World Building
Cosimo
I have noticed the phrase "world building" a couple of times in this ng
but am not sure I know what it refers to. Does it describe the activity
of an author in devloping a setting (physical, sociological, cultural,
religious, technological, etc.) quite well, so that the setting becomes
less of a flimsy 2D backdrop for the plot and more of a "real" place?
If this is not what world building is, what is the term used to describe
this characteristic of some novels?
Since, I won't get any responses on the above question before posting this
I will call this type of setting development "hyper-development of
setting" or HDS.
I first read LotR when I was a wee lad and almost felt like Middle Earth
was real. The plot was tolerable sure, but the book was different in that
the setting was exotic (physically, technologically, culturally, etc.) and
the author employed HDS which gave me a very vivid image of the fictional
universe.
Due to my interest in the exotic/fantastic and the occasional yearning for
HDS, I have read a number of genre sci-fi and fantasy books over the
course of my life. Lately, however, I have sworn off genre-SF (with the
exception of gene wolfe). My urge for exotic, well crafted settings has
been overcome by my good (if i do say so myself :) taste in literature.
Though I now avoid genre-SF, I have not given up books with exotic
settings and HDS, however. I have found Afrikan & far eastern literature
(Achebe, Mahfouz, Rushdie, Vassanji, etc.) to be full of amazing, new (to
me) settings, many times more exotic or fantastic than the settings of
many genre-SF books. Of course, the added perk is that much of this
literature is amazingly good as well.
Many genre-SF books have characters who are are steeped in Western thought
and values. Sure these characters may have 3 arms, green skin, robot
butlers, and ray guns, but if, on the inside, the characters are Western
people with Western values, they aren't really that interesting. At least
for me, what is inside the cranium has more potential to be fascinating
and amazing than the mere objects that clutter a universe.
A good example of a Western writer failing to make their characters
something other than modern day Westerners is _The Day of Creation_ by
J.G. Ballard. This allegory takes place in north/central Afrika near the
Chad and the Central Afrikan Republic. The main character is an American
or European (I can't recall which) but a number of people in the book are
natives. The problem is, the setting and the locals don't come off as
even mildly Afrikan. The "Afrikan" characters are merely contemporary
Westerners (inside) who Ballard describes as having dark skin and as being
natives of Afrika. The local military leader could just as well be my
next door neighbor in Columbus, Ohio. The book doesn't necessarily fail
because of this, however, its purpose was not HDS (or convincing
development of setting) but allegory.
So a question I have is, are their any fans of HDS who have gone the route
I have taken and switched from genre-SF to non-Western literature? Any
fans of HDS that have read Achebe, Mahfouz, or Vassanji and feel that
these authors don't satisfy their yearning for HDS or that the settings
are exotic but not developed enough?
ralphus
---------------------------------------
my real e-mail -> barne...@osu.edu
Jake Kesinger
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: J.G. Ballard. This allegory takes place in north/central Afrika near the
^
: Chad and the Central Afrikan Republic. The main character is an American
^ ^
Why is it Afrika and Afrikan but not Amerika and Amerikan?
==Jake
Jo Walton
In article <barnes.183-19...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>
barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu "Cosimo" writes:
> So a question I have is, are their any fans of HDS who have gone the route
> I have taken and switched from genre-SF to non-Western literature? Any
> fans of HDS that have read Achebe, Mahfouz, or Vassanji and feel that
> these authors don't satisfy their yearning for HDS or that the settings
> are exotic but not developed enough?
It would strike me as unlikely that, if there were any such, you'd
encounter them on a newsgroup for discussion of SF. Whatever.
--
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.
Cosimo
In article <6menlu$9...@ttacs7.ttu.edu>, kesi...@math.ttu.edu (Jake
Kesinger) wrote:
Maybe it will be someday. Considering that fact that "k" & "s" take care
of all the shit we use "c" for, I don't know why the letter is even used.
Perhaps it has something to do with a national conspiracy to torment first
graders who are learning to read. I am sure there is an X-File episode
about it.
Kristopher/EOS
Cosimo wrote:
Might have something to do with Afrikaners (the language).
Kristopher/EOS
Bill McHale
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: In article <6menlu$9...@ttacs7.ttu.edu>, kesi...@math.ttu.edu (Jake
: Kesinger) wrote:
: >Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: >
: >: J.G. Ballard. This allegory takes place in north/central Afrika near the
: > ^
: >: Chad and the Central Afrikan Republic. The main character is an American
: > ^ ^
: >Why is it Afrika and Afrikan but not Amerika and Amerikan?
: >
: Maybe it will be someday. Considering that fact that "k" & "s" take care
: of all the shit we use "c" for, I don't know why the letter is even used.
: Perhaps it has something to do with a national conspiracy to torment first
: graders who are learning to read. I am sure there is an X-File episode
: about it.
Well the use of k to spell Afrika as opposed to the normal, recognized
Africa (Go to the UN, and any established atlas, its still Africa), is
just PC pretension.
As for C? Don't you know your linguistic history? A large number of
English words derive either Directly or indirectly (through French) from
Latin. In Latin C was used to produce what is now a hard K sound. The
only places you will find words with a K in them were words that latin
borrowed from Greek. During the Middle Ages, when spelling words in
Anglo-Saxon/English or German, using phonetics, the user got to decide
between K or C. When Dictionaries standarized English Spellings they
chose the most common ways that words were spelled. Thus you are going to
find very few words with Latin root spelled with a K, Greek words will be
normally spelled with a k as opposed to a c (though some exceptions, like
the Acropolis exist) and words with a germanic origin will probably be
mixed.
As for the s sound of C? Well that was caused by the corruption of Latin.
Caeser and Cicero were orignally pronounced with hard C's (which explains
why Kaiser is derived from Caeser).
--
Bill
***************************************************************************
The main problem with my job is that they expect me to actually work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home page - http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~wmchal1
***************************************************************************
Bill McHale
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: I have noticed the phrase "world building" a couple of times in this ng
: but am not sure I know what it refers to. Does it describe the activity
: of an author in devloping a setting (physical, sociological, cultural,
: religious, technological, etc.) quite well, so that the setting becomes
: less of a flimsy 2D backdrop for the plot and more of a "real" place?
: If this is not what world building is, what is the term used to describe
: this characteristic of some novels?
: Since, I won't get any responses on the above question before posting this
: I will call this type of setting development "hyper-development of
: setting" or HDS.
No that is world building, no need to invent a new, potentially confusing
term for an old idea. And to be quite frank I should think that in any
good Novel setting should be more than a 2D backdrop. As far as I am
concerned Plot, Character and Setting are all bound. That is the way it
is in the real world, and that is the way it should be in a good Novel.
: I first read LotR when I was a wee lad and almost felt like Middle Earth
: was real. The plot was tolerable sure, but the book was different in that
: the setting was exotic (physically, technologically, culturally, etc.) and
: the author employed HDS which gave me a very vivid image of the fictional
: universe.
: Due to my interest in the exotic/fantastic and the occasional yearning for
: HDS, I have read a number of genre sci-fi and fantasy books over the
: course of my life. Lately, however, I have sworn off genre-SF (with the
: exception of gene wolfe). My urge for exotic, well crafted settings has
: been overcome by my good (if i do say so myself :) taste in literature.
Ah, and so the standard ugly, and unjust criticism of SF has been leveled.
Sure there is plenty of pulp out there, but there is plenty of good stuff
out there as well. If you think that Gene Wolfe is all that is worth
reading in SF then you are either poorly informed, or have been coopted by
the chauvinistic literature elite.
Go out read Bradbury, Le Guin, Dick, Vonnagut, Lem and then we can talk.
: Though I now avoid genre-SF, I have not given up books with exotic
: settings and HDS, however. I have found Afrikan & far eastern literature
: (Achebe, Mahfouz, Rushdie, Vassanji, etc.) to be full of amazing, new (to
: me) settings, many times more exotic or fantastic than the settings of
: many genre-SF books. Of course, the added perk is that much of this
: literature is amazingly good as well.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't most of these people dimply draw on
their own parent cultures and neighboring cultures for their inspiration?
Essentially it seems you would be satisfied with pulp, as long as it was
pulp from another culture.
: Many genre-SF books have characters who are are steeped in Western thought
: and values. Sure these characters may have 3 arms, green skin, robot
: butlers, and ray guns, but if, on the inside, the characters are Western
: people with Western values, they aren't really that interesting. At least
: for me, what is inside the cranium has more potential to be fascinating
: and amazing than the mere objects that clutter a universe.
Just a thought, but I would argue that Western Culture leads to more
interesting characters than many others. This is not an issue of
chauvinism, rather the displacement, and rapid changes that seem to occur
in Western Culture far more easily allow for development of characters who
no longer fit in any paradigm. Further, you are treating westerners like
they are a monolithic culture. There is a Universe difference between
someone who grew up in fields of El Salvador and someone who grew up on
Park Ave, New York.
: A good example of a Western writer failing to make their characters
: something other than modern day Westerners is _The Day of Creation_ by
: J.G. Ballard. This allegory takes place in north/central Afrika near the
: Chad and the Central Afrikan Republic. The main character is an American
: or European (I can't recall which) but a number of people in the book are
: natives. The problem is, the setting and the locals don't come off as
: even mildly Afrikan. The "Afrikan" characters are merely contemporary
: Westerners (inside) who Ballard describes as having dark skin and as being
: natives of Afrika. The local military leader could just as well be my
: next door neighbor in Columbus, Ohio. The book doesn't necessarily fail
: because of this, however, its purpose was not HDS (or convincing
: development of setting) but allegory.
Yes this might be true, but there are also authors who have developed
completely non western cultures for their stories. Look at what David
Brin did with the Soro in the Uplift War, Bradbury did with the Martians
in the Martian Chronicles or Le Guin did in the Left Hand of Darkness and
tell me that these authors are merely putting alien skins on "Westerners:.
Kristopher/EOS
Bill McHale wrote, and I did snip therefrom...
> Yes this might be true, but there are also authors who have developed
> completely non western cultures for their stories. Look at what David
> Brin did with the Soro in the Uplift War, Bradbury did with the Martians
> in the Martian Chronicles or Le Guin did in the Left Hand of Darkness and
> tell me that these authors are merely putting alien skins on "Westerners:.
I agree completely with you, Bill, but one minor thing...aren't the Gubru the
antogonists in "Uplift War?"
Kristopher/EOS
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <6mm3ae$o2p$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>
>As for C? Don't you know your linguistic history? A large number of
>English words derive either Directly or indirectly (through French) from
>Latin. In Latin C was used to produce what is now a hard K sound. The
>only places you will find words with a K in them were words that latin
>borrowed from Greek. During the Middle Ages, when spelling words in
>Anglo-Saxon/English or German, using phonetics, the user got to decide
>between K or C. When Dictionaries standarized English Spellings they
>chose the most common ways that words were spelled. Thus you are going to
>find very few words with Latin root spelled with a K, Greek words will be
>normally spelled with a k as opposed to a c (though some exceptions, like
>the Acropolis exist) and words with a germanic origin will probably be
>mixed.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Bill McHale
Kristopher/EOS (eosl...@net-link.net) wrote:
: Bill McHale wrote, and I did snip therefrom...
: > Yes this might be true, but there are also authors who have developed
: > completely non western cultures for their stories. Look at what David
: > Brin did with the Soro in the Uplift War, Bradbury did with the Martians
: > in the Martian Chronicles or Le Guin did in the Left Hand of Darkness and
: > tell me that these authors are merely putting alien skins on "Westerners:.
: I agree completely with you, Bill, but one minor thing...aren't the Gubru the
: antogonists in "Uplift War?"
Oops... Man that has to be the worst spelling mistake I have ever made :)
Fortunately Krat is not around to punish me for mixing her up with a Bird
:)
Bill McHale
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net) wrote:
My guess it has to do with the non-standard spelling of English. If you
read any documents from the period right around the invention of the
Printing Press or before, you will probably find that the words are
spelled differently from document to document. Heck in Le' Morte
D'Aruthur, Thomas Mallory does not even spell his name the same way every
time. So I figure maybe someone couldn't decide between the two, and put
them both in a word. Later someone else was using that word (whatever it
was) to spell a word that rhymed, and so on.
I think also alot of those words also originally ended in e (Can you
believe that they use to use 'e's even more frequently than its used
today?)
Carrie Schutrick
>I think also alot of those words also originally ended in e (Can you
>believe that they use to use 'e's even more frequently than its used
>today?)
Thing is, those E's used to be pronounced. And, yes, the word
"knight" used to sound rather like "k-nig-t."
--Carrie S.
Ah, linguistics...
*****Carrie Schutri...@andrew.cmu.edu--Pittsburgh PA--CMU*****
<http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~caos>
Unsolicited commercial email sent to this address will be subject to a $1500
processing fee. Sending mail to this address, manually or automatically,
implies consent to these terms.
Cosimo
>Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>: In article <6menlu$9...@ttacs7.ttu.edu>, kesi...@math.ttu.edu (Jake
>: Kesinger) wrote:
>
>: >Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>: >
>: >: J.G. Ballard. This allegory takes place in north/central Afrika near the
>: > ^
>: >: Chad and the Central Afrikan Republic. The main character is an American
>: > ^ ^
>: >Why is it Afrika and Afrikan but not Amerika and Amerikan?
>: >
>: Maybe it will be someday. Considering that fact that "k" & "s" take care
>: of all the shit we use "c" for, I don't know why the letter is even used.
>: Perhaps it has something to do with a national conspiracy to torment first
>: graders who are learning to read. I am sure there is an X-File episode
>: about it.
>
>Well the use of k to spell Afrika as opposed to the normal, recognized
>Africa (Go to the UN, and any established atlas, its still Africa), is
>just PC pretension.
I don't know if I can agree with that. English speaking people are not
the only people who ever have a reason to spell that particular
continent. In particular, many people who live there speak languages in
which the "c" does not represent a "k" sound. It is only natural for them
to want to keep their phoneme-grapheme corrospondence tight and orderly
and they would therefore opt for the "k" spelling. Your accusation of "PC
pretenstion" may apply to some English speaking people who use the "k",
but I don't think you can apply that label to people who are not native
English speakers who use the "k."
>
>As for C? Don't you know your linguistic history?
Yes. I still think that we should either dump the "c" and replace it with
"k" & "s" or else dump the "k" and replace it with "c" while at the same
time replacing "c" 's wherever they represent and "s" sound. Doing this
would really help people learn to write and read English.
ralph
Cosimo
>Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>
>: I have noticed the phrase "world building" a couple of times in this ng
>: but am not sure I know what it refers to. Does it describe the activity
>: of an author in devloping a setting (physical, sociological, cultural,
>: religious, technological, etc.) quite well, so that the setting becomes
>: less of a flimsy 2D backdrop for the plot and more of a "real" place?
>
>: If this is not what world building is, what is the term used to describe
>: this characteristic of some novels?
>
>: Since, I won't get any responses on the above question before posting this
>: I will call this type of setting development "hyper-development of
>: setting" or HDS.
>
>No that is world building, no need to invent a new, potentially confusing
>term for an old idea. And to be quite frank I should think that in any
>good Novel setting should be more than a 2D backdrop. As far as I am
>concerned Plot, Character and Setting are all bound. That is the way it
>is in the real world, and that is the way it should be in a good Novel.
Interesting opinion. I lean towards a less prescriptive philosophy of
writing, however. Making up rules for how people should/shouldn't write
novels doesn't do much for creativity and makes for a pretty boring
reading selection. I am always pleased when an author reinvents the novel
by approaching it from a completely new and bizarre direction.
>
>: Due to my interest in the exotic/fantastic and the occasional yearning for
>: HDS, I have read a number of genre sci-fi and fantasy books over the
>: course of my life. Lately, however, I have sworn off genre-SF (with the
>: exception of gene wolfe). My urge for exotic, well crafted settings has
>: been overcome by my good (if i do say so myself :) taste in literature.
>
>Ah, and so the standard ugly, and unjust criticism of SF has been leveled.
>Sure there is plenty of pulp out there, but there is plenty of good stuff
>out there as well. If you think that Gene Wolfe is all that is worth
>reading in SF then you are either poorly informed, or have been coopted by
>the chauvinistic literature elite.
>
>Go out read Bradbury, Le Guin, Dick, Vonnagut, Lem and then we can talk.
Dick's good stuff, Vonnegut, Lem & Bradbury are all non-genre SF in my
book. You may categorize differently but if you critique my stand on the
value of genre-SF you can't nail me for shitting on books I don't even
consider genre-SF. Le Guin is genre-SF in my book and exceptional in the
field. As good as she is, there are so many better non-genre writers out
there, that I haven't been able to bring myself to pick up one of her
books in quite a while.
