dots and remove the antispam component.
Mike Arnautov
>Peter Beagle - anything really; _The Last Unicorn_ is probably the best
> known, but I'm partial to _The Folk of the Air_
Strange case. I thought TFotA was *far* too well written for what it
actually was. The disparity between the fairly trite plot and the
magnificent quality of writing kept grating on me. :-(
M. Wesley Osam
gree...@keepspaminthecan.cyberport.com wrote:
> I've been thinking for several years about starting a petition to get
> LOA to publish, at the very least, HPL, Dashiell Hammett, and D'arcy
> McNickle;
What did McNickle write?
> And how about The Complete Poetry
> and Prose of Clark Ashton Smith?
Hmmm... I'm not convinced that Smith is actually important enough
to deserve the attention.
Lovecraft might be good eventually, but first I'd like to see them
do Alfred Bester and a couple volumes of Philip K. Dick.
Maskull
Sjogren) wrote:
>mas...@pop3.concentric.net (Maskull) wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 09 Jul 1998 17:42:33 -0700, aber...@pantheon.yale.edu (Aaron
>>Bergman) wrote:
>>[...]
>>>In the interest of getting a few recommendations myself, what books would
>>>you recommend as being examples of literary sf.[...]
>>
>> ( This question should definitely go in the F.A.Q. )
>
>Super suggestion.
>
>We could have SF that deconstructionists would like, Non-SF that
>_really_ is SF, &c. Of course, if we did we'd never be able to agree
>on categories and so would never draw up the lists, so scratch that
>suggestion.
>
Well, considering that this thread pops up every few months (as
in frequently, as in frequently asked, as in frequently asked
question) and that virtually the same roster of authors is deployed
each time it strikes me that you would have to try hard *not* to put a
list together.
Ernest Sjogren
that is. I might be persuaded otherwise about HPL with the right
suggestions: I haven't read him in thirty years. CAS is quite
enjoyable, if minor. Any takers?
-- Ernie Sjogren
M. Wesley Osam
sjog...@mindspring.com wrote:
> HPL and CAS? They're just too mannered to be really "great," whatever
> that is. I might be persuaded otherwise about HPL with the right
> suggestions: I haven't read him in thirty years.
I think Lovecraft is important more for his influence than his
literary style. There's a prescedent for unreadable but interesting
or historically important authors in the LoA series; they published
a few volumes of James Fenimore Cooper.
> Scott <gree...@keepspaminthecan.cyberport.com> wrote:
>
> >Wesley,
> >
> >D'Arcy McNickle was probably the first really major Native American
> >novelist. His major works are The Surrounded and Wind From an Enemy Sky,
> >as well as the short stories collected in The Hawk is Hungry. Anyone who
> >has enjoyed the work of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, or Sherman
> >Alexie should try McNickle.
Thanks. I'll keep an eye out for those.
John Boston
>
>HPL and CAS? They're just too mannered to be really "great," whatever
>that is. I might be persuaded otherwise about HPL with the right
>enjoyable, if minor. Any takers?
Try Lovecraft's "The Color out of Space," one of his least mannered
and most substantial stories. Unfortunately it's exceptional; he doesn't
have a volume's worth like that.
John Boston
Bill McHale
: Isn't it ironic that the very post-modernists who are doing their
: best to abolish genre based discrimination are being subjected to
: apish derision by so many SF fans? Ingrates.
Probably because the post-modernists are in many respects the antithesis
of the values that science fiction has always espoused.
--
Bill
***************************************************************************
The main problem with my job is that they expect me to actually work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home page - http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~wmchal1
***************************************************************************
Beth and Richard Treitel
wrote:
>Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
>to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
>boring?
Why, Dickens. _Great Expectations_ has the melancholy distinction of being
the only book that was given to me in an Eng.Lit. class that I actually
found exciting.
Asides for the rest of the thread:
. _Hyperion_ contains too many shoot-em-up scenes to be "literature" IMHO.
. _The Dragon Waiting_ was passed as "enjoyable" by a friend of mine who is
heavily into Pynchon, so it might be worth using.
--
Our address has changed to tre...@sirius.com
Mail to wco.com will be forwarded for a few weeks.
Beth and Richard Treitel
>On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
Probably that children aren't expected to have the reasoning skills to tell
the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
much agreement on where that certain age lies.
Then again, I don't really want my children learning their science from ScF
unless I have the opportunity to vet what they read *very* tightly, which
could be a bad idea for other reasons. Of course, since I live in the USA,
I don't want them learning their science from the local schools either.
Jo Walton
tre...@sirius.com "Beth and Richard Treitel" writes:
> Then again, I don't really want my children learning their science from ScF
> unless I have the opportunity to vet what they read *very* tightly, which
> could be a bad idea for other reasons. Of course, since I live in the USA,
> I don't want them learning their science from the local schools either.
So, where are your kids going to learn science?
If you plan to teach them yourself then you shouldn't have any problem
with them learning it wrong from SF, because you can allow for that
and correct as you go.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Blood of Kings Poetry; rasfw FAQ;
Reviews; Interstichia; Momentum - a paying market for real poetry.
PMccutc103
>Give us American academics and critics a chance! :)
>
>There's a good number of us now teaching SF and writing on it--and I don't
>just mean Wells, Orwell, and Huxley (with Atwood thrown in for late 1900s
>sensibilities). In fact, the influence of French philosophy and cultural
>criticism is one of the factors helping us get all sorts of SF into the
>Academy.
Am I the only one who thinks that this very well might be a Bad Thing?
Part of sf's vitality, it seems to me, is derived in large part from its
outsider status, together with the need to _entertain_ an audience by _telling
stories_. It's fine if maybe a few iconoclasitc English profs get it, but
academic acceptance may well not be very good for the genre.
Consider individual authors. Vonnegut wrote his best stuff in his lean and
struggling years, when he wasn't afraid to be known as an sf writer. Then the
literati start yammering about how brilliant he is, and we get _Galapagos_.
Likewise, LeGuin, who, to her credit, never denied her roots, wrote her best
stuff before she became discovered by all the literati.
Besides, I can't imagine anything good ever coming of French philosophy and
literary critcism.
--
Pete McCutchen
PMccutc103
>To my surprise and delight, "D. Gascoyne" <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
>>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
>>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
>
>Probably that children aren't expected to have the reasoning skills to tell
>the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
>Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
>much agreement on where that certain age lies.
It is interesting, though, that we don't seem to have any current equivalent of
the Heinlein juveniles. Those new Jupiter novels are an attempt to revive that
particular market niche, and the two of those that I've read (_Higher
Education_ and _The Billion Dollar Boy_ struck me as, well, lifeless.)
>
>Then again, I don't really want my children learning their science from ScF
>unless I have the opportunity to vet what they read *very* tightly, which
>could be a bad idea for other reasons. Of course, since I live in the USA,
>I don't want them learning their science from the local schools either.
Substantively, I agree with you. Obviously, learning science from sf is a bad
idea. If, however, you want to inculcate a generalized respect for science as
an enterprise as well as immunizing them from the "science is just a white male
logocentric phallocentric social construction" meme, then sf is a great way to
start.
Which is one reason why I'd worry about the French critics accepting sf: they
are far more likely to accept the non-logocentric stuff rather than Heinlein
and Asimov and Clarke.
--
Pete McCutchen
Thomas R Scudder
: tre...@sirius.com (Beth and Richard Treitel) wrote:
: >To my surprise and delight, "D. Gascoyne" <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
: >
: >>On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
: >>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
: >>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
: >
: >Probably that children aren't expected to have the reasoning skills to tell
: >the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
: >Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
: >much agreement on where that certain age lies.
: It is interesting, though, that we don't seem to have any current equivalent of
: the Heinlein juveniles. Those new Jupiter novels are an attempt to revive that
: particular market niche, and the two of those that I've read (_Higher
: Education_ and _The Billion Dollar Boy_ struck me as, well, lifeless.)
How about Stephen (not Jay) Gould's stuff? (JUMPER and WILDSIDE, at least
- I haven't read HELM).
--
Tom Scudder aka tom...@umich.edu <*> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomscud
Squeezing flinthead trout "I contradict myself? Very well,
in their massive jaws, sparks fly: I contra- hey, wait. No I don't!"
Bears discover fire.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <35aa7583...@news.sirius.com>
> tre...@sirius.com "Beth and Richard Treitel" writes:
>
> > unless I have the opportunity to vet what they read *very* tightly, which
> > could be a bad idea for other reasons. Of course, since I live in the USA,
> > I don't want them learning their science from the local schools either.
> So, where are your kids going to learn science?
>
> If you plan to teach them yourself then you shouldn't have any problem
> with them learning it wrong from SF, because you can allow for that
> and correct as you go.
I learned a great deal about science from SF.
It was invaluable training in what made-up science, nonsense, and
crackpottery looks like. The population of the US, in general, is in
desperate need of such training.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Chad R Orzel
{What does it say that there's more fantasy than sci-fi for kids?}
>>Probably that children aren't expected to have the reasoning skills to tell
>>the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
>>Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
>>much agreement on where that certain age lies.
>
>It is interesting, though, that we don't seem to have any current equivalent of
>the Heinlein juveniles. Those new Jupiter novels are an attempt to revive that
>particular market niche, and the two of those that I've read (_Higher
>Education_ and _The Billion Dollar Boy_ struck me as, well, lifeless.)
Gould's _Jumper_ and _Wildside_ (haven't read _Helm_ yet) would seem to
be another attempt to fill that niche. Sort of. I haven't read the two
books you mentioned, but Gould's books are both pretty good.
>>Then again, I don't really want my children learning their science from ScF
>>unless I have the opportunity to vet what they read *very* tightly, which
>>could be a bad idea for other reasons. Of course, since I live in the USA,
>>I don't want them learning their science from the local schools either.
>
>Substantively, I agree with you. Obviously, learning science from sf is a bad
>idea.
And largely impossible...
(Or at least wildly improbable for any meaningful value of "science"...)
But what puzzles me is that this:
If, however, you want to inculcate a generalized respect for science as
>an enterprise as well as immunizing them from the "science is just a white male
>logocentric phallocentric social construction" meme, then sf is a great way to
>start.
is followed by this:
>Which is one reason why I'd worry about the French critics accepting sf: they
>are far more likely to accept the non-logocentric stuff rather than Heinlein
>and Asimov and Clarke.
Which would seem to be an argument in _favor_ of at least the
"logocentric" part of the original laundry list of lit-crit terms, and
probably would be taken as supporting the "white male" part as well
(Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein being rather white and rather male), by
one more political than I...
At the risk of bringing this whole fairly interesting thread crashing
down in a ball of flames, though, I'll attempt to defend the hypothetical
"French critic" position by pointing out that, by and large, the
"logocentric" books just aren't very good _as_ _novels._
Particularly if you're going to talk about Clarke and Asimov and
Heinlein, there's not a whole lot of finesse in the classic science
fiction novels. The stories tend to start at Point A, and proceed rather
linearly to Points B, C, D, and so on, occasionally stretching into the
Greek and Hebrew alphabets after running out of Roman characters. And the
prose occasionally soars to the dizzying heights of "workmanlike." Which
is pretty much what you should expect from "logocentric" books...
What makes these books readable, and dear to the hearts of SF readers, is
the _ideas_ behind them. Some new gadget, or political system, or alien
race, or what-have-you that's new and different and exciting, and drives
the plot.
But as examples of Great Writing, these books are a dismal failure. The
ideas are frequently presented in expositionary core-dumps, the
characters generally have the depth of a good mud puddle, and the writing
is almost entirely lacking in sparkle.
Basically, there's not much a critic can _do_ with these books. You can
argue about how well the consequences of whatever science-fictional idea
is used are worked out, or whether the plot is advanced primarily by
author-induced-stupidity, but this is not the stuff of Great
Literature...
If a Critical Theory of the SF Genre is developed, Asimov and Clarke and
Heinlein will be read by virtue of being Important to the Genre, but
these books in and of themselves will never draw critical attention.
Which is not, IMAO, surprising, nor a particularly Bad Thing.
This is not to say that they aren't enjoyable, or an intergral part of
the genre, or good examples of science fiction. They're just not Good
Novels in any sense that would make the literary intelligentsia sit up
and take notice.
"Classic" SF novels will never draw much critical praise for the same
reason that Micahel Crichton novels will never draw much critical praise.
Crichton does the same things that most "Classic" SF writers do- he picks
some gee-whiz idea, extrapolates it into the future a little bit, and
looks at what happens. The writing plods and the characters are
cardboard, and the novels stand or fall entirely on the strength of the
gee-whiz idea. This isn't the stuff of which Good Novels are made.
The only difference is that Crichton isn't particularly good at SF,
either- he extrapolates his ideas in an exceptionally stupid manner,
generally uses Bad Science, and takes a "man-was-not-meant-to-meddle-in-
God's-domain" slant in most of his books. In basic technique, though,
he's using the same rules as Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein.
There are a handful of people who manage to combine decent writing with
good old-school science-fictional technique. Bear has a few novels of
this sort, Brin has some good stuff, Greg Egan makes a good showing of
it (though I tend not to like his books, as some of the ideas slide
quickly into nonsense). I don't think they draw much outside-the-genre
attention, though. (I'm sure someone here will know if they do, and
provide more examples of modern SF in the classic vein, but with better
writing... Bujold, maybe...)
By and large, though, the people whose writing is strong enough that I'll
buy their books just for the prose are doing more fanciful things. The
science slides closer to magic, the characters drift into illogic and
acquire some depth, you start to pick up the ambiguity that's lacking in
the "Classic" books... And you end up with the New Wave, and William
Gibson, and Raphael Carter, and Johnathan Lethem, and John M. Ford...
all of whom write good _novels,_ (not just good science fiction novels)
and some of whom draw praise from mainstream critics.
