SF Today
Joseph V Nemec
Probably the primary reason I subscribed to SFLover's Digest was to
see what people were reading. When I was young Thirty years ago,
Magazine SF was IT, everyone who was a SF reader read the Magazines, and
there were only a few -- Analog, Galaxy, the Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction -- You read paperbacks as a supplement to the Magazines
but there were few authors who had enough clout with Hardbacks so they
weren't read that much. When you wanted a Hardback to put on your
shelf, you went to the SF Book club.
The result of that was everybody was reading the exact same thing!
On the plus side it seemed a tighter community. On the negative side
you always saw the same Author names everywhere, it was like The Grand
Ole Opry, these were SF and the rest weren't in the Club.
Today it seems a LOT different. First Fantasy is a Stronger presence
than it was Thirty years ago ... and that's putting it mildly, HALF or
MORE of the shelves supposedly devoted to SF are infact Fantasy. There
doesn't seem to BE a strictly SF Genre anymore. And the cost of an SF
magazine for a YEAR is the cost of a single Hardback! I get the feeling
the people on the SFDigest list are buying their New SF in Hardback, and
how many people can buy a Hardback a week at today's prices? So what
you get is not a community but an Elite!
What got me thinking of this is when you recently listed the SF and
Fantasy Books of 1997 by the number of times they were reviewed. As a
mind game I was lacing together the names and books as if I were making
up a monthly SF Magazine. What would you need? Maybe only four Novels
to serialize and stories and more stories with some commentary thrown
in.
I was surprised to realize that despite the supposed radical changes
in the past thirty years, you could have infact made up a monthly
magazine from that list of books using a lot of the Old SF Circle of
Authors. You had Novels by Arthur C. Clarke, Fritz Lieber, Jack
Williamson and Robert Silverberg and story collections by Alfred Bester,
C.M. Kornbluth, and Ray Bradbury to choose from ... and for your
commentary there was a nonfiction book by Silverberg.
It's made me wonder. It challenged my predjudice that things have
changed too much. So, I've got a bunch of questions for the Fans of
Today.
There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
EVERYONE reads anymore? I recently picked up some that I hadn't read in
years and found a lot of the stories "Arty" Drek that would never have
been published thirty years ago. Thirty years ... or am I thinking
thirty five years ago? ... a story was a story not an exercise in
obscure decadent imagery. (Jeez, that sounds like an old fuddy-duddy, a
cranky old Codger)
Of the Names that I didn't recognize are there any that are
significant? Hobb, Monahan, Kessel, Nagata, Nylund, Zettel, Antieau,
Hand, Swanwick, Preuss, Feintuch etc. etc.
A lot of them are Women, it seems almost 50-50! SF Fans were always a
mixed group but SF authors used to be mostly male. God knows there were
great SF Women Authors in days of Yore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton,
C. L. Moore etc. etc. But has there been a "touchy-feely" femnization
of SF? That sounds like I'm being a Bone-headed chauvinist by just
asking the question, but I would actually be very surprised if somebody
came back and said "Yes, these Dames have ruined SF!" Still, telling me
how more Relevant or Mature SF is today would get me groaning, "Please
don't Improve SF to Death!"
And Is there a New SF Author's Circle? Who'd be in it?
I feel like calling this letter "Report from Codger Planet" or "The
Time Traveler's Lament" and I'm still in my 40's (just turned 49)...
which I don't think of as Ancient but I sure feel ancient talking about
this.
And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
should be Segregated on the shelves? Or am I being just a reactionary
old Toad?
With sighs for my lost Youth ...
Joe Nemec
jos...@juno.com
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Lawrence Person
In article <19980129.072717...@juno.com>, jos...@juno.com
(Joseph V Nemec) wrote:
I get the feeling
> the people on the SFDigest list are buying their New SF in Hardback, and
> how many people can buy a Hardback a week at today's prices?
I tend to buy 2-4, but I'm a special case.
> There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
> EVERYONE reads anymore?
No, though ASIMOV'S comes closest.
> Of the Names that I didn't recognize are there any that are significant?
Kessel - Yes
Swanwick - Yes
The others - Haven't read enough
You also left out (just in SF): Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, Octavia Butler,
Pat Cadigan, George Alec Effinger, Greg Egan, William Gibson, Alexander
Jablokov, Ken MacLeod, Jack McDevitt, Ian McDonald, Paul J. McAuley, Kim
Newman, Patrick O'Leary, Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling,
Howard Waldrop, Walter Jon WIlliams, and Gene Wolfe (to name but a few).
> But has there been a "touchy-feely" femnization of SF?
Some, though not as much as some might think. Many women are writing
fantasy, and the women above (Butler, Cadigan) are as tough-minded as any.
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
> should be Segregated on the shelves?
In some places they already are, and the readerships seem to have very
little overlap; very few people who read, say, Terry Goodkind also read
Greg Egan.
--
- Lawrence Person
lawr...@bga.com
New Book Catalog Available Soon! E-mail for a hard or soft copy.
Visit the Nova Express Web Site at:
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Rocky Persaud
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
> In article <19980129.072717...@juno.com>,
> Joseph V Nemec <jos...@juno.com> wrote:
>
> [snip, snip]
>
> > And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
> >should be Segregated on the shelves?
> Somebody posted a neat analogy a
> while back, comparing the different genres to tall peaks of
> characteristic style rising among the plains of assorted influences
> and combinations. Where are you going to draw the line?
IIRC that was Dennis McKiernan.
------------------------------------------------------------
Raakesh Persaud ------> Editor of the CANADIAN SPACE GAZETTE
OnLine at http://members.octonline.com/rpersaud/gazette.html
Email: rocky....@utoronto.ca -OR- rper...@octonline.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Dryad
>
> There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
> EVERYONE reads anymore?
I used to read both Analog and Asimov, but quite frankly, I haven't the
time nor the storage space to keep up with them.
> Of the Names that I didn't recognize are there any that are
> significant? Hobb, Monahan, Kessel, Nagata, Nylund, Zettel, Antieau,
> Hand, Swanwick, Preuss, Feintuch etc. etc.
Ooer. Heh, yeah, I would consider a lot of these ppl significant...Robin
Hobb aka Megan Lindholm...Linda Nagata is brilliant (even though I hate
all of her cahracters)...Sarah Zettel is An Author Whose Books I Will
Always Buy, Even In HArdcover, Elisabeth Hand is one of the more
interesting "new" writers, Michael Swanwick's been around for what, 15
years now....Paul Preuss is a very odd, good, and different (these
adjectives don't really cover works like 'Sugar Rain')
author...geez...yeah, they're important.
>
> A lot of them are Women, it seems almost 50-50! SF Fans were always a
> mixed group but SF authors used to be mostly male. God knows there were
> great SF Women Authors in days of Yore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton,
> C. L. Moore etc. etc. But has there been a "touchy-feely" femnization
> of SF? That sounds like I'm being a Bone-headed chauvinist by just
> asking the question, but I would actually be very surprised if somebody
> came back and said "Yes, these Dames have ruined SF!" Still, telling me
> how more Relevant or Mature SF is today would get me groaning, "Please
> don't Improve SF to Death!"
Sorry...what's your point? Do you not like reading female authors or
what? WHat kind of SF do you prefer - hard technical stuff, political,
"emotional", what? Heck, you could read CJ Cherryh and find all of that,
or Kim Stanley Robinson or David Brin or Melissa Scott....
Clea
--
A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
The President scores much better than Bill Clinton.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, comparing Bush's record of marital infidelity to Clinton's during a televised interview with David Frost, 10/92.
annagrey at sover dot net
John Boston
[snip]
> And the cost of an SF
>magazine for a YEAR is the cost of a single Hardback!
That hasn't changed much. I'm looking at a 1960 issue of AMAZING
STORIES. A year's subscription cost $3.50. The price of a standard
hardcover SF novel at the time was $2.95 or $3.50. A 1964 WORLDS OF
TOMORROW, which was bi-monthly, cost $2.50 for a year, equivalent to $5.00
for a monthly magazine. Many hardcover sf books had increased in cost to
$4.50 or so by then.
John Boston
Dorothy J Heydt
[snip, snip]
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
>should be Segregated on the shelves?
Why, yes, there are a few, and every now and then one posts suggesting
it, and then there's fierce debate for a while, but neither side
convinces the other.
The trouble with trying to separate the SF from the F is twofold.
(1) There aren't really two separate categories. There's a spectrum
from really hard-core nuts-and-bolts SF on one end to really soft-and-
squishy elves-and-unicorns F on the other. And it's not even *that*
simple, because there are more than two extremes and a large number
of intermediate combinations. Somebody posted a neat analogy a
while back, comparing the different genres to tall peaks of
characteristic style rising among the plains of assorted influences
and combinations. Where are you going to draw the line?
(2) A large number of authors write both SF and F. Draw the line
at any point, put the SF on one side and the F on the other, and
you get (I'm quoting Orson Scott Card here) this:
"Where's the latest Xanth novel?"" asks the fifteenth kid today.
"I found Piers Anthony's books in the sci-fi section, but you
don't have *any* Xanth books there."
"That's because the Xanth books are *fantasy,*" says the
patient bookstore clerk. "They're in the *fantasy* section."
"Well, that's stupid," says the kid. "Why don't you have
his books *together*?"
So you sort of can't win. About all you can do is make mental
(or, since I gather you're about as old as I am) paper notes on
which of the new authors write stuff you like and which don't.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com (NOTE NEW ADDRESS)
Dorothy J Heydt
In article <34D15C97...@octonline.com>,
Rocky Persaud <rpersaud_remove...@octonline.com.> wrote:
>
>> Somebody posted a neat analogy a
>> while back, comparing the different genres to tall peaks of
>> characteristic style rising among the plains of assorted influences
>> and combinations. Where are you going to draw the line?
>
You do RC. I looked it up on the copy I've got saved on my domestic
disc, but was reluctant to re-post it. (Dennis, are you on this group?
Maybe you would like to post it?)
Pat Clancy
Joseph V Nemec wrote:
> There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
> EVERYONE reads anymore? I recently picked up some that I hadn't read in
> years and found a lot of the stories "Arty" Drek that would never have
> been published thirty years ago. Thirty years ... or am I thinking
> thirty five years ago? ... a story was a story not an exercise in
> obscure decadent imagery. (Jeez, that sounds like an old fuddy-duddy, a
> cranky old Codger)
>
> [clip]
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
> should be Segregated on the shelves? Or am I being just a reactionary
> old Toad?
>
Fantasy has became a pretty successful "formula" genre over the 35 (?) years
since Tolkien appeared. Maybe it's because they can churn out endless parts
2, 3, 4, ... e.g. Robert Jordan and that never-ending series. It really
shouldn't be lumped together with SF in any way, even though there's an
obvious overlap in the readerships.
More in the clear "decline and fall" category is the endless proliferation of
the TV-tie-in formula junk, "Star Trek" etc. There's an interesting
editorial/review on this topic by Normal Spinrad in the latest "Asimov's".
Re your comment about "arty" drek... this is always a problem (why I never
much liked "F&SF" mag., though haven't checked it in the last 20 years), but
it was at its height during that horrible "New Wave" era in SF of the late
60's and 70's, which thankfully had mostly died out by the mid-80's (your
chronology may differ, depending on how you classify things).Pat
David Kennedy
In article <EnKro...@kithrup.com>,
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
> In article <19980129.072717...@juno.com>,
> Joseph V Nemec <jos...@juno.com> wrote:
>
> really hard-core nuts-and-bolts SF on one end
Ha! Nuts-and-bolts is softer SF now, you want naked singularities
and mind-hurting multi-dimensional topologies... cf Egan or Benford
and their ilk. :-)
> "Where's the latest Xanth novel?"" asks the fifteenth kid today.