>
>: Though I now avoid genre-SF, I have not given up books with exotic
>: settings and HDS, however. I have found Afrikan & far eastern literature
>: (Achebe, Mahfouz, Rushdie, Vassanji, etc.) to be full of amazing, new (to
>: me) settings, many times more exotic or fantastic than the settings of
>: many genre-SF books. Of course, the added perk is that much of this
>: literature is amazingly good as well.
>
>Correct me if I am wrong, but don't most of these people dimply draw on
>their own parent cultures and neighboring cultures for their inspiration?
>Essentially it seems you would be satisfied with pulp, as long as it was
>pulp from another culture.
The people listed above are all literary heavy hitters. Amoung the 4
people I listed, there are a number of Booker Prizes (and short list
appearances), Nobel Prizes and numerous other awards to their credit.
Other authors I like that are non-Western are Okri, Ngugi, & Naipal. I
don't think you can criticize these folks for being talentless pulp
writers any more than you can the initial list. I think I tend to have
pretty high standards for the literature I choose to read.
What I intended to say is that HDS is one of many things I look for in a
novel. HDS is by no means the primary thing I look for in a novel,
although it is nice to bump into it from time to time. I cannot find the
combination of good HDS and good writing in genre-SF but I have found it
in non-genre SF from the above mentioned Afrikan, Asian, & Caribbean
authors. Considering what I wrote in my earlier paragraphs, I am not sure
how you came to the conclusion that all I cared about was exotic
settings.
>
>: Many genre-SF books have characters who are are steeped in Western thought
>: and values. Sure these characters may have 3 arms, green skin, robot
>: butlers, and ray guns, but if, on the inside, the characters are Western
>: people with Western values, they aren't really that interesting. At least
>: for me, what is inside the cranium has more potential to be fascinating
>: and amazing than the mere objects that clutter a universe.
>
>Just a thought, but I would argue that Western Culture leads to more
>interesting characters than many others. This is not an issue of
>chauvinism, rather the displacement, and rapid changes that seem to occur
>in Western Culture far more easily allow for development of characters who
>no longer fit in any paradigm. Further, you are treating westerners like
>they are a monolithic culture. There is a Universe difference between
>someone who grew up in fields of El Salvador and someone who grew up on
>Park Ave, New York.
Of course, I have made some generalizations. Let me avoid this problem by
making a couple of categories. Let us say there are societies that have
been strongly influenced by individualism, a linear approach to history &
religion, Xianity (esp. calvinism), & technology but that do not place a
huge emphasis on culture. These are people W. Then there are other
people that are more communal, less influenced by Xianity (esp.
calvinism), more cyclical in their view of history & religion, less
influenced by technology and who hold culture to be incredibly important.
We can call these folke people E. So go thru my initial post and replace
Westerners with "people W" and non-Westerners with "people E." This is
more accurate because i certainly do not think (and did not mean to imply)
that geography is useful tool for dividing up people into categories (esp.
as far as the topic of this thread is concerned). In fact, I thought that
people commonly used the terms "Western" and "non-Western" as categories
that really didn't have much to do with geography. I consider
Australians (exluding the aborigines) Westerners, and the people of the
Caribean and much of South America non-Westerners. Afrikans I consider
non-Westerners and Europeans Westerners.
>Yes this might be true, but there are also authors who have developed
>completely non western cultures for their stories. Look at what David
>Brin did with the Soro in the Uplift War, Bradbury did with the Martians
>in the Martian Chronicles or Le Guin did in the Left Hand of Darkness and
>tell me that these authors are merely putting alien skins on "Westerners:.
It has been a while since I read Martion Chronicles so I will say nothing
of that. Brin's Uplift stuff I have not read. Le Guin's _Left Hand of
Darkness_ does do a decent job of developing the cultural, political,
ethical, social structure of the people of whatever they planet they were
from. It is more 2D than I would have liked but considering the size of
the novel it is not bad. Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ does a better job
of describing the society of the moon people than _Left Hand of Darkness_
does in telling us about the hermaphrodite people.
I never said that one could not find good HDS in genre-SF, just that
genre-SF often (not all the time) is bad literature (IMHO). There are
genre-SF books with good HDS (e.g., LoTR, The Dispossessed) and there are
good genre-SF books (e.g., LoTR, BotNS).
Cosimo
Some more of my thoughts on "world building" as it relates both to writers
and readers.
The writer has several choices when developing a setting. Among these would be:
1) using the environment around himself/herself as a setting
2) creating a purely fantastic setting (as in LotR & the Foundation Trilogy)
3) using a real environment as setting but using one that no longer exists
(e.g., Anthony Burgess' _A Dead Man in Deptford_)
4) using a contemporary & real setting but one that the author doesn't
know through a lifetime of experience, but through research (would some of
Vollman's works be an example of this?)
In choosing a setting, the writer can choose to use what s/he knows (1)
make something up (2) or do research on an existing setting, and fill in
the gaps with what he or she chooses (3 & 4).
An author assuming his/her audience will live in the same environment as
s/he can get away with the least setting development and just let the
reader fill in the info. with their knowledge of reality. If I write a
novel about Columbus, OH and it takes place in 1998 and all my readers
will be from Columbus, then I can spent next to zero time on setting and
work on plot or some other element of writing.
Just because it is possible to skimp on setting development when using
option #1, doesn't mean it can't happen when using options 2-4. Short
stories set in fantastic places don't allow for much setting development.
You may learn that the sky is saffron, the planet has 2 moons, and that a
industrial revolution has
yet to occur, but the rest of the lines of the story may be used up by
plot. This does not always apply to short stories though. I have read
works of SF with 500+ pages that only offered a sketchy outline of the
"world" the characters lived in.
The readers don't necessarilly see things the way the writers do, however.
For instance. If author A is from Ohio and s/he uses option #1 for
setting development, then I think, "oh, this setting is pretty boring and
does not bring the reality of a "new world" to me." However, a reader of
the same novel from Western Sahara might think, "this setting is very
interesting and novel to me. it opens up a whole new world to me."
As far as readers are concerned, the setting can be either familiar or
unfamiliar (whether or not the reader is interested by the particular
unfamiliar setting is another topic). An unfamiliar setting, whether it
be a type 2 or a type 1 (that does not represent the readers culture of
origin), may be equally fascinating to a reader. (although a production of
a type 2 rather than a type 1 story represents 2 quite different processes
for the writer)
The amount of creative effort that an author puts into a type 2, 3, or 4
setting, however, is always going to be more than the that put into
developing a type #1 setting.
The bulk of what I would read in a year used to be type 2 novels (SF &
genre-SF). Lately, I have been reading more type 3 and type 1 novels.
From a writing standpoint, these are very different types literature.
From my standpoint, a well developed and alien universe being presented to
me can be equally fascinating, whether the "new" universe is a location or
historical era of this planet I was previously ignorant of (_Anna
Karenina_, _Midnight's Children_), or if the new universe is a fantasy of
an author (LotR).
One point I wish to make before I sign off has to do with the phrase
"world building." This phrase seems to specifically relate to type 2
setting development. However, does _A Dead Man in Deptford_ (it depicts
Chris Marlowe's England) exibit less creativity than an average sword &
sorcery novel? Is not a great deal of creativity needed to fill in the
gaps of historical knowledge to build the setting for _ADMiD_ (and many
historical fiction pieces)? However, it seems to me that the term "world
building" might not be applied to _ADMiD_ whereas it would in say, _The
Sword of Shannara_. Is the criterion we wish to use when applying the
phrase "world building" specific to what the author must do to develop the
setting, or what we, the reader get from the setting?
ralphus
Dan Goodman
In article <barnes.183-23...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>,
Cosimo <barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu> wrote:
>Some more of my thoughts on "world building" as it relates both to writers
>and readers.
>
>The writer has several choices when developing a setting. Among these would be:
>
>1) using the environment around himself/herself as a setting
>2) creating a purely fantastic setting (as in LotR & the Foundation Trilogy)
>3) using a real environment as setting but using one that no longer exists
>(e.g., Anthony Burgess' _A Dead Man in Deptford_)
>4) using a contemporary & real setting but one that the author doesn't
>know through a lifetime of experience, but through research (would some of
>Vollman's works be an example of this?)
>
>In choosing a setting, the writer can choose to use what s/he knows (1)
>make something up (2) or do research on an existing setting, and fill in
>the gaps with what he or she chooses (3 & 4).
>
>An author assuming his/her audience will live in the same environment as
>s/he can get away with the least setting development and just let the
>reader fill in the info. with their knowledge of reality. If I write a
>novel about Columbus, OH and it takes place in 1998 and all my readers
>will be from Columbus, then I can spent next to zero time on setting and
>work on plot or some other element of writing.
_Only_ if 1) you know _all_ the neighborhoods in Columbus Ohio well. So
you don't need to go there and look. 2) You use characters who don't
notice what's around them. 3) If you're going to have your characters
driving (or being driven) around, you know _exactly_ which streets are
oneway and which way -- and where the potholes are. That one you can get
around by having them take the bus (but then you have to know all the bus
routes they use -- and not just what the schedules say, because you need
to know how well the routes adhere to schedules and what kinds of
passengers ride the bus.)
No. Wrong. Inaccurate. More such effort goes into one of Lawrence
Block's Matthew Scudder mysteries than goes into books at the low end of
the sf "mid-list".
>The bulk of what I would read in a year used to be type 2 novels (SF &
>genre-SF). Lately, I have been reading more type 3 and type 1 novels.
>From a writing standpoint, these are very different types literature.
>From my standpoint, a well developed and alien universe being presented to
>me can be equally fascinating, whether the "new" universe is a location or
>historical era of this planet I was previously ignorant of (_Anna
>Karenina_, _Midnight's Children_), or if the new universe is a fantasy of
>an author (LotR).
>
>One point I wish to make before I sign off has to do with the phrase
>"world building." This phrase seems to specifically relate to type 2
>setting development. However, does _A Dead Man in Deptford_ (it depicts
>Chris Marlowe's England) exibit less creativity than an average sword &
>sorcery novel? Is not a great deal of creativity needed to fill in the
>gaps of historical knowledge to build the setting for _ADMiD_ (and many
>historical fiction pieces)? However, it seems to me that the term "world
>building" might not be applied to _ADMiD_ whereas it would in say, _The
>Sword of Shannara_. Is the criterion we wish to use when applying the
>phrase "world building" specific to what the author must do to develop the
>setting, or what we, the reader get from the setting?
>
>ralphus
>
>
>---------------------------------------
>my real e-mail -> barne...@osu.edu
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
The Person Your Mother Warned You About
>which the "c" does not represent a "k" sound. It is only natural for them
Perhaps, but that's not relevant to a discussion of English-language
spelling. The canonical English-language spelling uses the letter 'c'
>Yes. I still think that we should either dump the "c" and replace it with
>"k" & "s" or else dump the "k" and replace it with "c" while at the same
>time replacing "c" 's wherever they represent and "s" sound. Doing this
>would really help people learn to write and read English.
Amazingly enough, there are many people who manage to read and write
English with no difficulty, letter 'c' and all. Heck, my 7 year old
son manages quite nicely.
FWIW, though, I think we should dump the 'c' and replace it with Java
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "Go not to the programmers for counsel,
mailto:phyd...@liii.com for they will say both 1 and 0"
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux -- Elvish saying
Mark A Mandel
Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
: Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net) wrote:
: : In article <6mm3ae$o2p$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
: : >Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: : >
: : >As for C? Don't you know your linguistic history? A large number of
: : >English words derive either Directly or indirectly (through French) from
: : >Latin. In Latin C was used to produce what is now a hard K sound. The
: : >only places you will find words with a K in them were words that latin
: : >borrowed from Greek. During the Middle Ages, when spelling words in
: : >Anglo-Saxon/English or German, using phonetics, the user got to decide
: : >between K or C. When Dictionaries standarized English Spellings they
: : >chose the most common ways that words were spelled. Thus you are going to
: : >find very few words with Latin root spelled with a K, Greek words will be
: : >normally spelled with a k as opposed to a c (though some exceptions, like
: : >the Acropolis exist) and words with a germanic origin will probably be
: : >mixed.
: : >
: : How did the 'ck' combination happen?
: My guess it has to do with the non-standard spelling of English.
Not really. "ck" is actually pretty standard. First of all, observe that
we often show whether a vowel is so-called "long" or "short" (they used to
be ACTUALLY long and short, but that is another story) by whether or not
we double the consonant after them, before another vowel. Compare:
faddish fading
tiny tinny
bony bonny
But we don't use double "k" (or double "c" *for this purpose*). Instead we
use "ck":
taken tacky
: I think also alot of those words also originally ended in e (Can you
: believe that they use to use 'e's even more frequently than its used
: today?)
And most of our "silent e's" were originally pronounced. In Chaucer's
time,
fade tide bone
would have fit right into the first column of the list above.
-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
Philological Busybody
a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
--
If you're reading this in a newsgroup: to reply by mail,
remove the obvious spam-blocker from my edress.
Anton Sherwood
Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> writes
: .... In Latin C was used to produce what is now a hard K sound. The
: only places you will find words with a K in them were words that latin
: borrowed from Greek.
And not all of those.
: .... Thus you are going to
: find very few words with Latin root spelled with a K, Greek words will be
: normally spelled with a k as opposed to a c (though some exceptions, like
: the Acropolis exist) ...
I dunno what English dictionaries you've been looking at, but in mine
nearly all Greek words are Latinized: k>c, kh>ch, oi>oe, ai>ae,
-os > -us ...
--
"How'd ya like to climb this high WITHOUT no mountain?" --Porky Pine 70.6.19
Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher at netcom point com
Cosimo
In article <6mp0ku$i68$1...@cedar.liii.com>, phyd...@liii.com (The Person
Your Mother Warned You About) wrote:
>In article <barnes.183-23...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>,
>Cosimo <barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu> wrote:
>>Yes. I still think that we should either dump the "c" and replace it with
>>"k" & "s" or else dump the "k" and replace it with "c" while at the same
>>time replacing "c" 's wherever they represent and "s" sound. Doing this
>>would really help people learn to write and read English.
>
>Amazingly enough, there are many people who manage to read and write
>English with no difficulty, letter 'c' and all.
True. However, English is the textbook example of a language with horrible
grapheme-phoneme corrospondence. In fact, I am not sure there is a worse
example anyone could cite. Serbo-Croatian & Spanish on the other hand are
textbook examples of languages where there is a very close mapping of
grapheme to phoneme. For instance, English uses 14 vowel phonemes and 5 &
1/2 vowel graphemes. Spanish has 5 vowel phonemes and 5 vowel graphemes
and they nearly always corrospond.
One would think that learning to spell a language where each grapheme
corrosponded closely to a particular sound (and vice versa) would be
easier than a language like English where a particular sound could be
represented by 5 or more graphemes or where a single grapheme might
represent 5 or more phonemes.
My ex-girl friend speaks, reads, & writes 7 languages (and can speak but
not read or write an 8th). Though she picked up spoken English quite fast
and is now more fluent in it than most college seniors, she still admits
that the spelling system we use is pretty irritating.
Although dictionaries did much to standardize spelling and allow people
from diverse parts of the English speaking world to communicate with each
other graphically, they have also slowed down (I think) the evolution of
the language. Though a dictionary is intended to be descriptive, many
people take them as prescriptive and that therefore slows down the process
of change in the language.
There may be a natural tendency for people to write the language in a way
that corrosponds more to pronunciation. If that is true, over a long
period of time, the lack of phoneme/grapheme corrospondence in relation to
/s/ & /k/ may be solved. Reading graffiti (or is it graphiti?) and liner
notes on some pop music albums, one gets the idea that there is a movement
to use the written code in a more sensible way.
Cosimo
In article <MQVj1.1157$P8.33...@ptah.visi.com>, dsg...@visi.com (Dan
Goodman) wrote:
>In article <barnes.183-23...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>,
>Cosimo <barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu> wrote:
>>An author assuming his/her audience will live in the same environment as
>>s/he can get away with the least setting development and just let the
>>reader fill in the info. with their knowledge of reality. If I write a
>>novel about Columbus, OH and it takes place in 1998 and all my readers
>>will be from Columbus, then I can spent next to zero time on setting and
>>work on plot or some other element of writing.
>
>_Only_ if 1) you know _all_ the neighborhoods in Columbus Ohio well. So
>you don't need to go there and look. 2) You use characters who don't
>notice what's around them. 3) If you're going to have your characters
>driving (or being driven) around, you know _exactly_ which streets are
>oneway and which way -- and where the potholes are. That one you can get
>around by having them take the bus (but then you have to know all the bus
>routes they use -- and not just what the schedules say, because you need
>to know how well the routes adhere to schedules and what kinds of
>passengers ride the bus.)