But I wouldn't say any of them are doing the same things that Asimov,
Clarke, and Heinlein were doing.
Later,
OilCan
rbm...@library.syr.edu
Phil Fraering <p...@globalreach.net> wrote:
> rbm...@library.syr.edu writes:
>
> > _Against Infinity_ by Gregory Benford (Benford's reworking of Faulkner's
"The
> > Bear" in science fictional terms)
>
> Interestingly enough, it wasn't until Benford mentioned that that I realized
> that he's dealt with other Faulknerian themes in his literature.
>
> _Furious Gulf_ seems to me to echo Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_, as well as
> some of Twain's stuff. Probably others I can't recognize.
Thanks, Phil, I was going to include that in my earlier post as an aside but
couldn't recall the story title. I heard, years ago, that it was indeed an sf
reinterpretation of _As I Lay Dying_.
Randy Money
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Graydon
>>>On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
>>>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
>>>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
>>
>>the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
>>Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
>>much agreement on where that certain age lies.
>
>It is interesting, though, that we don't seem to have any current equivalent of
>the Heinlein juveniles. Those new Jupiter novels are an attempt to revive that
>particular market niche, and the two of those that I've read (_Higher
>Education_ and _The Billion Dollar Boy_ struck me as, well, lifeless.)
Pratchett's Johnny books would appear to qualify.
Pratchett's currently got the 'and never you tell them a lie' token than
went from Twain to Kipling to Heinlein, so far as I can tell.
--
goo...@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
Bill McHale
: To my surprise and delight, "D. Gascoyne" <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
: >On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
: >literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
: >really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
: Probably that children aren't expected to have the reasoning skills to tell
: the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
: Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
: much agreement on where that certain age lies.
: Then again, I don't really want my children learning their science from ScF
: unless I have the opportunity to vet what they read *very* tightly, which
: could be a bad idea for other reasons. Of course, since I live in the USA,
: I don't want them learning their science from the local schools either.
Ah, but here is an idea. While I certainly would not recommend severe
censorship of your children's reading (though some monitoring is probably
a good thing if they are still very young), it might be an idea to
encourage them to read, and then research the info that is in the story.
For example suppose they read Heinlein's short "The Man Who Sold the
Moon". Encourage them after reading it to research what the moon and
man's first trip to the moon was really like.
Personally while I never learned science from SF novels, it did provide
plenty of interesting areas for me to research.
Paul Clarke
>tre...@sirius.com (Beth and Richard Treitel) wrote:
>
>
>
>>To my surprise and delight, "D. Gascoyne" <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>>>On the other hand, the situation is reversed in the realm of children's
>>>literature, where there is _far_ more wonderful fantasy than there is
>>>really superior sci fi. I wonder what, if anything, that means ...
>>
>>Probably that children aren't expected to have the reasoning skills to tell
>>the two apart, or perhaps they're expected to lack the world knowledge.
>>Below a certain age I expect this is true, but I'm not sure that there is
>>much agreement on where that certain age lies.
>
>It is interesting, though, that we don't seem to have any current equivalent of
>the Heinlein juveniles. Those new Jupiter novels are an attempt to revive that
>particular market niche, and the two of those that I've read (_Higher
>Education_ and _The Billion Dollar Boy_ struck me as, well, lifeless.)
>
Have you read Cherryh's _Finity's End_? Parts of that reminded me of a
Heinlein juvenile, though there's also the usual Cherryh confused
protagonist and political and economic machinations.
[snip]
Bill McHale
: If, however, you want to inculcate a generalized respect for science as
: >an enterprise as well as immunizing them from the "science is just a white male
: >logocentric phallocentric social construction" meme, then sf is a great way to
: >start.
: is followed by this:
: >Which is one reason why I'd worry about the French critics accepting sf: they
: >are far more likely to accept the non-logocentric stuff rather than Heinlein
: >and Asimov and Clarke.
: Which would seem to be an argument in _favor_ of at least the
: "logocentric" part of the original laundry list of lit-crit terms, and
: probably would be taken as supporting the "white male" part as well
: (Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein being rather white and rather male), by
: one more political than I...
: At the risk of bringing this whole fairly interesting thread crashing
: down in a ball of flames, though, I'll attempt to defend the hypothetical
: "French critic" position by pointing out that, by and large, the
: "logocentric" books just aren't very good _as_ _novels._
In the opinion of the French Critics. It always seemed strange to me that
Critics can redefine what a Novel should be to allow Novels which I find
all but unreadable to be good, and yet refuse to do the same for other
works. Classic Hard SF (don't need the term logocentric) are about an
entirely different thing than most of the novels considered by critics,
and to judge them by the same standards of those other Novels is missing
the point.
: Particularly if you're going to talk about Clarke and Asimov and
: Heinlein, there's not a whole lot of finesse in the classic science
: fiction novels. The stories tend to start at Point A, and proceed rather
: linearly to Points B, C, D, and so on, occasionally stretching into the
: Greek and Hebrew alphabets after running out of Roman characters. And the
: prose occasionally soars to the dizzying heights of "workmanlike." Which
: is pretty much what you should expect from "logocentric" books...
Well mind you, I don't know about Clarke and Heinlein, but generally
Asimov actively attempted to keep is prose and plot simple and straight
forward.
: What makes these books readable, and dear to the hearts of SF readers, is
: the _ideas_ behind them. Some new gadget, or political system, or alien
: race, or what-have-you that's new and different and exciting, and drives
: the plot.
: But as examples of Great Writing, these books are a dismal failure. The
: ideas are frequently presented in expositionary core-dumps, the
: characters generally have the depth of a good mud puddle, and the writing
: is almost entirely lacking in sparkle.
Yet often times many of the same criticisms can be made of many works that
are now considered classics in Western literature. The simple fact of the
matter is that these writers were inventing a new genre, and I believe
they should be forgiven their stumbling.
: Basically, there's not much a critic can _do_ with these books. You can
: argue about how well the consequences of whatever science-fictional idea
: is used are worked out, or whether the plot is advanced primarily by
: author-induced-stupidity, but this is not the stuff of Great
: Literature...
There is much more to talk about in these works. The simple matter is
that these novels espouse a world view that was for the first half of this
century very compelling to many people, and in many ways still remains the
world view of the technical elite. These novels are wonderful tools for
exploring this worldview, because in their own way, they form the
mythology of that view.
: If a Critical Theory of the SF Genre is developed, Asimov and Clarke and
: Heinlein will be read by virtue of being Important to the Genre, but
: these books in and of themselves will never draw critical attention.
: Which is not, IMAO, surprising, nor a particularly Bad Thing.
It is a bad thing. Unless one truely understands these works, and what
their authors were trying to achieve, you really have little understanding
of the class that spawned them. These are the stories that inspired the
engineers that sent a man to the Moon, developed the internet, and did
countless of the other things that we now take for granted but which were
SF 50 years ago.
: This is not to say that they aren't enjoyable, or an intergral part of
: the genre, or good examples of science fiction. They're just not Good
: Novels in any sense that would make the literary intelligentsia sit up
: and take notice.
Well, not that I want to sound particularly cynical, but it generally
appears that the literary intelligentsia is more interested in showing how
smart they are than truely grappling with what the common man reads.
Modern Literature reads the writers no one else does. And while I am sure
the authors of these novels appreciate the business, the simple fact of
the matter is that there influence is unlikely to ever get much beyond
that intelligentsia. Writers like Stephen King and Tom Clancy probably
have more influence on the modern reader than Rushdie, Calvino or Borges.
: "Classic" SF novels will never draw much critical praise for the same
: reason that Micahel Crichton novels will never draw much critical praise.
: Crichton does the same things that most "Classic" SF writers do- he picks
: some gee-whiz idea, extrapolates it into the future a little bit, and
: looks at what happens. The writing plods and the characters are
: cardboard, and the novels stand or fall entirely on the strength of the
: gee-whiz idea. This isn't the stuff of which Good Novels are made.
Except that is not what these stories are about. Even if the science is
wrong or the idea is extrapolated poorly, Classic SF is about the
Scientific World View. That essentially the movers and shakers, are
scientists.
: The only difference is that Crichton isn't particularly good at SF,
: either- he extrapolates his ideas in an exceptionally stupid manner,
: generally uses Bad Science, and takes a "man-was-not-meant-to-meddle-in-
: God's-domain" slant in most of his books. In basic technique, though,
: he's using the same rules as Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein.
In some respects I would argue that Crichton is the antithesis of the
other three writers. While Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein are interested in
what science my bring us too, or extoling the wonders of the Universe,
Crichton is more interested in warning about the dangers of meddling in
things we do not understand.
: There are a handful of people who manage to combine decent writing with
: good old-school science-fictional technique. Bear has a few novels of
: this sort, Brin has some good stuff, Greg Egan makes a good showing of
: it (though I tend not to like his books, as some of the ideas slide
: quickly into nonsense). I don't think they draw much outside-the-genre
: attention, though. (I'm sure someone here will know if they do, and
: provide more examples of modern SF in the classic vein, but with better
: writing... Bujold, maybe...)
: By and large, though, the people whose writing is strong enough that I'll
: buy their books just for the prose are doing more fanciful things. The
: science slides closer to magic, the characters drift into illogic and
: acquire some depth, you start to pick up the ambiguity that's lacking in
: the "Classic" books... And you end up with the New Wave, and William
: Gibson, and Raphael Carter, and Johnathan Lethem, and John M. Ford...
: all of whom write good _novels,_ (not just good science fiction novels)
: and some of whom draw praise from mainstream critics.
Ah but here is the rub, for the classic writers, the idea is that with
time Man would outgrow the illogical. That his actions will be based on a
firm view of his place in the universe (greatly augmented through
science). Ultimately the idea is that there should be no ambiguity, not
in character or story. Granted it does not allow the authors to leave the
holes in a character that seems to provide depth... but then again thats
sort of the point.
As for much of the fancy stuff regarding prose, personally I never have
liked the novel that goes out of its way to show what a supurb stylist the
author is. If I notice the style of the author, without having to look
for it, then the author has placed an impediment between me and story that
I don not care for.
Oh, and as for Gibson? I am not really sure if I would include him among
the literarly accomplished authors. The only novel of his that I found
all that remarkable was Neuromancer, and to be quite honest, the
characters in that were as cardboard as any Heinlein or Clarke ever wrote.
: But I wouldn't say any of them are doing the same things that Asimov,
: Clarke, and Heinlein were doing.
Nope, not at all.
Maskull
>Maskull (mas...@pop3.concentric.net) wrote:
>
>: Isn't it ironic that the very post-modernists who are doing their
>: best to abolish genre based discrimination are being subjected to
>: apish derision by so many SF fans? Ingrates.
>
>Probably because the post-modernists are in many respects the antithesis
>of the values that science fiction has always espoused.
There is no single set of values confining sf. Moreover, sf is
rife with tales questioning the nature of being which is a very
post-modern concern.
Sea Wasp
> It is interesting, though, that we don't seem to have any current equivalent of
> the Heinlein juveniles. Those new Jupiter novels are an attempt to revive that
> particular market niche, and the two of those that I've read (_Higher
> Education_ and _The Billion Dollar Boy_ struck me as, well, lifeless.)
Odd. Reading them, I felt wonderfully transported back in time. They
felt EXACTLY to me like the RAH juveniles -- had I not known the Master
was dead, I'd have thought he had somehow come out of his fog and
started writing juveniles again under the name of Sheffield.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;;
_Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at http://www.hyperbooks.com
Ernest Sjogren
snip
>Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
>to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
>boring? I'd try a big collection of Mark Twain's short works (if it's
>as complete as the two-volume "Library of America" set, there should
>be something for everyone), Evelyn Waugh's _The Loved One_ (Douglas
>Adams only wishes he were this funny--and Stephen King only wishes he
>were this scary), and some short fiction by Kafka (he's more readable
>than most people think, he had a subtle, slightly screwy sense of humor,
>and some of his stories are only a few paragraphs long).
>
>--
>Wesley Osam "Everyone knows history moves in circles;
>wo...@avalon.net the surprise is how big the circles are."
>
> --Greil Marcus, _Lipstick Traces_
Agree w/ the Twain & Waugh. Kafka has to hit you right, but if he
does you're prob. reading SF already; if he doesn't and you're
*already* reading SF, Sea Wasp, perhaps the translation is at fault.
For lovers of longer fantasies of various sorts:
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel
Kristen Lavransdatter, The Axe, Sigrid Undset,
The Cloister and the Hearth, Charles Reade
The Big Sky, A. B. Guthrie Jr.
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, Robert Lewis Taylor
The Bull From the Sea, Mary Renault
Giles Goat-Boy, The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
-- Ernie Sjogren
Chad R Orzel
>Chad R Orzel (oil...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
>: At the risk of bringing this whole fairly interesting thread crashing
>: down in a ball of flames, though, I'll attempt to defend the hypothetical
>: "French critic" position by pointing out that, by and large, the
>: "logocentric" books just aren't very good _as_ _novels._
>
>In the opinion of the French Critics.
Yes.
Which is, of course, the opinion I'm defending, here.
(Well, actually, I'm defending a position somewhat to the Reality side of
where I expect the typical French Critic sits, but you get the basic
idea...)
It always seemed strange to me that
>Critics can redefine what a Novel should be to allow Novels which I find
>all but unreadable to be good, and yet refuse to do the same for other
>works. Classic Hard SF (don't need the term logocentric) are about an
>entirely different thing than most of the novels considered by critics,
>and to judge them by the same standards of those other Novels is missing
>the point.
Actually, as I understand the most recent school of French Criticism, I
don't think you're supposed to _judge_ anything, or have criteria which
can be stated in words of less than five syllables...