> "I found Piers Anthony's books in the sci-fi section, but you
> don't have *any* Xanth books there."
This should really read:
"That's because the Xanth books are *rubbish*, we threw them all
out. As for the one's in the sci-fi section, well, we must have
missed them. I'll go and throw them out now."
My gripe is with SF/F ending up in the mainstream or 'Literary'
(I hate that label) sections eg. "The Sparrow", "Ammonite", several
SF-y works by not-really-SF-authors, "The Calcutta Chromosone" etc.
--
David Kennedy, Dept. of Pure & Applied Physics, Queen's University of Belfast
Email: D.Ke...@Queens-Belfast.ac.uk | URL: http://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/~dcjk/
My .sig was so clever that it actually escaped!
Aznin
Hi kids. On 29 Jan 1998 10:28:41 -0500 I read this little ditty by
jos...@juno.com (Joseph V Nemec) and it made me think...
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
>should be Segregated on the shelves?
It's an old debate. We've had a couple of threads about this pop up
every once in a while, I guess.
As for my personal opinion, it wouldn't hurt to separate them, but it
wouldn't do that much good either. We still call both of them
speculative fiction (sf as in rec.arts.sf.written). Lots of authors
write both, as Dorothy pointed out earlier. Lots of books are very
difficult to place in either fantasy or science fiction (numerous
threads about Gene Wolfe come to mind). Some series even switch
genres at a certain point. Etcetera.
Aznin
**************************************************************
Did you know Mars bars are actually made right here on Earth?
**************************************************************
az...@NOSPAMerols.com
Remove the spamblocker for personal replies.
Rich Horton
On 29 Jan 98 22:52:36 GMT, anna...@nospamsover.net (Dryad) wrote:
>Paul Preuss is a very odd, good, and different (these
>adjectives don't really cover works like 'Sugar Rain')
>author...geez...yeah, they're important.
You're talking about Paul Park ("Get a Grip", his short from this
year, is really good, BTW). Though Paul Preuss, in a very different
way, might also be called odd, good, and different.
--
Rich Horton
Homepage: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton (new reviews of: _H.M.S. Surprise,
by Patrick O'Brian; and _The Stone Canal_, by Ken MacLeod.)
Dorothy J Heydt
In article <6as9df$snf$3...@news.qub.ac.uk>,
David Kennedy <D.Ke...@qub.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>This should really read:
>"That's because the Xanth books are *rubbish*, we threw them all
>out. As for the one's in the sci-fi section, well, we must have
>missed them. I'll go and throw them out now."
Don't I wish. My otherwise intellectually respectable husband
reads everything Anthony has written, and claims he intends to
read them again someday so I can't throw them/sell them. I can
see them from where I sit, occupying an entire shelf of the bookcase
containing the "A" fiction (that's alpha order, not rating, even
though Anderson and Asimov and Allingham are in there too).
They'd make a good doorstop if you used enough duct tape.
Lawrence Person
> Re your comment about "arty" drek... this is always a problem (why I never
> much liked "F&SF" mag., though haven't checked it in the last 20 years), but
> it was at its height during that horrible "New Wave" era in SF of the late
> 60's and 70's, which thankfully had mostly died out by the mid-80's (your
> chronology may differ, depending on how you classify things).Pat
Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
"arty dreck."
Nancy Lebovitz
>in the past thirty years, you could have infact made up a monthly
>magazine from that list of books using a lot of the Old SF Circle of
>Authors. You had Novels by Arthur C. Clarke, Fritz Lieber, Jack
>Williamson and Robert Silverberg and story collections by Alfred Bester,
>C.M. Kornbluth, and Ray Bradbury to choose from ... and for your
>commentary there was a nonfiction book by Silverberg.
>
Kornbluth presumably made a list of most reviewed books because
NESFA published a collection of his solo short fiction.
Mind you, things may have reached a point where there'd be a market
for a magazine or, more likely, a continuing anthology series of
That Good Old Stuff.
>
> There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
>EVERYONE reads anymore? I recently picked up some that I hadn't read in
I don't think so.
>years and found a lot of the stories "Arty" Drek that would never have
>been published thirty years ago. Thirty years ... or am I thinking
>thirty five years ago? ... a story was a story not an exercise in
Thirty years ago is when the New Wave was bringing the arty drek into
sf.
>obscure decadent imagery. (Jeez, that sounds like an old fuddy-duddy, a
>cranky old Codger)
>
I was a young codger who didn't like most of it back then.
> Of the Names that I didn't recognize are there any that are
>significant? Hobb, Monahan, Kessel, Nagata, Nylund, Zettel, Antieau,
>Hand, Swanwick, Preuss, Feintuch etc. etc.
I don't know what else is on your etc. list, but I'd at least recommend
_Vacuum Flowers_ by Swanwick.
>
> A lot of them are Women, it seems almost 50-50! SF Fans were always a
>mixed group but SF authors used to be mostly male. God knows there were
>great SF Women Authors in days of Yore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton,
>C. L. Moore etc. etc. But has there been a "touchy-feely" femnization
>of SF? That sounds like I'm being a Bone-headed chauvinist by just
I don't think so. Try Bujold and see what you think.
>asking the question, but I would actually be very surprised if somebody
>came back and said "Yes, these Dames have ruined SF!" Still, telling me
>how more Relevant or Mature SF is today would get me groaning, "Please
>don't Improve SF to Death!"
>
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
>should be Segregated on the shelves? Or am I being just a reactionary
>old Toad?
>
No, but there might be good marketing reasons for separating Hard
SF from everything else. There seem to be more people who only want
hard sf than people who want science fiction but not fantasy.
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
November '97 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <lawrence-300...@apm0-41.realtime.net>,
Lawrence Person <lawr...@bga.com> wrote:
>> Re your comment about "arty" drek... this is always a problem (why I never
>> much liked "F&SF" mag., though haven't checked it in the last 20 years), but
>> it was at its height during that horrible "New Wave" era in SF of the late
>> 60's and 70's, which thankfully had mostly died out by the mid-80's (your
>> chronology may differ, depending on how you classify things).Pat
>
>Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
>However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
>and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
>"arty dreck."
>
all my criteria for New Wave. (I hate to admit it because I'd like
to believe that "if it's New Wave, it can't be good". The criteria
are stylistic innovation (compared to mainstream sf), no solid
science, and immobilization as a primary theme.) It's a great
story.
I'm not so sure about _Stand on Zanzibar_ being New Wave--it seemed
more like slightly fringe sf to me.
Edmund C. Hack
In article <34D18933...@tableworks.com>,
Pat Clancy <p...@tableworks.com> wrote:
>
>Joseph V Nemec wrote:
>> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
>> should be Segregated on the shelves? Or am I being just a reactionary
>> old Toad?
One could always hope that a reader of the interminable fantasy series
would have a revelation that maybe this SF stuff would be worth reading....
>Fantasy has became a pretty successful "formula" genre over the 35 (?) years
>since Tolkien appeared. Maybe it's because they can churn out endless parts
>2, 3, 4, ... e.g. Robert Jordan and that never-ending series. It really
>shouldn't be lumped together with SF in any way, even though there's an
>obvious overlap in the readerships.
No kidding. I think the great success of "The Sword of Shanarra" was a big
shift in what got published.
>More in the clear "decline and fall" category is the endless proliferation of
>the TV-tie-in formula junk, "Star Trek" etc. There's an interesting
>editorial/review on this topic by Normal Spinrad in the latest "Asimov's".
As an aid to looking in the local SuperDuper BigChain store to see what is
new, they have a display of 20 new and featured books at the beginning of each
genre section such as SciFi, WhoDunIts, BodiceRippers, etc. Over the last
several months 50% of the books have had a media tie in (mainly Trek), 45%
have been fantasy (mostly series books), 5% or less have been SF (and I had
to count Bradbury as SF, not fantasy to make it that high). Now, I know this
is skewed by the fact that in all probability the books in this rack have
had a fee paid by the publisher to be put there, so only big budget stuff
such as media tie-ins and proven series will be there, but I would think that
at least _some_ SF without the star of a Paramount-produced TV show on the
cover would get some promotion.
--
ech...@crll.com / Edmund Hack, Houston, TX
IMHO. OTOH. IANAL. BTSOOM. BTW. FAQ. TLA. LSMFT. AF&AM Stereo.
Remove second l in hostname for email.
Avram Grumer
In article <6at9l1$j...@universe.digex.net>, nan...@universe.digex.net
(Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> Thirty years ago is when the New Wave was bringing
> the arty drek into sf.
Prior to that, most of SF's drek was artless.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@interport.net | http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
"...it is significant that we are called the 'information society' --
not the thinking society, not the deliberative society, not the society
of reason and rationality." -- Lloyd Morrisett
piranha
>than it was Thirty years ago ... and that's putting it mildly, HALF or
>MORE of the shelves supposedly devoted to SF are infact Fantasy. There
>doesn't seem to BE a strictly SF Genre anymore.
that's true. there is a wider spectrum now, and it does,
in fact, stretch into mainstream fiction as well. (magic
realism or fantasy, anyone? :-)
>And the cost of an SF
>magazine for a YEAR is the cost of a single Hardback!
that struck me instinctively as "what change?", so i did
a little research on the paramour's shelves. the paramour
isn't old enough for magazines to go back 35 years, but 20
years ago zie was reading analog, asimov's, and galaxy.
newsstand prices were $1.25, subscription prices were:
analog $10 for 12 issues (that was an xmas special)
asimov's $5.95 for 6 issues
galaxy $15 for 12 issues
prices for hardcover books (taken from advertising in those
magazines) were around $10.
>I get the feeling
>the people on the SFDigest list are buying their New SF in Hardback, and
>how many people can buy a Hardback a week at today's prices? So what
>you get is not a community but an Elite!
well, i don't ever buy hardcovers. not just because of the
price, but because they use up too much space and are a pain
to hold when reading in bed. :-)
> There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
>EVERYONE reads anymore?
i wouldn't know. i came to SF late, and never really read
magazines much. nowadays i read on-spec (canadian magazine),
and the old stuff on the shelves.
> Of the Names that I didn't recognize are there any that are
>significant? Hobb, Monahan, Kessel, Nagata, Nylund, Zettel, Antieau,
>Hand, Swanwick, Preuss, Feintuch etc. etc.
several, i'd say; tho i haven't read everyone on that list
yet myself. this isn't the A list tho (i don't mean A as
in quality, but A as in "famous, clearly significant), and
what's swanwick doing there? he's been around for a decade
and a half, while i've just noticed zettel, for example.
> A lot of them are Women, it seems almost 50-50! SF Fans were always a
>mixed group but SF authors used to be mostly male. God knows there were
>great SF Women Authors in days of Yore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton,
>C. L. Moore etc. etc. But has there been a "touchy-feely" femnization
>of SF?
no. there has been a maturation of SF. that doesn't, to
me, translate to "touchy-feely" and cute, fuzzy elves, but
to realistic characters (as opposed to "real" men and the
occasional "real" woman a la heinlein) with realistic lives
and realistic concerns. as i said, i came to SF late, and
i just never had an opportunity to enjoy some golden age
SF because i came straight from literature, and expected a
lot more from a story than some futuristic ideas -- i hun-
gered for good characterization, and much of that period
didn't have that, characters were fairly empty vehicles,
designed to move the plot along.
now SF has it, in spades. i love it.
and i'm not much into drawing lines based on gender -- i
bet i could hand you any number of books from my shelves
and you would not be able to guess whether they were writ-
ten by a man or a woman. it's easy to speculate in hind-
sight. i can't imagine much more UNtouchy-feely universes
than cj cherryh's, *grin*. and eddings gets mighty cute.
i could make a huge list of such examples, but luckily i
am not a listmaker by nature.