When I say "spend next to zero time on setting" I refer to using no
references to setting above and beyond that which is needed to advance the
plot. In other words, using few sentences to describe setting for
setting's sake. It is quite rare to see a plot that is completely
settingless. If the characters drive a car rather than ride in a horse &
buggy, or if they wear clothes rather than walk around nude, that is
setting and that type of information is likely to be divulged as part of
the plot. Gormenghast, for instance, divulges info. about he setting in
sentences whose purpose is to divulge info. about the setting. It also
divulges info. about the setting in many of the sentences whose purpose
are to further the plot.
>>As far as readers are concerned, the setting can be either familiar or
>>unfamiliar (whether or not the reader is interested by the particular
>>unfamiliar setting is another topic). An unfamiliar setting, whether it
>>be a type 2 or a type 1 (that does not represent the readers culture of
>>origin), may be equally fascinating to a reader. (although a production of
>>a type 2 rather than a type 1 story represents 2 quite different processes
>>for the writer)
>>
>>The amount of creative effort that an author puts into a type 2, 3, or 4
>>setting, however, is always going to be more than the that put into
>>developing a type #1 setting.
>
>No. Wrong. Inaccurate. More such effort goes into one of Lawrence
>Block's Matthew Scudder mysteries than goes into books at the low end of
>the sf "mid-list".
True. There is the question of amount of detail and cohesiveness of the
setting. At a given level of detail & cohesiveness, one would expect that
type 1 settings would require less effort on the part of the author than
type 2,3, or 4 settings. Does that statement ring true to you or is it
still off?
Bill McHale
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: In article <6mm3ae$o2p$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
: >Well the use of k to spell Afrika as opposed to the normal, recognized
: >Africa (Go to the UN, and any established atlas, its still Africa), is
: >just PC pretension.
: I don't know if I can agree with that. English speaking people are not
: the only people who ever have a reason to spell that particular
: continent. In particular, many people who live there speak languages in
: which the "c" does not represent a "k" sound. It is only natural for them
: to want to keep their phoneme-grapheme corrospondence tight and orderly
: and they would therefore opt for the "k" spelling. Your accusation of "PC
: pretenstion" may apply to some English speaking people who use the "k",
: but I don't think you can apply that label to people who are not native
: English speakers who use the "k."
I am only refering to people who are spelling it in English with the Latin
derived Alphabet. Naturally if a person's language has a different
spelling to English's spelling, then that spelling is correct inside their
own language. Hell trying to force then to spell the English way would be
like trying to force the spelling on a language that has a different
alphabet (such as Arabic or Greek). My point refers only to the English
spelling of the word, not any other spelling.
: >
: >As for C? Don't you know your linguistic history?
: Yes. I still think that we should either dump the "c" and replace it with
: "k" & "s" or else dump the "k" and replace it with "c" while at the same
: time replacing "c" 's wherever they represent and "s" sound. Doing this
: would really help people learn to write and read English.
If one was to dump every duplication and ambiguity in the English
language, one would have a very different written language than we have
today. Somewhere floating around the internet is a spoof that does just
this in gradual fashion.
Jake Kesinger
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: In article <6mm3ae$o2p$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
: >Well the use of k to spell Afrika as opposed to the normal, recognized
: >Africa (Go to the UN, and any established atlas, its still Africa), is
: >just PC pretension.
: I don't know if I can agree with that. English speaking people are not
: the only people who ever have a reason to spell that particular
: continent. In particular, many people who live there speak languages in
: which the "c" does not represent a "k" sound. It is only natural for them
: to want to keep their phoneme-grapheme corrospondence tight and orderly
: and they would therefore opt for the "k" spelling.
What language are you writing in? English. Which orthography should you
use? English. A native francophone writing in English shouldn't spell
the peninsula between China and Japan ``Corea,'' although that is the
French spelling.
And, even more in particular, many people who live in Africa speak languages
whose written form doesn't even *have* a ``c.'' Please give an example
of a language spoken in Africa, besides Afrikaans, that spells Africa with
a k.
Also, if you really want to keep your ``phoneme-grapheme corrosponcende
tight and orderly,'' what do you think about the transliteration of Chinese?
: Your accusation of "PC
: pretenstion" may apply to some English speaking people who use the "k",
: but I don't think you can apply that label to people who are not native
: English speakers who use the "k."
Yes, you can, after it has been pointed out to them that they're wrong.
==Jake ``if not before'' K.
Bill McHale
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: In article <6mm4c1$ofm$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
: >No that is world building, no need to invent a new, potentially confusing
: >term for an old idea. And to be quite frank I should think that in any
: >good Novel setting should be more than a 2D backdrop. As far as I am
: >concerned Plot, Character and Setting are all bound. That is the way it
: >is in the real world, and that is the way it should be in a good Novel.
: Interesting opinion. I lean towards a less prescriptive philosophy of
: writing, however. Making up rules for how people should/shouldn't write
: novels doesn't do much for creativity and makes for a pretty boring
: reading selection. I am always pleased when an author reinvents the novel
: by approaching it from a completely new and bizarre direction.
Why should it make for a very boring reading selection? I am not saying
that every story has to give equal treatment to each, but I would argue
that each help define the other. After all can you really know a
character, what motivates them if you don't know about their surroundings,
their past? And as for plot... Well I think plot is the driving force
that causes the characters and setting to evolve and change throught the
course of the work.
: >Ah, and so the standard ugly, and unjust criticism of SF has been leveled.
: >Sure there is plenty of pulp out there, but there is plenty of good stuff
: >out there as well. If you think that Gene Wolfe is all that is worth
: >reading in SF then you are either poorly informed, or have been coopted by
: >the chauvinistic literature elite.
: >
: >Go out read Bradbury, Le Guin, Dick, Vonnagut, Lem and then we can talk.
: Dick's good stuff, Vonnegut, Lem & Bradbury are all non-genre SF in my
: book. You may categorize differently but if you critique my stand on the
: value of genre-SF you can't nail me for shitting on books I don't even
: consider genre-SF. Le Guin is genre-SF in my book and exceptional in the
: field. As good as she is, there are so many better non-genre writers out
: there, that I haven't been able to bring myself to pick up one of her
: books in quite a while.
What exactly is non-genre SF? Either it is SF or it is not, and all of the
above have written novels that are undeniably SF, even if in some cases
their authors would like to deny it so they can distance themselves from
the guttern that the Literary elite place SF. Naturally of course it
serves your argument to claim that most of these people do not write SF,
or at least genre-SF, but that sort of redefinition of the field always
smacks of intellectual dishonesty to me. I can pick any field I want and
select out the best writers and then claim that the genre is not worth the
paper its novels are printed on.
: >Correct me if I am wrong, but don't most of these people dimply draw on
: >their own parent cultures and neighboring cultures for their inspiration?
: >Essentially it seems you would be satisfied with pulp, as long as it was
: >pulp from another culture.
: The people listed above are all literary heavy hitters. Amoung the 4
: people I listed, there are a number of Booker Prizes (and short list
: appearances), Nobel Prizes and numerous other awards to their credit.
: Other authors I like that are non-Western are Okri, Ngugi, & Naipal. I
: don't think you can criticize these folks for being talentless pulp
: writers any more than you can the initial list. I think I tend to have
: pretty high standards for the literature I choose to read.
I never claimed that these people were no-talent hacks. Clearly these
writers are hightly appreciated by today's literary elite. Though whether
their importance will endure is something that only time will tell. After
all who could have guessed in the 19th Century that Charles Dickens would
be regarded as perhaps the most important author from mid-19th Century
England?
In any case my point is that at least in the case of Rushdie (I am not
familiar with the works of the other authors), he is not engaging in world
building, rather taking a world he is familiar with and extending it and
describing it for his own purposes. By that standard many non-western
authors, regardless of talent would be placed ahead of most western
authors when it comes to developing settings.
: What I intended to say is that HDS is one of many things I look for in a
: novel. HDS is by no means the primary thing I look for in a novel,
: although it is nice to bump into it from time to time. I cannot find the
: combination of good HDS and good writing in genre-SF but I have found it
: in non-genre SF from the above mentioned Afrikan, Asian, & Caribbean
: authors. Considering what I wrote in my earlier paragraphs, I am not sure
: how you came to the conclusion that all I cared about was exotic
: settings.
Specifically your complaint about how authors specifically built worlds
where the characters, even if aliens, behaved like a westerner. While it
is a valid complaint, it suggests that you prefer the exotic over the
mundane. Indeed your emphasis on non US or European writers also
strengthens this idea.
: >
: >: Many genre-SF books have characters who are are steeped in Western thought
: >: and values. Sure these characters may have 3 arms, green skin, robot
: >: butlers, and ray guns, but if, on the inside, the characters are Western
: >: people with Western values, they aren't really that interesting. At least
: >: for me, what is inside the cranium has more potential to be fascinating
: >: and amazing than the mere objects that clutter a universe.
: >
: >Just a thought, but I would argue that Western Culture leads to more
: >interesting characters than many others. This is not an issue of
: >chauvinism, rather the displacement, and rapid changes that seem to occur
: >in Western Culture far more easily allow for development of characters who
: >no longer fit in any paradigm. Further, you are treating westerners like
: >they are a monolithic culture. There is a Universe difference between
: >someone who grew up in fields of El Salvador and someone who grew up on
: >Park Ave, New York.
: Of course, I have made some generalizations. Let me avoid this problem by
: making a couple of categories. Let us say there are societies that have
: been strongly influenced by individualism, a linear approach to history &
: religion, Xianity (esp. calvinism), & technology but that do not place a
: huge emphasis on culture. These are people W. Then there are other
: people that are more communal, less influenced by Xianity (esp.
: calvinism), more cyclical in their view of history & religion, less
: influenced by technology and who hold culture to be incredibly important.
: We can call these folke people E.
Well first, its Christianity not Xianity. Second all of the features of
people W is what defines their culture. The attitudes of a society and
its culture cannot be easily seperated. Further your descriptions of W
match the USA pretty well, but almost nowhere else, and to be quite honest
I cannot think of a contemporary society that matches people E too
closely. I suppose India comes relatively close. As for the "importance"
of culture, sure their are some cultures that are more static than others,
and those cultures tend to value that static nature, but as China clearly
shows, when necessary, almost any culture is capable of massice
restructuring in a rather short period.
: So go thru my initial post and replace
: Westerners with "people W" and non-Westerners with "people E." This is
: more accurate because i certainly do not think (and did not mean to imply)
: that geography is useful tool for dividing up people into categories (esp.
: as far as the topic of this thread is concerned). In fact, I thought that
: people commonly used the terms "Western" and "non-Western" as categories
: that really didn't have much to do with geography. I consider
: Australians (exluding the aborigines) Westerners, and the people of the
: Caribean and much of South America non-Westerners. Afrikans I consider
: non-Westerners and Europeans Westerners.
Your right in terms that Geography is not the dominant divisor, however
the simple fact of the matter is that the definition of westerner depends
on your starting point. If you use Christianity as the hallmark of
Western Culture, the All of the Americas are essentially Western. If you
use other determinants, the line might be drawn differently, but a place
like Latin America remains a problem since culturally it does not fit to
closely with any culture, being an amalgamation of Western, African and
Native American peoples.
: >Yes this might be true, but there are also authors who have developed
: >completely non western cultures for their stories. Look at what David
: >Brin did with the Soro in the Uplift War, Bradbury did with the Martians
: >in the Martian Chronicles or Le Guin did in the Left Hand of Darkness and
: >tell me that these authors are merely putting alien skins on "Westerners:.
: It has been a while since I read Martion Chronicles so I will say nothing
: of that. Brin's Uplift stuff I have not read. Le Guin's _Left Hand of
: Darkness_ does do a decent job of developing the cultural, political,
: ethical, social structure of the people of whatever they planet they were
: from. It is more 2D than I would have liked but considering the size of
: the novel it is not bad. Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ does a better job
: of describing the society of the moon people than _Left Hand of Darkness_
: does in telling us about the hermaphrodite people.
: I never said that one could not find good HDS in genre-SF, just that
: genre-SF often (not all the time) is bad literature (IMHO). There are
: genre-SF books with good HDS (e.g., LoTR, The Dispossessed) and there are
: good genre-SF books (e.g., LoTR, BotNS).
Ah, but by going out of your way to say that, you make it sound as if SF
is somehow less worthy of respect. When push comes to shove an enormous
amount of garbage is produced in every field every year. For every
Magical Realist like Borges or Rushdie, there is an uncounted number of
hacks who try to copy them. This is true in every langueage and every
possible literary division. After all Lem was not the only person in the
Eastern Block writing SF during the Cold War, just the only one to be
approved by the Soviet overlords and also worth importing and translating.
Bill McHale
ld.std.com>:
Distribution:
Mark A Mandel (mam-DIE-S...@world.std.com) wrote:
: Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
: : Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net) wrote:
: : : In article <6mm3ae$o2p$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
: : : >Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: : : >
: : : >As for C? Don't you know your linguistic history? A large number of
: : : >English words derive either Directly or indirectly (through French) from
: : : >Latin. In Latin C was used to produce what is now a hard K sound. The
: : : >only places you will find words with a K in them were words that latin
: : : >borrowed from Greek. During the Middle Ages, when spelling words in
: : : >Anglo-Saxon/English or German, using phonetics, the user got to decide
: : : >between K or C. When Dictionaries standarized English Spellings they
: : : >chose the most common ways that words were spelled. Thus you are going to
: : : >find very few words with Latin root spelled with a K, Greek words will be
: : : >normally spelled with a k as opposed to a c (though some exceptions, like
: : : >the Acropolis exist) and words with a germanic origin will probably be
: : : >mixed.
: : : >
: : : How did the 'ck' combination happen?
: : My guess it has to do with the non-standard spelling of English.
: Not really. "ck" is actually pretty standard. First of all, observe that
: we often show whether a vowel is so-called "long" or "short" (they used to
: be ACTUALLY long and short, but that is another story) by whether or not
: we double the consonant after them, before another vowel. Compare:
: faddish fading
: tiny tinny
: bony bonny
Sorry I did not mean to imply that it was a modern inconsistency. Rather
I was making a guess as to how the ck arose over cc or kk. Your
positioning in the spelling/prononciation sounds good though.
: But we don't use double "k" (or double "c" *for this purpose*). Instead we
: use "ck":
: taken tacky
: : I think also alot of those words also originally ended in e (Can you
: : believe that they use to use 'e's even more frequently than its used
: : today?)
: And most of our "silent e's" were originally pronounced. In Chaucer's
: time,
: fade tide bone
: would have fit right into the first column of the list above.
Bill McHale
9235...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>:
Distribution:
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: In article <6mp0ku$i68$1...@cedar.liii.com>, phyd...@liii.com (The Person
: Your Mother Warned You About) wrote:
: >In article <barnes.183-23...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>,
: >Cosimo <barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu> wrote:
: >>Yes. I still think that we should either dump the "c" and replace it with
: >>"k" & "s" or else dump the "k" and replace it with "c" while at the same
: >>time replacing "c" 's wherever they represent and "s" sound. Doing this
: >>would really help people learn to write and read English.
: >
: >Amazingly enough, there are many people who manage to read and write
: >English with no difficulty, letter 'c' and all.
: True. However, English is the textbook example of a language with horrible
: grapheme-phoneme corrospondence. In fact, I am not sure there is a worse
: example anyone could cite. Serbo-Croatian & Spanish on the other hand are
: textbook examples of languages where there is a very close mapping of
: grapheme to phoneme. For instance, English uses 14 vowel phonemes and 5 &
: 1/2 vowel graphemes. Spanish has 5 vowel phonemes and 5 vowel graphemes
: and they nearly always corrospond.
Sure there is, you forgot all about pictographic languages like Chinese...
On the other hand it does allow them to use the same written form for
several very distinct dialects.
Cosimo
>Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>: In article <6mm4c1$ofm$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale)
wrote:
>
>: >No that is world building, no need to invent a new, potentially confusing
>: >term for an old idea. And to be quite frank I should think that in any
>: >good Novel setting should be more than a 2D backdrop. As far as I am
>: >concerned Plot, Character and Setting are all bound. That is the way it
>: >is in the real world, and that is the way it should be in a good Novel.
>
>: Interesting opinion. I lean towards a less prescriptive philosophy of
>: writing, however. Making up rules for how people should/shouldn't write
>: novels doesn't do much for creativity and makes for a pretty boring
>: reading selection. I am always pleased when an author reinvents the novel
>: by approaching it from a completely new and bizarre direction.
>
>Why should it make for a very boring reading selection?
Because you have a prescriptive statement of what a novel should be. This
type of thinking sets bounderies and excludes many novels or potential
novels from the set of novels that should exist.
It is like someone claiming that a novel should have a plot developed in a
linear fashion. This person has now limited their literary horizons and
may miss out on many non-linear plotted novels.
