Is Science Fiction literature
kraz...@usa.net
I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
any suggestions?
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gcar...@gentner.com
In article <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>
> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> any suggestions?
The initial problem in your argument is defining literature. Ask yourself
"what is literature?" and you are going to open a much bigger can of worms.
Then there are additional issues like "canonized literature", etc. My problem
is that I happen to have a B.A. in English lit, but I love SF & F. Try to
reconcile that issue why don't you. I just read what I like and look for the
best works everywhere.
Chuck Gee
In <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> kraz...@usa.net writes:
>I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>any suggestions?
Yes, I believe I have a suggestion.
Why don't you look up the word "literature" in a dictionary. That will
enlighten you as to the utterly absurd nature of your premise.
Michael G. Haynes
Well, I think I'd start by defining what you mean by literature and what
does it take to be a valid piece of literature. Are you referring to
plot elements, writing style, characterization? and What time period are
you referring to since concepts of literary merit alter with the passage
of time. Also you might want to make genre distinctions; for instance
are you considering classic SF, modern SF, tv tie in scifi, space opera?
Each area has its own sense of what makes this good science fiction
which may or may not coincide with what makes good literature.
Don't focus on ONE area in particular or your essay will be one-sided
also. You shouldn't have that tough a time defending science fiction as
literature as long as you define what you are talking about.
:)
Michael G. Haynes
In rec.arts.sf.written kraz...@usa.net wrote:
> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> any suggestions?
> -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
--
--
Michael G. Haynes | "All the world will be your enemy, and when"
mgha...@oakland.edu | "they catch you, they will kill you, Prince"
bu...@gatecom.com | "with a thousand enemies."
| --"Watership Down"...Richard Adams
Seth Deitch
On Wed, 27 May 1998 14:57:49 GMT, kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>any suggestions?
>
Has anyone ever expressed serious doubt about that in recent years?
If its not literature, than what the hell is it? Sheesh!
Jim Mann
kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>
> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> any suggestions?
>
Well, first off you have to say what you mean by the term literature. If
you are using it, in its broadest sense, the answer is "of course, by
definition."
If you are using it the way it often is in these discussions,
essentially to include high quality books of some depth that have
something interesting to say about life, the universe, and everything,
the answer is either "yes and no" or "the question is meaningless."
More precisely, I'd say that SF is not literature (a genre as a whole
can't be), but many SF books are (and many are not).
Jim Mann
Ambiguous9
>....high quality books of some depth that have
>something interesting to say about life, the universe, and >everything, the
I'd go with Yes and No, myself. Are specific works within the genre of SF
literature? Surely. Are other works pure escapist tripe? Absolutely.
Is Dickens literature, by whatever definition you are using? What genre does he
write--adventure? potboiler? serial? 9th grade torture? How about
Hemingway--what genre does he write? I'd go with war stories, but some of his
novels aren't. American lit, perhaps--and then we could define Dickens as Brit
lit?
I cite these examples to show that the genre definition of literature is pretty
specious. As for literary merit, I'd stand the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula
LeGuin next to Catcher in the Rye as a coming-of-age story any day. CS Lewis'
non-SF writing is considered literature; shouldn't Out of the Silent Planet,
Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength also fit the bill?
And, speaking as someone who's published short-stories in the Dragonlance
setting, I wouldn't nominate any of my work-for-hire writing as literature.
It's pulp. I worked hard on it, but it's not enduring, quality writing.
Elisabeth Carey
kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>
> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> any suggestions?
First define "valid".
Then define "literature".
Lis Carey
Lance
kraz...@usa.net wrote:
> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> any suggestions?
>
I am writing an essay on whether or not Trolling is a valid form ofliterature,
and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
any suggestions?
If not, perhaps I'll go to the alt.barney.die.die.die group and tell them I'm
having "troble" deciding if the purple one is a valid form of educational
television.
--
Lance Berg
http://empyre.net
Tharsia
><HTML><PRE>
>
>kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>
>> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>> any suggestions?