>That sounds like I'm being a Bone-headed chauvinist by just
>asking the question, but I would actually be very surprised if somebody
>came back and said "Yes, these Dames have ruined SF!" Still, telling me
>how more Relevant or Mature SF is today would get me groaning, "Please
>don't Improve SF to Death!"
sorry. i can't say i see much wrong in improving things.
yes, i can never again read certain books the way i read
them when i was a child, that magic is irretrievably lost,
except maybe in sentimental memory. but there are other
things to take its place now. the bonus is that you can
still probably find whatever it is you miss today, except
it's no longer the only thing out there, and so maybe you
can stretch a little beyond the old envelope if you feel
so inclined.
> And Is there a New SF Author's Circle? Who'd be in it?
hm. depends on whom you ask, and what zir selection cri-
teria are. are we talking about "authors who're doing
original and exciting things with SF", or "authors who're
big on the bestseller list"?
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
>should be Segregated on the shelves? Or am I being just a reactionary
>old Toad?
yes. no. well. :-) i do not believe one _can_ segregate
them. sure, most everything with cute, fuzzy elves, dragons,
and wizards would belong on the fantasy shelves, but there
is so much overlap. and more so, i don't really think it's
a one-axis problem -- we'd need a multi-dimensional set of
shelves.
> With sighs for my lost Youth ...
time to start enjoying your "golden" years. :-)
-piranha
------------------------------------------------------------------------
please help fight spam -- http://www.cauce.org
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Arthur Wohlwill
In article <6as9df$snf$3...@news.qub.ac.uk> D.Ke...@qub.ac.uk (David Kennedy) writes:
>From: D.Ke...@qub.ac.uk (David Kennedy)
>Subject: Re: SF Today
>Date: 30 Jan 1998 10:18:23 GMT
(skip)
>My gripe is with SF/F ending up in the mainstream or 'Literary'
>(I hate that label) sections eg. "The Sparrow", "Ammonite", several
>SF-y works by not-really-SF-authors, "The Calcutta Chromosone" etc.
Has anyone read "The Calcutta Chromosome"? Is it any good?
Arthur Wohlwill adwo...@UIC.EDU
Lawrence Person
In article <6ata1u$j...@universe.digex.net>, nan...@universe.digex.net
(Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> I'm not so sure about _Stand on Zanzibar_ being New Wave--it seemed
> more like slightly fringe sf to me.
Well, it's set in the future, features a superpowerful computer, a
significantly altered sociopolitical landscape, plus drugs, biotechnology,
weapons, and scientific theories unknown in its day (and most unknown in
ours as well). I would say this qualifies as SF.
And as for New Wave, I don't think anyone had ever used the multi-stream,
multi-media viewpoint technique for crafting a novel before Brunner. I
would argue that this fits firmly into the new Wave's tradition of
stylistic innovation, and I think SOZ was very much claimed as New Wave by
the members of that movement (though I admit that, being 3 when it came
out, I was not quite plugged into the SF critical metadialogue at the
time.
And as for critical source, Clute does mention Brunner in his section on
New Wave in the SF Encyclopedia.
Brenda and Larry Clough
piranha wrote:
>
> no. there has been a maturation of SF. that doesn't, to
> me, translate to "touchy-feely" and cute, fuzzy elves, but
> to realistic characters (as opposed to "real" men and the
> occasional "real" woman a la heinlein) with realistic lives
> and realistic concerns. as i said, i came to SF late, and
> i just never had an opportunity to enjoy some golden age
> SF because i came straight from literature, and expected a
> lot more from a story than some futuristic ideas -- i hun-
> gered for good characterization, and much of that period
> didn't have that, characters were fairly empty vehicles,
> designed to move the plot along.
>
> now SF has it, in spades. i love it.
>
> and i'm not much into drawing lines based on gender -- i
> bet i could hand you any number of books from my shelves
> and you would not be able to guess whether they were writ-
> ten by a man or a woman. it's easy to speculate in hind-
> sight. i can't imagine much more UNtouchy-feely universes
> than cj cherryh's, *grin*. and eddings gets mighty cute.
> i could make a huge list of such examples, but luckily i
> am not a listmaker by nature.
IMO, the maturation of the field is a necessary thing. For how many
years can you read stories centering around adolescent male power
fantasies and coming of age? At some point the field has to move on, to
adult concerns -- I mean adult as in grown up, not adult as in X-rated.
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Pat Clancy
John Boston wrote:
> These current denunciations of the New Wave remind me of
> self-reliant young women who deny being feminists. Most of the stylistic
> and thematic innovations of the New Wave have been absorbed into the genre
> and are taken for granted. Gene Wolfe and Gregory Benford illustrate this
> point in very different ways.
>
> John Boston
Your "absoption" contention is as nonsensical as your statement about women.
Just what is it supposed to mean that these "innovations" are "taken for
granted"? I, as an SF reader, certainly don't take anything like that for
granted. And even if you define SF according to what some select (by you) group
of critics say about it, on what basis can you assert that they take anything
like that for granted? And, have you ever read anything by Gregory Benford?
Pat
beasonj
I always thought that SF was a subcategory of fantasy, just as magic
realism and "adolescents discovering they have great powers and are
destined to transform the world" and horror and alternate history are
all subcategories.
Joe
John Boston
In article <34D208...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com says...
>maintained his complete collection of Gor novels for 25 years,
clogging
>valuable shelf space all that time.
>
You're right. They'd probably run away together.
John Boston
John Boston
>
>In article <lawrence-300...@apm0-41.realtime.net>,
>Lawrence Person <lawr...@bga.com> wrote:
>>> Re your comment about "arty" drek... this is always a problem (why I
never
>>> much liked "F&SF" mag., though haven't checked it in the last 20 years),
but
>>> it was at its height during that horrible "New Wave" era in SF of the
late
>>> 60's and 70's, which thankfully had mostly died out by the mid-80's
(your
>>> chronology may differ, depending on how you classify things).Pat
>>
>>Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
>>However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
>>and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
>>"arty dreck."
>>
>Much as I hate to admit it, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" meets
>all my criteria for New Wave. (I hate to admit it because I'd like
>to believe that "if it's New Wave, it can't be good". The criteria
>are stylistic innovation (compared to mainstream sf), no solid
>science, and immobilization as a primary theme.) It's a great
>story.
>
>more like slightly fringe sf to me.
>
Andrew Plotkin
John Boston (jbo...@mindspring.com) wrote:
> >> Don't I wish. My otherwise intellectually respectable husband
> >> reads everything Anthony has written, and claims he intends to
> >> read them again someday so I can't throw them/sell them. I can
> >> see them from where I sit, occupying an entire shelf of the bookcase
> >
> >We must never let your husband and mine meet, Dorothy. Mine has
> >maintained his complete collection of Gor novels for 25 years,
> >clogging valuable shelf space all that time.
>
> You're right. They'd probably run away together.
The husbands, or the book collections?
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
John Moreno
Brenda and Larry Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >
> > In article <6as9df$snf$3...@news.qub.ac.uk>,
> > David Kennedy <D.Ke...@qub.ac.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > >This should really read:
> > >"That's because the Xanth books are *rubbish*, we threw them all
> > >out. As for the one's in the sci-fi section, well, we must have
> > >missed them. I'll go and throw them out now."
> >
> > Don't I wish. My otherwise intellectually respectable husband
> > reads everything Anthony has written, and claims he intends to
> > read them again someday so I can't throw them/sell them. I can
> > see them from where I sit, occupying an entire shelf of the bookcase
> > containing the "A" fiction (that's alpha order, not rating, even
> > though Anderson and Asimov and Allingham are in there too).
> > They'd make a good doorstop if you used enough duct tape.
> >
>
> We must never let your husband and mine meet, Dorothy. Mine has
> maintained his complete collection of Gor novels for 25 years, clogging
> valuable shelf space all that time.
Look, iyou can get through it then you might want to read it again, so
why throw it away?
--
John Moreno
Jo Walton
In article <lawrence-300...@apm3-153.realtime.net>
lawr...@bga.com "Lawrence Person" writes:
> And as for New Wave, I don't think anyone had ever used the multi-stream,
> multi-media viewpoint technique for crafting a novel before Brunner. I
Jon Dos Passos, :USA:.
John Brunner said he read it and he thought, "Ah." He freely admitted
this is where the "Innes mode" came from.
It's odd how hard it is to do though. :Earth: falls flat on its face
trying the same thing frex.
--
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.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <6au5at$9...@camel18.mindspring.com>,
John Boston <jbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <6ata1u$j...@universe.digex.net>, nan...@universe.digex.net
>says...
>>
>>all my criteria for New Wave. (I hate to admit it because I'd like
>>to believe that "if it's New Wave, it can't be good". The criteria
>>are stylistic innovation (compared to mainstream sf), no solid
>>science, and immobilization as a primary theme.) It's a great
>>story.
>>
>>I'm not so sure about _Stand on Zanzibar_ being New Wave--it seemed
>>more like slightly fringe sf to me.
>
> These current denunciations of the New Wave remind me of
>self-reliant young women who deny being feminists. Most of the stylistic
>and thematic innovations of the New Wave have been absorbed into the genre
>and are taken for granted. Gene Wolfe and Gregory Benford illustrate this
>point in very different ways.
>
have minded it, and might have been in favor of it. However, the
dull plots (I'm thinking of Malzberg and of a story by Ballard
where everything was just s l o w i n g d o w n) which were
supposed to be wonderful soured me on the movement.
Matt Hickman
What turned me off from the 'New Wave' movement was its arrogance.
The implication was that all prior SF was trivial or hack work and that
the 'New Wave' was glorious, pure and would take over with historic
inevitability.
I still have my collection of J.J. Peirce's _Renaissance_ magazines
around somewhere. This fanzine spear-headed the attack on that
mis-begotten marketing campaign.
Matt Hickman
...a literary critic, which is mostly harmless,
like dead yeast left in beer.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
_The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ c 1966
James Nicoll
In article <EnLqB...@kithrup.com>,
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>
>Don't I wish. My otherwise intellectually respectable husband
>reads everything Anthony has written, and claims he intends to
>read them again someday so I can't throw them/sell them. I can
>see them from where I sit, occupying an entire shelf of the bookcase
>containing the "A" fiction (that's alpha order, not rating, even
>though Anderson and Asimov and Allingham are in there too).
Uh, isn't that running the risk that the Anthony books
will taint the Andersons and other books in the 'A' section?
I filed my Necronomicon in with my other books and had to
torch the whole bookcase in the end. Don't think my KJV reads
the same since then, either.
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one God.
They're just this far away from atheism."
James Nicoll
In article <6at9l1$j...@universe.digex.net>,
Nancy Lebovitz <nan...@universe.digex.net> wrote:
>>
>No, but there might be good marketing reasons for separating Hard
>SF from everything else. There seem to be more people who only want
>hard sf than people who want science fiction but not fantasy.
OK, so Hal Clement gets a shelf to himself. I can't think of
anyone else offhand who gets the science right, without fantasies
like FTL or amazingly parallel evolution.
James Nicoll
Pat Powers
In article <34D208...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com wrote:
No, I am not married to Brenda Clough. Though I am sure it would be fun. O:X
> We must never let your husband and mine meet, Dorothy. Mine has
> maintained his complete collection of Gor novels for 25 years, clogging
> valuable shelf space all that time.
>
> Brenda
> --
> Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
> <clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
--
Visit www.islandford.w1.com and know the beauty and terror of Karg, enjoy
the Fauxtoons and the Celebrity Clones, and generally have a good time --
mostly for free.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <34d33...@news3.ibm.net>, Matt Hickman <rrs...@ibm.net> wrote:
>In <6av751$q...@universe.digex.net>, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz) writes:
>>>
>>If New Wave had just been the stylistic changes, I probably wouldn't
>>have minded it, and might have been in favor of it. However, the
>>dull plots (I'm thinking of Malzberg and of a story by Ballard
>>where everything was just s l o w i n g d o w n) which were
>>supposed to be wonderful soured me on the movement.