More seriously, can you provide an example of this kind of "redefining"
at work? Obviously, this is a very fluid game, but I can't come up with
any examples, off the top of my head, of books with bad writing, shoddy
plotting, cardboard characters, and no intellectual depth which was
widely praised while Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein are panned. One or two
of those is occasionally excused ("shoddy plotting" is the most frequent,
assuming that "nothing fucking _happened_" falls into that category), but
there is _some_ fairly consistent set of standards regarding what gets
termed Literature, and what gets termed Pulp.
And, to take a whack at this from another angle, what's wrong with that?
Or, another way, why should _you_ get to pick a double standard that
favors books that _you_ like?
(There is, of course, the trivial and unhelpful answer "Tastes Vary (tm)"
which is perfectly valid, but not all that interesting...)
>: Particularly if you're going to talk about Clarke and Asimov and
>: Heinlein, there's not a whole lot of finesse in the classic science
>: fiction novels. The stories tend to start at Point A, and proceed rather
>: linearly to Points B, C, D, and so on, occasionally stretching into the
>: Greek and Hebrew alphabets after running out of Roman characters. And the
>: prose occasionally soars to the dizzying heights of "workmanlike." Which
>: is pretty much what you should expect from "logocentric" books...
>
>Well mind you, I don't know about Clarke and Heinlein, but generally
>Asimov actively attempted to keep is prose and plot simple and straight
>forward.
Which is a virtue in some circles, and a fault in others. It's great if
you're trying to talk about Science, or tell stories in which the Gadget
or Idea is really what you're showing off. It doesn't allow much room for
grand moral speculation, or philosophizing about the nature of Evil, or
any of the really fun stuff you get at out of more capital-L Literary
works.
In classic hard SF, you tend to have a Good Guy, and a Bad Guy, and a
Problem to be solved, and a Gadget that solves the problem, and the Good
Guy employs the Gadget to surmount the Problem and beat the Bad Guy, and
maybe ride off into the sunset with the Girl if it's one of the racier
stories, and all of this is handled with cool, dispassionate Logic.
There are no grand human passions, here, no greater themes beyond an
underlying "Science is Good" motif. There's precious little moral
ambiguity- the heroes are almost always upright and honorable, and we
certainly never get a hint that Good Science might have Bad Consequences.
The books are really light on any of the Really Big Issues.
>: But as examples of Great Writing, these books are a dismal failure. The
>: ideas are frequently presented in expositionary core-dumps, the
>: characters generally have the depth of a good mud puddle, and the writing
>: is almost entirely lacking in sparkle.
>
>Yet often times many of the same criticisms can be made of many works that
>are now considered classics in Western literature.
Such as?
Melville and Hawthorne are the worst offenders I can think of- both bore
me to tears, and I never even attempted _Moby Dick_- but for all their
core-dumping and plodding prose, there's depth to the story. They talk
about morality, and obsession, and recognizable human motivations, and
humanly fallible characters- Asimov and Heinlein's characters tend to be
wunderkinder, equally adept at theory and experiment, able to logically
work through any problem, and pilot starships, deliver babies, plan
invasions, and whip up a time machine/ space ship/ superweapon with spare
auto parts, a few vacuum tubes, and a roll of duct tape. And Asimov's
characters manage it with nary a sexual thought in their heads...
And even at their most tedious, Melville and Hawthorne do occasionally
manage to hit some rhetorical heights. It's not the bumper-sticker level
of quotability that Heinlein hits, but they have their moments.
The success of Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein is in the ideas they had-
they were better than most at thinking up cool new worlds, and gadgets,
and weird applications of physics, and playing those out. They have
moments where they come close to touching on bigger themes- Asimov had
the occasional social commentary ("Nightfall," for example), Clarke his
pantheon of benevolent godlike aliens, Heinlein his political
philosophizing- but they're almost always gadget stories. Of the three,
Clarke comes the closest to literary respectability, but still comes up
short.
>: Basically, there's not much a critic can _do_ with these books. You can
>: argue about how well the consequences of whatever science-fictional idea
>: is used are worked out, or whether the plot is advanced primarily by
>: author-induced-stupidity, but this is not the stuff of Great
>: Literature...
>
>There is much more to talk about in these works. The simple matter is
>that these novels espouse a world view that was for the first half of this
>century very compelling to many people, and in many ways still remains the
>world view of the technical elite. These novels are wonderful tools for
>exploring this worldview, because in their own way, they form the
>mythology of that view.
Novels as Cultural History is a separate question, and has very little to
do with Novels Considered as Novels. Crichton is also a wonderful tool in
the Novel as Cultural History picture, for the opposite worldview, and
his novels suck rocks ina big way when considered as Novels.
Besides, Cultural History isn't big in French lit-crit circles these
days.
>: This is not to say that they aren't enjoyable, or an intergral part of
>: the genre, or good examples of science fiction. They're just not Good
>: Novels in any sense that would make the literary intelligentsia sit up
>: and take notice.
>
>Well, not that I want to sound particularly cynical, but it generally
>appears that the literary intelligentsia is more interested in showing how
>smart they are than truely grappling with what the common man reads.
>Modern Literature reads the writers no one else does. And while I am sure
>the authors of these novels appreciate the business, the simple fact of
>the matter is that there influence is unlikely to ever get much beyond
>that intelligentsia. Writers like Stephen King and Tom Clancy probably
>have more influence on the modern reader than Rushdie, Calvino or Borges.
I'm not sure this line of attack is really that much more favorable to
SF...
I'm also not sure what sort of effect you'd be looking for. One could
argue that SF has influenced the way we look at the world in terms of the
promise of the future, and the possibilities for tomorrow, but then that
sort of cuts both ways, as there's as much Frankensteinian
cautionary-tale _fear_ of technology as there is hope for a golden
future. And, if I'm reading you right, you'd claim that that's actively
against the trend of SF...
And one could argue that the shiny, happy, prosperous future envisioned
by the classic hard SF writers was as much a product of their times as
anything else, and that the grimier, more ambiguous future currently
projected in SF is a product of the present state of affairs, where we're
dealing with the shortfalls and fallout of the dreams of earlier decades.
All in all, I suspect we're just too early to see the effects of Rushdie
and Calvino and Borges, if there are to be any. By and large, I suspect
the real influence of these writers on the Common Man won't be felt save
as an indirect effect through people who were themselves influenced by
Rushdie and Calvino and Borges (at least two of whom suffer from not
writing in English, and thus have less chance to influence American
culture, which, like it or not, is probably the single biggest influence
of the pop culture of the rest of the world...). Their influence, near as
I can figure, would be mostly directed towards different modes of
storytelling, and suchlike, which I suppose one could argue we're seeing
now in the better class of movies and tv shows...
>: "Classic" SF novels will never draw much critical praise for the same
>: reason that Micahel Crichton novels will never draw much critical praise.
>: Crichton does the same things that most "Classic" SF writers do- he picks
>: some gee-whiz idea, extrapolates it into the future a little bit, and
>: looks at what happens. The writing plods and the characters are
>: cardboard, and the novels stand or fall entirely on the strength of the
>: gee-whiz idea. This isn't the stuff of which Good Novels are made.
>
>Except that is not what these stories are about. Even if the science is
>wrong or the idea is extrapolated poorly, Classic SF is about the
>Scientific World View. That essentially the movers and shakers, are
>scientists.
Which, at least in the books I've read (which admittedly aren't that
many) is also true of Crichton. They tend to be sloppy scientists, and
the resolutions of the books tend not to be positive scientific
developments, but there's a message in that, as well...
>: The only difference is that Crichton isn't particularly good at SF,
>: either- he extrapolates his ideas in an exceptionally stupid manner,
>: generally uses Bad Science, and takes a "man-was-not-meant-to-meddle-in-
>: God's-domain" slant in most of his books. In basic technique, though,
>: he's using the same rules as Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein.
>
>In some respects I would argue that Crichton is the antithesis of the
>other three writers. While Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein are interested in
>what science my bring us too, or extoling the wonders of the Universe,
>Crichton is more interested in warning about the dangers of meddling in
>things we do not understand.
Sure.
But that's every bit as valid an underlying message as "Science is Good."
It may knock him out of the genre proper, but it is a valid message.
Think _Frankenstein._ And probably Faust, too...
The point is not the worldview, the point is the technical incompetence.
>: By and large, though, the people whose writing is strong enough that I'll
>: buy their books just for the prose are doing more fanciful things. The
>: science slides closer to magic, the characters drift into illogic and
>: acquire some depth, you start to pick up the ambiguity that's lacking in
>: the "Classic" books... And you end up with the New Wave, and William
>: Gibson, and Raphael Carter, and Johnathan Lethem, and John M. Ford...
>: all of whom write good _novels,_ (not just good science fiction novels)
>: and some of whom draw praise from mainstream critics.
>
>Ah but here is the rub, for the classic writers, the idea is that with
>time Man would outgrow the illogical. That his actions will be based on a
>firm view of his place in the universe (greatly augmented through
>science). Ultimately the idea is that there should be no ambiguity, not
>in character or story. Granted it does not allow the authors to leave the
>holes in a character that seems to provide depth... but then again thats
>sort of the point.
Which is wonderful as a worldview (or nigh on religion, in some cases),
but lousy as literature.
The best art all allows for ambiguity. The villain as a tragic figure.
The hero whose actions are morally questionable. The grand passions that
drive men to war, to love, to change the world.
As someone here once pointed out, if Hamlet and Othello switch places,
you lose two good plays. Othello would kill Claudius in Act One, and
Hamlet would sit down and talk things out with Desdemona, and neither
ending would be all that tragic. It's the irrationality of the two leads
that makes those stories work. And, in the end, it's irrationality and
illogic that define humanity, as much as cold logic and reason. Take
those away, and you're left with little more than gadget stories.
>As for much of the fancy stuff regarding prose, personally I never have
>liked the novel that goes out of its way to show what a supurb stylist the
>author is. If I notice the style of the author, without having to look
>for it, then the author has placed an impediment between me and story that
>I don not care for.
I'm not talking just about stylistic games- writing the story in reverse,
or having the narrator lie, or suchlike. I'm talking mostly about paying
some attention to the ebb and flow of the language, to the use of
imagery, and a good turn of phrase (wretched puns don't count (Asimov)
and neither does ideological sloganeering (Heinlein)). I seem to have
lost the file with the best examples in it (I'll see if I can dig it up),
but I'll assert that Asimov on his best day couldn't come within a hundred
miles of Johnathan Lethem's flair for language.
>Oh, and as for Gibson? I am not really sure if I would include him among
>the literarly accomplished authors. The only novel of his that I found
>all that remarkable was Neuromancer, and to be quite honest, the
>characters in that were as cardboard as any Heinlein or Clarke ever wrote.
In many cases, he's better in the short form. There are stories in
_Burning Chrome_ that are a hundred times more lyrical than anything
Heinlein or Clarke ever wrote, and he's got a much defter touch with plot
and scene.
And while he has no shortage of one-note characters, they project more
humanity than the typical Heinleinian ubermensch. They're _flawed_-
cowards and junkies, killers and con men, people of questionable moral
character with occasional flashes of honor and decency. They're
low-lifes, and more readily identifiable as inhabiting the same world as
the rest of us.
(As a side note, I am being a little harsh on Asimov, Clarke, and
Heinlein- deliberately so. They have more redeeming qualities than I
really let on here, and I have enjoyed and do enjoy their work. But if
you want to talk about SF novels as novels in some larger sense, and why
SF does or does not attract critical attention, they're really not all
that good.
(I'm not opposed to considering SF novels as SF novels- that is, as a
separate category entirely, with entirely separate standards. The idea
has some merit, and could probably be extended to the various other
genres of fiction. To a large extenet, this is what is done in the
handing out of genre awards- Hugos and Nebulas are handed out to books
that are good SF novels, regardless of whether they would be judged good
novels in a more general sense. And that's all well and good.
(Several times in these threads, though, I've seen the implication that
there's something wrong with "mainstream" literary critical attention for
SF, since "mainstream" critics tend to look down on some of the "Classic"
authors of the field. This particular subthread is an attempt to point
that this snubbing of the classics is a natural result of the standards
generally held for "mainstream" books. If you want to have SF judged
along with all the rest of literature, you need to stick to the same
standards as the rest of literature, and by those standards, some SF
classics don't measure up.
(Personally, I'm not sure what I think should really be done. On the one
hand, I find that I tend to like the more "Literary" run of SF authors,
and wouldn't mind seeing some of them get a little more credit in the
mainstream, even if it means some disrespect to the pulpy past. On the
other hand, I _like_ a lot of the pulpy crap that's produced, and, much
as I hate to see good authors languish in limbo between SF and
"mainstream," I don't want to completely give up the crap books, either.
(In the end, I'm stuck with the status quo, for lack of any better ideas.
And, damn, but this is a long patrenthetical note...)
Later,
OilCan
("I am relaxed. It's just buried under layers of incredulity and panic.
But underneath those, I'm very relaxed.")
Sea Wasp
>
> wo...@SPAMBLOCKavalon.net (M. Wesley Osam) wrote:
>
> snip
>
> >Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
> >to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
> >boring? I'd try a big collection of Mark Twain's short works (if it's
> >as complete as the two-volume "Library of America" set, there should
> >be something for everyone), Evelyn Waugh's _The Loved One_ (Douglas
> >Adams only wishes he were this funny--and Stephen King only wishes he
> >were this scary), and some short fiction by Kafka (he's more readable
> >than most people think, he had a subtle, slightly screwy sense of humor,
> >and some of his stories are only a few paragraphs long).
> Agree w/ the Twain & Waugh. Kafka has to hit you right, but if he
> does you're prob. reading SF already; if he doesn't and you're
> *already* reading SF, Sea Wasp, perhaps the translation is at fault.