I am not saying
>that every story has to give equal treatment to each, but I would argue
>that each help define the other. After all can you really know a
>character, what motivates them if you don't know about their surroundings,
>their past?
I don't think you can have plot without a minimum of setting. If your
first sentence begins "She said in reply to..." then we can assume that
the setting is a place where at least one female exists, this female is in
the company of another sentient being, both beings have some type of
verbal communication skills, both beings are surrounded by an atmosphere
that allows them to produce auditory events (i.e. words), etc. etc.
However, one can write a novel that doesn't have one shred of setting
info. beyond what is required to simply move the plot along. This is
possible and is not inherently bad story telling IMHO.
>: Dick's good stuff, Vonnegut, Lem & Bradbury are all non-genre SF in my
>: book. You may categorize differently but if you critique my stand on the
>: value of genre-SF you can't nail me for shitting on books I don't even
>: consider genre-SF. Le Guin is genre-SF in my book and exceptional in the
>: field. As good as she is, there are so many better non-genre writers out
>: there, that I haven't been able to bring myself to pick up one of her
>: books in quite a while.
>
>What exactly is non-genre SF?
Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kafka, Poe, Grimms Fairy Tales,
Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rushdie, Bulgakov, W.S. Burroughs, Ngugi, Okri,
Mahfouz etc. are all examples of non-genre SF. They are all speculative
fiction but are not an integral part of SF fandom. By that I mean that
they don't get the spotlight at SF conventions (did Homer ever get
nominated for a "Grandmaster of SF" award?), they are not big topics of
discussion among those in the genre, they get ignored by the SF awards
(Hugo, Nebula etc.). In other words, there is a whole segment of SF that
is represented by certain conventions, a particular section in many
bookstores, ngs like this one, etc. but this segment does not encompass
all SF. I choose to call it genre-SF.
Either it is SF or it is not, and all of the
>above have written novels that are undeniably SF, even if in some cases
>their authors would like to deny it so they can distance themselves from
>the guttern that the Literary elite place SF.
Many people use the genre-SF/non-genre SF distinction, many don't. If you
don't want to, that is fine by me. I can agree to have a different
classification system than you.
As far as the gutter that the elite place SF in, I will argue that it is
this very statement which leads me to use the genre/non-genre
distinction. IMHO, the literary elite do not have a bias (even a tiny
one) against SF. Look at the Booker Prize winners and short lists for the
last 20 years. I scanned the list the other night and I recall seeing
quite a few SF titles on it.
W.S. Burroughs, Kafka, Rushdie, Mahfouz, Okri, Ngugi, Achebe, Bulgakov,
Borges, Calvino etc. are all respected authors of SF, all from this
century and all have their fans amoung the literary elite.
It is the case that authors whose writings have been accepted by SF
fandom, get recognition at SF conventions, win SF awards etc. are snubbed
by the elite. The elite are ignoring SF, they are only ignoring
genre-SF. If you don't wish to use two terms, and simply classify both as
SF. With this classification system you would have to claim that the
elite trash some SF and love other examples of SF.
Naturally of course it
>serves your argument to claim that most of these people do not write SF,
>or at least genre-SF, but that sort of redefinition of the field always
>smacks of intellectual dishonesty to me. I can pick any field I want and
>select out the best writers and then claim that the genre is not worth the
>paper its novels are printed on.
I could dig your criticism if my genre/non-genre distinction was simply
made on the basis of who is best. However, I use an objective standard,
and that is acceptance of the writer by SF fandom, and recognition by the
SF public. One can measure this by how many times an author is asked to
speak at SF conventions, how many times they get awards or nominations at
conventions, how many people who identify themselves of SF fans read the
author etc.
Isaac Asimov was a genre writer. He was an integral part of SF fandom for
years. During many of the years that IA was writing SF, W.S. Burrough was
as well. Burroughs was ignored (to a large extent) by SF fandom. His
name didn't pop up to frequently on Hugo or Nebula nomination lists, his
books didn't get placed in the SF section of book stores and his fiction
was often ignored by SF authors in their discussions of the current state
of the field. At the same time this was going on, Burroughs did sell many
books to non-SF fans, he got critical aclaim and was the topic of
discussion among lit. critics.
There are genre-SF books that are much better than non-genre SF books and
vice versa.
>: Of course, I have made some generalizations. Let me avoid this problem by
>: making a couple of categories. Let us say there are societies that have
>: been strongly influenced by individualism, a linear approach to history &
>: religion, Xianity (esp. calvinism), & technology but that do not place a
>: huge emphasis on culture. These are people W. Then there are other
>: people that are more communal, less influenced by Xianity (esp.
>: calvinism), more cyclical in their view of history & religion, less
>: influenced by technology and who hold culture to be incredibly important.
>: We can call these folke people E.
>
>Well first, its Christianity not Xianity.
Will I go to hell for using a common and church-initiated abbreviation?
Second all of the features of
>people W is what defines their culture. The attitudes of a society and
>its culture cannot be easily seperated. Further your descriptions of W
>match the USA pretty well, but almost nowhere else, and to be quite honest
>I cannot think of a contemporary society that matches people E too
>closely.
The categories are meant to be fuzzy bounderies. The people of England
are closer to the W prototype than the E prototype but the people of the
USA are much closer to W than E. Violation of culture and tradition may
get a person run out of town, beaten, or even killed in some areas (type E
areas) whereas in Spain, France, Denmark, for instance, non-observance of
a particular festival or showing up for an ethnic celebration in improper
attire may not result in so strict a community backlash. In that extent,
they would be more like type W people. Another thing is that if a
particular people don't meet, say 70% or more of the criterion for either
people W or people E then there is no need to classify them as either. I
do not claim that everyone is either a W or an E, just that some are Ws
and some are Es.
>
>: So go thru my initial post and replace
>: Westerners with "people W" and non-Westerners with "people E." This is
>: more accurate because i certainly do not think (and did not mean to imply)
>: that geography is useful tool for dividing up people into categories (esp.
>: as far as the topic of this thread is concerned). In fact, I thought that
>: people commonly used the terms "Western" and "non-Western" as categories
>: that really didn't have much to do with geography. I consider
>: Australians (exluding the aborigines) Westerners, and the people of the
>: Caribean and much of South America non-Westerners. Afrikans I consider
>: non-Westerners and Europeans Westerners.
>
>Your right in terms that Geography is not the dominant divisor, however
>the simple fact of the matter is that the definition of westerner depends
>on your starting point. If you use Christianity as the hallmark of
>Western Culture, the All of the Americas are essentially Western.
Remember, my W category had a number of things that defined it as a
prototype. Xianity (specifically Xianity as influenced by the thinking of
Calvin) was just one of these. Therefore Xianity is not the hallmark of
people W. To determine if one is a people W or not, an evaluation must be
made in regards to all the criterion I listed.
If you
>use other determinants, the line might be drawn differently, but a place
>like Latin America remains a problem since culturally it does not fit to
>closely with any culture, being an amalgamation of Western, African and
>Native American peoples.
>
>: >Yes this might be true, but there are also authors who have developed
>: >completely non western cultures for their stories. Look at what David
>: >Brin did with the Soro in the Uplift War, Bradbury did with the Martians
>: >in the Martian Chronicles or Le Guin did in the Left Hand of Darkness and
>: >tell me that these authors are merely putting alien skins on "Westerners:.
>
>: It has been a while since I read Martion Chronicles so I will say nothing
>: of that. Brin's Uplift stuff I have not read. Le Guin's _Left Hand of
>: Darkness_ does do a decent job of developing the cultural, political,
>: ethical, social structure of the people of whatever they planet they were
>: from. It is more 2D than I would have liked but considering the size of
>: the novel it is not bad. Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ does a better job
>: of describing the society of the moon people than _Left Hand of Darkness_
>: does in telling us about the hermaphrodite people.
>
>: I never said that one could not find good HDS in genre-SF, just that
>: genre-SF often (not all the time) is bad literature (IMHO). There are
>: genre-SF books with good HDS (e.g., LoTR, The Dispossessed) and there are
>: good genre-SF books (e.g., LoTR, BotNS).
>
>Ah, but by going out of your way to say that, you make it sound as if SF
>is somehow less worthy of respect.
Let me put it this way, I do admit to generalizing and any time I, or
anyone else, does that, reality is going to be misrepresented. However, I
have found many books of merit outside of genre-SF and precious few within
it. As far as signal to noise ratio goes, I don't know which has more
crap-per-gem. It would not suprise me that there are more crap-per-gems
in "literature" than there are in genre-SF. There are really to many
books being written each year for me to have a clear conception of that.
As far as total gems go, I claim that literature outside of genre-SF wins
hands down. I may have come to this conclusion because of my limited and
biased exposure to both types of liturature, however. But, biased or not
biased, that is the conclusion I have drawn from my experiences.
When push comes to shove an enormous
>amount of garbage is produced in every field every year. For every
>Magical Realist like Borges or Rushdie, there is an uncounted number of
>hacks who try to copy them. This is true in every langueage and every
>possible literary division.
After all Lem was not the only person in the
>Eastern Block writing SF during the Cold War, just the only one to be
>approved by the Soviet overlords and also worth importing and translating.
Hmm. I have a couple of Soviet SF collections from the cold war era. Lem
couldn't have been the only writer out there.
ralphus
Cosimo
In article <6mu47d$m0b$3...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
>9235...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>:
>Distribution:
>
>Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>: In article <6mp0ku$i68$1...@cedar.liii.com>, phyd...@liii.com (The Person
>: Your Mother Warned You About) wrote:
>
>: >In article <barnes.183-23...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>,
>: >Cosimo <barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu> wrote:
>
>: True. However, English is the textbook example of a language with horrible
>: grapheme-phoneme corrospondence. In fact, I am not sure there is a worse
>: example anyone could cite. Serbo-Croatian & Spanish on the other hand are
>: textbook examples of languages where there is a very close mapping of
>: grapheme to phoneme. For instance, English uses 14 vowel phonemes and 5 &
>: 1/2 vowel graphemes. Spanish has 5 vowel phonemes and 5 vowel graphemes
>: and they nearly always corrospond.
>
>Sure there is, you forgot all about pictographic languages like Chinese...
You are using that as an example of horrible grapheme-phoneme
corrospondence? The Chinese (i believe) have 2 or more different grapheme
systems. I think the one you refer to is one in which the symbol
represents a single syllable rather than a phoneme. Because of this there
are obviously many more graphemes in this system than in a phonemic
system. However, I was not aware of a huge lack of corrospondence between
the grapheme & syllable in Chinese. I am no expert on Chinese so anyone
can feel free to correct me.
Paul Clarke
On Thu, 25 Jun 1998 03:51:13 -0500, barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu
(Cosimo) wrote:
[snip]
>You are using that as an example of horrible grapheme-phoneme
>corrospondence? The Chinese (i believe) have 2 or more different grapheme
>systems. I think the one you refer to is one in which the symbol
>represents a single syllable rather than a phoneme. Because of this there
>are obviously many more graphemes in this system than in a phonemic
>system. However, I was not aware of a huge lack of corrospondence between
>the grapheme & syllable in Chinese. I am no expert on Chinese so anyone
>can feel free to correct me.
>
You may be thinking of Japanese, which has two syllabaries in addition
to using Chinese-derived characters. Katakana symbols are mostly used
to spell loan words (other than those borrowed from Chinese), and
hiragana symbols are used for affixes and such like.
You might also be thinking of the two systems of representing Chinese
using the Roman alphabet: Wade-Giles and Pinyin.
Bill McHale
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: >Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: >: In article <6mm4c1$ofm$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale)
: wrote:
: >
: >: >No that is world building, no need to invent a new, potentially confusing
: >: >term for an old idea. And to be quite frank I should think that in any
: >: >good Novel setting should be more than a 2D backdrop. As far as I am
: >: >concerned Plot, Character and Setting are all bound. That is the way it
: >: >is in the real world, and that is the way it should be in a good Novel.
: >
: >: Interesting opinion. I lean towards a less prescriptive philosophy of
: >: writing, however. Making up rules for how people should/shouldn't write
: >: novels doesn't do much for creativity and makes for a pretty boring
: >: reading selection. I am always pleased when an author reinvents the novel
: >: by approaching it from a completely new and bizarre direction.
: >
: >Why should it make for a very boring reading selection?
: Because you have a prescriptive statement of what a novel should be. This
: type of thinking sets bounderies and excludes many novels or potential
: novels from the set of novels that should exist.
: It is like someone claiming that a novel should have a plot developed in a
: linear fashion. This person has now limited their literary horizons and
: may miss out on many non-linear plotted novels.
Well I suppose my particular point here is that I believe that you can
write lots of things in a 3-400 book that are fiction, but that does not
necessarily make them novels. IMHO, the first purpose of a novel is to
tell a good story. To be quite honest I have always been somewhat
suspicious of writers who seem to to write in new styles simpley for the
sake of writing in new styles. Sometimes they work, other times they
don't.
: I am not saying
: >that every story has to give equal treatment to each, but I would argue
: >that each help define the other. After all can you really know a
: >character, what motivates them if you don't know about their surroundings,
: >their past?
: I don't think you can have plot without a minimum of setting. If your
: first sentence begins "She said in reply to..." then we can assume that
: the setting is a place where at least one female exists, this female is in
: the company of another sentient being, both beings have some type of
: verbal communication skills, both beings are surrounded by an atmosphere
: that allows them to produce auditory events (i.e. words), etc. etc.
: However, one can write a novel that doesn't have one shred of setting
: info. beyond what is required to simply move the plot along. This is
: possible and is not inherently bad story telling IMHO.
I would argue that a minmum setting is not only necessary for plot, but
also for characterization as well. As we learn more about a character, we
learn more about the setting, and the reverse is also true.
: >: Dick's good stuff, Vonnegut, Lem & Bradbury are all non-genre SF in my
: >: book. You may categorize differently but if you critique my stand on the
: >: value of genre-SF you can't nail me for shitting on books I don't even
: >: consider genre-SF. Le Guin is genre-SF in my book and exceptional in the
: >: field. As good as she is, there are so many better non-genre writers out
: >: there, that I haven't been able to bring myself to pick up one of her
: >: books in quite a while.
: >
: >What exactly is non-genre SF?
: Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kafka, Poe, Grimms Fairy Tales,
: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rushdie, Bulgakov, W.S. Burroughs, Ngugi, Okri,
: Mahfouz etc. are all examples of non-genre SF. They are all speculative
: fiction but are not an integral part of SF fandom.
Well while all of them might be speculative fiction, not all of them are
Science Fiction, or even fantasy.
: By that I mean that
: they don't get the spotlight at SF conventions (did Homer ever get
: nominated for a "Grandmaster of SF" award?), they are not big topics of
: discussion among those in the genre, they get ignored by the SF awards
: (Hugo, Nebula etc.). In other words, there is a whole segment of SF that
: is represented by certain conventions, a particular section in many
: bookstores, ngs like this one, etc. but this segment does not encompass
: all SF. I choose to call it genre-SF.
But by this definition at the very least Phillip K. Dick, Lem and Bradbury
are all Genre-SF authors. Phillip K. Dick has an award named after him
(for best novel initially released as a paperback), Lem was once a member
of the SFFWA though politics drove him out. In almost any bookstore you
care to look, you will find their works grouped with SF, not in the
General Literature secton. In many of the other cases, writers like
Vonnegut seek to avoid the appelation SF author to avoid the stigma that
seems to come with it.
: Either it is SF or it is not, and all of the
: >above have written novels that are undeniably SF, even if in some cases
: >their authors would like to deny it so they can distance themselves from
: >the guttern that the Literary elite place SF.
: Many people use the genre-SF/non-genre SF distinction, many don't. If you
: don't want to, that is fine by me. I can agree to have a different
: classification system than you.
: As far as the gutter that the elite place SF in, I will argue that it is
: this very statement which leads me to use the genre/non-genre
: distinction. IMHO, the literary elite do not have a bias (even a tiny
: one) against SF. Look at the Booker Prize winners and short lists for the
: last 20 years. I scanned the list the other night and I recall seeing
: quite a few SF titles on it.
By making this distincition you are further ghetoizzing the genre.
Essentially you are stating that the authors who have made it to litereary
respectability are not really part of the genre. And I have encountered
an enormous number of Litereature and writing professors who do not
consider SF to be serious writing. In fact I know a number of people who
have taken writing classes and have been specifically instructed not to
write SF because it is not serious writing... If that is not placing it
in the Gutter I do not know what is.
: W.S. Burroughs, Kafka, Rushdie, Mahfouz, Okri, Ngugi, Achebe, Bulgakov,
: Borges, Calvino etc. are all respected authors of SF, all from this
: century and all have their fans amoung the literary elite.
And all of them would probably protest like crazy if someone was to claim
that they were writing science fiction or fantasy.