>
>What turned me off from the 'New Wave' movement was its arrogance.
>The implication was that all prior SF was trivial or hack work and that
>the 'New Wave' was glorious, pure and would take over with historic
>inevitability.
This may just be the way people talk at the beginning of literary
movements they like. Chest-beating was more consistant with cyberpunk
than with a delicate literary movement, though.
>I still have my collection of J.J. Peirce's _Renaissance_ magazines
>around somewhere. This fanzine spear-headed the attack on that
>mis-begotten marketing campaign.
>
I don't know how much was marketting, and how much was the non-commercial
pleasure of sounding off.
Christian Weisgerber
In article <U55850.87...@uic.edu>, Arthur Wohlwill
<U55...@uic.edu> wrote:
> Has anyone read "The Calcutta Chromosome"?
I did.
> Is it any good?
In my opinion, it sucks.
See <URL:http://home.pages.de/~naddy/reviews/TheCalcuttaChromosome.html>
It is fundamentally a mainstream book. Part of it is set in the future,
part of it deals with fantastic elements, so that must make it SF by
some definition but it really reads and feels like a mainstream book.
I'm not sure just what distinguishes "genre science fiction" from
"mainstream", but I'm usually much drawn to the former and painfully
bored by the latter.
If somebody liked the book, and considering that it won the 1997 Arthur
C. Clarke Award there must be people who liked it, I'd be really
interested to know *what* they liked about this novel.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.rhein-neckar.de
See another pointless homepage at <URL:http://home.pages.de/~naddy/>.
Christian Weisgerber
In article <88626259...@globe.uwaterloo.ca>, James Nicoll
<jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> >No, but there might be good marketing reasons for separating Hard
> >SF from everything else. There seem to be more people who only want
> >hard sf than people who want science fiction but not fantasy.
>
> OK, so Hal Clement gets a shelf to himself. I can't think of
> anyone else offhand who gets the science right, without fantasies
> like FTL or amazingly parallel evolution.
Robert L. Forward, of course.
BTW, Clement *has* FTL.
Kurt Montandon
On Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:11:14 -0600, lawr...@bga.com (Lawrence Person)
wrote:
>Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
>However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
>and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
>"arty dreck."
Just curious, but is STAND ON ZANZIBAR really that good? The only
book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
Then again, I'm not sure about any sf/fantasy written in the 70s.
Kurt Montandon
--
The recent deaths of Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono have led to
concerns that more mandatory safety regulations are needed on the ski
slopes. I disagree. I think that all that's needed on the slopes are
more politicians.
John Boston
In article <34D2BB6A...@tableworks.com>, p...@tableworks.com
says...
>
>John Boston wrote:
>
>
>> These current denunciations of the New Wave remind me of
>> self-reliant young women who deny being feminists. Most of the
stylistic
>> and thematic innovations of the New Wave have been absorbed into the
genre
>> and are taken for granted. Gene Wolfe and Gregory Benford
illustrate this
>> point in very different ways.
>>
>
>
>Your "absoption" contention is as nonsensical as your statement about
women.
>Just what is it supposed to mean that these "innovations" are "taken
for
>granted"? I, as an SF reader, certainly don't take anything like that
for
>granted. And even if you define SF according to what some select (by
you) group
>of critics say about it, on what basis can you assert that they take
anything
>like that for granted? And, have you ever read anything by Gregory
Benford?
>
Yes, I've read quite a bit by Benford, and one of the things I
like about him is his willingness to use a wide variety of themes,
techniques, and approaches, including some of those introduced to genre
SF by writers labelled New Wave. An example of what I am talking about
is his short story "Relativistic Effects," which contrasts the
shabbiness of a lot of day-to-day human existence with some of the more
grandiose subject matter of SF in ways that, before the mid-60s, would
probably not have occurred to anyone, and result in a pretty effective
piece of fiction. The New Wave produced some excellent fiction and a
lot of crap, and it opened a lot of doors, and the genre is a lot
better off for it.
John Boston
John Boston
In article <34d33...@news3.ibm.net>, rrs...@ibm.net says...>>In article <6au5at$9...@camel18.mindspring.com>,
>>John Boston <jbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> These current denunciations of the New Wave remind me of
>>>self-reliant young women who deny being feminists. Most of the
stylistic
>>>and thematic innovations of the New Wave have been absorbed into the
genre
>>>and are taken for granted. Gene Wolfe and Gregory Benford
illustrate this
>>>point in very different ways.
>>>
>>have minded it, and might have been in favor of it. However, the
>>dull plots (I'm thinking of Malzberg and of a story by Ballard
>>where everything was just s l o w i n g d o w n) which were
>>supposed to be wonderful soured me on the movement.
>
>What turned me off from the 'New Wave' movement was its arrogance.
>The implication was that all prior SF was trivial or hack work and
that
>the 'New Wave' was glorious, pure and would take over with historic
>inevitability.
>
>around somewhere. This fanzine spear-headed the attack on that
>mis-begotten marketing campaign.
Literary and artistic movements, including those in the SF
genre, are generally arrogant. Remember cyberpunk? What's important
is what is left behind when the posturing is finished.
John Boston
Rich Horton
On Sat, 31 Jan 98 08:32:10 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton)
wrote:
>Jon Dos Passos, :USA:.
>
>John Brunner said he read it and he thought, "Ah." He freely admitted
>this is where the "Innes mode" came from.
And I recall some rather snide-sounding comments to the effect that
"This is what SF calls 'new wave'. It was done 30 years ago in the
'mainstream'".
--
Rich Horton
Homepage: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton (new reviews of: _H.M.S. Surprise,
by Patrick O'Brian; and _The Stone Canal_, by Ken MacLeod.)
John Boston
In article <34d8eaa1...@news.concentric.net>,
rrho...@concentric.net says...
>
>On Sat, 31 Jan 98 08:32:10 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton)
>wrote:
>
>>Jon Dos Passos, :USA:.
>>
>>John Brunner said he read it and he thought, "Ah." He freely admitted
>>this is where the "Innes mode" came from.
>
>And I recall some rather snide-sounding comments to the effect that
>"This is what SF calls 'new wave'. It was done 30 years ago in the
>'mainstream'".
To a large extent, that's true. The New Wave mitigated the
isolation of genre SF from the rest of 20th Century literature. This
was not without value.
John Boston
Matt Hickman
In <6b0fd1$j...@camel18.mindspring.com>, jbo...@mindspring.com (John Boston) writes:
>In article <34d33...@news3.ibm.net>, rrs...@ibm.net says...
>>The implication was that all prior SF was trivial or hack work and
>>inevitability.
> Literary and artistic movements, including those in the SF
>genre, are generally arrogant. Remember cyberpunk? What's important
>is what is left behind when the posturing is finished.
I paid very little attention to the cyberpunk movement. Did they
denounce everyone before them as hacks?
Matt Hickman
'Tut, tut,' the dragon tapped back. 'Unreasoned anguish is
nonetheless real.'
- Robert A. Heinlein _Between Planets_
John Boston
In article <34d3f...@news3.ibm.net>, rrs...@ibm.net says...
>
>In <6b0fd1$j...@camel18.mindspring.com>, jbo...@mindspring.com (John
Boston) wri
>tes:
>>In article <34d33...@news3.ibm.net>, rrs...@ibm.net says...
>>>What turned me off from the 'New Wave' movement was its arrogance.
>>>The implication was that all prior SF was trivial or hack work and
>>>the 'New Wave' was glorious, pure and would take over with historic
>>>inevitability.
>
>> Literary and artistic movements, including those in the SF
>>genre, are generally arrogant. Remember cyberpunk? What's important
>>is what is left behind when the posturing is finished.
>
>I paid very little attention to the cyberpunk movement. Did they
>denounce everyone before them as hacks?
>
Some of them expressed considerable disdain for their
predecessors. It wasn't quite as categorical as your question.
Neither, of course, were the attitudes expressed by those associated
with the New Wave. For example, one of them was Brian Aldiss, who has
expressed his appreciation for earlier SF in numerous books and essays.
John Boston
Dorothy J Heydt
In article <34d8eaa1...@news.concentric.net>,
Rich Horton <rrho...@concentric.net> wrote:
>
>And I recall some rather snide-sounding comments to the effect that
>"This is what SF calls 'new wave'. It was done 30 years ago in the
>'mainstream'".
And I remember some that simply called it "The New Wave in Norman
Spinrad's hair."
Joel Benford
Matt Hickman wrote:
<snip>
>I paid very little attention to the cyberpunk movement. Did they
>denounce everyone before them as hacks?
Looking at the forensics (I wasn't reading SF at the time), there was a
definite ovetone of "there are too many hacks around". I wouldn't say that
they denounced all before them, though. Dem punkz were wont to point to the
past to show how it *should* be done.
From Cheap Truth, Issue 1:
> As American SF lies in a reptilian torpor, its small, squishy cousin,
>Fantasy, creeps gecko-like across the bookstands. Dreaming of dragon-hood,
>Fantasy has puffed itself up with air like a Mojave chuckwalla. SF's
>collapse had formed a vacuum that forces Fantasy into a painful and explosive
>bloat.
>
> Short stories, crippled with the bends, expand into whole hideous
>trilogies as hollow as nickel gumballs. Even poor Stephen Donaldson, who
>struggles to atone for his literary crimes with wet hippy sincerity, has been
>forced to re-xerox his Tolkien pastiches and doubly insult the public. As
>Robert E. Howard spins in his grave, the Chryslers of publishing attach
>rotors to his head and feet and use him to power the presses.
>
> But the editors have eaten sour grapes and the writers' teeth are on
>edge. Fantasy, for too long the vapid playground of McCaffreyite
>unicorn-cuddlers and insect-eating SCA freaks, has some new and dangerous
>borderlands. Suddenly, perhaps out of sheer frustration, fantasy has
>movement and color again. It is the squirming movement of corruption and the
>bright sheen of decay. [Segues into plug for "Nifft The Lean"]
It was targeted venom.
This, incidentally, is Sterling a decade or so later (from "Cyberpunk in the
Nineties", originally in Interzone, now net freeware):
> CHEAP TRUTH had rather mixed success. We had a
>laudable grasp of the basics: for instance, that SF writers
>ought to *work a lot harder* and *knock it off with the
>worn-out bullshit* if they expected to earn any real
>respect. Most folks agreed that this was a fine
>prescription -- for somebody else. In SF it has always
>been fatally easy to shrug off such truisms to dwell on the
>trivialities of SF as a career: the daily grind in the Old
>Baloney Factory. Snappy cyberpunk slogans like
>"imaginative concentration" and "technological literacy"
>were met with much the same indifference. Alas, if
>preaching gospel was enough to reform the genre, the earth
>would surely have quaked when Aldiss and Knight espoused
>much the same ideals in 1956.
>
> SF's struggle for quality was indeed old news, except
>to CHEAP TRUTH, whose writers were simply too young and
>parochial to have caught on. [...]
IMHO, this is all vicious but true. I hear it all the time on rasfw, in
different words.
-- Joel
(rasfw access intermittent, if you want to rend me limb from limb you'd better cc it by mail)
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, lawr...@bga.com (Lawrence Person) wrote:
> (Joseph V Nemec) wrote:
>> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
>> should be Segregated on the shelves?
>
>In some places they already are, and the readerships seem to have very
>little overlap; very few people who read, say, Terry Goodkind also read
>Greg Egan.