People, don't be snide. (Not the people who weren't snide, of course :-)
If the poster is a high-school student, he or she is probably having trouble
forming arguments, because that isn't something they stress heavily at all. You
know the drill : it's poetry if it rhymes; man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs.
himself; all literature is/was written to be educational.
Given these sorts of paradigms, and given that defining terms is not generally
a big part of college, let alone hs classes, outside of science itself, it's
hardly surprising that someone would have trouble formulating an argument that
books of a genre are literature when the first thing most non-sf readers are
going to think of is 'Star Trek.'
And when 'literature' and 'fun' are not thought to belong in the same sentence.
Even as recently few years ago I read an essay by a professor admitting to
being an 'Odyssey junkie,' and remarking on how admitting this was like
professing to prefer Twinkies to Godiva in the classics department.
I think that the advice to define 'valid' and 'literature,' stressing that
which makes things like Dickens and Hemingway lit,
I would also advise the poster to consider how much space he has, as a careful
definition of terms can fill up all the given pages before you come to
comparing specific examples. (Short answer/Long answer problem; do your long
answer if you have the time, and then cut the core of that to the page
requirement; if not, outline fiercely, pick examples carefully and write very,
very concisely.
C.S.Lewis and Brian Aldiss (& someone else who I can't recall now) discussed
this in the mid-60's; their conclusion was that 'this generation must die and
rot,' before the literary establishment would accept sf as lit. Let's hope, as
they did, that this proves wrong!
Tha...@aol.com (aka joan barger)
--Whoever does not study history is doomed to repeat it
Live long and prospect!
--Motto of the Intergalactic Mining Association
jonathan dale mccall
tha...@aol.com (Tharsia) wrote:
(Big snip of thoughtful stuff)
>
>C.S.Lewis and Brian Aldiss (& someone else who I can't recall now) discussed
Was it Kingsley Amis, maybe?
>this in the mid-60's; their conclusion was that 'this generation must die and
>rot,' before the literary establishment would accept sf as lit. Let's hope, as
>they did, that this proves wrong!
>
>
>Tha...@aol.com (aka joan barger)
>--Whoever does not study history is doomed to repeat it
>
>Live long and prospect!
>--Motto of the Intergalactic Mining Association
In the course of pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Lit
(graduated in '95), not <once> was I ever assigned a story or novel
that could be remotely construed as science fiction (nor do I recall
any SF being included in any of the many anthologies we used). No
fantasy either, unless it was categorized as postmodern fabulation
(Pynchon, Barth, etc.).
Although the (general) exclusion of SF from academic discussion
rankles a bit, I still can't help wondering if the ongoing
"ghettoization" of SF hasn't, at times, been healthy for the genre.
It seems to be that SF has profited from the fact that it has been
generally critiqued by people who are themselves gifted genre editors
and writers in their own right. Sf at least has been spared the worst
of the scholastic silliness that seems to be running riot in so many
humanities departments of late.
--
Jonathan McCall
Travis C. Porco
In article <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kraz...@usa.net> wrote:
>I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>any suggestions?
Step one is to try to figure out why in God's green earth anyone
would have ever argued that it WASN'T a valid form of literature.
Here's another proposal: argue that books that mention cats in the
past aren't valid literature! :)
--
Travis **standard disclaimers apply**
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly
is to fill the world with fools." --Herbert Spencer
mhar...@itsnet.com
In article <6kip5l$2h0$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
po...@stat.Berkeley.EDU (Travis C. Porco) wrote:
>
> In article <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kraz...@usa.net> wrote:
> >I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> >literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> >any suggestions?
>
As someone who just lost a job at a research university because I write
science fiction--my own literature--instead of articles about other people's,
I think I may have some insight into this. Most people I know of consider
science fiction to be a lesser form of art because it sells. Really! In my
study of the past, I have found the same thing to hold true of a lot of
authors who sell. You can look at the complaints that Nathaniel Hawthorne
wrote about women authors who were selling his *** off in the 1800s in
America, or the condescending tone of Wieland's introduction to Sophie von La
Roche's Sternheim for the same thing. If it is popular, it must be bad. The
reasoning behind this is that a large majority of people can't possibly like
anything that is deep (read subversive here) because the large majority of
people are idiots. So say the academics (they have to justify their lives
somehow, eh?). That's it in a nutshell. Real literature can't sell.