Doubtful. Part of the problem is that I do NOT read any fiction
primarily for its ideas or message. If that's the only thing that's
there to hold my attention, I drop it like a rock. I view fiction as
ENTERTAINMENT. Its first, primary, and essential job is to tell me a
good story. Everything after that is icing on the cake. Kafka is in my
fairly wide experience (if that job didn't make me read EVERYTHING he
wrote, it must've been close, though I admit after the first several
stories my brain overloaded so I didn't "read" them as well as I might)
universally depressing. I can get "depressing" from headlines, I don't
need it from a man who had control over the universe he's inviting me to
step into.
jessie shelton
> 5. Peter S. Beagle -- anything, except _The Last Unicorn_
Now you've gone and made me curious. Why do you exclude the Last
Unicorn?
jessie
--
---------------------------------------------------------------
jessie shelton (one side of moebius)
shelton(AT)princeton.edu http://www.princeton.edu/~shelton
"The first thing to learn is that one cannot learn
everything. The second thing to learn is that this must not
prevent one from trying." --Starandrahi, the Book of Sam
---------------------------------------------------------------
Simon van Dongen
>Sea Wasp wrote:
>>
>> Robert Barrett wrote:
>>
>> > I promise you you'll get your Library of America Heinlein, Weinstein,
>> > Moore, and Le Guins yet.
>>
>> How about my Libarary of America Doc Smiths, Robert Howards, and H. P.
>
>
>Yá'át'ééh Sea Wasp et al,
>
>I've been thinking for several years about starting a petition to get
>LOA to publish, at the very least, HPL, Dashiell Hammett, and D'arcy
>McNickle; all of whom are, IMHO, major American writers, as worthy as
>Hemingway or Faulkner, and all have been dead long enough. They actually
>did publish Chandler and a two-volume set of American Noir recently, so
>at least they're on the right track. And how about The Complete Poetry
>and Prose of Clark Ashton Smith? Anybody have any thoughts on these and
>other possibilities, and actually starting a letter-writing campaign?
>I'm sure they must have at least considered Lovecraft!
>
>Scott N.
Err, for the non-USians in this newsgroup: what is the significance of
this 'Library of America'? Who publishes it? Who decides who's worthy?
--
Simon van Dongen <sg...@xs4all.nl> Rotterdam, The Netherlands
As he reclined there he sang ballads of ancient valour, from
time to time beating a hollow wooden duck in unison with his
voice, so that the charitable should have no excuse for
missing the entertainment. -Bramah, Kai Lung's Golden Hours
PMccutc103
>Ah, but here is an idea. While I certainly would not recommend severe
>censorship of your children's reading (though some monitoring is probably
>a good thing if they are still very young),
I once participated in a discussion in which my then-boss was asked if he'd
want his then ten-year-old son reading Kundera's _The Unbearable Lightness of
Being_ or _Justine_ by the Marquis de Sade. He replied that he'd be quite
happy to see his son with a book in his hand, regardless of content.
>it might be an idea to
>encourage them to read, and then research the info that is in the story.
>For example suppose they read Heinlein's short "The Man Who Sold the
>Moon". Encourage them after reading it to research what the moon and
>man's first trip to the moon was really like.
>
Oh great. Make them do an assignment after every sf book that they read. The
point being to destroy their love for science fiction, I gather?
(Please note: while a child I did nonfiction reading on astronomy and space
travel, no doubt inspired in part by sf. I still do. But if my parents had
assigned me such a reading, I would have found it quite onerous.)
--
Pete McCutchen
Travis C. Porco
Maskull <mas...@pop3.concentric.net> wrote:
>On 13 Jul 1998 02:23:53 GMT, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
>>Maskull (mas...@pop3.concentric.net) wrote:
>>: Isn't it ironic that the very post-modernists who are doing their
>>: best to abolish genre based discrimination are being subjected to
>>: apish derision by so many SF fans? Ingrates.
>>Probably because the post-modernists are in many respects the antithesis
>>of the values that science fiction has always espoused.
> There is no single set of values confining sf. Moreover, sf is
>rife with tales questioning the nature of being which is a very
>post-modern concern.
All I know is whenever a book or anything else can be described as
"postmodern" by someone (say on its blurb), it's
probably going to be bad (obscurity concealing triviality). The third
best example is my copy of Malzberg's Galaxies. The second best example
is the pointless comic strip Zippy the Pinhead.
--
Travis **standard disclaimers apply**
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly
is to fill the world with fools." --Herbert Spencer
Travis C. Porco
>>Give us American academics and critics a chance! :)
>>There's a good number of us now teaching SF and writing on it--and I don't
>>just mean Wells, Orwell, and Huxley (with Atwood thrown in for late 1900s
>>sensibilities). In fact, the influence of French philosophy and cultural
>>criticism is one of the factors helping us get all sorts of SF into the
>>Academy.
>Am I the only one who thinks that this very well might be a Bad Thing?
>Part of sf's vitality, it seems to me, is derived in large part from its
>outsider status, together with the need to _entertain_ an audience by _telling
>stories_. It's fine if maybe a few iconoclasitc English profs get it, but
>academic acceptance may well not be very good for the genre.
Academic acceptance would give us inane little PC-agitpamphlets about
how UFO's are racist or something.
>Consider individual authors. Vonnegut wrote his best stuff in his lean and
>struggling years, when he wasn't afraid to be known as an sf writer. Then the
>literati start yammering about how brilliant he is, and we get _Galapagos_.
>Likewise, LeGuin, who, to her credit, never denied her roots, wrote her best
>stuff before she became discovered by all the literati.
>Besides, I can't imagine anything good ever coming of French philosophy and
>literary critcism.
ROFL! You are so right! I'd only add _recent_ French philosophy, say
postwar--after the Germans taught them how to be obscure. The French
were traditionally brilliantly clear (and iconoclastic if they thought
reason demanded it!) Examples--Decartes, Pascal, d'Holbach, La Mettrie,
Voltaire...
Travis C. Porco
>snip
>>Now, for some devil's advocacy... What "literary" books would you give
>>to an SF fan who was convinced that "literature" is pretentious and
>>boring?
Well--Tolstoy's _The Death of Ivan Ilyitch_. That messed up my mind
for _years_! Should be required reading for everybody in the world.
PMccutc103
[lack of books to fill Heinlein juvenile niche]
>Gould's _Jumper_ and _Wildside_ (haven't read _Helm_ yet) would seem to
>be another attempt to fill that niche. Sort of. I haven't read the two
>books you mentioned, but Gould's books are both pretty good.
Haven't read 'em. Will put 'em on the list of books to read. Which I will no
doubt finish, assuming I live to be be 304.
<snip>
[Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein]
>Which would seem to be an argument in _favor_ of at least the
>"logocentric" part of the original laundry list of lit-crit terms, and
>probably would be taken as supporting the "white male" part as well
>(Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein being rather white and rather male), by
>one more political than I...
Let me clarify: I agree that Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov are indeed
logocentric. What I would prefer is that my child heap scorn and derision on
the type of person who thinks that "logocentric" is properly used as a
pejorative term.
I once took a class in "feminist legal theory." After the second week, I had a
t-shirt printed up that said "Logocentric -- and proud of it."
My hypothetical kids don't have to agree with every jot and tittle of my
philosophy. Indeed, it would be boring if they did. However, I would prefer
that they absorb at least some minimal committment to rationality.
As to the fact that Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov are all white males, I must
agree. Again, I would prefer that my child be the type of person who really
doesn't give a shit about the race and/or gender of their faovrite authors.
>
>At the risk of bringing this whole fairly interesting thread crashing
>down in a ball of flames, though, I'll attempt to defend the hypothetical
>"French critic" position by pointing out that, by and large, the
>"logocentric" books just aren't very good _as_ _novels._
Well, first you have to tell me what it means to be good as a novel. Precisely
what novelistic virtues are these authors missing?
>
>Particularly if you're going to talk about Clarke and Asimov and
>Heinlein, there's not a whole lot of finesse in the classic science
>fiction novels. The stories tend to start at Point A, and proceed rather
>linearly to Points B, C, D, and so on, occasionally stretching into the
>Greek and Hebrew alphabets after running out of Roman characters.
First, I object to the notion that beginning at the beginning and proceeding to
the middle thence to the end is a bad thing. Now, I will grant that a good
novel need not be sequential -- _Use of Weapons_ and _Catch-22_ both come to
mind -- but the mere fact that a novel is linear does not mean it's a bad
novel.
_Use of Weapons_ and _Catch-22_ and, for that matter _Slaughterhouse 5_ are
best done out of order because the stories are better told that way. Other
novels, which tell different stories, need not be non-linear.
Second, at least some of the novels by the afforementioned trio are not in
linear order. Take, for example, _Starship Troopers_, that controversial
classic of military sf. It actually has a rather intricate structure. It's
just that people don't notice, because Heinlein handles it so well.
>And the
>prose occasionally soars to the dizzying heights of "workmanlike."
Depends on what you look for in prose, I suppose. I actually think that
Heinlein was an extremely skilled prosemeister -- more skilled than a lot of
more critically-aclaimed modern writers. I'd rank him above John Updike,for
example, or Phillip Roth.
As to Asimov, he didn't write beautiful prose, but I think that it was a
deliberate artistic choice. That is, he wasn't concerned with dazzling us with
the beauty of his language (as, say Shakespeare or Ray Bradbury sometimes do),
but in telling the story as unobtrusively as possible. The word that is often
used is "transparent." .
I can see saying that you don't like that particular choice, that you prefer
reading works which can be savored for the use of language. But Asimov
executed that particular choice extremely well, for the most part. He was good
at what he set out to do, even if you believe that he set out to do the wrong
thing.
As to Clarke, I personally found him a bit uneven. Some of his work,
partiuclarly short work, is really good prosewise. But he can be, well,
clunky.
>Which
>is pretty much what you should expect from "logocentric" books...
>
>What makes these books readable, and dear to the hearts of SF readers, is
>the _ideas_ behind them. Some new gadget, or political system, or alien
>race, or what-have-you that's new and different and exciting, and drives
>the plot.
Yes. Kewl ideas, sensawunda. Those I like.
>
>But as examples of Great Writing, these books are a dismal failure. The
>ideas are frequently presented in expositionary core-dumps, the
Well, as somebody else pointed out on the thread that spawned this one,_Moby
Dick_ has expositor core-dumps that would shame even the most infodump happy sf
writer. And it's often considered a classic of Great Writing.
>characters generally have the depth of a good mud puddle, and the writing
>is almost entirely lacking in sparkle.
I've already dealt with the issue of writing, but I will agree with you, in
part, on the issue of character. Yes, some sfnal characters are bit thin.
But this is by no means universal; I think, for example, that Kip and Juan Rico
from _Have Spacesuit Will Travel_ and _Starship Troopers_ are very rich
characters, whom, unlike Alexei Panshin, I have no trouble telling apart.
After reading those books, I thought I knew Kip and Juan. Granted, they
weren't drug addicts or derelicts or sociopaths, which does not endear them to
postmodernistis, but they're real enough to me.
Even Asimov, whose characters are often little more than cutouts, had some good
ones. Elijah Bailey and Susan Calvin, for example.
>
>Basically, there's not much a critic can _do_ with these books. You can
>argue about how well the consequences of whatever science-fictional idea
>is used are worked out, or whether the plot is advanced primarily by
>author-induced-stupidity, but this is not the stuff of Great
>Literature...
I don't think that any of the three that I mentioned use
author-induced-stupidity as a prime mover, but I could be wrong.
But, in any case, you seem to be saying that Great Literature is literature
that leaves a lot of room for critics to work. I would have though that Great
Literature was literature that moved people, or made them think.
And in any case, I think that the sorts of discussions to which you allude are
more intiinsically interesting than a lot of the discussions that go on in lit
crit circles.
>
>If a Critical Theory of the SF Genre is developed, Asimov and Clarke and
>Heinlein will be read by virtue of being Important to the Genre, but
>these books in and of themselves will never draw critical attention.
Why must the genre adapt to critical theories rather than the other way around?
One way of reading an sf book is to read it just like any other book, looking
for exactly the same literary virtues that youl would look for in a book by
John Updike or Jane Austen or any other author whom you care to name.
But it seems to me that if you are envisioning a critical theory of science
fiction, then that theory should take into account the sfnal virtues as well as
the more general literary virtues. Criticizing Asimov because his characters
aren't as good as Jane Austen's strikes me as being like criticizing _Pride and
Prejudice_ because it doesn't have any robots.
>Which is not, IMAO, surprising, nor a particularly Bad Thing.
>
>This is not to say that they aren't enjoyable, or an intergral part of
>the genre, or good examples of science fiction. They're just not Good
>Novels in any sense that would make the literary intelligentsia sit up
>and take notice.
Look, in case it's not clear to you by this point, I really don't give a shit
about what the literary intelligentsia think.
>
>"Classic" SF novels will never draw much critical praise for the same
>reason that Micahel Crichton novels will never draw much critical praise.
>Crichton does the same things that most "Classic" SF writers do- he picks
>some gee-whiz idea, extrapolates it into the future a little bit, and
There was a mini-thread a while ago about "sf packaged as bestsellers," and
some people had some interesting things to say.
What I would say about Chricton is that he has neither literary nor sfnal
virtues. His writing is clunkier than, say Arthur Clarke at his worst, and his
science fiction is, shall we say, timid. I mean, if we're growing dinos out of
recovered dino blood from mosquitos in amber, then wouldn't we be doing all
sorts of other cool stuff as well?
>looks at what happens. The writing plods and the characters are
>cardboard, and the novels stand or fall entirely on the strength of the
>gee-whiz idea. This isn't the stuff of which Good Novels are made.
Well, I disagree with you about the writng and characters, at least with
respect to the best of classic sf. I personally think that good classic sf is
more well written and has more interesting characters than the work of a lot of
more modern critically-adored authors, like Roth and Updike. Of course, the
characters aren't pathetic losers, which doesn't endear them to the literati,
but you can't have everything.