: It is the case that authors whose writings have been accepted by SF
: fandom, get recognition at SF conventions, win SF awards etc. are snubbed
: by the elite. The elite are ignoring SF, they are only ignoring
: genre-SF. If you don't wish to use two terms, and simply classify both as
: SF. With this classification system you would have to claim that the
: elite trash some SF and love other examples of SF.
Yes and naturally they feel they are the better judges than the vast
majority of readers. Question when was the last time that an SF novel won
both the Hugo or the Nebula and the Booker?
: Naturally of course it
: >serves your argument to claim that most of these people do not write SF,
: >or at least genre-SF, but that sort of redefinition of the field always
: >smacks of intellectual dishonesty to me. I can pick any field I want and
: >select out the best writers and then claim that the genre is not worth the
: >paper its novels are printed on.
: I could dig your criticism if my genre/non-genre distinction was simply
: made on the basis of who is best. However, I use an objective standard,
: and that is acceptance of the writer by SF fandom, and recognition by the
: SF public. One can measure this by how many times an author is asked to
: speak at SF conventions, how many times they get awards or nominations at
: conventions, how many people who identify themselves of SF fans read the
: author etc.
Except of course most of the writers you mention have clearly made
attempts to distance themselves from SF. And others are not from the
English Speaking world. After all, with all of the SF published each
year, why should SF fans look in the General literature section for Novels
that should be in the SF section? And at least some of the authors you
claim are non-genre are in fact well accepted by the SF community.
Also consider HG Wells. Since he invented modern Science Fiction, there
was no SF community to accept him, yet few would argue that he is anything
other than a genre-sf writer.
: Isaac Asimov was a genre writer. He was an integral part of SF fandom for
: years. During many of the years that IA was writing SF, W.S. Burrough was
: as well. Burroughs was ignored (to a large extent) by SF fandom. His
: name didn't pop up to frequently on Hugo or Nebula nomination lists, his
: books didn't get placed in the SF section of book stores and his fiction
: was often ignored by SF authors in their discussions of the current state
: of the field. At the same time this was going on, Burroughs did sell many
: books to non-SF fans, he got critical aclaim and was the topic of
: discussion among lit. critics.
The question though is why? I have not followed his career too closely,
however it was clearly the case in the 1940's and 50's that Literary
Critics were not even taking a close look at SF. Even then people like
Bradbury and Sturgeon were producing high quality fiction.
: There are genre-SF books that are much better than non-genre SF books and
: vice versa.
: >: Of course, I have made some generalizations. Let me avoid this problem by
: >: making a couple of categories. Let us say there are societies that have
: >: been strongly influenced by individualism, a linear approach to history &
: >: religion, Xianity (esp. calvinism), & technology but that do not place a
: >: huge emphasis on culture. These are people W. Then there are other
: >: people that are more communal, less influenced by Xianity (esp.
: >: calvinism), more cyclical in their view of history & religion, less
: >: influenced by technology and who hold culture to be incredibly important.
: >: We can call these folke people E.
: >
: >Well first, its Christianity not Xianity.
: Will I go to hell for using a common and church-initiated abbreviation?
Its a simple matter of respect. While it is true that X was used as
abreviation since Greek has a letter that looks like X that is uses for
the first several letters of Christ, it is also true that in general you
will never see a Christian use it. As a general rule, the use of the X
has come to be used by those who do not give Christianity much
consideration.
: Second all of the features of
: >people W is what defines their culture. The attitudes of a society and
: >its culture cannot be easily seperated. Further your descriptions of W
: >match the USA pretty well, but almost nowhere else, and to be quite honest
: >I cannot think of a contemporary society that matches people E too
: >closely.
: The categories are meant to be fuzzy bounderies. The people of England
: are closer to the W prototype than the E prototype but the people of the
: USA are much closer to W than E. Violation of culture and tradition may
: get a person run out of town, beaten, or even killed in some areas (type E
: areas) whereas in Spain, France, Denmark, for instance, non-observance of
: a particular festival or showing up for an ethnic celebration in improper
: attire may not result in so strict a community backlash. In that extent,
: they would be more like type W people. Another thing is that if a
: particular people don't meet, say 70% or more of the criterion for either
: people W or people E then there is no need to classify them as either. I
: do not claim that everyone is either a W or an E, just that some are Ws
: and some are Es.
By that standard, you are defining your categories out of existence.
Indeed one could imagine cultures that fit the definition of W. or E.
quite well but which are otherwise completely different.
: >
: >: So go thru my initial post and replace
: >: Westerners with "people W" and non-Westerners with "people E." This is
: >: more accurate because i certainly do not think (and did not mean to imply)
: >: that geography is useful tool for dividing up people into categories (esp.
: >: as far as the topic of this thread is concerned). In fact, I thought that
: >: people commonly used the terms "Western" and "non-Western" as categories
: >: that really didn't have much to do with geography. I consider
: >: Australians (exluding the aborigines) Westerners, and the people of the
: >: Caribean and much of South America non-Westerners. Afrikans I consider
: >: non-Westerners and Europeans Westerners.
: >
: >Your right in terms that Geography is not the dominant divisor, however
: >the simple fact of the matter is that the definition of westerner depends
: >on your starting point. If you use Christianity as the hallmark of
: >Western Culture, the All of the Americas are essentially Western.
: Remember, my W category had a number of things that defined it as a
: prototype. Xianity (specifically Xianity as influenced by the thinking of
: Calvin) was just one of these. Therefore Xianity is not the hallmark of
: people W. To determine if one is a people W or not, an evaluation must be
: made in regards to all the criterion I listed.
By specifying Calvin as a particular brand of Christianity, you are
stressing the importance of Christianity. After all if it was not that
important, then why stress a particular brand of Christianity, and one of
the smaller Christian Groups to Boot.
: If you
The question is how hard have you tried to do a comprehensive, or even a
representative source of each group? For example if I was to judge
literature of the last 20 years simply by looking at the Booker Prize,
certainly I would be inclined to believe that litereature was better (or
at least more pretensious) when compared to a general selection of the SF.
conversely if I was to read only the Nebula winners, I would probably
believe that SF had the edge over a general selection of "literature" And
in any case, I have already pointed out, several of the authors whom you
have defined as non-genre SF are very clearly genre writers.
: As far as signal to noise ratio goes, I don't know which has more
: crap-per-gem. It would not suprise me that there are more crap-per-gems
: in "literature" than there are in genre-SF. There are really to many
: books being written each year for me to have a clear conception of that.
: As far as total gems go, I claim that literature outside of genre-SF wins
: hands down. I may have come to this conclusion because of my limited and
: biased exposure to both types of liturature, however. But, biased or not
: biased, that is the conclusion I have drawn from my experiences.
And I have often found that the "gems" of literature are often self
absorbed and overly congratulatory of their own cleverness. Don't get me
wrong, there is some really good stuff out there, but when did "being hard
to read" become a hallmark of great literature. How does omitting
punctuation or using unusual spellings of words make something better than
the person who uses clear English spellings and Syntax?
: When push comes to shove an enormous
: >amount of garbage is produced in every field every year. For every
: >Magical Realist like Borges or Rushdie, there is an uncounted number of
: >hacks who try to copy them. This is true in every langueage and every
: >possible literary division.
: After all Lem was not the only person in the
: >Eastern Block writing SF during the Cold War, just the only one to be
: >approved by the Soviet overlords and also worth importing and translating.
: Hmm. I have a couple of Soviet SF collections from the cold war era. Lem
: couldn't have been the only writer out there.
I never claimed he was. But the fact that you mention collections (by
which I take it you mean anthologies of multiple authors) and not books
Russian Authors suggests that their importance was minimal.
Cosimo
IMHO, the first purpose of a novel is whatever purpose the author has in
writing it. If the author does not want to tell a good story, that is
fine by me. You won't find me burning books or forcing people to write
them in a certain way. If an author's aim is not the aim you, as an
individual, look for, then don't buy the book. It is silly to claim the
author wrote the book with an improper purpose in mind. What objective
criterion do you have for claiming that someone else's purpose is the
"wrong" one anyhow? Your own taste?
To be quite honest I have always been somewhat
>suspicious of writers who seem to to write in new styles simpley for the
>sake of writing in new styles. Sometimes they work, other times they
>don't.
Yeah, I know where you are coming from. I have always been somewhat
suspicious of writers who seem to write about new characters simply for
the sake of writing about new characters. Sometimes they work, other
times they don't. Those types of writers are just a bunch of show-offs if
you ask me. Creativity and originality always make me nervous. I don't
know why everyone doesn't write about Tarzan rather than using so many
different protagonists in their novels.
>: >: Dick's good stuff, Vonnegut, Lem & Bradbury are all non-genre SF in my
>: >: book. You may categorize differently but if you critique my stand on the
>: >: value of genre-SF you can't nail me for shitting on books I don't even
>: >: consider genre-SF. Le Guin is genre-SF in my book and exceptional in the
>: >: field. As good as she is, there are so many better non-genre writers out
>: >: there, that I haven't been able to bring myself to pick up one of her
>: >: books in quite a while.
>: >
>: >What exactly is non-genre SF?
>
>: Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kafka, Poe, Grimms Fairy Tales,
>: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rushdie, Bulgakov, W.S. Burroughs, Ngugi, Okri,
>: Mahfouz etc. are all examples of non-genre SF. They are all speculative
>: fiction but are not an integral part of SF fandom.
>
>Well while all of them might be speculative fiction, not all of them are
>Science Fiction, or even fantasy.
Which of the above authors or books is not representative of fantasy? I
can't think of one that is devoid of the fantastic.
>
>: By that I mean that
>: they don't get the spotlight at SF conventions (did Homer ever get
>: nominated for a "Grandmaster of SF" award?), they are not big topics of
>: discussion among those in the genre, they get ignored by the SF awards
>: (Hugo, Nebula etc.). In other words, there is a whole segment of SF that
>: is represented by certain conventions, a particular section in many
>: bookstores, ngs like this one, etc. but this segment does not encompass
>: all SF. I choose to call it genre-SF.
>
>But by this definition at the very least Phillip K. Dick, Lem and Bradbury
>are all Genre-SF authors.
Dick is in the center of the genre. Lem and Bradbury are less so but can
be considered genre-SF writers or perhaps cross-over writers. What is
your point concerning these 3 authors?
>
>: Either it is SF or it is not, and all of the
>: >above have written novels that are undeniably SF, even if in some cases
>: >their authors would like to deny it so they can distance themselves from
>: >the guttern that the Literary elite place SF.
>
>: Many people use the genre-SF/non-genre SF distinction, many don't. If you
>: don't want to, that is fine by me. I can agree to have a different
>: classification system than you.
>
>: As far as the gutter that the elite place SF in, I will argue that it is
>: this very statement which leads me to use the genre/non-genre
>: distinction. IMHO, the literary elite do not have a bias (even a tiny
>: one) against SF. Look at the Booker Prize winners and short lists for the
>: last 20 years. I scanned the list the other night and I recall seeing
>: quite a few SF titles on it.
>
>By making this distincition you are further ghetoizzing the genre.
The genre ghettoizzes itself. The the network of fans & writers in the
genre claim they represent SF while at the same time ignoring a huge
amount of really amazing SF (Okri, Ngugi, Rushdie, Calvino, Borges, Kafka,
Burroughs etc.). If the genre doesn't want to be ghettoizzed, then those
in it should stop excluding quality SF from the set of books to be read,
praised, & appreciated. If it isn't derivative of Tolkien or wasn't
influenced (directly or indirectly) by Campbell then it often (but not
always) isn't "good" enough for SF fans to appreciate. No one is forcing
the SF community to crap on and ignore SF novels that aren't written
according to the tired formula seen in most genre-SF books.
>Essentially you are stating that the authors who have made it to litereary
>respectability are not really part of the genre. And I have encountered
>an enormous number of Litereature and writing professors who do not
>consider SF to be serious writing. In fact I know a number of people who
>have taken writing classes and have been specifically instructed not to
>write SF because it is not serious writing... If that is not placing it
>in the Gutter I do not know what is.
They are talking about genre-SF. They are not talking about SF in
general. Many lit. critics and professors consider Shakespeare and Homer
to be two of the greatest writers in history. Since we know these two
authors wrote SF, how then can you claim that these same professors and
critics think SF is gutter writing?
If you refuse to distinguish between genre SF and non-genre SF then you
are going to have to give up all the ridiculous claims about how SF is
ghettoized or how it is treated w/disrespect by lit. critics, professors,
etc. These things are SIMPLY NOT TRUE of SF in general. If you do wish
to make a distinction between genre-SF and non-genre SF, ONLY THEN can you
make a case that genre SF is treated like sub-literature.
>
>: W.S. Burroughs, Kafka, Rushdie, Mahfouz, Okri, Ngugi, Achebe, Bulgakov,
>: Borges, Calvino etc. are all respected authors of SF, all from this
>: century and all have their fans amoung the literary elite.
>
>And all of them would probably protest like crazy if someone was to claim
>that they were writing science fiction or fantasy.
They wrote speculative fiction and I am sure they were quite aware of that
fact. They would only protest if they were lumped in with genre-SF.
>
>: It is the case that authors whose writings have been accepted by SF
>: fandom, get recognition at SF conventions, win SF awards etc. are snubbed
>: by the elite. The elite are ignoring SF, they are only ignoring
>: genre-SF. If you don't wish to use two terms, and simply classify both as
>: SF. With this classification system you would have to claim that the
>: elite trash some SF and love other examples of SF.
>
>Yes and naturally they feel they are the better judges than the vast
>majority of readers. Question when was the last time that an SF novel won
>both the Hugo or the Nebula and the Booker?
You pick on the critics for going a way that is the opposite of the vast
majority of readers. However, on average, does Rushdie or Niven generally
sell more copies per novel? I am guessing it is Rushdie by a landslide.
Are people in general more familiar with Kafka or Heinlein? If the vast
majority of readers is criterion for goodness of a SF work then the SF
genre is excluding some pretty wonderful prose.
I may be wrong and genre SF books may be widely translated and distributed
throughout the world. Any one in the ng have any info. on this? Are
genre books generally read by a core of SF fans who speak English or do
they have mass appeal? Is one likely to find copies of Asimov, Brin,
Bova, Brooks, & company in a bookstore in France, Italy, or Japan? Is one
more likely to find classics of English prose in foreign countries or
current genre-best sellers?
>
>: Naturally of course it
>: >serves your argument to claim that most of these people do not write SF,
>: >or at least genre-SF, but that sort of redefinition of the field always
>: >smacks of intellectual dishonesty to me. I can pick any field I want and
>: >select out the best writers and then claim that the genre is not worth the
>: >paper its novels are printed on.
>
>: I could dig your criticism if my genre/non-genre distinction was simply
>: made on the basis of who is best. However, I use an objective standard,
>: and that is acceptance of the writer by SF fandom, and recognition by the
>: SF public. One can measure this by how many times an author is asked to
>: speak at SF conventions, how many times they get awards or nominations at
>: conventions, how many people who identify themselves of SF fans read the
>: author etc.
>
>Except of course most of the writers you mention have clearly made
>attempts to distance themselves from SF.
Genre-SF, not SF in general. Rushdie, Burroughs, Calvino, Borges etc.
have not claimed that their writing was not speculative. Certainly they
were well aware that elements of the fantastic were in their writing. In
the natural universe there most likely aren't people who have telepathic
power centered in their noses, or people that travel thru time via
retro-masturbation, or sub-atomic particles that have romantic affairs, or
infinite mazes of libraries filled with meaningless books and obsessed
monks. To think that any of these authors is not aware that coming up
with these ideas involved some degree of speculation is pure silliness.
If these authors wanted to distance themselves from SF, why did they spend
so much time writing SF?
And others are not from the
>English Speaking world. After all, with all of the SF published each
>year, why should SF fans look in the General literature section for Novels
>that should be in the SF section?
Maybe because there is an incredible amount of great SF in the general
literature section? Of course if quality of literature is less important
than spatial location of a book then they should constrain themselves to
the genre-SF section.
And at least some of the authors you
>claim are non-genre are in fact well accepted by the SF community.
Such as?
>
>Also consider HG Wells. Since he invented modern Science Fiction, there
>was no SF community to accept him, yet few would argue that he is anything
>other than a genre-sf writer.
I never made an statements about Wells' status as a writer.
>
>: Isaac Asimov was a genre writer. He was an integral part of SF fandom for
>: years. During many of the years that IA was writing SF, W.S. Burrough was
>: as well. Burroughs was ignored (to a large extent) by SF fandom. His
>: name didn't pop up to frequently on Hugo or Nebula nomination lists, his
>: books didn't get placed in the SF section of book stores and his fiction
>: was often ignored by SF authors in their discussions of the current state
>: of the field. At the same time this was going on, Burroughs did sell many
>: books to non-SF fans, he got critical aclaim and was the topic of
>: discussion among lit. critics.