Mette Harrison
Jonathan Meltzer
In article <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kraz...@usa.net> wrote:
>I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>any suggestions?
You might want to get Thomas Disch's new book
--
Jon Meltzer
jmel...@world.std.com
Brenda Clough
jonathan dale mccall wrote:
> Although the (general) exclusion of SF from academic discussion
> rankles a bit, I still can't help wondering if the ongoing
> "ghettoization" of SF hasn't, at times, been healthy for the genre.
> It seems to be that SF has profited from the fact that it has been
> generally critiqued by people who are themselves gifted genre editors
> and writers in their own right. Sf at least has been spared the worst
> of the scholastic silliness that seems to be running riot in so many
> humanities departments of late.
>
Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
James Battista
kraz...@usa.net wrote:
: I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
: literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
: any suggestions?
I'd bet that you recognize that some SF works have real literary merit and
others don't, and that the question "Is SF valid literature" really doesn't
ask much.
I think that what you're really interested in, or ought to be, is whether
or not _being SF_ is an integral part of the literary merit of the works
in question. Take any of a number of SF works that are ususally perceived
as being of high quality, and ask some questions: Are the SF aspects of
this work necessary to get the author's point across, or would this
work just as well set in, say, an Austen-like piece? Do the SF aspects
help the author? Do they actively detract from the work?
Obviously the answers you get will vary -- in _Hyperion_ the SF aspects are
pushing irrelvancy (not surprising given that it's a retelling of
_The Canterbury Tales_. In any of a number of utopian/quasi utopian (Banks'
Culture books), dystopian (there are lots, take your pick), ecotopian
(lots by KS Robinson) pieces the SF aspects are an important part of
defining the society. In work by Greg Egan, the SF-ness is central as
he spends a lot of time exploring the effects of (future) technology on
psychology, the nature of the mind, the nature of identity, and so on
Hope this helps some!
Jim
jonathan dale mccall
Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
(Snip)
>
>Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
>into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>
>Brenda
>
>
>
>--
>Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
><clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
>
>
Tedious, indeed. Of course, they generally get fawned over by critics
who treat their (often clumsy) handling of SF tropes as if it were a
breathtakingly daring and outre adventure in literary slumming.
'Course, most of these mainstream authors are quick to deny that they
write "science fiction" (sniff). ; )
--
Jonathan McCall
Brenda Clough
jonathan dale mccall wrote:
> Tedious, indeed. Of course, they generally get fawned over by critics
> who treat their (often clumsy) handling of SF tropes as if it were a
> breathtakingly daring and outre adventure in literary slumming.
>
Or worse, when they hail the SFnal bit as a startlingly new idea that nobody had ever
had before. "Robots who want to be people? My god, what a concept!"
Ambiguous9
<<In the course of pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Lit (graduated
in '95), not <once> was I ever assigned a story or novel that could be remotely
construed as science fiction (nor do I recall any SF being included in any of
the many anthologies we used).>>
A couple of "literary" novels I often have seen on course syllabi that can
reach into the SF/F realm are_ Gulliver's Travels_ and of course, _1984_.
Since I did a course on utopias, we hit several other visions along the way,
including _Looking Backward_, _Walden_, and in the elective category, Suzy
Charnas's _Walk to the End of the World_. I'd include Tepper's _Gate to
Women's Country_ nowadays, and LeGuin's _The Dispossessed_, and... but I'm
getting off-topic. :-)
I've also taught myself: I used Spider Robinson's "Just Desserts" to show my
high school sophomores the kind of reaction I think Mark Twain's "Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" got among his contemporaries. They found
"Frog" slow going, archaic, and unfunny, but once they knew what syrup of
ipecac was, they all "got" Spider's story just fine.