>
>The only difference is that Crichton isn't particularly good at SF,
>either- he extrapolates his ideas in an exceptionally stupid manner,
>generally uses Bad Science, and takes a "man-was-not-meant-to-meddle-in-
>God's-domain" slant in most of his books. In basic technique, though,
>he's using the same rules as Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein.
Well, I'm glad we agree that Chricton is dumb. I disagree about him using the
same rules, though. Chricton uses on neato gadget per story, and there's no
sense of extrapolation, no sense that change is any way pervasive. The world
is exaclty like our world, except with the neato gadget thrown in. Which might
be easier for filmmakers and those who are, shall we say, imagiinatively
challenged, but it's not what the Classic sf authors did.
>
>There are a handful of people who manage to combine decent writing with
>good old-school science-fictional technique. Bear has a few novels of
>this sort, Brin has some good stuff, Greg Egan makes a good showing of
>it (though I tend not to like his books, as some of the ideas slide
>quickly into nonsense). I don't think they draw much outside-the-genre
>attention, though. (I'm sure someone here will know if they do, and
>provide more examples of modern SF in the classic vein, but with better
>writing... Bujold, maybe...)
I don't care if the people outside the genre enjoy Bear, Brin, Bujold and the
like. It's enough that enough people like them that those books continue to
be written.
>
>By and large, though, the people whose writing is strong enough that I'll
>buy their books just for the prose are doing more fanciful things. The
>science slides closer to magic, the characters drift into illogic and
>acquire some depth, you start to pick up the ambiguity that's lacking in
I object to the notion that people have to be illogical or inconsistent to have
"depth;" I think that this particular meme is largely associated with this
obsessive love of losers as protagonists.
But if you prefer less sfnally rigourous stuff which can be savored for the
prose alone, then go for it.
>the "Classic" books... And you end up with the New Wave, and William
>Gibson, and Raphael Carter, and Johnathan Lethem, and John M. Ford...
>all of whom write good _novels,_ (not just good science fiction novels)
>and some of whom draw praise from mainstream critics.
Well, I think that _The Gods Themselves_ and the _Caves of Steel_ and _The Moon
is a Harsh Mistress_ and even _Starship Troopers_ are good novels, even if they
don't have quite the sense of squalor that you get in works by people like
Carter and Gibson. I also thnk, by the way, that _Neuromancer_ and _The
Fortunate Fall_ have plenty of sfnal virtues. Don't know about Lethem, and am
unlikely to find out, since I consdier him a traitor and am now boycotting his
books.
As to these people drawing praise from mainstream crtics, I am utterly
indifferent.
Well, not utterly indiffernt. I do think that praise from the literarit can
ruin a writer (Vonnegut), and it does piss me off when sf writers who have
gotten praise from mainstream critics write whiney essays about how awful sf
is. But other than that, I'm pretty indiffernt to what critics of any stripe
have to say.
--
Pete McCutchen
PMccutc103
>Actually, as I understand the most recent school of French Criticism, I
>don't think you're supposed to _judge_ anything, or have criteria which
>can be stated in words of less than five syllables...
Fine, then. "I like it" is three syllables.
[snip]
>but
>there is _some_ fairly consistent set of standards regarding what gets
>termed Literature, and what gets termed Pulp.
I thought that Jim Thompson , who, when he wrote, was pretty clearly in the
"pulp" category, was in the process of being redifined as "literature." Which
is fine with me, since I think that Jim Thompson is better at the lean and
clean than even Hemingway.
Or am I behind the curve on Thompson?
--
Pete McCutchen
PMccutc103
but here goes anway:
oil...@wam.umd.edu (Chad R Orzel) wrote:
[Gibson]
>And while he has no shortage of one-note characters, they project more
>humanity than the typical Heinleinian ubermensch.
Then you haven't read Heinlein very carefully. With the exception of Valentine
Michael Smith, who is rather deliberately Chrstlike, his characters are neither
unflawed nor ubermensch.
>They're _flawed_-
>cowards and junkies, killers and con men, people of questionable moral
>character with occasional flashes of honor and decency. They're
>low-lifes, and more readily identifiable as inhabiting the same world as
>the rest of us.
>
Speak for yourself. Chad.
The curent fascination with characters who are
heroin-addicated-hacker-loser-low-life scumbags wiith the odd flash of decency
is little more than a literary taste for grunge. The fact that a character is
a scumabag does not make that character intrinsically deeper or more
interesting than somebody who is less depraved. You are confusing a passing
fad for depth.
Oh, and if you like characters of this nature, I do suggest you read Jim
Thompson. He wrote grunge before grunge was in; his stories may take place in
Texas and Oklahoma during the 40s and 50s, but his characters could easily be
transported into a Gibson novel.
And with all due respect to Mr. Gibson, Jim Thompson could write rings around
him.
--
Pete McCutchen
=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan()
>>humanity than the typical Heinleinian ubermensch.
>
>Valentine Michael Smith, who is rather deliberately Chrstlike, his
>characters are neither unflawed nor ubermensch.
I'd agree that, if you read them carefully, most of Heinlein's characters
are not unflawed, but I have to take issue with the statement that they're
not uebermenschen. I'd say all the "Old Man" characters qualify
(particularly Lazarus Long, but Jubal's awfully close to being
omnicompitent, as is Richard Ames), and while the younger characters
haven't reached Old-Man-uebermensch status yet, that's usually pretty
clearly just a matter of gaining some seasoning. (E.g., Kip in "Have
Space Suit, Will Travel," Hazel Stone, Juan Rico.) The youngsters also
all seem to have one (and the same) character flaw, self-doubt.
Not to mention that Heinlein couldn't write a convincing villain to save
his life.
What I find interesting is that this seems to me to be by far the most
common complaint about Heinlein, but every time someone brings it up, the
response is, "You just weren't paying attention." Could it be that
Heinlein just wasn't good enough a writer to clearly communicate his
characters' flaws?
--Josh
Jay Random
>
> Not to mention that Heinlein couldn't write a convincing villain to save
> his life.
Very few of Heinlein's stories had villains or needed them. Your point?
> What I find interesting is that this seems to me to be by far the most
> common complaint about Heinlein, but every time someone brings it up, the
> response is, "You just weren't paying attention." Could it be that
> Heinlein just wasn't good enough a writer to clearly communicate his
> characters' flaws?
Or could it be that current critical theory demands that no character be
more competent or less flawed than Thomas Covenant on downers?
I take the liberty of quoting Randel Helms, in _Tolkien's World_:
`The work of such myth-breaking giants as Darwin and Freud is now
complete (the effects of that work could be neatly graphed against the
decline and disappearance of the hero in late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century literature), and we are now well into a period of
degrading overcompensation (and pathetic undercompensation) for a real
and painful loss. On the subliterary level, we have daydream superheroes
(in one form Conan, in another, James Bond), and in serious literature,
sad and bumbling schlemiels and antiheroes (Henderson, Yossarian).'
A concomitant of this is that any character who _isn't_ a sad & bumbling
schlemiel -- anyone who _doesn't_ rub the reader's nose in his capacity
every page or so -- is dismissed by an awful lot of readers as an
unrealistic, well, Übermensch. It ain't necessarily so. There _are_
competent people; there are even people competent in a wide enough
variety of fields to appear to the average person virtually as
Renaissance men. Robert Heinlein was one of them: a naval officer,
ballistician, mathematician, engineer (of several different varieties),
carpenter, landscape gardener, inventor, mineralogist, silver-miner,
politician, marksman, & jackleg architect -- & did capable,
professional-quality work in all these fields, as well as being one of
the most talented & popular writers of the 20th century. Virginia
Heinlein was another, one of the few people whose abilities left Robert
Heinlein in awe.
As for moral flaws, Heinlein generally takes the attitude that everybody
has 'em, but we are all capable of _learning better_. He was never
better than when putting a promising but callow youngster through the
wringer of _growing up_ -- Rod Walker, Podkayne Fries, or for that
matter, Valentine Smith (who was by no means messiah material when he
first came to Earth). Heinlein nowhere claims that his heroes are
_average_ people; they are all persons of superior capacity, put into
situations where they must exploit that capacity to the fullest in order
to survive -- & that, to Heinlein's way of thinking, is what makes them
worth telling about. Except for Lazarus Long, the `Wise Old Man' figure
is never the central character in a Heinlein yarn; he is there
specifically to knock some of the self-delusion out of the lead
character, & so that, when the lead does something spectacularly
shortsighted & stupid (as quite often happens), someone will be in the
position to say, `I told you so!' (Except that Heinlein's lead
characters are generally bright enough to figure out that they _were_
told so, without the Wise Old Man rubbing their noses in it.)
Let me return for a moment to the matter of villains:--
I imagine you are familiar with the literary theory that all conflict is
divisible into three categories, conventionally labelled `Man vs. Man',
`Man vs. Nature', & `Man vs. Himself'. Heinlein's stories generally fall
into the category of `Man vs. Nature', as befits a writer who earned his
living writing first for the pulps, then for the juvenile market. In a
`Man vs. Nature' story, there is no place for a villain; the antagonist
is the Universe itself; a mere human villain would be a superfluous
excrescence, as useless as stirrups on a boat. The subplots in
Heinlein's stories tend to be of the `Man vs. Himself' type, where the
same character necessarily serves as both `hero' & `villain'. It is only
in `Man vs. Man' stories that the role of Villain need arise. Heinlein
did not write many of these, but when he did, he could cast the role
quite capably: the racketeers in `Magic, Inc.', Scudder in `If This Goes
On--', the union bosses in `The Roads Must Roll', etc.
Modern (i.e., `modernist' & `post-modernist') critics are apt to claim
that only Man vs. Himself is _real_ conflict, & everything else is pulp
hackwork. From this notion, which is at best questionable & at worst
pernicious (would _Moby Dick_ have been a better book without the
whale?), we get the idea that only the aforementioned sad & bumbling
schlemiels are dramatic characters -- because, you see, only they are
sufficiently self-destructive & filled with self-doubt & self-loathing
to be truly worthy adversaries for themselves. This whole nexus of
anti-heroes & psychologized interior conflict is the squidmouth of
20th-century literature; any writer, reader, or critic of any earlier
time would have regarded it as sheer insanity. Heinlein would have none
of it. He worked in an older &, I would say, far nobler literary
tradition -- the tradition in which it _means_ something to be a hero;
where heroes are not only allowed but required to be heroic, & if they
have flaws, must overcome them to achieve their ends. If that tradition
is subliterary, then all the literature of the Western world from
_Gilgamesh_ to Dickens is the raving of overrated hacks. If you will buy
that thesis, then you can dismiss Heinlein in the same job lot.
--J. Random Trad-Lit Reader, D.G.F.V.
Nancy Lebovitz
Chad R Orzel <oil...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>In article <6odfcl$dc9$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>>Chad R Orzel (oil...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
>
>In classic hard SF, you tend to have a Good Guy, and a Bad Guy, and a
>Problem to be solved, and a Gadget that solves the problem, and the Good
>Guy employs the Gadget to surmount the Problem and beat the Bad Guy, and
>maybe ride off into the sunset with the Girl if it's one of the racier
>stories, and all of this is handled with cool, dispassionate Logic.
>
and Heinlein, sf was considerably more sophisticated. Consider _Childhood's
End_, the Foundation trilogy, or _The Star Beast_.
(.....)
>Melville and Hawthorne are the worst offenders I can think of- both bore
>me to tears, and I never even attempted _Moby Dick_- but for all their
>core-dumping and plodding prose, there's depth to the story. They talk
>about morality, and obsession, and recognizable human motivations, and
>humanly fallible characters- Asimov and Heinlein's characters tend to be
>wunderkinder, equally adept at theory and experiment, able to logically
>work through any problem, and pilot starships, deliver babies, plan
>invasions, and whip up a time machine/ space ship/ superweapon with spare
>auto parts, a few vacuum tubes, and a roll of duct tape. And Asimov's
>characters manage it with nary a sexual thought in their heads...
This is simply not true of Heinlein. One of these days, I'm going
to make up a list of Heinlein's loser and semi-loser protagonists,
but meanwhile, consider Lorenzo from _Double Star_ and what's-his-
name from _Time for the Stars_. I'd include Hugh from _Farnham's
Freehold_ (insufficient people skills in situations where he needed
them), but that's more questionable. For that matter, while Manny
from TMIaHM is no loser, he's clearly not omnicompetent.
>The success of Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein is in the ideas they had-
>they were better than most at thinking up cool new worlds, and gadgets,
>and weird applications of physics, and playing those out. They have
>moments where they come close to touching on bigger themes- Asimov had
>the occasional social commentary ("Nightfall," for example), Clarke his
>pantheon of benevolent godlike aliens, Heinlein his political
>philosophizing- but they're almost always gadget stories. Of the three,
Like _Tunnel in the Sky_? The gadget sets up the situation, but the
story is about how some people manage with very few gadgets--and the
teleportation system just comes back on line when it's convenient
for the story.
>>: Basically, there's not much a critic can _do_ with these books. You can
>>: argue about how well the consequences of whatever science-fictional idea
>>: is used are worked out, or whether the plot is advanced primarily by
>>: author-induced-stupidity, but this is not the stuff of Great
>>: Literature...
>>
Also, you can track themes in and between books. Just about everything
in RAH's _Starman Jones_ is about how information moves or fails to
move in a hierarchy. I haven't found any other sf which is as themetically
tidy, but I bet there's some. Also, I suspect that there's a good long
paper possible under the title of "Hierarchy and the Subversion of
Hierarchy in _The Star Beast_".
It's not that I'm obsessed with hierarchy--who's in charge, and how,
and what difference it makes is a big theme in Heinlein.
>>There is much more to talk about in these works. The simple matter is
>>that these novels espouse a world view that was for the first half of this
>>century very compelling to many people, and in many ways still remains the
>>world view of the technical elite. These novels are wonderful tools for
>>exploring this worldview, because in their own way, they form the
>>mythology of that view.