But those are extremes: while I've not read Goodkind, I often hear him
mentioned as an example of lowest-common-denominator fantasy Extruded
Book Product, whereas Egan IMHO (even if I've been objecting noisily to
_Permutation City_ this past week) writes some very thoughtful and
challenging books and stories that usually have noticeable amounts of
science in them. If you get a little closer to the centre, I think
you'll find that plenty of people who read Niven have also read Tolkien;
that plenty who read Drake also enjoy Glen Cook; and that most who read
C.S. Friedman have also read at least one book by C.S. Friedman.
I would imagine that very few people who read Pier Xanthony's attempts
at ScF also read Egan; but that doesn't mean that ScF and attempted ScF
shouldn't be shelved together.
Going back to Joe's more important questions, ISTM (even though I'm not
yet - quite - in my 40's) that the major changes can be put down to one
cause: ScF has emerged from its ghetto and is no longer shunned as
suitable only for nerds who Should Get A Life. Thus we get the whizbang
Hollywood blockbusters (it helps, of course, that Westerns and war
spectaculars have gone out of style, leaving a big niche to be filled)
and we get the mainstream stories dolled up with a few gimmicks from the
beginning of the twenty-first century, some of which are more
character-oriented and "touchy-feely" than the average ScF. There also
seem to be many "Gulliver" books, by which I mean political/social/eco
polemics in ScF form, but there have probably always been many of them.
I remember a couple of years back seeing, on the back cover blurb of
some mainstream book I didn't buy, that the author "is thinking of
writing a science fiction novel" even though the brag-list of books he
had already written contained nothing that looked even vaguely connected
with science. That told me very loudly that ScF has both succeeded with
mainstreamers and been diluted by them.
Regarding the magazines, I don't regularly read any of them, nor did I
ever. Perhaps that disqualifies me from this discussion.
-- Richard
------
A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic.
What is (and isn't) ScF? ==> http://www.wco.com/~treitel/sf.html
Mail from hotmail.com is ignored due to spamming.
I use PGP 2.6.2.
Lawrence Person
> In article <lawrence-300...@apm3-153.realtime.net>
> lawr...@bga.com "Lawrence Person" writes:
>
> > And as for New Wave, I don't think anyone had ever used the multi-stream,
> > multi-media viewpoint technique for crafting a novel before Brunner. I
>
> Jon Dos Passos, :USA:.
>
Yes, I knew that; what I so inauspiciously and unintentionally left out of
the sentence was "in the genre" between "anyone" and "had". Mea culpa.
--
- Lawrence Person
lawr...@bga.com
New Book Catalog Available Soon! E-mail for a hard or soft copy.
Visit the Nova Express Web Site at:
http://www.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
Lawrence Person
In article <34D20A...@pprd.abbott.com>, beasonj
<bea...@pprd.abbott.com> wrote:
> I always thought that SF was a subcategory of fantasy
Troll, troll, troll your boat . . .
Lawrence Person
> OK, so Hal Clement gets a shelf to himself. I can't think of
> anyone else offhand who gets the science right, without fantasies
> like FTL or amazingly parallel evolution.
>
Egan pop to mind. (No doubt some of the true had SF stuck-in-the-mud's
regard Egan as too extravagant.)
Stephen Taylor
Dryad wrote:
> Paul Preuss is a very odd, good, and different (these
> adjectives don't really cover works like 'Sugar Rain')
> author...
No - that's Paul Park you're thinking of. And yeah - he's brilliant.
Steve
------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Taylor st...@afs.net.au
Applied Financial Services
Phone: +61 3 9670 0233
Fax: +61 3 9670 5018
Stephen Taylor
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> I'm not so sure about _Stand on Zanzibar_ being New Wave--it seemed
> more like slightly fringe sf to me.
Certainly the style of _Stand on Zanzibar_ was innovative only within
SF. It's very much in the mode of John Dos Passos, as Brunner was happy
to admit.
> Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
Stephen Taylor
Pat Clancy wrote:
> Your "absoption" contention is as nonsensical as your statement about women.
Oh? I thought his statement about women was accurate enough. I have
personally known many women who approved of all the older goals of
feminism (self determination, equal pay, political representation...)
while steadfastly denying any connection to or sympathy for feminism. I
always though it odd...
> Just what is it supposed to mean that these "innovations" are "taken for
> granted"?
It's clear enough - look back at some 30's to 50's SF, then read some
modern stuff. With exceptions in both directions, modern SF is more
subtle, more complex, much less a simple meat and potatoes dish than the
older SF. This applies to authors who'd run a mile from the 'new wave'
label - an interesting exercise would be to look at some old Edmond
Hamilton 'Captain Future' then read something by Jerry Pournelle. We've
come a long way. And I believe the emphasis on character and style in
the new wave school was a factor in bringing this about.
> Pat
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz)
wrote:
>... there might be good marketing reasons for separating Hard
>SF from everything else. There seem to be more people who only want
>hard sf than people who want science fiction but not fantasy.
You'd make a good case were it not that most people can't define the
difference between "hard" and "soft" any more clearly than that between
ScF and fantasy. Rather than repeat my standard arguments here, I'll
invite you to my Web site, which has a page called (surprise) hard.html.
Jonathan Evans
piranha <pir...@pobox.com> wrote:
> in fact, stretch into mainstream fiction as well. (magic
> realism or fantasy, anyone? :-)
You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
Jon
Jonathan Evans
Lawrence Person <lawr...@bga.com> wrote:
>And as for New Wave, I don't think anyone had ever used the multi-stream,
>multi-media viewpoint technique for crafting a novel before Brunner. I
STAND ON ZANZIBAR, one of my all-time favourites, is not structurally
inventive: its structure was very, very heavily influenced by John Dos
Passos' 1920s USA trilogy.
And, of course, there's always ULYSSES.
Jon
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <34e2d1fc...@news.wco.com>,
Beth and Richard Treitel <tre...@wco.com> wrote:
>To my surprise and delight, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz)
>wrote:
>
>>... there might be good marketing reasons for separating Hard
>>SF from everything else. There seem to be more people who only want
>>hard sf than people who want science fiction but not fantasy.
>
>You'd make a good case were it not that most people can't define the
>difference between "hard" and "soft" any more clearly than that between
>ScF and fantasy. Rather than repeat my standard arguments here, I'll
>invite you to my Web site, which has a page called (surprise) hard.html.
>
it shouldn't be a marketing category.
Graydon
In article <6b4eht$k63$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>,
Jonathan Evans <jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
>Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
Nope, but 'there exists a proper subset of fantasy equivalent in
mechanisms to magic realism' I'd go for.
Magic realism uses magic for purposes of transforming imagination (what
magic is, in the here-and-know, able to do), and there are fantasies like
that. Most fantasies use magic as a mechanism for transforming the world,
which is a different fishkettle. (Although I will note Tolkein's
portrayal of, and comments on, 'Elvish magic'. :)
--
goo...@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
Jo Walton
In article <6b4eht$k63$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>
jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com "Jonathan Evans" writes:
> piranha <pir...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > in fact, stretch into mainstream fiction as well. (magic
> > realism or fantasy, anyone? :-)
>
> You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>
> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
>
> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
In fantasy everything makes internal sense on its own level.
There is magic, and strange creatures, but the logic of their own
reality is carried through in context.
In magic realism there is no such obligation. Dream logic is sufficient.
It doesn't have to make sense.
I have said before that Tolkien and post-Tolkien fantasy as genre is
"realist magicism" the green grass is as mighty a matter of legend as
the elves that walk on it... the world fits together.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Blood of Kings Poetry; rasfw FAQ;
Reviews; Interstichia; Momentum - a paying market for real poetry.
Ethan A Merritt
In article <886448...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <6b4eht$k63$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>
> jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com "Jonathan Evans" writes:
>
>> You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
>> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>>
>
>In fantasy everything makes internal sense on its own level.
>
>There is magic, and strange creatures, but the logic of their own
>reality is carried through in context.
>
>In magic realism there is no such obligation. Dream logic is sufficient.
>It doesn't have to make sense.
>
I predict that drawing a hard border between "fantasy" and "magic realism"
will be just as non-productive as the periodic attempts to draw the same
sort of boundary between "fantasy" and "science fiction". You can make up
definitions all you want, but that doesn't ensure that the interesting
books will fit any of them. There's plenty of fantasy out there in which
there is little, if any, logic or internal consistency. That may well make
it bad fantasy writing, but it doesn't by itself make it into magic realism
instead. By the same token, I don't think that a mainstream novel or
author currently held up as an example of magic realism would suddenly be
reshelved in the fantasy section just because the magic in a later work
was internally consistent. And there would always be borderline cases.
Examples, hmmm. How about Tepper's _Marianne_ books? If they'd been
written or marketed for the mainstream I'd bet on a label of "magic realism";
most of the narrative purports to be in the here and now, and [nearly?]
everything that isn't could be attributed to a dream sequence. But since
Tepper is already being shelved in the F/SF section, it's just another
fantasy, right?
Ethan A Merritt
mer...@u.washington.edu
Avram Grumer
> To my surprise and delight, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz)
> wrote:
>
> >... there might be good marketing reasons for separating Hard
> >SF from everything else. There seem to be more people who only want
> >hard sf than people who want science fiction but not fantasy.
>
> You'd make a good case were it not that most people can't define the
> difference between "hard" and "soft" any more clearly than that between
> ScF and fantasy.
That doesn't matter. The people who like hard SF can tell the difference,
and people who don't like it will benefit from having it labelled on the
spine so they can avoid it.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@interport.net | http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
Information wants to be wrong.
Thomas R Scudder
Ethan A Merritt (mer...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
: I predict that drawing a hard border between "fantasy" and "magic realism"
: will be just as non-productive as the periodic attempts to draw the same
: sort of boundary between "fantasy" and "science fiction". You can make up
: definitions all you want, but that doesn't ensure that the interesting
: books will fit any of them. There's plenty of fantasy out there in which
: there is little, if any, logic or internal consistency. That may well make
: it bad fantasy writing, but it doesn't by itself make it into magic realism
: instead. By the same token, I don't think that a mainstream novel or
: author currently held up as an example of magic realism would suddenly be
: reshelved in the fantasy section just because the magic in a later work
: was internally consistent. And there would always be borderline cases.
Would this be a good time to mention DESOLATION ROAD?
--
Tom Scudder aka tom...@umich.edu <*> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomscud
I'm called little Ishmael / Sweet little Ishmael
Though I could never say why...
-from _H. M. S. Pequod_, words by H. Melville, music by A. Sullivan
Ian
beasonj <bea...@pprd.abbott.com> wrote:
>I always thought that SF was a subcategory of fantasy, just as magic
>realism and "adolescents discovering they have great powers and are
>destined to transform the world" and horror and alternate history are
>all subcategories.
Not by the standard usage of the word "fantasy".
Rather than mangle one of the existing words by redefinition,
"speculative fiction" seems to work well.
Frossie
jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com (Jonathan Evans) writes:
> You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>
> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
>
> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
I'll defend any position you want, as long as I'm allowed to disagree
with myself afterwards :-)
I don't think magic realism and fantasy *identical*. However, I do
regard magic realism as fantasy (in some cases) along certain
stylistic and thematic lines which indeed happen to make it more
palatable to a mainstream litarary audience. In this, I have no
problem agreeing with Brust's quote.
If you found Borges' _Library_ in the next issue of F&SF,
would you blink twice?
To be more precise, I believe "magic realism" is mostly a description
of style whereas "fantasy" is mostly a description of content. They
need not overlap, but they often do.
I would class Swanwick's _Stations of the Tide_ as magic realism. You
could argue that it's content is science-fictional rather than
mythological or symbolical as is most often the case; nevertheless, I
cannot think of it in any other terms.