>
>The question though is why? I have not followed his career too closely,
>however it was clearly the case in the 1940's and 50's that Literary
>Critics were not even taking a close look at SF.
They were not taking a close look at genre-SF. They were paying attention
to and praising many SF novels, however. I already gave you a list of
20th centure SF writers that literary critics were/are in love with. Your
statement that critics were ignoring SF is just plain false. I don't know
why you keep insisting that it is true.
Even then people like
>Bradbury and Sturgeon were producing high quality fiction.
>: >
>: >Well first, its Christianity not Xianity.
>
>: Will I go to hell for using a common and church-initiated abbreviation?
>
>Its a simple matter of respect. While it is true that X was used as
>abreviation since Greek has a letter that looks like X that is uses for
>the first several letters of Christ, it is also true that in general you
>will never see a Christian use it.
Not true at all. Xians began the convention. Monks began using an X to
symbolize Christ hundreds of years ago. Many Xians write Christmas as
Xmas and xians who are into saving keystrokes use an x in Xian. I hang
out in several religious ngs so i know that xians use this abrev.
As a general rule, the use of the X
>has come to be used by those who do not give Christianity much
>consideration.
And you base this statement on what evidence?
Bill McHale
mbc.edu> <barnes.183-30...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>:
Distribution:
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: In article <6n8o4b$ekv$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
: >Well I suppose my particular point here is that I believe that you can
: >write lots of things in a 3-400 book that are fiction, but that does not
: >necessarily make them novels. IMHO, the first purpose of a novel is to
: >tell a good story.
: IMHO, the first purpose of a novel is whatever purpose the author has in
: writing it. If the author does not want to tell a good story, that is
: fine by me. You won't find me burning books or forcing people to write
: them in a certain way. If an author's aim is not the aim you, as an
: individual, look for, then don't buy the book. It is silly to claim the
: author wrote the book with an improper purpose in mind. What objective
: criterion do you have for claiming that someone else's purpose is the
: "wrong" one anyhow? Your own taste?
I never claimed that there is such a thing as an improper purpose, rather
that if the work of fiction is not telling a story, and telling it in
prose, then it is not a novel. An epic poem is not a Novel even if it 300
pages long. Nor for that matter is a 400 page description of an alien
landscape.
: To be quite honest I have always been somewhat
: >suspicious of writers who seem to to write in new styles simpley for the
: >sake of writing in new styles. Sometimes they work, other times they
: >don't.
: Yeah, I know where you are coming from. I have always been somewhat
: suspicious of writers who seem to write about new characters simply for
: the sake of writing about new characters. Sometimes they work, other
: times they don't. Those types of writers are just a bunch of show-offs if
: you ask me. Creativity and originality always make me nervous. I don't
: know why everyone doesn't write about Tarzan rather than using so many
: different protagonists in their novels.
Now your just being silly and difficult. My point here is that sure, if
there are compelling reasons to invent a new style then sure, however more
often than not, I find that modern literature just invents new styles for
the sake of inventing them. How is a work enhanced by omitting
punctuation? Or by spelling the words in an irregular manner?
: >: >: Dick's good stuff, Vonnegut, Lem & Bradbury are all non-genre SF in my
: >: >: book. You may categorize differently but if you critique my stand on the
: >: >: value of genre-SF you can't nail me for shitting on books I don't even
: >: >: consider genre-SF. Le Guin is genre-SF in my book and exceptional in the
: >: >: field. As good as she is, there are so many better non-genre writers out
: >: >: there, that I haven't been able to bring myself to pick up one of her
: >: >: books in quite a while.
: >: >
: >: >What exactly is non-genre SF?
: >
: >: Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kafka, Poe, Grimms Fairy Tales,
: >: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rushdie, Bulgakov, W.S. Burroughs, Ngugi, Okri,
: >: Mahfouz etc. are all examples of non-genre SF. They are all speculative
: >: fiction but are not an integral part of SF fandom.
: >
: >Well while all of them might be speculative fiction, not all of them are
: >Science Fiction, or even fantasy.
: Which of the above authors or books is not representative of fantasy? I
: can't think of one that is devoid of the fantastic.
Please, since you were the one stressing the difference between genre-sf
and sf, you must surely be aware that fantasy is a modern genre as
distinct, and with its own qualifiers as any other. Sure works like those
written by the magical realists have fantastic elements, but that does not
make them fantasy by the standards of the genre.
: >
: >: By that I mean that
: >: they don't get the spotlight at SF conventions (did Homer ever get
: >: nominated for a "Grandmaster of SF" award?), they are not big topics of
: >: discussion among those in the genre, they get ignored by the SF awards
: >: (Hugo, Nebula etc.). In other words, there is a whole segment of SF that
: >: is represented by certain conventions, a particular section in many
: >: bookstores, ngs like this one, etc. but this segment does not encompass
: >: all SF. I choose to call it genre-SF.
: >
: >But by this definition at the very least Phillip K. Dick, Lem and Bradbury
: >are all Genre-SF authors.
: Dick is in the center of the genre. Lem and Bradbury are less so but can
: be considered genre-SF writers or perhaps cross-over writers. What is
: your point concerning these 3 authors?
Specifically refuting your claim that these were not genre-sf authors.
You were claiming that genre-sf was devoid of merit, I pointed these
authors out, and then you claimed that they were not really genre-sf
authors.
: >: As far as the gutter that the elite place SF in, I will argue that it is
: >: this very statement which leads me to use the genre/non-genre
: >: distinction. IMHO, the literary elite do not have a bias (even a tiny
: >: one) against SF. Look at the Booker Prize winners and short lists for the
: >: last 20 years. I scanned the list the other night and I recall seeing
: >: quite a few SF titles on it.
: >
: >By making this distincition you are further ghetoizzing the genre.
: The genre ghettoizzes itself. The the network of fans & writers in the
: genre claim they represent SF while at the same time ignoring a huge
: amount of really amazing SF (Okri, Ngugi, Rushdie, Calvino, Borges, Kafka,
: Burroughs etc.). If the genre doesn't want to be ghettoizzed, then those
: in it should stop excluding quality SF from the set of books to be read,
: praised, & appreciated. If it isn't derivative of Tolkien or wasn't
: influenced (directly or indirectly) by Campbell then it often (but not
: always) isn't "good" enough for SF fans to appreciate. No one is forcing
: the SF community to crap on and ignore SF novels that aren't written
: according to the tired formula seen in most genre-SF books.
Most of these writers have written Speculative Fiction, but that does not
make them Science Fiction writers. In particular Science Fiction must
deal with Science. Indeed it is this quality that is central to making
Science Fiction one of the central and most important literatures of the
20th century, in some ways more important than any literary movements that
are championed by the Literary elite. The people who literaly and
continually are reshaping our views of reality in an objective sense grew
up on the likes of Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. While people like Rusdie,
Borges and Calvino might be astute social critics, and have wonderful
imaginations, their influence is far more limited.
In addition, how many of the Rushdies, Calvinos and Borges have actually
made any attempts to make contact with the SF comunity. The paradigms of
SF are not static, the new wave of the 60's and the cyberpunks of the 80's
show that basic assumptions about the field can be changed.
: >Essentially you are stating that the authors who have made it to litereary
: >respectability are not really part of the genre. And I have encountered
: >an enormous number of Litereature and writing professors who do not
: >consider SF to be serious writing. In fact I know a number of people who
: >have taken writing classes and have been specifically instructed not to
: >write SF because it is not serious writing... If that is not placing it
: >in the Gutter I do not know what is.
: They are talking about genre-SF. They are not talking about SF in
: general. Many lit. critics and professors consider Shakespeare and Homer
: to be two of the greatest writers in history. Since we know these two
: authors wrote SF, how then can you claim that these same professors and
: critics think SF is gutter writing?
No they are talking about any kind... Include a spacecraft in your story
and recieve an F.
And for the record while Shakespeare and Homer wrote things that might be
considered Fantasy, the pardigms that drive them are very different than
the ones that drive modern writers, genre SF and non-genre.
: If you refuse to distinguish between genre SF and non-genre SF then you
: are going to have to give up all the ridiculous claims about how SF is
: ghettoized or how it is treated w/disrespect by lit. critics, professors,
: etc. These things are SIMPLY NOT TRUE of SF in general. If you do wish
: to make a distinction between genre-SF and non-genre SF, ONLY THEN can you
: make a case that genre SF is treated like sub-literature.
: >
: >: W.S. Burroughs, Kafka, Rushdie, Mahfouz, Okri, Ngugi, Achebe, Bulgakov,
: >: Borges, Calvino etc. are all respected authors of SF, all from this
: >: century and all have their fans amoung the literary elite.
: >
: >And all of them would probably protest like crazy if someone was to claim
: >that they were writing science fiction or fantasy.
: They wrote speculative fiction and I am sure they were quite aware of that
: fact. They would only protest if they were lumped in with genre-SF.
But the point is why? Probably because if their work was lumped in with
Genre-SF, it would make it that much harder for them to gain literary
acceptance.
: >
: >: It is the case that authors whose writings have been accepted by SF
: >: fandom, get recognition at SF conventions, win SF awards etc. are snubbed
: >: by the elite. The elite are ignoring SF, they are only ignoring
: >: genre-SF. If you don't wish to use two terms, and simply classify both as
: >: SF. With this classification system you would have to claim that the
: >: elite trash some SF and love other examples of SF.
: >
: >Yes and naturally they feel they are the better judges than the vast
: >majority of readers. Question when was the last time that an SF novel won
: >both the Hugo or the Nebula and the Booker?
: You pick on the critics for going a way that is the opposite of the vast
: majority of readers. However, on average, does Rushdie or Niven generally
: sell more copies per novel? I am guessing it is Rushdie by a landslide.
: Are people in general more familiar with Kafka or Heinlein? If the vast
: majority of readers is criterion for goodness of a SF work then the SF
: genre is excluding some pretty wonderful prose.
Ah, but Rushdie is a bad example, he has been cast into artificial
prominance since he was sentenced to Death by the Ayotollah. And while I
certainly don't have the figures world wide, I would guess that you are
more likely to find a genre SF book on the New York Times best seller list
than you are a work by Calvino or Borges. And of course if we lump the
likes of Steven King into the argument (for surely horror/dark-fantasy is
another genre in SF when SF means speculative fiction, then the literary
SF writers loose by a land slide.
: I may be wrong and genre SF books may be widely translated and distributed
: throughout the world. Any one in the ng have any info. on this? Are
: genre books generally read by a core of SF fans who speak English or do
: they have mass appeal? Is one likely to find copies of Asimov, Brin,
: Bova, Brooks, & company in a bookstore in France, Italy, or Japan? Is one
: more likely to find classics of English prose in foreign countries or
: current genre-best sellers?
This is not necessarily a good test. After all, those who do translations
are part of the literary elite. In fact their is an interesting story how
A.E. vanVoght (sp?) was translated into French. Now he was definitely not
a prose stylist by any stretch of the imagination, yet the French
Translation was in very literate French. As a result his work was more
accepted by French critics than it was by American critics.
:
: >
: >: Naturally of course it
: >: >serves your argument to claim that most of these people do not write SF,
: >: >or at least genre-SF, but that sort of redefinition of the field always
: >: >smacks of intellectual dishonesty to me. I can pick any field I want and
: >: >select out the best writers and then claim that the genre is not worth the
: >: >paper its novels are printed on.
: >
: >: I could dig your criticism if my genre/non-genre distinction was simply
: >: made on the basis of who is best. However, I use an objective standard,
: >: and that is acceptance of the writer by SF fandom, and recognition by the
: >: SF public. One can measure this by how many times an author is asked to
: >: speak at SF conventions, how many times they get awards or nominations at
: >: conventions, how many people who identify themselves of SF fans read the
: >: author etc.
: >
: >Except of course most of the writers you mention have clearly made
: >attempts to distance themselves from SF.
: Genre-SF, not SF in general. Rushdie, Burroughs, Calvino, Borges etc.
: have not claimed that their writing was not speculative. Certainly they
: were well aware that elements of the fantastic were in their writing. In
: the natural universe there most likely aren't people who have telepathic
: power centered in their noses, or people that travel thru time via
: retro-masturbation, or sub-atomic particles that have romantic affairs, or
: infinite mazes of libraries filled with meaningless books and obsessed
: monks. To think that any of these authors is not aware that coming up
: with these ideas involved some degree of speculation is pure silliness.
: If these authors wanted to distance themselves from SF, why did they spend
: so much time writing SF?
Well generally when one mentions SF, one is refering to science fiction,
not speculative fiction. But even allowing that, why should they try to
distance themselves from genres where their works might be accepted? Why
not try to sell to the thousands of readers who read genre-Fantasy?
(almost none of these writers works would really qualify as Science
Fiction).
: And others are not from the
: >English Speaking world. After all, with all of the SF published each
: >year, why should SF fans look in the General literature section for Novels
: >that should be in the SF section?
: Maybe because there is an incredible amount of great SF in the general
: literature section? Of course if quality of literature is less important
: than spatial location of a book then they should constrain themselves to
: the genre-SF section.
Oh, please its a question of marketing. Your looking for a Fantasy Novel,
you can look through the 300 or so volumes sitting in your book store in
the SF section, where most of the books will fit your criteria, or you can
look through the 1500-2000 volumes of general fiction, where in only a
small percentage of the works you are looking at are likely to meet your
selection criteria.
As these authors and their publishers seek to keep them out of the SF
section, they also alienate themselves from the critics and writers of the
genres that could promote their works... of course by doing so they can
become more respected in the process.
: And at least some of the authors you
: >claim are non-genre are in fact well accepted by the SF community.
: Such as?
Bradbury, Lem and Dick. In your second post on this subject you claimed
that you considered none of these genre writers.
: >
: >Also consider HG Wells. Since he invented modern Science Fiction, there
: >was no SF community to accept him, yet few would argue that he is anything
: >other than a genre-sf writer.
: I never made an statements about Wells' status as a writer.
I know that, I was stressing that the community base (of fans and authors)
which you used to define genre-sf is not in fact necessary for an author
to be a genre sf author.
: >
: >: Isaac Asimov was a genre writer. He was an integral part of SF fandom for
: >: years. During many of the years that IA was writing SF, W.S. Burrough was
: >: as well. Burroughs was ignored (to a large extent) by SF fandom. His
: >: name didn't pop up to frequently on Hugo or Nebula nomination lists, his
: >: books didn't get placed in the SF section of book stores and his fiction
: >: was often ignored by SF authors in their discussions of the current state
: >: of the field. At the same time this was going on, Burroughs did sell many
: >: books to non-SF fans, he got critical aclaim and was the topic of
: >: discussion among lit. critics.
: >
: >The question though is why? I have not followed his career too closely,
: >however it was clearly the case in the 1940's and 50's that Literary
: >Critics were not even taking a close look at SF.
: They were not taking a close look at genre-SF. They were paying attention
: to and praising many SF novels, however. I already gave you a list of
: 20th centure SF writers that literary critics were/are in love with. Your
: statement that critics were ignoring SF is just plain false. I don't know
: why you keep insisting that it is true.
Well again it comes to a distinction of SF as speculative fiction as
opposed to SF as Science Fiction. And clearly the critics have ignored
Science Fiction. The problem of course is that definition of speculative
fiction is so broad as to include almost any works that one could care to
include.
Science Fiction on the other hand has dealt with issues that are more
central and immediate to man in the 20th century. That it is the
literature of the Technological elite is something I think that disturbs
the literary elite.
: Even then people like
: >Bradbury and Sturgeon were producing high quality fiction.
: >: >
: >: >Well first, its Christianity not Xianity.
: >
: >: Will I go to hell for using a common and church-initiated abbreviation?
: >
: >Its a simple matter of respect. While it is true that X was used as
: >abreviation since Greek has a letter that looks like X that is uses for
: >the first several letters of Christ, it is also true that in general you
: >will never see a Christian use it.
: Not true at all. Xians began the convention. Monks began using an X to
: symbolize Christ hundreds of years ago. Many Xians write Christmas as
: Xmas and xians who are into saving keystrokes use an x in Xian. I hang
: out in several religious ngs so i know that xians use this abrev.
: As a general rule, the use of the X
: >has come to be used by those who do not give Christianity much
: >consideration.
: And you base this statement on what evidence?
A simple web search and sample. I looked at quite a few web sites, in
most cases they were all by atheists, pagans, satanists or people who had
a beef with the Christianity (not I am not saying all pagans or atheists
do this, just some of them).
I suppose in part, the problems that the literary elite have with Science
Fiction, is that it preaches a different method than they are interested
in. In general Science Fiction has tossed out or ignored Post-modernism
and Existentialism, instead concentrating on the Wonders of a universes of
real possibilities as opposed to the purely imagined. They have looked to
a universe that can be objectively quantified, while the post-modernists
reject such a Universe.