Oh, yeah, like C.M.Kornbluth--clearly an elite pov. On the other hand,
it would be fair to argue that Kornbluth was opposing the techno-elite.
>
>>: This is not to say that they aren't enjoyable, or an intergral part of
>>: the genre, or good examples of science fiction. They're just not Good
>>: Novels in any sense that would make the literary intelligentsia sit up
>>: and take notice.
>>
>>Well, not that I want to sound particularly cynical, but it generally
>>appears that the literary intelligentsia is more interested in showing how
>>smart they are than truely grappling with what the common man reads.
I thought that, these days, they showed how smart they are by coming
up with theories about popular art.
>>Modern Literature reads the writers no one else does. And while I am sure
>>the authors of these novels appreciate the business, the simple fact of
>>the matter is that there influence is unlikely to ever get much beyond
>>that intelligentsia. Writers like Stephen King and Tom Clancy probably
>>have more influence on the modern reader than Rushdie, Calvino or Borges.
Bernadette Bosky is a Stephen King scholar. She gets published academically.
>
>
>>: By and large, though, the people whose writing is strong enough that I'll
>>: buy their books just for the prose are doing more fanciful things. The
>>: science slides closer to magic, the characters drift into illogic and
>>: acquire some depth, you start to pick up the ambiguity that's lacking in
>>: the "Classic" books... And you end up with the New Wave, and William
>>: Gibson, and Raphael Carter, and Johnathan Lethem, and John M. Ford...
>>: all of whom write good _novels,_ (not just good science fiction novels)
>>: and some of whom draw praise from mainstream critics.
>>
Didn't Ford write some hard sf?
>>Ah but here is the rub, for the classic writers, the idea is that with
>>time Man would outgrow the illogical. That his actions will be based on a
This is *not* true of Heinlein, and Bradbury thinks that the irrational
is an essential spiritual element.
>>firm view of his place in the universe (greatly augmented through
>>science). Ultimately the idea is that there should be no ambiguity, not
I'll grant you that Bradbury isn't ambiguous--did he write any stories
where his pov isn't obvious? Howcome no one complains about how polemical
Bradbury is?
>>in character or story. Granted it does not allow the authors to leave the
>>holes in a character that seems to provide depth... but then again thats
>>sort of the point.
>
>As someone here once pointed out, if Hamlet and Othello switch places,
>you lose two good plays. Othello would kill Claudius in Act One, and
>Hamlet would sit down and talk things out with Desdemona, and neither
Actually, Hamlet talks a lot, but I wouldn't say that he's famous for
being clear and sensible.
>ending would be all that tragic. It's the irrationality of the two leads
>that makes those stories work. And, in the end, it's irrationality and
>illogic that define humanity, as much as cold logic and reason. Take
>those away, and you're left with little more than gadget stories.
For some people, logic is a passion, though perhaps not an entirely
reasonable one. Characters like that are very rare because the writer
has to be at least as smart as the character.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
M. Wesley Osam
> Err, for the non-USians in this newsgroup: what is the significance of
> this 'Library of America'?
It's basically just a really nicely designed and amazingly
well-made series of books by classic American writers.
> Who publishes it? Who decides who's worthy?
I can't remember who publishes them, but I think it's a
nonprofit venture.
Nancy Lebovitz
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan() wrote:
>>
>> Not to mention that Heinlein couldn't write a convincing villain to save
>> his life.
>
>Very few of Heinlein's stories had villains or needed them. Your point?
>
to write villains.
>> What I find interesting is that this seems to me to be by far the most
>> common complaint about Heinlein, but every time someone brings it up, the
>> response is, "You just weren't paying attention." Could it be that
>> Heinlein just wasn't good enough a writer to clearly communicate his
>> characters' flaws?
Or could it be that the Competent Man claim is a cliche that gets
repeated a lot because it sounds plausible?
>
>Or could it be that current critical theory demands that no character be
>more competent or less flawed than Thomas Covenant on downers?
>
>I take the liberty of quoting Randel Helms, in _Tolkien's World_:
>
>`The work of such myth-breaking giants as Darwin and Freud is now
>complete (the effects of that work could be neatly graphed against the
>decline and disappearance of the hero in late nineteenth- and early
>twentieth-century literature), and we are now well into a period of
>degrading overcompensation (and pathetic undercompensation) for a real
>and painful loss. On the subliterary level, we have daydream superheroes
>(in one form Conan, in another, James Bond), and in serious literature,
>sad and bumbling schlemiels and antiheroes (Henderson, Yossarian).'
On a more moderate level, there's the idea in _The Road to Middle Earth_
that Frodo and Bilbo are modern characters which make the heroic world
of Middle Earth accessible to modern readers. Frodo and Bilbo don't
want to be heroes, but they do heroic things when they must.
>
>Let me return for a moment to the matter of villains:--
>
>I imagine you are familiar with the literary theory that all conflict is
>divisible into three categories, conventionally labelled `Man vs. Man',
>`Man vs. Nature', & `Man vs. Himself'. Heinlein's stories generally fall
>into the category of `Man vs. Nature', as befits a writer who earned his
>living writing first for the pulps, then for the juvenile market. In a
>`Man vs. Nature' story, there is no place for a villain; the antagonist
>is the Universe itself; a mere human villain would be a superfluous
>excrescence, as useless as stirrups on a boat. The subplots in
I could make a case that the Nazis on the moon in _Starship Gallileo_
are an unnecessary flourish.
>Heinlein's stories tend to be of the `Man vs. Himself' type, where the
>same character necessarily serves as both `hero' & `villain'. It is only
>in `Man vs. Man' stories that the role of Villain need arise. Heinlein
I think there's a little more MvM in Heinlein than you're saying even
though it's commonly mixed with MvN. Consider "The Man Who Sold the Moon".
For that matter, how about _Citizen of the Galaxy_?
>did not write many of these, but when he did, he could cast the role
>quite capably: the racketeers in `Magic, Inc.', Scudder in `If This Goes
>On--', the union bosses in `The Roads Must Roll', etc.
All of whom are kept at least as off-stage as Sauron.
>
>Modern (i.e., `modernist' & `post-modernist') critics are apt to claim
>that only Man vs. Himself is _real_ conflict, & everything else is pulp
>hackwork. From this notion, which is at best questionable & at worst
>pernicious (would _Moby Dick_ have been a better book without the
>whale?), we get the idea that only the aforementioned sad & bumbling
>schlemiels are dramatic characters -- because, you see, only they are
>sufficiently self-destructive & filled with self-doubt & self-loathing
>to be truly worthy adversaries for themselves. This whole nexus of
:-)
>anti-heroes & psychologized interior conflict is the squidmouth of
>20th-century literature; any writer, reader, or critic of any earlier
>time would have regarded it as sheer insanity. Heinlein would have none
>of it. He worked in an older &, I would say, far nobler literary
>tradition -- the tradition in which it _means_ something to be a hero;
>where heroes are not only allowed but required to be heroic, & if they
>have flaws, must overcome them to achieve their ends. If that tradition
>is subliterary, then all the literature of the Western world from
>_Gilgamesh_ to Dickens is the raving of overrated hacks. If you will buy
>that thesis, then you can dismiss Heinlein in the same job lot.
>
>
Martin Wisse
: In article <35a97544...@news.xs4all.nl>, sg...@xs4all.nl wrote:
:
: > Err, for the non-USians in this newsgroup: what is the significance of
: > this 'Library of America'?
:
: It's basically just a really nicely designed and amazingly
: well-made series of books by classic American writers.
Sort of like the Penguin Classics we get over here?
Martin Wisse
PMccutc103
>In article <35a97544...@news.xs4all.nl>, sg...@xs4all.nl wrote:
>
>> Err, for the non-USians in this newsgroup: what is the significance of
>> this 'Library of America'?
>
>It's basically just a really nicely designed and amazingly
>well-made series of books by classic American writers.
>
>
Not just fiction, either. The LOA has a two-volume set called "The Debate on
the Constitution," which is a really nice selection of Federalist and
Anti-Federalist literature arranged chronologically. And they've published
both Grant's and Sherman's memoirs. As well as some other historical stuff.
Just as an aside, I once read Grant's and Sherman's memoirs, _A Soldier's
Story_ by Omar Bradley, followed by H Norman Schwarzkopf's _It Doesn't Take A
Hero_. If nothing else, the literary ability of our generals seems to have
declined.
--
Pete McCutchen
Bill McHale
: wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
: >Ah, but here is an idea. While I certainly would not recommend severe
: >censorship of your children's reading (though some monitoring is probably
: >a good thing if they are still very young),
: I once participated in a discussion in which my then-boss was asked if he'd
: want his then ten-year-old son reading Kundera's _The Unbearable Lightness of
: Being_ or _Justine_ by the Marquis de Sade. He replied that he'd be quite
: happy to see his son with a book in his hand, regardless of content.
: >it might be an idea to
: >encourage them to read, and then research the info that is in the story.
: >For example suppose they read Heinlein's short "The Man Who Sold the
: >Moon". Encourage them after reading it to research what the moon and
: >man's first trip to the moon was really like.
: >
: Oh great. Make them do an assignment after every sf book that they read. The
: point being to destroy their love for science fiction, I gather?
: (Please note: while a child I did nonfiction reading on astronomy and space
: travel, no doubt inspired in part by sf. I still do. But if my parents had
: assigned me such a reading, I would have found it quite onerous.)
I said encourage them, not make them. Two entirely different things. It
could start simply by reading what your child reads and then discussing it
with them afterwards... raise the questions in their minds, and then help
them research the answers if they actually want them.
PMccutc103
>=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan() wrote:
>>
>> Not to mention that Heinlein couldn't write a convincing villain to save
>> his life.
>
>Very few of Heinlein's stories had villains or needed them. Your point?
>
>> What I find interesting is that this seems to me to be by far the most
>> common complaint about Heinlein, but every time someone brings it up, the
>> response is, "You just weren't paying attention." Could it be that
>> Heinlein just wasn't good enough a writer to clearly communicate his
>> characters' flaws?
>
>Or could it be that current critical theory demands that no character be
>more competent or less flawed than Thomas Covenant on downers?
>
>I take the liberty of quoting Randel Helms, in _Tolkien's World_:
>
>
[snip quotation]
I just wanted to say that I was going to respond to Joshua -- and then I saw
Jay's post, which made any response on my part redundant. Jay, I may have
disagreed with you a bit recently, but here you are right on.
Let me just add that one of the reasons that I like sf is that it is one genre
that still has room for genuine, old-fashioned heroes. Where is it written
that literature must celebrate the worst in people? Is there no room for
celebrating humans at their best?
I have to say also that I think that the current taste for grunge is more than
just a choice about what certain books are going to be about. It is, in some
ways, a denial that human beings are capable of being more than scumbags.
With, of course, the occaissional flash of decency.
<snip>
>In a
>`Man vs. Nature' story, there is no place for a villain; the antagonist
>is the Universe itself; a mere human villain would be a superfluous
>excrescence, as useless as stirrups on a boat.
Jay, I did want to admire that last phrase -- "as useless as stirrups on a
boat." I could well see that phrase coming form the pen of Robert Heinlein
himsef.
--
Pete McCutchen
Maskull
wrote:
[huge snip]
>Modern (i.e., `modernist' & `post-modernist') critics are apt to claim
>that only Man vs. Himself is _real_ conflict, & everything else is pulp
>hackwork. From this notion, which is at best questionable & at worst
>pernicious (would _Moby Dick_ have been a better book without the
>whale?)...
The whale can be read as a metaphor.
>..., we get the idea that only the aforementioned sad & bumbling
>schlemiels are dramatic characters -- because, you see, only they are
>sufficiently self-destructive & filled with self-doubt & self-loathing
>to be truly worthy adversaries for themselves. This whole nexus of
>anti-heroes & psychologized interior conflict is the squidmouth of
>20th-century literature; any writer, reader, or critic of any earlier
>time would have regarded it as sheer insanity.
Sounds like historical revisionism. You're ignoring (just to take
the most obvious example) English Renaissance drama which holds a
prominent place in the Western canon - we're talkin' Shakespeare after
all - and in which losers and anti-heroes are often central
characters.
>Heinlein would have none
>of it.
[...]
But Leiber would.
Graydon
PMccutc103 <pmccu...@aol.com> wrote:
>Just as an aside, I once read Grant's and Sherman's memoirs, _A Soldier's
>Story_ by Omar Bradley, followed by H Norman Schwarzkopf's _It Doesn't Take A
>Hero_. If nothing else, the literary ability of our generals seems to have
>declined.
Sure that's not a side effect of the social acceptability of having them
ghost written?
--
goo...@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
Chad R Orzel
>> common complaint about Heinlein, but every time someone brings it up, the
>> response is, "You just weren't paying attention." Could it be that
>> Heinlein just wasn't good enough a writer to clearly communicate his
>> characters' flaws?
>
>Or could it be that current critical theory demands that no character be
>more competent or less flawed than Thomas Covenant on downers?
Dunno.
Are you blaming current critical theory for Macbeth, Hamlet, and King
Lear? Not the cheeriest pack of epic heroes, those guys.
Nor, for that matter, is the Achilles of _The Iliad_ a Heinleinian
go-getter, given that the action of that book is basically driven by
Achilles getting into a snit... Sure, when he finally gets off his ass,
he kicks butt, but things go pretty wrong on account of his refusing to
do much for several books.
Hester Prynne? A regular Sigourney Weaver-in-_Alien_, that one. Captain
Ahab? Yeah, there's a guy who was cool under fire...
The great literature of the past has no shortage of heroes of dubious
worth. Pretty much any of the "Classic" works that you might care to name
focusses on characters who are irrational, short-sighted, occasionally
incompetent, usually overconfident, frequently unstable, and just
all-around _flawed._
This is not a new development.