Like many other rasfwen, I enjoy introducing SF to people who sneer at
it. I always ask what they like to read first, and pick something
along similar lines (invariable producing the reaction "But that
wasn't science fiction!" when the photon torpedoes fail to appear). I
have had a great deal more success with readers of magic realism than
with readers of Michael Crichton. Go figure.
Frossie
--
Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawaii http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~frossie/
Language is the soul's ozone layer and we thin it at our peril --Sven Birkerts
D. Gascoyne
Jonathan Evans wrote:
>
> piranha <pir...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > in fact, stretch into mainstream fiction as well. (magic
> > realism or fantasy, anyone? :-)
>
> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>
> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
>
> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
>
If I could dare venture what I think is the difference: one (fantasy)
relates to plot: genre, setting, conventions, even characters. Quite
apart from the fact that magic realism is grounded in the "real" world,
which I think is a red herring, I would suggest that magic realism is a
_thematic_ device. What someone said about it representing the
imagination at work in the "real" world. Most, if not all, examples of
mr (at least those I'm familiar with - Borges, Rushdie, Garcia Marquez et
al) are in fairly postmodern novels. The obviously fictional quality of
the events highlight the fictionality of the text itself, yet offer the
suggestion that if one is possible ... I think the Tepper example - the
Marianne books - is a good one, as I think she was attempting something
like a postmodern fantasy. I have heard GGK refered to as a postmodern
fantasist, and, in fact, the fantastic elements in his after-Fionavar
novels do have the quality of magic realism.
- Debbie
beasonj
Jonathan Evans wrote:
> You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>
> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
>
> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
>
> Jon
If you define fantasy as the swords and sorcery/LOTR/unicorn fare, then,
yes, magic realism is not fantasy. If you define fantasy as literature
that steps outside of reality in some way, then, yes, magic realism is
fantasy, and the books that line the shelves of the fantasy section are
another subset of the larger body of fantasy.
Joe
Baruz
Let's get to the root of what's going on with this post, shall we?
Possibly flameworthy material follows the quote, which Joseph V Nemec
recently wrote:
> There were a lot of SF Magazines listed, but are there any that
> EVERYONE reads anymore? I recently picked up some that I hadn't read in
> years and found a lot of the stories "Arty" Drek that would never have
> been published thirty years ago. Thirty years ... or am I thinking
> thirty five years ago? ... a story was a story not an exercise in
> obscure decadent imagery. (Jeez, that sounds like an old fuddy-duddy, a
> cranky old Codger)
> Of the Names that I didn't recognize are there any that are
> significant? Hobb, Monahan, Kessel, Nagata, Nylund, Zettel, Antieau,
> Hand, Swanwick, Preuss, Feintuch etc. etc.
> A lot of them are Women, it seems almost 50-50! SF Fans were always a
> mixed group but SF authors used to be mostly male. God knows there were
> great SF Women Authors in days of Yore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton,
> C. L. Moore etc. etc. But has there been a "touchy-feely" femnization
> of SF? That sounds like I'm being a Bone-headed chauvinist by just
> asking the question, but I would actually be very surprised if somebody
> came back and said "Yes, these Dames have ruined SF!" Still, telling me
> how more Relevant or Mature SF is today would get me groaning, "Please
> don't Improve SF to Death!"
> I feel like calling this letter "Report from Codger Planet" or "The
> Time Traveler's Lament" and I'm still in my 40's (just turned 49)...
> which I don't think of as Ancient but I sure feel ancient talking about
> this.
The feeling I get from this post is you read SF when you were younger.
Then you left the genre for some reason. Your mother threw out your
books. Your teachers told you to stop reading that dreck. Your job
took over your life. You found a better use for the movement of those
green pieces of paper in your back pocket. Whatever. You left SF.
You left SF in the hands of people much more dedicated than you. These
people cared enough about the genre to keep developing it, expanding its
possibilities, borrowing elements from other genres to keep it fresh,
keep it from calcifying, from going sterile.
You say you weren't a writer, couldn't have influenced SF even if you
had written *your* kind of SF? Writers don't write in a vacuum; they
write for audiences. Without the audiences, without the money being
tossed around by publishers seeking those audiences, writers don't
write--writers *can't* write. You weren't there for SF. You and SF
grew apart, or had a break-up. But you're not even here for SF now.
Instead of trying to reacquaint yourself with an old friend, you're
asking friends of the friend if that friend's a virgin, or if that
friend has been going around in arty dreck clothes and *gasp!* sleeping
with Fantasy.
"Don't improve SF to death?" You don't know any of the writers writing
today, and yet you presume to tell them to look back to the days of yore,
and write the stories you want written? SF, she's gone on without you.
> With sighs for my lost Youth ...
My advice? Go to your local library. It may not have those magazines
you were thinking about, but it probably does have a science fiction
section, or at least a spec fic section. Browse through some of the
newer-looking covers, read a few pages. Knowing your own mind, you'll
probably know if a book is to your taste within a few minutes. Not
much of an investment in time. Ask SF how it's been recently, directly,
on your own. It's not as hard as it might seem. If the two of you have
changed so much, well, hey, there's always the used books and mags in
the cons, little portraits of the SF that was, not so Relevant, not so
Mature, with which to please yourself. erm.
> And is there anyone out there who feels like me that SF and Fantasy
> should be Segregated on the shelves? Or am I being just a reactionary
> old Toad?
Ahem. I happen to think that even segregating spec fic from mainstream
literature damages both. I recognize the need for genre shelves without
liking them. Literary miscegenation adds hybrid vigor.
Well, enough of my babble. All this IM obviously-not-so HO. Sleep, now,
Allan. Sleep.
Allan.
--
R Allan Baruz
Jonathan Evans
D. Gascoyne <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
>
>fantasist, and, in fact, the fantastic elements in his after-Fionavar
>novels do have the quality of magic realism.
I was agreeing with you up to this last sentence, and now I think we
may mean two very different things when we say "magic realism".
I finished Okri's (brilliant) novel THE FAMISHED ROAD last night, it's
one of the things I mean by MR, and it is _permeated_ by the fantastic
- characters stumble into a dreamlike forest of spirits regularly,
dead boxers emerge from the swamp, midgets with yellow eyes appear and
disappear under dead-lizard fetishes, herbalists and witch-doctors
spend days fighting for characters locked in fever dreams...
A SONG FOR ARBONNE, on the other hand, is just an arrow and a
priestess away from being a (very fine) historical novel. Even in
TIGANA, there is Magic and there are Magicians, there are rituals and
spells, and you would be hard-pressed to find anything like that in,
say, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.
Jon
Jo Walton
In article <34d2f09e...@news.ucdavis.edu>
kmmon...@ucdavis.edu "Kurt Montandon" writes:
>
> Just curious, but is STAND ON ZANZIBAR really that good? The only
> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
Yes.
Brunner wrote a lot of light pay-the-rent books. :Polymath: is one of
them. I quite like it, it's good of its type.
:Stand of Zanzibar: is one of his major works, it's another kind of
thing entirely, it's SF at its best and I'd recommend it highly.
> Then again, I'm not sure about any sf/fantasy written in the 70s.
Then you'll be OK with SoZ, it was written (and won the Hugo in)
1969.
Jo Walton
In article <34D69C...@bc.sympatico.ca>
d...@bc.sympatico.ca "D. Gascoyne" writes:
I have heard GGK refered to as a postmodern
> fantasist, and, in fact, the fantastic elements in his after-Fionavar
> novels do have the quality of magic realism.
No they don't.
I'm sorry, but they just don't. I can't see any resemblance at all
whatsoever. None. Zero.
The magic in :Tigana:, :A Song for Arbonne: and :The Lions of
Al-Rassan: seems about as far from magic realism as it is from
cottage cheese.
Could you please expand on this with examples and reasons?
I'm not meaning to be rude, and I really am listening and interested
in why you think this, I just can't make a reasonable argument when
I really have no idea what you mean.
The rest of what you said (and I snipped, re Tepper etc.) I pretty much
agree with.
Brandon Ray
> On Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:11:14 -0600, lawr...@bga.com (Lawrence Person)
> wrote:
>
> >Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
> >However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
> >and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
> >"arty dreck."
>
>
Oh, I dunno. It seems to me that "I Have No Mouth etc." has to fall in the
category of "arty dreck"....of course, I would consign most of Ellison's
writing to that category.
Jo Walton
In article <6b5f31$jqa$1...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>
mer...@u.washington.edu "Ethan A Merritt" writes:
> Examples, hmmm. How about Tepper's _Marianne_ books? If they'd been
> written or marketed for the mainstream I'd bet on a label of "magic realism";
> most of the narrative purports to be in the here and now, and [nearly?]
> everything that isn't could be attributed to a dream sequence. But since
> Tepper is already being shelved in the F/SF section, it's just another
> fantasy, right?
One can talk about genre two useful ways I think - as a marketing label
or as a literary movement.
Both her Marianne books and :Beauty: are magic realism, yes, they have
far more in common with magic realism than with genre fantasy and
people who enjoy magic realism are far more likely to enjoy them than
I am. To put it another way, if one considers marketing as "helping
books to find their friends" these books would be better marketed
as magic realism.
They were marketed as fantasy because Tepper's earlier books are fantasy,
or SF (True Game world turned out to be SF kinda sorta, but it feels
like fantasy) and that's what covers they have and that's where they are
on the shelf.
Where they are in literary terms though, in considering what they're
like, what they're influenced by, is far closer to Borges etc. There's
a section in :Beauty: that's a deliberate evocation of SoAm magic
realism for goodness sake.
Julie Stampnitzky
Could somebody give some examples of books which would be magic realism?
Julie Stampnitzky Keeper, http://neskaya.darkover.org
Lawrence Person
In article <34d2f09e...@news.ucdavis.edu>, kmmon...@ucdavis.edu
(Kurt Montandon) wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:11:14 -0600, lawr...@bga.com (Lawrence Person)
> wrote:
>
> >Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
> >However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
> >and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
> >"arty dreck."
>
> Just curious, but is STAND ON ZANZIBAR really that good? The only
> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
>
> Then again, I'm not sure about any sf/fantasy written in the 70s.
Actually, it is. (Plus it was published in 1968). Also, unlike, say,
Spinrad's BUG JACK BARRON, STAND ON ZANZIBAR holds up remarkably well for
a 30 year old book.
M. Wesley Osam
In article <6b4eht$k63$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>, jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com
(Jonathan Evans) wrote:
> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
It's also nothing like, say, Charles DeLint, and he's
marketed specifically as fantasy. There are different kinds
of fantasy, and just because one kind has a different feel,
it doesn't mean that it's a different genre altogether. It's
simply easier for critics to pretend that particular book
isn't fantasy at all.
--
"Why do you look so skeptical?" M. Wesley Osam
"Because I've seen too much." wo...@iastate.edu
"Then why do you keep looking?
"Too much is never enough." -- Bill Griffith, "Zippy the Pinhead"
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <886499...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <34d2f09e...@news.ucdavis.edu>
> kmmon...@ucdavis.edu "Kurt Montandon" writes:
>>
>> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
>
>
>Brunner wrote a lot of light pay-the-rent books. :Polymath: is one of
>them. I quite like it, it's good of its type.
>
>:Stand of Zanzibar: is one of his major works, it's another kind of
>thing entirely, it's SF at its best and I'd recommend it highly.
>
interesting than _Polymath_. However, _The Jagged Orbit_ is my
favorite of Brunner's big problem novels. The ending's a *lot*
more satisfactory if you have any fondness for human choice.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <ux3ei1s...@jach.hawaii.edu>,
Frossie <fro...@jach.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>
>jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com (Jonathan Evans) writes:
>
>> You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
>> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>>
>> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
>> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
>> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
>>
>
I've read rather little magic realism. That should make the job easier.