Which reminds me:_ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ is only
marginally less-familiar Twain than _Huckleberry Finn_.
Jonatha
Dave
In article <6kip5l$2h0$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Travis C. Porco <po...@stat.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
> Here's another proposal: argue that books that mention cats in the
> past aren't valid literature! :)
litterature? ;-)
Dave
Tharsia
>>C.S.Lewis and Brian Aldiss (& someone else who I can't recall now) discussed
>
>Was it Kingsley Amis, maybe?
>
>
Yes! That's who it was. Thanks!
I'd also like to point out that when most hs students do make it to college and
get to read classic 'fantasy' such as Odyssey or Beowulf, they try vehemently
to explain why the dragon is not a dragon and Grendel isn't really a monster
who eats people and the clashing rocks aren't supposed to be understood as
things that squish ships -- all the 'solar myth' and symbolism stuff that was
popular around a century ago, only they've come to it not through first hand
sources but through the emphasis/assumption in English classes that Intelligent
People in the Past Wrote Books to Edify and Inform People, Not For Fun.
Rich Horton
On Thu, 28 May 1998 09:58:33 -0400, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
wrote:
>Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
>into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
Look instead at both Amises, and Borges, and Nabokov. Invariably,
saying "invariably" will trip you up.
--
Rich Horton | rrho...@concentric.net
Web Page: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton (New reviews of
_To Say Nothing of the Dog_ and _The Last Hawk_)
Travis C. Porco
In article <6kkom2$jqk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <mhar...@itsnet.com> wrote:
>> In article <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kraz...@usa.net> wrote:
>> >I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>> >literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>> >any suggestions?
>As someone who just lost a job at a research university because I write
>science fiction--my own literature--instead of articles about other people's,
>I think I may have some insight into this.
What should happen is that everyone who has a job in a literature
department should be REQUIRED to produce a commercially salable novel
or many short stories!
>Most people I know of consider
>science fiction to be a lesser form of art because it sells. Really! In my
>study of the past, I have found the same thing to hold true of a lot of
>authors who sell. You can look at the complaints that Nathaniel Hawthorne
>wrote about women authors who were selling his *** off in the 1800s in
>America, or the condescending tone of Wieland's introduction to Sophie von La
>Roche's Sternheim for the same thing. If it is popular, it must be bad. The
>reasoning behind this is that a large majority of people can't possibly like
>anything that is deep (read subversive here) because the large majority of
>people are idiots. So say the academics (they have to justify their lives
>somehow, eh?). That's it in a nutshell. Real literature can't sell.
Well, there's no doubt that higher quality things are probably less
popular, but there are many very unpopular things of zero quality.
More strange, much of what passes for higher or elevated taste these
days is artistically worthless and cannot be understood without
reference to the emperor's new clothes.
Travis C. Porco
In article <356d83e...@news.mindspring.com>,
jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
...
>>Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
>>into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
...
>Tedious, indeed. Of course, they generally get fawned over by critics
>who treat their (often clumsy) handling of SF tropes as if it were a
>breathtakingly daring and outre adventure in literary slumming.
>'Course, most of these mainstream authors are quick to deny that they
>write "science fiction" (sniff). ; )
We mustn't forget Doris LESSING whose Canopus in Argos books are not
quite traditional science fiction, but they are incredible. Did she
claim not to be writing science-fiction? I've never read her
statements on the matter.
As far as "mainstream literature", no one in their right mind would
deny the value of some of it, of course. But much contemporary
mainstream literature deals with meaningless sex and body odors, and
for all its clever pretentiousness, is miles from being either
entertaining or instructive to me. The fact that something is
critically acclaimed "mainstream fiction" means nothing anymore
to me anyway. Give me an old beatup copy of Analog with a Hal Clement
story in it anyday! ("So's their old man.")
jonathan dale mccall
po...@stat.Berkeley.EDU (Travis C. Porco) wrote:
>In article <356d83e...@news.mindspring.com>,
>jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>...
>
>>>Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
>>>into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>...