The most interesting heroes triumph not because of their innate
superiority, but in spite of their flaws. The most interesting villains
are brought down not by the superior worth and abilities of their
opponents, but by their own weaknesses.
Books where the hero wins out in the end because he's smarter, faster,
handsomer, and just all-around _better_ than anyone who stands in his way
are really not that philosophically exciting. Delaying this triumph until
the young hero can pick up some seasoning and wisdom at the feet of the
Wise Old Man does not lift Heinlein into the Shakespearean stratosphere.
Later,
OilCan
Thomas R Scudder
: The great literature of the past has no shortage of heroes of dubious
: worth. Pretty much any of the "Classic" works that you might care to name
: focusses on characters who are irrational, short-sighted, occasionally
: incompetent, usually overconfident, frequently unstable, and just
: all-around _flawed._
The AENEAD. Aeneas is the single most irritatingly over-perfect character
I've ever encountered, anywhere. The damn story MUST be a masterpiece of
Latin style, because the plot & characters sure don't have anything going
for them.
--
Tom Scudder aka tom...@umich.edu <*> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomscud
Squeezing flinthead trout If religion is the opiate of the masses,
in their massive jaws, sparks fly: does that mean Usenet is the artificial
Bears discover fire. sweetener of the masses? - rone
Thomas R Scudder
: Chad R Orzel (oil...@wam.umd.edu) asieoniezi:
: : The great literature of the past has no shortage of heroes of dubious
: : worth. Pretty much any of the "Classic" works that you might care to name
: : focusses on characters who are irrational, short-sighted, occasionally
: : incompetent, usually overconfident, frequently unstable, and just
: : all-around _flawed._
: The AENEAD. Aeneas is the single most irritatingly over-perfect character
: I've ever encountered, anywhere. The damn story MUST be a masterpiece of
: Latin style, because the plot & characters sure don't have anything going
: for them.
Committing the grievous sin of following up to myself:
I can't see any tragic flaws in Beowulf.
If Hector has any tragic flaw, it's that he doesn't kick as much arse as
Achilleus.
Joel Rosenberg
>I'd agree that, if you read them carefully, most of Heinlein's characters
>are not unflawed, but I have to take issue with the statement that they're
>not uebermenschen. I'd say all the "Old Man" characters qualify
>(particularly Lazarus Long, but Jubal's awfully close to being
>omnicompitent, as is Richard Ames), and while the younger characters
>haven't reached Old-Man-uebermensch status yet, that's usually pretty
>clearly just a matter of gaining some seasoning. (E.g., Kip in "Have
>Space Suit, Will Travel," Hazel Stone, Juan Rico.) The youngsters also
>all seem to have one (and the same) character flaw, self-doubt.
Juan Rico? He's certainly shown as a competent, if by no means
brilliant, company-grade officer, but he not only is not irresistable
to The Girl, he loses the one fight with a trained man that he's ever
in. He's a good mechanic's assistant, sure, but he has a horrible
time judging priorities, and never will survive to figure that out.
Genius? Nah. Ubermensch. Nope.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Rosenberg | For news about upcoming books, | My opinions are mine.
jo...@winternet.com | finger jo...@winternet.com | Whose are yours?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jay Random
>
> Dunno.
> Are you blaming current critical theory for Macbeth, Hamlet, and King
> Lear? Not the cheeriest pack of epic heroes, those guys.
No, I'm blaming current critical theory for refusing to consider anyone
who actually behaves heroically as a character worthy of literary
consideration. Incidentally, a novel published today about Macbeth,
Hamlet, or Lear (or their modern equivalents) would almost certainly be
roundly trashed by the lit'ry critics. Why? Two kings & a prince --
therefore, _not_ your average bumbling schlemiel -- elitism! Horrible,
reactionary elitism! All _real_ fiction is supposed to be about, as
intimated elsewhere on the froup, heroin-addicted, tongue-pierced
sociopaths coming to grips with their own terminal internal rot.
Yossarian, one of the icons of modern literary criticism, is a
schmendrick who takes 500 pages of stewing just to get up the gumption
to _run away_. Even Lear would eat him for breakfast. But even Yossarian
is too active, not introspective enough, for some of the critics -- the
Joycean school, who hold that the `epiphany' is the true measure of a
story, that external conflict is mere pulp, to be stripped away &
stripped away until the character's interior psychological angst, & the
Change of Heart that eventually comes over him (or doesn't, but the
author lectures the reader into seeing that it shoulda), stands revealed
as the entirety of the story. (I'm not making this up; this is what I
was taught in college English, circa 1985. Gah.)
--J. Random Metacritic, D.G.F.V.
Kevin J. Maroney
>All I know is whenever a book or anything else can be described as
>"postmodern" by someone (say on its blurb), it's
>probably going to be bad (obscurity concealing triviality). The third
>best example is my copy of Malzberg's Galaxies. The second best example
>is the pointless comic strip Zippy the Pinhead.
All I know is whenever a book or anything else can be described as
"science fiction" by someone (say on its blurb), it's probably going
to be bad (spaceships instead of people).
Aren't generalities based in ignorance fun?
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor
The New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html
=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan()
Nancy Lebovitz <nan...@universe.digex.net> wrote:
>>=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan() wrote:
>>>
>>> What I find interesting is that this seems to me to be by far the most
>>> common complaint about Heinlein, but every time someone brings it up, the
>>> response is, "You just weren't paying attention." Could it be that
>>> Heinlein just wasn't good enough a writer to clearly communicate his
>>> characters' flaws?
>
>repeated a lot because it sounds plausible?
Quite possibly. Frankly, I think there's some truth to both positions; no
question, if you look closely enough, each of Heinlein's characters has
some flaw. But, like Richard Ames' ethnicity (arguably) and Juan Rico's
nationality, Heinlein seems to me to have treated those flaws in a
less-than-straightforward manner.
My point is that, as much as readers deserve some measure of the blame
for making the generalization that Heinlein's characters are
omnicompetent, so does Heinlein. And it seems to me that that particular
criticism generally gets dismissed out of hand, without really considering
*why* that's such a common criticism.
--Josh
=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan()
PMccutc103 <pmccu...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Let me just add that one of the reasons that I like sf is that it is one genre
>that still has room for genuine, old-fashioned heroes. Where is it written
>that literature must celebrate the worst in people? Is there no room for
>celebrating humans at their best?
I think you misunderstand my criticism of Heinlein. My complaint is not
that he wrote good, upstanding, old-fashioned heroes (although I'm not
sure that any of his characters would be *my* heroes), but that that seems
to me to be *all* he wrote. And before you start citing the list of
characters that don't match that description, I'm well aware that there
are counter-examples. But I don't generally consider the counter-examples
to be that significant (for a number of reasons I'll enumerate if you want
me to), and I'm more interested in the *general* feeling I get from
Heinlein's work.
--Josh
Chad R Orzel
>[Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein]
>>Which would seem to be an argument in _favor_ of at least the
>>"logocentric" part of the original laundry list of lit-crit terms, and
>>probably would be taken as supporting the "white male" part as well
>>(Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein being rather white and rather male), by
>>one more political than I...
>
>Let me clarify: I agree that Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov are indeed
>logocentric. What I would prefer is that my child heap scorn and derision on
>the type of person who thinks that "logocentric" is properly used as a
>pejorative term.
Heh.
>As to the fact that Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov are all white males, I must
>agree. Again, I would prefer that my child be the type of person who really
>doesn't give a shit about the race and/or gender of their faovrite authors.
That was mostly in jest...
>>At the risk of bringing this whole fairly interesting thread crashing
>>down in a ball of flames, though, I'll attempt to defend the hypothetical
>>"French critic" position by pointing out that, by and large, the
>>"logocentric" books just aren't very good _as_ _novels._
>
>Well, first you have to tell me what it means to be good as a novel.
Good prose style, interesting plot, some moral or philosophical conflict,
some depth of character. Something that's about recognizable human
characters interacting in ways that the reader can identify with, and
going through situations that have something to say about humankind in
general.
Note that this is mostly my own definition- many credentialed critics
would scrap the bit about "interesting plot" and perhaps the relevance to
the general reader. Others would not.
Precisely
>what novelistic virtues are these authors missing?
The big ones would be prose style and depth of character, though moral
conflict is occasionally lacking as well. Their characters tend to be
people I can identify with mostly in the "I wanna be James Bond" sense,
rather than the "Yeah, I know how that feels" sense. They're coolly
logical, hypercompetent (the physicist characters are equally adept at
theory and experiment, the engineers can make _anything_ work...), and
generally Better People than those who oppose them. They succeed not
so much through difficult choices or actions with unpleasant
consequences, but because they're smart enough, fast enough, and cool
enough to find the Magic Gadget that defuses the crisis (whatever it is)
without having to compromise their principles in any way.
Don't get me wrong- I enjoy these kinds of stories. My copy of Moran's
_The Long Run_ is on the verge of falling apart, and damnit, I _want_ to
be Trent the Uncatchable in a way that no-one will ever want to be the
lead character in a Johnathan Lethem novel.
But that doesn't mean it's a Good Novel by the standards commonly applied
to mainstream literature. The interesting questions to explore are either
factual (did Trent _really_ walk through a wall?) or meta-story (what's
this guy got against the French?), neither of which really get the
mainstream critic's juices flowing.
The implied question that started me off on this tangent was "What's
_wrong_ with mainstream literary critics that they don't like classic
hard sf novels?" And the answer is "Nothing. They just use different
criteria than you do. And by their criteria, _Tunnel in the Sky_ just
isn't that good a book."
There just isn't that much there that mainstream critics would really
find attractive. And if you want to know why they like Lethem and not
Asimov, that's why.
>>Particularly if you're going to talk about Clarke and Asimov and
>>Heinlein, there's not a whole lot of finesse in the classic science
>>fiction novels. The stories tend to start at Point A, and proceed rather
>>linearly to Points B, C, D, and so on, occasionally stretching into the
>>Greek and Hebrew alphabets after running out of Roman characters.
>
>First, I object to the notion that beginning at the beginning and proceeding to
>the middle thence to the end is a bad thing. Now, I will grant that a good
>novel need not be sequential -- _Use of Weapons_ and _Catch-22_ both come to
>mind -- but the mere fact that a novel is linear does not mean it's a bad
>novel.
It's not so much the linearity as the plodding linearity. I'm not sure
I'll be able to explain that well, as my Heinlein and Asimov collections
are all in New York at the moment...
>>And the
>>prose occasionally soars to the dizzying heights of "workmanlike."
>
>Depends on what you look for in prose, I suppose. I actually think that
>Heinlein was an extremely skilled prosemeister -- more skilled than a lot of
>more critically-aclaimed modern writers. I'd rank him above John Updike,for
>example, or Phillip Roth.
Heinlein's prose lends itself to quotability in a .sigfile/ bumper
sticker sort of way, but that's about it. He's got something of a tin ear
for dialogue (in places, he comes close, but the vast majority of real
people don't talk the way his characters do), and his use of language is
pretty pedestrian.
Hemingway made a name for himself on choppy and journalistic prose, but
he did a better job of reproducing the way people actually _talk._ And,
much as I dislike Hemingway in general, when he _wanted_ to write a good
descriptive passage, he could write a good descriptive passage.
>As to Asimov, he didn't write beautiful prose, but I think that it was a
>deliberate artistic choice. That is, he wasn't concerned with dazzling us with
>the beauty of his language (as, say Shakespeare or Ray Bradbury sometimes do),
>but in telling the story as unobtrusively as possible. The word that is often
>used is "transparent." .
And again, you can get away with this, if you have something interesting
to say. Transparent prose presenting some good characters and interesting
conflicts is wonderful. Transparent prose presenting stories in which
some scientific widget is the real hero just isn't going to make you the
subject of a million PhD theses.
Again, there's nothing all that _wrong_ with it, and some of his books
are certainly enjoyable, but they're not that deep. They stand and fall
on the strength of whatever widget forms the focus of the story.
There's probably a fair comparison to be drawn between Asimov's Robot
stories and, say, Dick's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep._ Dick
takes the concept of, essentially, robots, and uses it to explore
questions of humanity and identity. What makes people human? What makes
people the way they are?
Asimov's robots are saddled with the various Laws of Robotics, and the
stories revolve around those Laws. The questions raised are all of the
form "How do the Laws apply to <arbitrary situation>?" The problems and
the solutions are all set up quite cleverly, but they're all artificial-
the Laws are graven in positronic stone, and inflexible, and that
prevents the questions raised from ever becoming very deep.
That's why the Dick book is, IMAO, a better novel than the various Asimov
books. (Well, to be fair, the Laws were loosened up some in the later
books. Those are bad for entirely different reasons...)
>As to Clarke, I personally found him a bit uneven. Some of his work,
>partiuclarly short work, is really good prosewise. But he can be, well,
>clunky.
I try to avoid talking too much about Clarke, as I tend to dislike a lot
of his standard plot elements, and that colors my opinion of his books
pretty strongly.
>>What makes these books readable, and dear to the hearts of SF readers, is
>>the _ideas_ behind them. Some new gadget, or political system, or alien
>>race, or what-have-you that's new and different and exciting, and drives
>>the plot.
>
>Yes. Kewl ideas, sensawunda. Those I like.
Right.
And these may be the hallmarks of a Great Science Fiction Novel, but
that's a separate category from a Great Novel, period. The reason the
"mainstream" cozies up to Lethem and pushes Asimov aside is from
consistent application of standards. Their standards.
And again, that's how we got off into this.
If you want to create a separate category of Great Science Fiction
Novels, go right ahead. One could argue that that's what the Hugos and
Nebulas are, and there's nothing wrong with having that as a distinct
group, separate from the mainstream.