>I'll defend any position you want, as long as I'm allowed to disagree
>with myself afterwards :-)
>
>I don't think magic realism and fantasy *identical*. However, I do
>regard magic realism as fantasy (in some cases) along certain
>stylistic and thematic lines which indeed happen to make it more
>palatable to a mainstream litarary audience. In this, I have no
>problem agreeing with Brust's quote.
>
>If you found Borges' _Library_ in the next issue of F&SF,
>would you blink twice?
>
I wouldn't blink, but I wouldn't feel as though it's their usual
thing.
On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly call Borge's "Library"
(that's the one with all possible books, right?) magical
realism, either.
Imho, magical realism is mostly fiction set in consensus reality,
but with non-logical intrusions of fantasy. I've heard one defintion
of magical realism which requires that all the fantastic elements
be explainable as dreams, hallucinations, lies, etc. I'm not sure
that this is sound. I've read a magical realist novel in which the
main character is a centaur. There's no good explanation of why
there should only be one centaur (apparently) in the world, but
unless I missed something, the guy was quite literally and physically
a centaur.
>To be more precise, I believe "magic realism" is mostly a description
>of style whereas "fantasy" is mostly a description of content. They
>need not overlap, but they often do.
I suppose that Kotzwinkle's _The Bear Went Over the Mountain_
counts as magical realism. A bear steals a manuscript, and is able to
imitate being human well enough to become a best-selling author. The
original writer becomes more and more bearlike. This is a world where
that happens--but there's no hint that this is the sort of
world where that sort of thing *usually* happens.
I'm probably talking about a continuum here. The Rachel Pollack
books seem more like fantasy to me because everyone in them
knows that fantastic events are happening, and there's an effort
to show how such a world would work.
Would those who are into such things care to say whether they
consider _Resume with Monsters_ to be magical realism? (_Resume
with Monsters_ is about Lovecraftian monsters vs. the horrors
of modern employment--it's pretty good.)
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <baruz-ya02368000...@news.erols.com>,
Baruz <ba...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>Ahem. I happen to think that even segregating spec fic from mainstream
>literature damages both. I recognize the need for genre shelves without
>liking them. Literary miscegenation adds hybrid vigor.
>
that lead to hybrid vigor.
Benjamin Adams
Julie Stampnitzky wrote:
>
> Could somebody give some examples of books which would be magic realism?
_Boy's Life_ by Robert R. McCammon.
Most of McCammon's stuff is horror, so you'd probably find it in the
horror section.
-Ben Adams
Glen Engel-Cox
> >jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com (Jonathan Evans) writes:
> >
> >> You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
> >> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
> >>
> >> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> >> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> >> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> >> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
> >>
> >> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
I think it all depends on how you classify fantasy. Personally, I call
all novels fantasy, and then start subgenrefication from there.
John Clute and Peter Nicholls have done the best at trying to establish
what the different subgenres are in their encyclopedias of Fantasy and
Science Fiction. I found their categories interesting, because they add
Surrealism and Fantastical to the mix.
glen
--
Sites to SF Site <http://www.sfsite.com>
look for: Home Page <http://www.netcom.com/~mrwrite/>
First Impressions <http://www.sfsite.com/fi/>
Alexandria Digital Literature <http://www.alexlit.com/>
Brenda and Larry Clough
beasonj wrote:
> If you define fantasy as the swords and sorcery/LOTR/unicorn fare, then,
> yes, magic realism is not fantasy. If you define fantasy as literature
> that steps outside of reality in some way, then, yes, magic realism is
> fantasy, and the books that line the shelves of the fantasy section are
> another subset of the larger body of fantasy.
>
> Joe
By george, I've got it. Thanks to you, I think I have a glimmering of
what magic realism is! (I've never read any, and had no idea what
people were talking about when they assure me that my novel is magic
realism.)
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Jo Walton
In article <vQsB.164$IO.9...@news.itd.umich.edu>
tom...@umich.edu "Thomas R Scudder" writes:
> Ethan A Merritt (mer...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
> : I predict that drawing a hard border between "fantasy" and "magic realism"
> : will be just as non-productive as the periodic attempts to draw the same
> : sort of boundary between "fantasy" and "science fiction". You can make up
> : definitions all you want, but that doesn't ensure that the interesting
> : books will fit any of them. There's plenty of fantasy out there in which
> : there is little, if any, logic or internal consistency. That may well make
> : it bad fantasy writing, but it doesn't by itself make it into magic realism
> : instead. By the same token, I don't think that a mainstream novel or
> : author currently held up as an example of magic realism would suddenly be
> : reshelved in the fantasy section just because the magic in a later work
> : was internally consistent. And there would always be borderline cases.
>
> Would this be a good time to mention DESOLATION ROAD?
:Desolation Road: is SF.
And it makes sense all the way through.
D. Gascoyne
Jonathan Evans wrote:
>
> D. Gascoyne <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> I finished Okri's (brilliant) novel THE FAMISHED ROAD last night, it's
> one of the things I mean by MR, and it is _permeated_ by the fantastic
> - characters stumble into a dreamlike forest of spirits regularly,
> dead boxers emerge from the swamp, midgets with yellow eyes appear and
> disappear under dead-lizard fetishes, herbalists and witch-doctors
> spend days fighting for characters locked in fever dreams...
>
> A SONG FOR ARBONNE, on the other hand, is just an arrow and a
> priestess away from being a (very fine) historical novel. Even in
> TIGANA, there is Magic and there are Magicians, there are rituals and
> spells, and you would be hard-pressed to find anything like that in,
> say, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.
>
> Jon
When you say that Song for Arbonne is just an arrow and a priestess away
from being a very fine novel, doesn't that also mean that it's hardly
_fantasy_, let alone Magic realism? It's that incidental quality that I
think I mean (I'm finding it hard to articulate a distinction that I'm
just formulating myself!). The magic elements, especially in Arbonne and
Lions, are not essential to the plot. Really, as you say, they could
both be historical novels except for the setting. Tigana is more a
conventional fantasy, I agree; I think the friend who considered GGK
postmodern may even have been referring to the Fionavar Tapestry and its
extremely derivative elements (I'll have to ask him).
Obviously, magic realism varies in intensity; the book you
mention, which I haven't read, sounds like an example where the
distinction between fantasy/sci fi/magic realism is very blurred. But
"One Hundred Years of Solitude," for example, is also just a bag of
chattering bones and a rain of flowers away from being a history/family
saga, don't you think? And how about "Midnight's Children"? There the
magical element is a plot point, but the socio-political reality is
firmly grounded in the "real world."
Perhaps what is tiresome about the distinction is that MR is well
established as "high brow" literature, whereas fantasy is at best
"middle" and most often considered "low", often dismissed as "junk" by
its mere definition. I think even science fiction gets more respect! I
would, however, defend the literary value of GGK to anyone.
- Cheers
Debbie
Steve Miller
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
> In article <886499...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >In article <34d2f09e...@news.ucdavis.edu>
> > kmmon...@ucdavis.edu "Kurt Montandon" writes:
> >>
> >> Just curious, but is STAND ON ZANZIBAR really that good? The only
> >> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
> >
> >Yes.
> >
> >Brunner wrote a lot of light pay-the-rent books. :Polymath: is one of
> >them. I quite like it, it's good of its type.
> >
> >:Stand of Zanzibar: is one of his major works, it's another kind of
> >thing entirely, it's SF at its best and I'd recommend it highly.
> >
> Agreed that it's another kind of thing entirely, and much more
> interesting than _Polymath_. However, _The Jagged Orbit_ is my
> favorite of Brunner's big problem novels. The ending's a *lot*
> more satisfactory if you have any fondness for human choice.
>
Am I the only person who remembers Brunner's The Space Barbarians?"
Rich Horton
On 4 Feb 1998 07:54:50 -0500, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy
Lebovitz) wrote:
>On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly call Borge's "Library"
>(that's the one with all possible books, right?) magical
>realism, either.
I don't think Borges is a Magical Realist. People who call him one
are following Wolfe's definition: "Magical Realism is Fantasy written
in Spanish."
One might note that (I have heard: I may be wrong) the first
appearance of Borges' fiction in the US was in F&SF. (And in fact,
the translation of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" which
appears in _Ficciones_ is by Anthony Boucher. Though, while I think
"Pierre Menard" is one of Borges' best stories, it isn't very
fantastical.)
Someone asked for examples of MR authors. The canonical examples are
Latin American (hence Wolfe's definition I cited above, with which I
disagree): Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Manuel Puig, Mario Vargas Llosa,
Laura Esquivel. A European author who might qualify is Milan Kundera.
--
Rich Horton
Homepage: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton (new reviews of: _H.M.S. Surprise,
by Patrick O'Brian; and _The Stone Canal_, by Ken MacLeod.)
Rich Horton
>John Clute and Peter Nicholls have done the best at trying to establish
>what the different subgenres are in their encyclopedias of Fantasy and
>Science Fiction. I found their categories interesting, because they add
>Surrealism and Fantastical to the mix.
Another category they add is that of the "Fabulation", which they
allow might include in a "big tent" of sorts all kind of "Mainstream"
SF: they list Absurdist SF, Fictionality [???], Magical Realizm,
Slipstream, and Surfiction [is this a name for Surrealist Fiction?].
In their terms (really Clute's terms), as I see it, a Fabulation,
unlike genre SF (including Fantasy), does not accept that there might
be a rational or consistent explanation for whatever odd events occur:
in Clute's words: "a Fabulation is any story which challenges the two
main assumptions of genre SF: that the world can be seen; and that it
can be told." Of course, say I, these two assumptions are also
central to mimetic realist fiction.
Jonathan Evans
D. Gascoyne <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Obviously, magic realism varies in intensity; the book you
>mention, which I haven't read, sounds like an example where the
>distinction between fantasy/sci fi/magic realism is very blurred. But
>"One Hundred Years of Solitude," for example, is also just a bag of
>chattering bones and a rain of flowers away from being a history/family
>saga, don't you think?
Well, uh, actually, no. The inventive gypsies, the mad ghost of the
inventor, Colonel Buendia's thirty-seven sons with the stigmata who
are doomed to execution, the endless wars and inability to find the
rest of the country, the ship's hull lost in the jungle, appearances
and disappearances, whassisname's fantastic animal rearing, ghosts and
spirits and destruction and rebirth in the space of a day...
I think you may wish to re-read it.
>And how about "Midnight's Children"? There the
>magical element is a plot point, but the socio-political reality is
>firmly grounded in the "real world."
Here I agree.
> Perhaps what is tiresome about the distinction is that MR is well
>established as "high brow" literature, whereas fantasy is at best
>"middle" and most often considered "low", often dismissed as "junk" by
>its mere definition. I think even science fiction gets more respect! I
>would, however, defend the literary value of GGK to anyone.
Absolutely. And :The Lord Of The Rings: is sort of semi-considered
highbrow, although it occupies a unique enough niche that comparison
isn't really meaningful.
> Debbie
Jon
Sion Arrowsmith
In article <886586...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>:Desolation Road: is SF.
>
>And it makes sense all the way through.
Apart from the bit where it goes "This doesn't make any sense,
because what do you expect if you go around playing with
temporal paradoxes?" Which, I suppose, makes sense in a nicely
twisted sort of way.
--
\S -- si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk -- http://www.chaos.org.uk/~sion/
___ | "... intelligence in youth, for some reason or | 88% of clowns
\X/ | another, is bad for the hair and muddies the | never fall
<*> | complexion." -- Gonfal of Naimes | in love
Evelyn C. Leeper
In article <6b4eht$k63$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>,
Jonathan Evans <jeme...@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
> piranha <pir...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > in fact, stretch into mainstream fiction as well. (magic
> > realism or fantasy, anyone? :-)
>
> is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>
> I hesitate to try and put my finger on the difference, but....the kind
> of regimented, heirarchical, alternate-world, magic-as-tool feel you
> get from Brust or Hodgell is nothing like the fever-dream sequences
> from, say, Okri's THE FAMISHED ROAD.