>>Tedious, indeed. Of course, they generally get fawned over by critics
>>who treat their (often clumsy) handling of SF tropes as if it were a
>>breathtakingly daring and outre adventure in literary slumming.
>
>>'Course, most of these mainstream authors are quick to deny that they
>>write "science fiction" (sniff). ; )
>
>We mustn't forget Doris LESSING whose Canopus in Argos books are not
>quite traditional science fiction, but they are incredible. Did she
>claim not to be writing science-fiction? I've never read her
>statements on the matter.
(Snip stuff I agree with)
>
>
>--
>Travis **standard disclaimers apply**
>
>"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly
>is to fill the world with fools." --Herbert Spencer
Actually, DL was one of the people I had in mind when I wrote that.
She was, as far as I'm aware, not at all amused at being lumped in
with science fiction writers.
I remember reading in <Grumbles from the Grave> a letter from Heinlein
to his agent complaining about the Scribner's editor having made some
disparaging comment about a magazine he had previously sold work to.
RAH said something to the effect of, "It's not a critique of the
content, it's a sneer at the format from a snob." I think that's a
huge part of why SF is consistently excluded from the academic canon.
There are no sound literary criteria for excluding, say, PK Dick,
Alfred Bester, Tolkien, (add your favorite here).
I find it supremely ironic that the genre that has tapped most deeply
into this century's zeitgeist is scorned as "mindless escapism", as
one of my instructors put it.
--
Jonathan McCall
jonathan dale mccall
rrho...@concentric.net (Rich Horton) wrote:
>On Thu, 28 May 1998 09:58:33 -0400, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
>>into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>
>Look instead at both Amises, and Borges, and Nabokov. Invariably,
>saying "invariably" will trip you up.
>--
>Rich Horton | rrho...@concentric.net
>Web Page: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton (New reviews of
>_To Say Nothing of the Dog_ and _The Last Hawk_)
Yeah, but the Amises aren't guilty of snobbery in that regard -
Kingsley Amis was one of SF's strongest early advocates in academia.
Although your point is well taken, I still feel there's a difference
between those authors who wander into SF fields because of their own
unique vision (I'll see your Borges and raise you a Calvino) and those
who retread sf tropes that have been cliches for a half century.
Naturally, I have a flawless, foolproof system for telling the former
from the latter. ; )
--
Jonathan McCall
Simon van Dongen
On or about Wed, 27 May 1998 18:47:34 -0400, Elisabeth Carey wrote:
>kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>>
>> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>> any suggestions?
>
>First define "valid".
>
>Then define "literature".
>
>Lis Carey
But please don't define science fiction. Or not here, at any rate.
BTW, does Usenet qualify as invalid literature?
Discuss
--
Simon van Dongen <sg...@pi.net> Rotterdam, The Netherlands
As he reclined there he sang ballads of ancient valour, from
time to time beating a hollow wooden duck in unison with his
voice, so that the charitable should have no excuse for
missing the entertainment. -Bramah, Kai Lung's Golden Hours
EllenDat
radi...@mindspring.com (jonathan dale mccall) responding to
po...@stat.Berkeley.EDU (Travis C. Porco) who wrote:
>
and
>>jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
snip to:
>>We mustn't forget Doris LESSING whose Canopus in Argos books are not
>>quite traditional science fiction, but they are incredible. Did she
>>claim not to be writing science-fiction? I've never read her
>>statements on the matter.
>(Snip stuff I agree with)
>>
>>
more snips to Jonathan McCall's:
>Actually, DL was one of the people I had in mind when I wrote that.
>She was, as far as I'm aware, not at all amused at being lumped in
>with science fiction writers.
and a great big snip.
Lessing gave out the Hugo Award for Best novelette at Brighton several years
ago so she couldn't be that annoyed at being associated with the field.
Ellen Datlow
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <199805290333...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>She was, as far as I'm aware, not at all amused at being lumped in
>>with science fiction writers.
>
>and a great big snip.
>Lessing gave out the Hugo Award for Best novelette at Brighton several years
>ago so she couldn't be that annoyed at being associated with the field.