Essentially Science Fiction is the literature of the Scientists, Engineers
and Programmers that are reshaping the landscape of the planet. When you
talk to a programmer, they are more likely to know Asimov over Kafka,
Beneford over Calvino.
Cosimo
>mbc.edu> <barnes.183-30...@pc318.psy.ohio-state.edu>:
>Distribution:
>
>Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
>: In article <6n8o4b$ekv$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale)
wrote:
>
>: >Well I suppose my particular point here is that I believe that you can
>: >write lots of things in a 3-400 book that are fiction, but that does not
>: >necessarily make them novels. IMHO, the first purpose of a novel is to
>: >tell a good story.
>
>: IMHO, the first purpose of a novel is whatever purpose the author has in
>: writing it. If the author does not want to tell a good story, that is
>: fine by me. You won't find me burning books or forcing people to write
>: them in a certain way. If an author's aim is not the aim you, as an
>: individual, look for, then don't buy the book. It is silly to claim the
>: author wrote the book with an improper purpose in mind. What objective
>: criterion do you have for claiming that someone else's purpose is the
>: "wrong" one anyhow? Your own taste?
>
>I never claimed that there is such a thing as an improper purpose,
You claimed that the first purpose of a novel is X. That presupposes that
if someone writes a novel and ignores X in favor of developing Y then they
are writing the novel in an improper way.
rather
>that if the work of fiction is not telling a story, and telling it in
>prose, then it is not a novel.
I am not sure about accepted definitions here, but would not a prose work
that sought to evoke a particular emotion or feeling also be considered a
novel? I just saw Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas the other day. The movie
is not about story or plot but about evoking in the viewer an emotional
response, or conveying a feeling that captures the excess and problems
associated with drug use in the early 70's. If the book the movie was
based on was similarly constructed, then that book is not about story but
about a feeling or idea. William S. Burrough's books are generally
considered novels and some of them are composed of insane episodes that
when taken together make up a sermon about addiction rather than tell a
story.
An epic poem is not a Novel even if it 300
>pages long. Nor for that matter is a 400 page description of an alien
>landscape.
>
>: To be quite honest I have always been somewhat
>: >suspicious of writers who seem to to write in new styles simpley for the
>: >sake of writing in new styles. Sometimes they work, other times they
>: >don't.
>
>: Yeah, I know where you are coming from. I have always been somewhat
>: suspicious of writers who seem to write about new characters simply for
>: the sake of writing about new characters. Sometimes they work, other
>: times they don't. Those types of writers are just a bunch of show-offs if
>: you ask me. Creativity and originality always make me nervous. I don't
>: know why everyone doesn't write about Tarzan rather than using so many
>: different protagonists in their novels.
>
>Now your just being silly and difficult.
Actually, in mirroring your own narrow minded approach to literature, I
hoped to show you how narrow minded it was. You want novels to all have a
particular style and my hypothetical rant was about a guy who wanted all
novels to have the same protagonist. If you consider the latter silly,
then you may be able to see your own, nearly identical statement, as
equally silly.
My point here is that sure, if
>there are compelling reasons to invent a new style
How about this one, a compelling reason to invent a new style is to
provide readers with something that isn't boring and formulaic. I cannot
imagine that there ever would be a day where these compelling reasons
would not exist. If I was not interested in inovation, originality, or a
fresh and creative approach to literature, then I would seriously question
the purpose of creating new styles. Luckily, I am more open minded than
that.
then sure, however more
>often than not, I find that modern literature just invents new styles for
>the sake of inventing them. How is a work enhanced by omitting
>punctuation? Or by spelling the words in an irregular manner?
I won't go into this. If you don't like creativity as far as style goes,
there is no way I am going to convince you via this post that you should
be interested in innovative and creative approaches to writing style.
>: >: Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kafka, Poe, Grimms Fairy Tales,
>: >: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rushdie, Bulgakov, W.S. Burroughs, Ngugi, Okri,
>: >: Mahfouz etc. are all examples of non-genre SF. They are all speculative
>: >: fiction but are not an integral part of SF fandom.
>: >
>: >Well while all of them might be speculative fiction, not all of them are
>: >Science Fiction, or even fantasy.
>
>: Which of the above authors or books is not representative of fantasy? I
>: can't think of one that is devoid of the fantastic.
>
>Please, since you were the one stressing the difference between genre-sf
>and sf, you must surely be aware that fantasy is a modern genre as
>distinct, and with its own qualifiers as any other.
yes i am aware of that, but since i was reading the word as used by you,
and it was you who objected to the classification of literature into
high-literature and genre, i assumed that your use of the word "fantasy"
was something other than a genre reference. if you are going to
distinguish between the two, then please clarify (like i have done with
genre/non-genre SF) to avoid confusion.
Sure works like those
>written by the magical realists have fantastic elements, but that does not
>make them fantasy by the standards of the genre.
agreed. actually that is part of my point. the fantasy genre has
excluded much true fantasy from its consideration.
>: Dick is in the center of the genre. Lem and Bradbury are less so but can
>: be considered genre-SF writers or perhaps cross-over writers. What is
>: your point concerning these 3 authors?
>
>Specifically refuting your claim that these were not genre-sf authors.
>You were claiming that genre-sf was devoid of merit, I pointed these
>authors out, and then you claimed that they were not really genre-sf
>authors.
I never claimed that genre-SF is devoid of merit (check dejanews if you
doubt me). I claimed that most genre-SF is devoid of merit.
Some of Dick's good works would never have been shelved in the SF section
of a bookstore had they been written by someone who wasn't already
accpeted as a genre writer. There is no way Valis and Transmigration of
TA would ever be shelved in SF if they were the only two books written by
a particular author. Both books would be in general fiction and would be
unkown to most genre types. As for most of Dick's work, it seems to be
pretty heinous as far as i have noticed.
Bradbury is in a fuzzy category. He did a good job of getting ignored by
the genre and fans while getting lots of acclaim from the general public.
Check out his score card as it pertains to genre-awards like the Hugo &
Nebula. I just popped into the ISFDB to see how Bradbury looked as far as
awards go. He has 6 to his credit according to the IFDB. Larry Niven (a
talentless schmuck IMHO) has 13 (according to ISFDB). This disparity may
not reflect acceptance by the genre, however. The years in which they
were writing may have had something to do with number of awards. Still
though, Bradbury, is perhaps at least as much a general fiction writer as
a genre-SF writer. Everyone has read Farenheit 451 and a few other
Bradbury books. Most SF is only digested by SF fans, not the general
public.
Lem is the recipient of a grand total of zero genre awards (according to
the ISFDB). I also notice quite a bit of hostility towards him in this ng
which tends to make me think he was straddling the genre/high literature
fence but is mostly on the non-genre side. His novels don't really seem
good enough to compete in the general fiction market and that may explain
why he gets shelved in SF.
>
>: >: As far as the gutter that the elite place SF in, I will argue that it is
>: >: this very statement which leads me to use the genre/non-genre
>: >: distinction. IMHO, the literary elite do not have a bias (even a tiny
>: >: one) against SF. Look at the Booker Prize winners and short lists for the
>: >: last 20 years. I scanned the list the other night and I recall seeing
>: >: quite a few SF titles on it.
>: >
>: >By making this distincition you are further ghetoizzing the genre.
>
>: The genre ghettoizzes itself. The the network of fans & writers in the
>: genre claim they represent SF while at the same time ignoring a huge
>: amount of really amazing SF (Okri, Ngugi, Rushdie, Calvino, Borges, Kafka,
>: Burroughs etc.). If the genre doesn't want to be ghettoizzed, then those
>: in it should stop excluding quality SF from the set of books to be read,
>: praised, & appreciated. If it isn't derivative of Tolkien or wasn't
>: influenced (directly or indirectly) by Campbell then it often (but not
>: always) isn't "good" enough for SF fans to appreciate. No one is forcing
>: the SF community to crap on and ignore SF novels that aren't written
>: according to the tired formula seen in most genre-SF books.
>
>Most of these writers have written Speculative Fiction, but that does not
>make them Science Fiction writers.
I have not made any claims about Science Fiction since the initiation of
this thread. I have been speaking of SF, speculative fiction.
>
>In addition, how many of the Rushdies, Calvinos and Borges have actually
>made any attempts to make contact with the SF comunity.
The chicken or the egg. Did the sf people ghettoiz themselves and that
explains why Borges & Rushdie would not associate with them, or did
Rushdie & Borges turn their noses up at the SF community and as a result
leave the community ghetto-like? I think a pretty good case can be made
for the former explanation. The SF genre did not always exist (just like
the crime novel, & romance novel genres were not always with us). When
groups of fans came together and restricted their reading to books with a
particular subject matter, publishers and book stores took note and
created SF sections to reflect the book purchasing habits of the fans.
The fans wanted stories with robots, lazers, space flight, dragons &
worlocks in them. They didn't want quality literature if it meant giving
up their robots, lazers, etc. The fans don't want certain types of
literature and they are getting what they want.
There are a group of people that primarily read genre-romance novels.
There is another group that primarily reads genre-crime novels. So we
have two sections in our book stores for these two groups. If there were
few who read only romance and few who read only crime, but many fans who
read lots of romance and lots of crime stories, then there would be a
single genre to represent this segment of society. The people create the
genre, the publishers & book companies react to what the people are doing
so that they can get the most money out of people.
The paradigms of
>SF are not static, the new wave of the 60's and the cyberpunks of the 80's
>show that basic assumptions about the field can be changed.
>
>: >Essentially you are stating that the authors who have made it to litereary
>: >respectability are not really part of the genre. And I have encountered
>: >an enormous number of Litereature and writing professors who do not
>: >consider SF to be serious writing. In fact I know a number of people who
>: >have taken writing classes and have been specifically instructed not to
>: >write SF because it is not serious writing... If that is not placing it
>: >in the Gutter I do not know what is.
>
>: They are talking about genre-SF. They are not talking about SF in
>: general. Many lit. critics and professors consider Shakespeare and Homer
>: to be two of the greatest writers in history. Since we know these two
>: authors wrote SF, how then can you claim that these same professors and
>: critics think SF is gutter writing?
>
>No they are talking about any kind... Include a spacecraft in your story
>and recieve an F.
That is completely idiotic. No lit. prof. worth his/her salt is going to
give out an F because someone writes a story similar in style to Borges,
Kafka, Rushdie, Calvino, Poe etc. The type of writing these people did
was well respected. If you can write as good as Rushdie or Okri and have
a spaceship in your story, not only should you get an A in class but you
should also get worldwide fame as a budding young novelist.
>: They wrote speculative fiction and I am sure they were quite aware of that
>: fact. They would only protest if they were lumped in with genre-SF.
>
>But the point is why? Probably because if their work was lumped in with
>Genre-SF, it would make it that much harder for them to gain literary
>acceptance.
Probably because those in the genre do a fine job of excluding good SF in
favor of derivative nonsense, and adolescent adventure stories. Who wants
to be associted with a group of people who prefer Heinlein or Niven or
Brin to Rushdie, Burroughs, Kafka, & Okri? The demand among genre SF fans
is for dragons & space flight and crap, not for good fiction. Just look
at the quantity of Brooks, Anthony, A.D. Foster, Eddings, Brin, Niven,
Anderson, Clarke, Startreck/Starwars/B5/D&D etc. novels that are sold.
The demand is for stupid adventure stories. Many of those in the genre
don't read good SF outside the genre and they don't want to. There is a
great quantity of excellent SF outside the genre. How much of it have you
bothered to read? There are tons of SF fans who won't even read non-media
tie-in SF much less something from the general fiction section of a book
store.
>: >Yes and naturally they feel they are the better judges than the vast
>: >majority of readers. Question when was the last time that an SF novel won
>: >both the Hugo or the Nebula and the Booker?
>
>: You pick on the critics for going a way that is the opposite of the vast
>: majority of readers. However, on average, does Rushdie or Niven generally
>: sell more copies per novel? I am guessing it is Rushdie by a landslide.
>: Are people in general more familiar with Kafka or Heinlein? If the vast
>: majority of readers is criterion for goodness of a SF work then the SF
>: genre is excluding some pretty wonderful prose.
>
>Ah, but Rushdie is a bad example, he has been cast into artificial
>prominance since he was sentenced to Death by the Ayotollah. And while I
>certainly don't have the figures world wide, I would guess that you are
>more likely to find a genre SF book on the New York Times best seller list
>than you are a work by Calvino or Borges.
True. However, the NYT list represents a minority of books sold. There
is an entire book buying planet out there and what is being read in the
USA does not reflect the trends of the whole planet. Another thing to
consider is how many years ago Calvino's and Borges' books were initially
written. How many of today's genre-SF books will be on the shelves (in
10+ languages in dozens of countries) in 60 years? Comparing William
Gibson's sales in 1998 to Borges' sales in 1998 is not a decent way to
assess popularity of the two authors.
>: >Except of course most of the writers you mention have clearly made
>: >attempts to distance themselves from SF.
>
>: Genre-SF, not SF in general. Rushdie, Burroughs, Calvino, Borges etc.
>: have not claimed that their writing was not speculative. Certainly they
>: were well aware that elements of the fantastic were in their writing. In
>: the natural universe there most likely aren't people who have telepathic
>: power centered in their noses, or people that travel thru time via
>: retro-masturbation, or sub-atomic particles that have romantic affairs, or
>: infinite mazes of libraries filled with meaningless books and obsessed
>: monks. To think that any of these authors is not aware that coming up
>: with these ideas involved some degree of speculation is pure silliness.
>: If these authors wanted to distance themselves from SF, why did they spend
>: so much time writing SF?
>
>Well generally when one mentions SF, one is refering to science fiction,
>not speculative fiction.
Actually, if i remember correctly from the faq, the abrev. SF is meant to
denote speculative fiction. It is this definition that I feel most people
in this ng are using. Sci-fi is the abreviation for science fiction.
>: And at least some of the authors you
>: >claim are non-genre are in fact well accepted by the SF community.
>
>: Such as?
>
>Bradbury, Lem and Dick. In your second post on this subject you claimed
>that you considered none of these genre writers.
I think I mentioned that Dick's best stuff was non-genre. The other two,
unlike most genre-SF writers, are accepted outside the genre. I think i
covered this above. Bounderies are not black & white and you can nail me
on their fuzziness.
>
>: They were not taking a close look at genre-SF. They were paying attention
>: to and praising many SF novels, however. I already gave you a list of
>: 20th centure SF writers that literary critics were/are in love with. Your
>: statement that critics were ignoring SF is just plain false. I don't know
>: why you keep insisting that it is true.
>
>Well again it comes to a distinction of SF as speculative fiction as
>opposed to SF as Science Fiction. And clearly the critics have ignored
>Science Fiction. The problem of course is that definition of speculative
>fiction is so broad as to include almost any works that one could care to
>include.
W.S. Burroughs counts as SF and sci-fi and is certainly not ignored by
critics. He is a damn fine writer and that gets him noticed.
As far as genre-sci-fi that critics should like, I can't think of much.
Wolfe's _BotNS_ is one and critics do notice it. Gibson's _Burning
Chrome_ is another and I may be wrong but I think that critics have
noticed this as well. Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ was phenomenal in
comparison to genre-sci fi and but in comparison to general fiction, I
don't think it holds up to well. I am not so sure if genre-sci fi has
produced anything else that is worthy of praise. Maybe I am forgetting
something.
>
>Science Fiction on the other hand has dealt with issues that are more
>central and immediate to man in the 20th century.
I don't understand this. It seems to me that general fiction that takes
place in the current time and earth, has to deal with current issues at
least as much as sci fi. Sci fi can, i agree, deal with current issues as
much as non-sci fi but it is unlikely (and not true) that it deals with
these issues more than non-sci fi.
Of what I have read of general fiction and sci fi in the last 5 years, I
would have to say that general fiction wins hands down when it comes to
dealing w/immediate issues that pertain the 20th humanity.
Coyu
>From: barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu (Cosimo)
>Date: Wed, Jul 1, 1998 15:43 EDT
>Of what I have read of general fiction and sci fi in the last 5 years, I
>would have to say that general fiction wins hands down when it comes to
>dealing w/immediate issues that pertain the 20th humanity.
Fiction that you've read in the past five years, or fiction that was
_published_
in the last five years?
Alter S. Reiss
On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Carrie Schutrick wrote:
> >I think also alot of those words also originally ended in e (Can you
> >believe that they use to use 'e's even more frequently than its used
> >today?)
>
> "knight" used to sound rather like "k-nig-t."
I'm pretty sure it didn't. ki-nicht is what I've heard from
people who talk the Germanic languages.