>
> Anyone want to try and defend "magic realism == fantasy"?
There were panels on this at Chicon V ("What the Difference Between
Magical Realism and Fantasy?") and LoneStarCon 2 ("Magical Realism:
Fantasy from the Other Side of the Border"). The latter is available
at http://fanac.org/worldcon/LoneStarCon/w97-rpt.html#magreal; the
former is at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/chiconv.htm#magreal,
but will soon also be at fanac.org.
For those using cut-and-paste:
http://fanac.org/worldcon/LoneStarCon/w97-rpt.html#magreal
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/chiconv.htm#magreal
--
Evelyn C. Leeper | ele...@lucent.com
+1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"Never throw fruit at someone who understands the theatrics
of the situation better than you do." --David Denby
Thomas R Scudder
Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <vQsB.164$IO.9...@news.itd.umich.edu>
: tom...@umich.edu "Thomas R Scudder" writes:
<borderline cases between SF, Fantasy, Magic Realism>
: > Would this be a good time to mention DESOLATION ROAD?
: :Desolation Road: is SF.
: And it makes sense all the way through.
Conceded, I suppose.
How 'bout THE DIGGING LEVIATHAN? Or "Paper Dragons", if you're so
inclined.
Or DAHLGREN, to go in a slightly different direction.
--
Tom Scudder aka tom...@umich.edu <*> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomscud
I'm called little Ishmael / Sweet little Ishmael
Though I could never say why...
-from _H. M. S. Pequod_, words by H. Melville, music by A. Sullivan
Dan Bailey
On Sat, 31 Jan 1998, Kurt Montandon wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:11:14 -0600, lawr...@bga.com (Lawrence Person)
> wrote:
>
> >Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
> >However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
> >and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
> >"arty dreck."
>
> Just curious, but is STAND ON ZANZIBAR really that good? The only
> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
To tell you the truth, I really couldn't get into it at all. Ugh. I read
about the first fifty pages and gave up. By contrast, however, CHILDREN
OF THE THUNDER (?), which he wrote back in the 80's was pretty good.
-- Dan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Bailey supe...@krypton.mankato.msus.edu On IRC: Superdan
http://EEL2.cs.mankato.msus.edu/~superdan/
Screw the status quo. Question EVERYTHING.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cambias
> Jonathan Evans wrote:
>
> > You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
> > is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
> >
it. Consider: the chief criticism levied at both SF and fantasy is the
old canard "when anything can happen, nothing is important." (The phrase
originated with HG Wells, who was explaining why he rigorously based his
stories in reality.) In Magic Realist stories, anything can happen, but
the writers manage to convey a sense of importance anyway.
Cambias
Thomas R Scudder
SpahmtrapCambias (cambias@heliograph..com) wrote:
: Consider: the chief criticism levied at both SF and fantasy is the
: old canard "when anything can happen, nothing is important." (The phrase
: originated with HG Wells, who was explaining why he rigorously based his
: stories in reality.)
I thought Wells said "nothing is INTERESTING."
Which means that the statement has morphed in an interesting way.
Although I could be wrong about the Wells quote - I don't remember
seeing the original anywhere.
Jo Walton
> Am I the only person who remembers Brunner's The Space Barbarians?"
You may be.
I own it, I've read it, but I can't say I _remember_ it.
My favourite of his light works is :Into the Slave Nebula:.
Jo Walton
In article <a6t*p4...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>
si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk "Sion Arrowsmith" writes:
> In article <886586...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >:Desolation Road: is SF.
> >
> >And it makes sense all the way through.
>
> Apart from the bit where it goes "This doesn't make any sense,
> because what do you expect if you go around playing with
> temporal paradoxes?" Which, I suppose, makes sense in a nicely
> twisted sort of way.
>
Oh, ah, that bit.
I'd forgotten about that bit. The charter. Yes. I didn't notice that.
Well my life's like that quite a lot of the time, I don't see why
that can't be perfectly realistic....
No, OK. I was wrong.
How _interesting_.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <cambias-0502...@cu-dialup-0074.cit.cornell.edu>,
Cambias <cambias@heliograph."Spahmtrap".com> wrote:
>> Jonathan Evans wrote:
>>
>> > You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing - "magic realism
>> > is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and I still don't buy it.
>> >
>Magic Realism is what highbrow readers call fantasy when they want to read
>old canard "when anything can happen, nothing is important." (The phrase
>originated with HG Wells, who was explaining why he rigorously based his
>the writers manage to convey a sense of importance anyway.
>
to deal with world-building."
Or "Fantasy is fiction for people who want to doodle around the
edges of the unconscious without acknowledging its chaos."
D. Gascoyne
Jonathan Evans wrote:
>
> D. Gascoyne <d...@bc.sympatico.ca> wrote: But "One Hundred Years of Solitude," for example, is also just a bag of
> >chattering bones and a rain of flowers away from being a history/family
> >saga, don't you think?
>
> Well, uh, actually, no. The inventive gypsies, the mad ghost of the
_has_ been about 15 years since I read it.
> I think you may wish to re-read it.
Yes. (Blush) :)
>
> >And how about "Midnight's Children"? There the
> >magical element is a plot point, but the socio-political reality is
> >firmly grounded in the "real world."
>
> Here I agree.
Thank heavens :)
>
> > Perhaps what is tiresome about the distinction is that MR is well
> >established as "high brow" literature, whereas fantasy is at best
> >"middle" and most often considered "low", often dismissed as "junk" by
> >its mere definition. I think even science fiction gets more respect! I
> >would, however, defend the literary value of GGK to anyone.
>
> Absolutely. And :The Lord Of The Rings: is sort of semi-considered
> highbrow, although it occupies a unique enough niche that comparison
> isn't really meaningful.
> Jon
Yes. Although I gather there was a certain amount of pooh pooing in
England when it topped a poll of the best novels of the 20th century. I
remember being thrilled when one of my profs when I was an undergrad said
that it was the greatest Romance this century. And one of my own
students was chuffed when I referred to it when teaching Beowulf - he
said that Tolkien had made him want to study literature.
I think it depends where you are, too. Here in Canada, in academic
circles fantasy is pretty much ignored, except when it's someone like
Angela Carter (back to the MR vs Fantasy debate: which one is she??). My
friend the GGK fan wanted to do his Master's thesis on Tigana but
couldn't find a supervisor willing to do it with him. Ursula Le Guin
gets respect, but more as a science fiction writer than for her fantasy
(which is, after all, young adult, don't you know, and even less worthy
of mention).
Of course, there _is_ an awful lot of junk in fantasy (I won't mention
any names, here, lest I come under fire), but that's a pitfall in any
genre, it seems to me.
- Debbie
Geoffrey Charles Marshall
In article <34d2f09e...@news.ucdavis.edu>,
kmmon...@ucdavis.edu (Kurt Montandon) writes:
> On Fri, 30 Jan 1998 12:11:14 -0600, lawr...@bga.com (Lawrence Person)
> wrote:
>
>>Certainly New Wave produced its share (or more) of Sturgeon's 90%.
>>However, I don't think that any movement which produces "I Have No Mouth
>>and I Must Scream" or STAND ON ZANZIBAR can be written off in toto as
>>"arty dreck."
>
> Just curious, but is STAND ON ZANZIBAR really that good? The only
> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
>
>
John Brunner is at least three different people....
"Stand On Zanzibar" is indded that good. One of the classics.
In a similar vein "The Sheep Look Up"....
If you didn't like "Polymath", then avoid his "thin" books.
You'll like his "fat" ones....
But don't under any circumstances, miss Zanzibar.
Geoff...
____________________________________________________________
E-Mail: Geoff C. Marshall <co...@ozemail.com.au>
No Spam please. Private correspondence only.
Please remove from all lists.
____________________________________________________________
The following should PLEASE note this;
ro...@aol.com, postm...@aol.com
ro...@hotmail.com, postm...@hotmail.com
ro...@mail-man.net, postm...@mail-man.net
Geoffrey Charles Marshall
In article <34D94B...@mint.net>,>> In article <886499...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
>> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> >In article <34d2f09e...@news.ucdavis.edu>
>> > kmmon...@ucdavis.edu "Kurt Montandon" writes:
>> >>
>> >> book I've read by Brunner is _Polymath_, so I'm not sure about him.
>> >
>> >
>> >Brunner wrote a lot of light pay-the-rent books. :Polymath: is one of
>> >them. I quite like it, it's good of its type.
>> >
>> >:Stand of Zanzibar: is one of his major works, it's another kind of
>> >thing entirely, it's SF at its best and I'd recommend it highly.
>> >
>> Agreed that it's another kind of thing entirely, and much more
>> interesting than _Polymath_. However, _The Jagged Orbit_ is my
>> favorite of Brunner's big problem novels. The ending's a *lot*
>> more satisfactory if you have any fondness for human choice.
>>
>
No. Just the only one with bad enough taste to mention it.
[Joke, Joyce]
That's the "third" John Brunner, in my book.....
Geoff...
--
Doug Tricarico
In <6bd8de$1...@universe.digex.net> nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy
Lebovitz) writes:
>
>In article <cambias-0502...@cu-dialup-0074.cit.cornell.edu>,
>Cambias <cambias@heliograph."Spahmtrap".com> wrote:
>>> Jonathan Evans wrote:
>>>
>>> > You know, I've heard Stephen Brust say the same thing -
>>> > "magic realism is just fantasy sold to the mainstream" and
>>> > I still don't buy it.
>>
>>
>>Magic Realism is what highbrow readers call fantasy when they
>>want to read it. Consider: the chief criticism levied at both
>>SF and fantasy is the old canard "when anything can happen, nothing
>>is important." (The phrase originated with HG Wells, who was
>>explaining why he rigorously based his stories in reality.) In
>>Magic Realist stories, anything can happen, but the writers manage
>>to convey a sense of importance anyway.
>
>
>Alternatively, "Magic realism is fantasy for people who don't want
>to deal with world-building."
I suppose it depends on what you call "world-building." There are few
fantasy stories (or SF, for that matter) which are completely created.
De Lint's Newford strikes me as a created world, even if it is based on
real places. But even the most far-our fantasy and science fiction
tales seem based on real places, events and people.
I like the notion stated in an earlier post that Magic Realism is a
stylistic distinction as a subgebre of fantasy, just as cyberpunk is a
stylistic subgenre of SF.
I've often considered Magic Realism to be a subset of Contemporary
Fantasy (fantasy which takes place _today_), where the magic takes
place just out of sight and you can only catch glimpses from the corner
of your eye. The aforementioned De Lint stories would be such, as
would W.P. Kinsella's _Shoeless Joe_ (aka Field of Dreams).
Doug
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <6bfa1q$l...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>,
Doug Tricarico <tr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>In <6bd8de$1...@universe.digex.net> nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy
>Lebovitz) writes:
>>
>>Alternatively, "Magic realism is fantasy for people who don't want
>>to deal with world-building."
>
>I suppose it depends on what you call "world-building." There are few
>fantasy stories (or SF, for that matter) which are completely created.
>De Lint's Newford strikes me as a created world, even if it is based on
>real places. But even the most far-our fantasy and science fiction
>tales seem based on real places, events and people.
>
In fantasy, the fantastic elements hang around for a while, and
they have causes and consequences. There may even be some speculation
about what sort of universe can give rise to such strange things.
In magical realism (as I understand it), part of the style is
that fantastic elements pop in and out of the story for no
apparent reason.