>
she knew very little about science fiction. Does anyone have the
books handy so that this can be checked?
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Emmanuel Baechler
>> Most people I know of consider science fiction to be a lesser form
>> of art because it sells.
There seems to be a sort of discrimination between two casts. Everybody
who writes something else that what a few people "true" litterature is
the subject of strong prejudices. This is not only true for science
fiction. It is also the case for many "crime" novelists (in french, we
use the expression "roman noir", i.e. "black novel"), while some of them
are at least as good as any "true" writer.
Science fiction has one more problem, it contains the word "science".
The mere word causes a quite strong repulsion in many litterary circles.
This is especially strong in the french speaking world. Here the
opposition is almost schizophrenic. A "traditionnal" writer cannot
consider the possibility that an enginneer or a sciencist starts
writing.
That a such person may be a good writer and that his (her) production
may be of interest is unthinkable.
Emmanuel Baechler
Lausanne
Switzerland
Lance
Rich Horton wrote:
> On Thu, 28 May 1998 09:58:33 -0400, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
> >into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>
> Look instead at both Amises, and Borges, and Nabokov. Invariably,
> saying "invariably" will trip you up.
> --
I'd suggest Twain's A Conneticut Yankee Yankee in King Arthur's Court as a
counterexample, too...
Evelyn C. Leeper
In article <357010ef...@news.concentric.net>,
Rich Horton <rrho...@concentric.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 May 1998 09:58:33 -0400, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
> >into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>
> Look instead at both Amises, and Borges, and Nabokov. Invariably,
> saying "invariably" will trip you up.
I would classify Borges as fantasy rather than science fiction, though
I am willing to be corrected. In general, fantasy is considered to
be eligible as "literature" more readily than science fiction.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper | ele...@lucent.com
+1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?"
"I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles."
Jerry Cullingford
In article <484d87e61...@zetnet.co.uk>,
Dave <dave...@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Or, if the book mentioned a group of new born cats, would it be
>litterature? ;-)
Well, if the kittens are subsequently eaten, then it should
certainly count as litterachewer :-).
--
_|_ Jerry Cullingford jerry.cu...@ffei.co.uk (Work)
/ | Fujifilm Electronic Imaging j...@selune.demon.co.uk (Home)
\_|_ Hemel Hempstead, UK PGP key at www.selune.demon.co.uk
\__/ (Speaking only for myself and not the company unless otherwise stated)
Robert Pearlman
radi...@mindspring.com (jonathan dale mccall) wrote:
>po...@stat.Berkeley.EDU (Travis C. Porco) wrote:
>
>>In article <356d83e...@news.mindspring.com>,
[snip snip snip]
>I find it supremely ironic that the genre that has tapped most deeply
>into this century's zeitgeist is scorned as "mindless escapism", as
>one of my instructors put it.
I think it was C. S. Lewis who noted that the people most intent on
preventing escape were jailers.
Pearlman
Larisa Migachyov
Simon van Dongen (sg...@pi.net) wrote:
: On or about Wed, 27 May 1998 18:47:34 -0400, Elisabeth Carey wrote:
:
: >kraz...@usa.net wrote:
: >>
: >> I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
: >> literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
: >> any suggestions?
: >
: >First define "valid".
: >
: >Then define "literature".
: >
: >Lis Carey
:
: But please don't define science fiction. Or not here, at any rate.
:
: BTW, does Usenet qualify as invalid literature?
:
: Discuss
Of course it does. Especially my posts.
--
Larisa Migachyov * Quant'e bella giovinezza
Biomedical Engineering * Che si fugge tuttavia!
Stanford University * Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
http://www.stanford.edu/~lvm * Di doman non c'e certezza.
Seth Deitch
On Fri, 29 May 1998 02:22:26 GMT, radi...@mindspring.com (jonathan
dale mccall) wrote:
(major snippage)
>I find it supremely ironic that the genre that has tapped most deeply
>into this century's zeitgeist is scorned as "mindless escapism", as
>one of my instructors put it.