--
Alter S. Reiss --- www.geocities.com/Area51/2129 --- asr...@ymail.yu.edu
"Woe unto those that awake early in the morning..."
Isaiah, 5:11
Bill McHale
Cosimo (barne...@OMIT.THIS.osu.edu) wrote:
: My point here is that sure, if
: >there are compelling reasons to invent a new style
: How about this one, a compelling reason to invent a new style is to
: provide readers with something that isn't boring and formulaic. I cannot
: imagine that there ever would be a day where these compelling reasons
: would not exist. If I was not interested in inovation, originality, or a
: fresh and creative approach to literature, then I would seriously question
: the purpose of creating new styles. Luckily, I am more open minded than
: that.
Ok, so answer me this.... how does ommitting punctuation and irregular
spelling make the book more interesting? In my experience they just make
the book harder to read.
: then sure, however more
: >often than not, I find that modern literature just invents new styles for
: >the sake of inventing them. How is a work enhanced by omitting
: >punctuation? Or by spelling the words in an irregular manner?
: I won't go into this. If you don't like creativity as far as style goes,
: there is no way I am going to convince you via this post that you should
: be interested in innovative and creative approaches to writing style.
I don't like pointless creativity as far as style goes. Particularly when
it seems to be more along the lines of the author proclaiming to world how
clever he is.
: >: >: Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Kafka, Poe, Grimms Fairy Tales,
: >: >: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rushdie, Bulgakov, W.S. Burroughs, Ngugi, Okri,
: >: >: Mahfouz etc. are all examples of non-genre SF. They are all speculative
: >: >: fiction but are not an integral part of SF fandom.
: >: >
: >: >Well while all of them might be speculative fiction, not all of them are
: >: >Science Fiction, or even fantasy.
: >
: >: Which of the above authors or books is not representative of fantasy? I
: >: can't think of one that is devoid of the fantastic.
: >
: >Please, since you were the one stressing the difference between genre-sf
: >and sf, you must surely be aware that fantasy is a modern genre as
: >distinct, and with its own qualifiers as any other.
: yes i am aware of that, but since i was reading the word as used by you,
: and it was you who objected to the classification of literature into
: high-literature and genre, i assumed that your use of the word "fantasy"
: was something other than a genre reference. if you are going to
: distinguish between the two, then please clarify (like i have done with
: genre/non-genre SF) to avoid confusion.
Ok I will grant that.
: Sure works like those
: >written by the magical realists have fantastic elements, but that does not
: >make them fantasy by the standards of the genre.
: agreed. actually that is part of my point. the fantasy genre has
: excluded much true fantasy from its consideration.
I will also grant that. I certainly think that the Magical Realists
should be housed there. Fortunately Fantasy seems to be slowly but surely
breaking from the mold of Tolkien imitation.
: >: Dick is in the center of the genre. Lem and Bradbury are less so but can
: >: be considered genre-SF writers or perhaps cross-over writers. What is
: >: your point concerning these 3 authors?
: >
: >Specifically refuting your claim that these were not genre-sf authors.
: >You were claiming that genre-sf was devoid of merit, I pointed these
: >authors out, and then you claimed that they were not really genre-sf
: >authors.
: I never claimed that genre-SF is devoid of merit (check dejanews if you
: doubt me). I claimed that most genre-SF is devoid of merit.
Maybe not, but you did make a distinction between genre-SF and non-genre
SF/
: Some of Dick's good works would never have been shelved in the SF section
: of a bookstore had they been written by someone who wasn't already
: accpeted as a genre writer. There is no way Valis and Transmigration of
: TA would ever be shelved in SF if they were the only two books written by
: a particular author. Both books would be in general fiction and would be
: unkown to most genre types. As for most of Dick's work, it seems to be
: pretty heinous as far as i have noticed.
What do you mean as far as you noticed? Have you not read them?
: Bradbury is in a fuzzy category. He did a good job of getting ignored by
: the genre and fans while getting lots of acclaim from the general public.
: Check out his score card as it pertains to genre-awards like the Hugo &
: Nebula. I just popped into the ISFDB to see how Bradbury looked as far as
: awards go. He has 6 to his credit according to the IFDB. Larry Niven (a
: talentless schmuck IMHO) has 13 (according to ISFDB). This disparity may
: not reflect acceptance by the genre, however. The years in which they
: were writing may have had something to do with number of awards. Still
: though, Bradbury, is perhaps at least as much a general fiction writer as
: a genre-SF writer. Everyone has read Farenheit 451 and a few other
: Bradbury books. Most SF is only digested by SF fans, not the general
: public.
Yes Bradbury's prime was before most of the current awards were founded.
However even though much of what Bradbury writes is not SF, he does see
himself as an SF writer... if only part time. In a Collection of his
short stories he mentions how he once wrote an article defending SF
(defined in this case as Science Fiction).
:
: Lem is the recipient of a grand total of zero genre awards (according to
: the ISFDB). I also notice quite a bit of hostility towards him in this ng
: which tends to make me think he was straddling the genre/high literature
: fence but is mostly on the non-genre side. His novels don't really seem
: good enough to compete in the general fiction market and that may explain
: why he gets shelved in SF.
Lem will elicit not elicit any stronger of a reaction than Harlan Ellison
will, and he definitely has spent much of his career writing genre fiction
(science fiction, fantasy, horror).
: >
: >: >: As far as the gutter that the elite place SF in, I will argue that it is
: >: >: this very statement which leads me to use the genre/non-genre
: >: >: distinction. IMHO, the literary elite do not have a bias (even a tiny
: >: >: one) against SF. Look at the Booker Prize winners and short lists for the
: >: >: last 20 years. I scanned the list the other night and I recall seeing
: >: >: quite a few SF titles on it.
: >: >
: >: >By making this distincition you are further ghetoizzing the genre.
: >
: >: The genre ghettoizzes itself. The the network of fans & writers in the
: >: genre claim they represent SF while at the same time ignoring a huge
: >: amount of really amazing SF (Okri, Ngugi, Rushdie, Calvino, Borges, Kafka,
: >: Burroughs etc.). If the genre doesn't want to be ghettoizzed, then those
: >: in it should stop excluding quality SF from the set of books to be read,
: >: praised, & appreciated. If it isn't derivative of Tolkien or wasn't
: >: influenced (directly or indirectly) by Campbell then it often (but not
: >: always) isn't "good" enough for SF fans to appreciate. No one is forcing
: >: the SF community to crap on and ignore SF novels that aren't written
: >: according to the tired formula seen in most genre-SF books.
: >
: >Most of these writers have written Speculative Fiction, but that does not
: >make them Science Fiction writers.
: I have not made any claims about Science Fiction since the initiation of
: this thread. I have been speaking of SF, speculative fiction.
Ah, but see SF has two meanings... as often as not it means Science
Fiction. And that of course was the first definition that came to mind
when I saw your original post.
: >
: >In addition, how many of the Rushdies, Calvinos and Borges have actually
: >made any attempts to make contact with the SF comunity.
: The chicken or the egg. Did the sf people ghettoiz themselves and that
: explains why Borges & Rushdie would not associate with them, or did
: Rushdie & Borges turn their noses up at the SF community and as a result
: leave the community ghetto-like? I think a pretty good case can be made
: for the former explanation.
Well SF was ghettoized from the start because of its origins. But then
most literary movements start the same way and expand from there. Despite
genre-SF's persistent influence on the technical elite, it has remained
all but unrecognized.
: The SF genre did not always exist (just like
: the crime novel, & romance novel genres were not always with us). When
: groups of fans came together and restricted their reading to books with a
: particular subject matter, publishers and book stores took note and
: created SF sections to reflect the book purchasing habits of the fans.
: The fans wanted stories with robots, lazers, space flight, dragons &
: worlocks in them. They didn't want quality literature if it meant giving
: up their robots, lazers, etc. The fans don't want certain types of
: literature and they are getting what they want.
Yes the fans are interested in a certain type of story, and when the elite
authors would not provide it to them, they provided it themselves.
: There are a group of people that primarily read genre-romance novels.
Well I am sorry to burst your bubble but if you think this is the case,
then you are sadly mistaken. I have known a number of people who have
taken writing classes and have been forbidden from writing any genre
fiction.
: >: They wrote speculative fiction and I am sure they were quite aware of that
: >: fact. They would only protest if they were lumped in with genre-SF.
: >
: >But the point is why? Probably because if their work was lumped in with
: >Genre-SF, it would make it that much harder for them to gain literary
: >acceptance.
: Probably because those in the genre do a fine job of excluding good SF in
: favor of derivative nonsense, and adolescent adventure stories. Who wants
: to be associted with a group of people who prefer Heinlein or Niven or
: Brin to Rushdie, Burroughs, Kafka, & Okri? The demand among genre SF fans
: is for dragons & space flight and crap, not for good fiction. Just look
: at the quantity of Brooks, Anthony, A.D. Foster, Eddings, Brin, Niven,
: Anderson, Clarke, Startreck/Starwars/B5/D&D etc. novels that are sold.
: The demand is for stupid adventure stories.
While it is true that many in the genre write stupid adventure stories,
you are certainly doing exactly what I have been accusing the Literary
Elite of doing if you think that all that Brin, Clarke and Anderson do is
write stupid adventure storis. Even Niven, is usually interested in more
than adventure in his novels. These particular examples write novels that
are driven by ideas and plot. Even Brin and Anderson, who admittedly
include a fair bit adventure in their stories, are not simply writing
adventure stories. In many cases the stories are about Scientific
ideas... about how technology increasingly becomes a dominant factor in
our lives. In other cases thoughts of maturity, both for individuals and
the whole of humanity are the forefront, and in other cases the authors
are interested with the development of Universes.
And of course you completely missed Novels like Ender's Game, Speaker for
the Dead, Beggars in Spain and dozens of others that are not about
adventure, and many of them don't even have space ships, dragons or ray
guns in them... any many of them never did.
: Many of those in the genre
: don't read good SF outside the genre and they don't want to. There is a
: great quantity of excellent SF outside the genre. How much of it have you
: bothered to read? There are tons of SF fans who won't even read non-media
: tie-in SF much less something from the general fiction section of a book
: store.
I am not talking about media tie ins and I have read fairly extensively
outside the genre. In general however I don't the writers outside the
genre to be noticibly better or worse than those inside it.
: >: >Yes and naturally they feel they are the better judges than the vast
: >: >majority of readers. Question when was the last time that an SF novel won
: >: >both the Hugo or the Nebula and the Booker?
: >
: >: You pick on the critics for going a way that is the opposite of the vast
: >: majority of readers. However, on average, does Rushdie or Niven generally
: >: sell more copies per novel? I am guessing it is Rushdie by a landslide.
: >: Are people in general more familiar with Kafka or Heinlein? If the vast
: >: majority of readers is criterion for goodness of a SF work then the SF
: >: genre is excluding some pretty wonderful prose.
: >
: >Ah, but Rushdie is a bad example, he has been cast into artificial
: >prominance since he was sentenced to Death by the Ayotollah. And while I
: >certainly don't have the figures world wide, I would guess that you are
: >more likely to find a genre SF book on the New York Times best seller list
: >than you are a work by Calvino or Borges.
: True. However, the NYT list represents a minority of books sold. There
: is an entire book buying planet out there and what is being read in the
: USA does not reflect the trends of the whole planet. Another thing to
: consider is how many years ago Calvino's and Borges' books were initially
: written. How many of today's genre-SF books will be on the shelves (in
: 10+ languages in dozens of countries) in 60 years? Comparing William
: Gibson's sales in 1998 to Borges' sales in 1998 is not a decent way to
: assess popularity of the two authors.
And how many works from the general fiction category? The vast majority
of all fiction fades away. However genre Science Fiction does indeed have
classics that are still prominent in the field decades after they were
written. And yes some of it has been translated into general fiction.
: >: >Except of course most of the writers you mention have clearly made
: >: >attempts to distance themselves from SF.
: >
: >: Genre-SF, not SF in general. Rushdie, Burroughs, Calvino, Borges etc.
: >: have not claimed that their writing was not speculative. Certainly they
: >: were well aware that elements of the fantastic were in their writing. In
: >: the natural universe there most likely aren't people who have telepathic
: >: power centered in their noses, or people that travel thru time via
: >: retro-masturbation, or sub-atomic particles that have romantic affairs, or
: >: infinite mazes of libraries filled with meaningless books and obsessed
: >: monks. To think that any of these authors is not aware that coming up
: >: with these ideas involved some degree of speculation is pure silliness.
: >: If these authors wanted to distance themselves from SF, why did they spend
: >: so much time writing SF?
: >
: >Well generally when one mentions SF, one is refering to science fiction,
: >not speculative fiction.
: Actually, if i remember correctly from the faq, the abrev. SF is meant to
: denote speculative fiction. It is this definition that I feel most people
: in this ng are using. Sci-fi is the abreviation for science fiction.
Be careful jumping to conclusions. Sure the FAQ uses it to mean that, but
that is not its only meaning. In general Sci-fi is not used to denote
serious science fiction, rather SF is. And indeed early in your posts,
your examples seemed to indicate an opposition of non-genre SF with
science fiction specifically.
: >Bradbury, Lem and Dick. In your second post on this subject you claimed
: >that you considered none of these genre writers.
: I think I mentioned that Dick's best stuff was non-genre. The other two,
: unlike most genre-SF writers, are accepted outside the genre. I think i
: covered this above. Bounderies are not black & white and you can nail me
: on their fuzziness.
Actually you simply said I don't consider them genre SF writers.
:
: >
: >: They were not taking a close look at genre-SF. They were paying attention
: >: to and praising many SF novels, however. I already gave you a list of
: >: 20th centure SF writers that literary critics were/are in love with. Your
: >: statement that critics were ignoring SF is just plain false. I don't know
: >: why you keep insisting that it is true.
: >
: >Well again it comes to a distinction of SF as speculative fiction as
: >opposed to SF as Science Fiction. And clearly the critics have ignored
: >Science Fiction. The problem of course is that definition of speculative
: >fiction is so broad as to include almost any works that one could care to
: >include.
: W.S. Burroughs counts as SF and sci-fi and is certainly not ignored by
: critics. He is a damn fine writer and that gets him noticed.
: As far as genre-sci-fi that critics should like, I can't think of much.
: Wolfe's _BotNS_ is one and critics do notice it. Gibson's _Burning
: Chrome_ is another and I may be wrong but I think that critics have
: noticed this as well. Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ was phenomenal in
: comparison to genre-sci fi and but in comparison to general fiction, I
: don't think it holds up to well. I am not so sure if genre-sci fi has
: produced anything else that is worthy of praise. Maybe I am forgetting
: something.
Maybe you read the genre with preconcieved notions. Certainly the way you
dismiss many of the authors above indicates that you have no real
familarity with their work. While pleny of accusations can leveled at
Clarke, pigen holing him as an adventure writter is most certainly not
true. The same is true of Card, Kress, Beneford, Brin, Bear, Robinson and
a whole host of other writers.
In most cases mind you they are interested in a whole different set of
issues and a far greater degree of realism than most of the magical
realists are.
: >
: >Science Fiction on the other hand has dealt with issues that are more
: >central and immediate to man in the 20th century.
: I don't understand this. It seems to me that general fiction that takes
: place in the current time and earth, has to deal with current issues at
: least as much as sci fi. Sci fi can, i agree, deal with current issues as
: much as non-sci fi but it is unlikely (and not true) that it deals with
: these issues more than non-sci fi.
Except much of general fiction either ignores or worse avoids the
scientific and technical world views. Considering that it is the
technical elite who are the men reshaping our world, a body of work that
does not deal with them seriously, and their world view is missing a key
ingredient in the make up of society. And mind you this particular charge
is leveled at genre Fantasy as much as any other group.
Further and most importantly, this is the literature of that class. I
would imagine a survey of scientists, engineers and CS students and
professionals would reveal a far higher percentage read genre SF,
specifically science Fiction than read Borges, Calvino, Rushdie, et all.
I certainly know it is true amongst the people in those groups that I
know.
Indeed the traffic on this group indicates that.
: Of what I have read of general fiction and sci fi in the last 5 years, I
: would have to say that general fiction wins hands down when it comes to
: dealing w/immediate issues that pertain the 20th humanity.
The question is are you giving science fiction a fair chance? Everything
you write seems to indicate how strongly you have relegated the genre to
the gutter.
JoatSimeon
>wmchal
>I won't go into this. If you don't like creativity as far as style goes, :
there is no way I am going to convince you via this post that you should be
interested in innovative and creative approaches to writing style.
-- everyone makes wheels round. Everyone makes chairs in about the same way
ancient Egyptians did. Classrooms today are quite similar in setup to the way
the Sumerians taught their young scribes.
This is because, very often, there is only one really good way to do something.
If you change it, you make it worse.
-- S.M. Stirling