But there's also nothing inherently wrong with judging that some Great
Science Fiction Novels do not meet the criteria for Great Novels, period.
Or, to take a less controversial stance, that they're not Great Mystery
Novels, or Great Romance Novels.
In fact, there'd be a problem if the "mainstream" literary community were
to relax its standards to approve Asimov on the grounds of being
Important to Science Fiction without also approving of the dozens of
non-SF writers who can claim the same literatry virtues as Asimov.
>>Basically, there's not much a critic can _do_ with these books. You can
>>argue about how well the consequences of whatever science-fictional idea
>>is used are worked out, or whether the plot is advanced primarily by
>>author-induced-stupidity, but this is not the stuff of Great
>>Literature...
>
>I don't think that any of the three that I mentioned use
>author-induced-stupidity as a prime mover, but I could be wrong.
You could argue about whether or not they do, though...
>But, in any case, you seem to be saying that Great Literature is literature
>that leaves a lot of room for critics to work. I would have though that Great
>Literature was literature that moved people, or made them think.
I'm most directly saying that the literature that attracts positive
critical attention is the literature that allows lots of room for critics
to work. All tautologies are tautologies.
More indirectly (well, I may have said it directly in _this_ post, if not
the last), Great Literature is literature that has something to say about
the general state of being human. To crib your terms, yes, it moves
people, and makes them think _about_ _things_ _less_ _concrete_ _than_
_the _laws_ _of_ _physics._
>And in any case, I think that the sorts of discussions to which you allude are
>more intiinsically interesting than a lot of the discussions that go on in lit
>crit circles.
I tend to lean a bit in that direction myself. Which is why I'm not a
literary critic by trade (I'm a physicist), and why you'll never be one,
either, most likely.
>>If a Critical Theory of the SF Genre is developed, Asimov and Clarke and
>>Heinlein will be read by virtue of being Important to the Genre, but
>>these books in and of themselves will never draw critical attention.
>
>Why must the genre adapt to critical theories rather than the other way around?
Why must the literary community change its standards when it starts
looking at _your_ favorite books?
>>Which is not, IMAO, surprising, nor a particularly Bad Thing.
>>
>>This is not to say that they aren't enjoyable, or an intergral part of
>>the genre, or good examples of science fiction. They're just not Good
>>Novels in any sense that would make the literary intelligentsia sit up
>>and take notice.
>
>Look, in case it's not clear to you by this point, I really don't give a shit
>about what the literary intelligentsia think.
Yeah, I picked up on that.
But you also seemed to imply that they were somehow _wrong_ for liking
fringe works while snubbing the classic core of sf authors. And my aim
was to point out that, by their standards, that's a perfectly justifiable
position. And, indeed, favoring Asimov et al. would actually _be_ wrong,
by their standards.
{Crichton}
>>The only difference is that Crichton isn't particularly good at SF,
>>either- he extrapolates his ideas in an exceptionally stupid manner,
>>generally uses Bad Science, and takes a "man-was-not-meant-to-meddle-in-
>>God's-domain" slant in most of his books. In basic technique, though,
>>he's using the same rules as Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein.
>
>Well, I'm glad we agree that Chricton is dumb. I disagree about him using the
>same rules, though. Chricton uses on neato gadget per story, and there's no
>sense of extrapolation, no sense that change is any way pervasive. The world
>is exaclty like our world, except with the neato gadget thrown in.
Is that timidity, or choice of setting?
Crichton is always explicitly writing about the very near future. The
most imaginative works of the other authors have all been set rather
farther in the future, when one would expect more change.
I vividly recall quite a few Asimov short stories in which the world was
exactly as is, with only one neato gadget thrown in, and I believe there
were a few such tales in Heinlein's "Future History," near the beginning.
(His "history" diverges from ours pretty early on, though, so there
aren't many...) And one could argue that Clarke's most famous stories
had only one gadget per story- it's just that the "gadget" takes the form
of Benevolent Godlike Aliens of some sort...
>>By and large, though, the people whose writing is strong enough that I'll
>>buy their books just for the prose are doing more fanciful things. The
>>science slides closer to magic, the characters drift into illogic and
>>acquire some depth, you start to pick up the ambiguity that's lacking in
>
>I object to the notion that people have to be illogical or inconsistent to have
>"depth;" I think that this particular meme is largely associated with this
>obsessive love of losers as protagonists.
I think you focus rather too much on the "loser" nature of the
protagonists. Forget the junkies and the bums and the rest of the Irvine
Welsh Gallery of Rogues, and consider some other Literary character.
Hamlet, say. Or Othello.
If they acted logically and rationally, where's the story? They're not
even all that fucked up by modern standards- Othello's got a bit of a
temper, and maybe a jealous streak, but he's very good at what he does.
And Hamlet's a Prince, fer Chrissakes, an educated man, and wealthy.
Their stories are powerful precisely _because_ their actions are
illogical. Hamlet's indecision leads to the deaths of most of the cast,
and Othello's short fuse lets Iago bend him around until he slaughters
his innocent wife. And the plays have the power to move us because we can
see that it doesn't have to happen that way, if not for the flaws of the
characters.
These are not stories that would be handled well in the classic hard sf
style.
Later,
OilCan
James Nicoll
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>
>Yossarian, one of the icons of modern literary criticism, is a
>schmendrick who takes 500 pages of stewing just to get up the gumption
>to _run away_. Even Lear would eat him for breakfast.
But Hamlet *wouldn't*. Juliet would try to date him.
James Nicoll
--
"The only people who think there's something wrong with escapism
are jailers."
C.S. Lewis
Chad R Orzel
>Thomas R Scudder (tom...@umich.edu) asieoniezi:
>: Chad R Orzel (oil...@wam.umd.edu) asieoniezi:
>: : The great literature of the past has no shortage of heroes of dubious
>: : worth. Pretty much any of the "Classic" works that you might care to name
>: : focusses on characters who are irrational, short-sighted, occasionally
>: : incompetent, usually overconfident, frequently unstable, and just
>: : all-around _flawed._
>
>: The AENEAD. Aeneas is the single most irritatingly over-perfect character
>: I've ever encountered, anywhere.
Well, he is a real shit to Dido...
But on the whole, yeah, he's a little too perfect.
I did qualify the above with "pretty much" for a reason...
The damn story MUST be a masterpiece of
>: Latin style, because the plot & characters sure don't have anything going
>: for them.
Well, in a certain sense, the whole thing was being written to suck up to
Augustus in a major way, so that's probably not that surprising...
>Committing the grievous sin of following up to myself:
>
>I can't see any tragic flaws in Beowulf.
I tried, but couldn't remember how it is that he ends up dead.
I thought there might've been some sort of Germanic equivalent of hubris
in there, but I really don't remember the last section of it that well. I
think he just dies valiantly in battle...
>If Hector has any tragic flaw, it's that he doesn't kick as much arse as
>Achilleus.
Maybe a little too much pride in killing whatshisname, but I think the
major character flaws are all Achilles's.
Again, the claim wasn't that _all_ Great Works of Literature feature
flawed characters, just that many or most of them do.
Later,
OilCan
(Just stupid enough to get into this argument, but not so stupid as to
make absolute statements... (Mostly...))
Beth Friedman
>j...@lana.uucp (=JK4=Joshua Kaderlan()) writes:
>Juan Rico? He's certainly shown as a competent, if by no means
>brilliant, company-grade officer, but he not only is not irresistable
>to The Girl, he loses the one fight with a trained man that he's ever
>in.
That's not the way I remember it. I don't have my copy handy, but I seem to
remember that "a long, painful time later" they've fought pretty much to a
draw, and his opponent (Red?) says for Juan to hit him, which he does with
enough force to crush an anemic mosquito.
Sounds to me like it's a draw, but this is essentially a fight to establish
pecking order, and the guy who knows he's supposed to be below Juan in said
order throws the fight.
Or have I missed the entire significance of that scene?
> He's a good mechanic's assistant, sure, but he has a horrible
> time judging priorities, and never will survive to figure that out.
Yep, that's why last scene bothered me -- not just the triteness of him
serving with his father (bad practice, that, I should think), but the fact
that they must have been stretched pretty thin for him to have ended up
where he did.
--
Beth Friedman
be...@comtrol.com
Mark Asher
wrote:
>PMccutc103 <pmccu...@aol.com> wrote:
snip
>>Well, first you have to tell me what it means to be good as a novel.
>
>Good prose style, interesting plot, some moral or philosophical conflict,
>some depth of character. Something that's about recognizable human
>characters interacting in ways that the reader can identify with, and
>going through situations that have something to say about humankind in
>general.
I had a prof that put it in even simpler terms -- something that shows
us what it means to be human. And, I'd add, he demand that it somehow
seem fresh and new, as if it hadn't been done before.
> Precisely
>>what novelistic virtues are these authors missing?
>
>The big ones would be prose style and depth of character, though moral
>conflict is occasionally lacking as well. Their characters tend to be
>people I can identify with mostly in the "I wanna be James Bond" sense,
>rather than the "Yeah, I know how that feels" sense. They're coolly
>logical, hypercompetent (the physicist characters are equally adept at
>theory and experiment, the engineers can make _anything_ work...), and
>generally Better People than those who oppose them. They succeed not
>so much through difficult choices or actions with unpleasant
>consequences, but because they're smart enough, fast enough, and cool
>enough to find the Magic Gadget that defuses the crisis (whatever it is)
>without having to compromise their principles in any way.
Classic SF tends toward the magic gadget or clever twist on
technology, from what I've read, and as such would fall short of being
considered literature.
There's obviously literary SF, works that burst through the
limitations of the genre, just as Jane Eyre is more than just a gothic
romance. I think a lot of SF fans get their noses out of joint over
their favorite works not being taken seriously, which I sympathize
with. A lot of it doesn't try to be literature, though, so it will
never be taken seriously. A lot of good SF just contents itself with
telling a clever story -- and that's ok by me. I'm just interested in
an interesting story. I don't have a hunger for literature in the way
that I did when I was younger. I think some of the exploration that
takes place in a good piece of literature has been bumped aside in my
life by the simple mystery of watching my children grow up.
snip
>The implied question that started me off on this tangent was "What's
>_wrong_ with mainstream literary critics that they don't like classic
>hard sf novels?" And the answer is "Nothing. They just use different
>criteria than you do. And by their criteria, _Tunnel in the Sky_ just
>isn't that good a book."
>
>There just isn't that much there that mainstream critics would really
>find attractive. And if you want to know why they like Lethem and not
>Asimov, that's why.
Yeah, I agree. Asimov isn't all that good of a writer when you compare
his works with literary works. I think his real strength was in his
non-fiction, as a popularizer. He had a rare talent for that. I don't
think much of Clarke and Heinlein for that matter, though I enjoy
their work. Frankly, their work isn't profound or well-written when
compared to classic literature.
Why do Asimov and all have to be ranked with literay figures like
Faulkner anyway? Very few writers scale such heights. It just seems
enough to me that I enjoy their work, just like I enjoy Top 40 tunes
or Seinfeld.
snip
>There's probably a fair comparison to be drawn between Asimov's Robot
>stories and, say, Dick's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep._ Dick
>takes the concept of, essentially, robots, and uses it to explore
>questions of humanity and identity. What makes people human? What makes
>people the way they are?
>
>Asimov's robots are saddled with the various Laws of Robotics, and the
>stories revolve around those Laws. The questions raised are all of the
>form "How do the Laws apply to <arbitrary situation>?" The problems and
>the solutions are all set up quite cleverly, but they're all artificial-
>the Laws are graven in positronic stone, and inflexible, and that
>prevents the questions raised from ever becoming very deep.
Heh -- I agree with you, but most of the time I'd rather read an
Asimov Robot story than Dick. Of course, most of the time I'd rather
watch a football game than Masterpiece Theatre.
Anyway, Asimov et al have their place in the pantheon of SF writers.
Isn't that good enough? Most people who are SF fans are fans not
because the writing in SF is better in other genres, but because they
like the trappings of the genre. To SF fans, those guys are heroes of
a sort.
Mark Asher
Graydon
Elizabeth Moon
(snip)
> I said encourage them, not make them. Two entirely different things. It
> could start simply by reading what your child reads and then discussing it
> with them afterwards... raise the questions in their minds, and then help
> them research the answers if they actually want them.
>
> --
> Bill
On the other hand...John Holt (author of _How Children Learn_, _Why
Children Fail_, etc.) once got nonreading children to read by promising
*not* to ask them anything about what they read. He told them they
didn't have to finish any book they started, and he wouldn't interfere,
but he wanted them to read x minutes a day. Performance anxiety gets
between many kids and the story (or information.)
Since kids are not all alike, some would probably benefit from the parent
showing an interest (or at least approval of the child reading), and some
should be left alone. Some reluctant readers do better with nonfiction,
and need to be eased into fiction with another form of storytelling.
Elizabeth
--
"A little raised number at the end of a statement is not an icon of
inerrancy." _British Medical Journal_
Maskull
wrote:
>Chad R Orzel wrote:
>>
>> Dunno.
>> Are you blaming current critical theory for Macbeth, Hamlet, and King
>> Lear? Not the cheeriest pack of epic heroes, those guys.
>
>No, I'm blaming current critical theory for refusing to consider anyone
>who actually behaves heroically as a character worthy of literary
>consideration. Incidentally, a novel published today about Macbeth,
>Hamlet, or Lear (or their modern equivalents) would almost certainly be
>roundly trashed by the lit'ry critics. Why? Two kings & a prince --
>therefore, _not_ your average bumbling schlemiel -- elitism! Horrible,
>reactionary elitism! All _real_ fiction is supposed to be about, as
>intimated elsewhere on the froup, heroin-addicted, tongue-pierced
>sociopaths coming to grips with their own terminal internal rot.
[...]
Is that right? I guess DeLillo, Eco, Updike, et al. better get
with the program.