Its weird. I haven't heard this kind of small minded criticism of
the genre in general (at least from people worth taking seriously) in
well over twenty years.
I had teachers in school who had plenty of not so nice things to
say about various individual writers, some of which I agreed with some
of which I did not, but few of them were willing to trash the entire
genre wholesale. In my junior year english, we had War of the Worlds
for one unit. It was the same year we did Great Expectations and it
wasn't treated as significantly less serious. I did a book report for
that class on Last and First Men.
-Seth Deitch
Jay Random
Lance wrote:
>
> Rich Horton wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 28 May 1998 09:58:33 -0400, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
> > >into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
> >
> > Look instead at both Amises, and Borges, and Nabokov. Invariably,
> > saying "invariably" will trip you up.
>
> I'd suggest Twain's A Conneticut Yankee Yankee in King Arthur's Court as a
> counterexample, too...
Mind you, Mark Twain was not a `member of the literary establishment';
he was one of the antinomian giants of the 19th century, even more
subversive than H.G. Wells. The lit'ry gents were even more up in arms
about _Huckleberry Finn_ when it first appeared than the P.C.
book-banners are now. (Then, it was on the grounds that he was
massacring the Queen's English; now, on the grounds that when portraying
Southern slaveholders, he made them say `nigger'. As Berke Breathed made
Judge Wapner say: `Bailiff, kick these two nuts in the butt.')
--J. Random Twain-Marker, D.G.F.V>
Margaret R. Dean
In article <356fd5ee...@news.pipeline.com>,
>>
>>>In article <356d83e...@news.mindspring.com>,
>[snip snip snip]
>>into this century's zeitgeist is scorned as "mindless escapism", as
>>one of my instructors put it.
>
>preventing escape were jailers.
He did say that, but he was quoting his friend J.R.R. Tolkien.
--Margaret Dean
<marg...@access.digex.net>
William Clifford
>> On Thu, 28 May 1998 09:58:33 -0400, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
>> wrote:
>> >Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a toe
>> >into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>> Look instead at both Amises, and Borges, and Nabokov. Invariably,
>> saying "invariably" will trip you up.
>I am willing to be corrected. In general, fantasy is considered to
>be eligible as "literature" more readily than science fiction.
Not to mention Italo Calvino. _Cosmicomics_ is not 'hard' SF and it
could be argued that it's more fantasy than SF. But I can't think of
any good reason not to consider it SF. And it's in the fiction aisle
and B&N.
-William Clifford
Warning!! From fields foiled! (you figure it out)
Michael A. Fishman
No. Some of it is actually fun to read.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Michael A. Fishman,
Group T-10, MS K710, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545
phone: 505-665-1923, fax: 505-665-3493
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tharsia
>jonathan dale mccall wrote:
>
>> Although the (general) exclusion of SF from academic discussion
>> rankles a bit, I still can't help wondering if the ongoing
>> "ghettoization" of SF hasn't, at times, been healthy for the genre.
>> It seems to be that SF has profited from the fact that it has been
>> generally critiqued by people who are themselves gifted genre editors
>> and writers in their own right. Sf at least has been spared the worst
>> of the scholastic silliness that seems to be running riot in so many
>> humanities departments of late.
>>
>
>Amen, brother! And those members of the literary establishment who do stick a
toe into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at John Updike.
>
Brenda, thank you! This explains why I can't read Updike even though I read
Bradbury, Dickens, Asimov, Dostoyevsky, etc 'in a sandwichy sort of way' and
why literary people always tell me, "Oh, if you like sf, you'll love Updike . .
.or 'Foucalt's Pendulum.'"
And when I try to explain that I don't, they think, "Yeah, liberal arts major .
. . _right_"
There are, of course, the exceptions -- people who should get the Lucian award
if one exists. Turtledove, Pratchett, and all those others who are so obviously
Liberal Arts Rebels -- they couldn't hit so close to home if they weren't!
John Van Sickle
Simon van Dongen wrote:
>
> BTW, does Usenet qualify as invalid literature?
Well, most of the stuff from AOL and WebTV does...
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, radi...@mindspring.com (jonathan dale
mccall) wrote:
>It seems to be that SF has profited from the fact that it has been
>generally critiqued by people who are themselves gifted genre editors
>and writers in their own right. Sf at least has been spared the worst
>of the scholastic silliness that seems to be running riot in so many
>humanities departments of late.
Indeed, SF has been spared the meticulous attention that is given to
fossilised art forms, and I'm glad SF isn't fossilised, though I'm not
sure which way the causal connection goes (if there is one). But once
an art form fossilises, academia has no choice but to find new ways in
which to criticise it (and criticise the criticisms), because there no
longer is any new material to criticise. Poor chumps. Scientists can
make their new material by doing experiments, but lit profs are stuck.
Going back to the question ... I can't think of another genre that has
failed to become "literature" once it has been around long enough.
Romance novels are certainly literature ... ask any Jane Austen fan.
-- Richard
------
A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic.
What is (and isn't) ScF? ==> http://www.wco.com/~treitel/sf.html
jonathan dale mccall
tre...@wco.com (Beth and Richard Treitel) wrote:
(snip)
>Indeed, SF has been spared the meticulous attention that is given to
>fossilised art forms, and I'm glad SF isn't fossilised, though I'm not
>sure which way the causal connection goes (if there is one). But once
>an art form fossilises, academia has no choice but to find new ways in
>which to criticise it (and criticise the criticisms), because there no
>longer is any new material to criticise. Poor chumps. Scientists can
>make their new material by doing experiments, but lit profs are stuck.
>
(Snip)
>
>-- Richard
Perhaps therein lies the hope for continued vigor for SF - by hitching
its literary wagon to a discipline that's in a constant state of flux.
I'm afraid I'm a hypocrite in this regard. Half of me wants to see SF
authors get the recognition they deserve in lit. courses; my other
half wants to "kick SF back into the gutter where it belongs." ; )
--
Jonathan McCall
Arthur Wohlwill
In article <35781d69...@news.wco.com> tre...@wco.com (Beth and Richard Treitel) writes:
>From: tre...@wco.com (Beth and Richard Treitel)
>Subject: Re: Is Science Fiction literature
>Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 14:56:18 GMT
>Going back to the question ... I can't think of another genre that has
>failed to become "literature" once it has been around long enough.
>Romance novels are certainly literature ... ask any Jane Austen fan.
Not too long ago, the mystery newsgroup debated the issue of whether anything
in the mystery genre could be considered literature. The discussion was
fairly similar to the one here and it appears that many scholars do not take
that genre seriously either.
In a similar debate about SF as literature on the rec.arts. books group,
I recall someone using some criteria to distinguish "pulp' and "literature"
but I am not sure that something cant be both. (Icant remember what the
criteria were).
Arthur Wohlwill adwo...@UIC.EDU
Dene Bebbington
kraz...@usa.net wrote:
>I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
>literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
>any suggestions?
Even after you've come up with some good definitions of "valid" and
"literature", you might want to ask whether it's important or matters
one jot.
--
Dene Bebbington http://www.bebbo.demon.co.uk
"Beside the braes of dawn. One clear new morning. Down where the lilies
stood in bloom. I knew that I was just a stranger in this world. A wind
just passing through." - Calum & Rory Macdonald (Runrig)
Alan Gore
Emmanuel Baechler <ebae...@hospvd.ch> wrote:
>Science fiction has one more problem, it contains the word "science".
>The mere word causes a quite strong repulsion in many litterary circles.
>This is especially strong in the french speaking world. Here the
>opposition is almost schizophrenic. A "traditionnal" writer cannot
>consider the possibility that an enginneer or a sciencist starts
>writing.
>That a such person may be a good writer and that his (her) production
>may be of interest is unthinkable.
This is a very strange attitude when you consider that France has been
a leader in high tech for years, in much the same way as Japan, taking
pains to develop technologies that other "advanced" countries are
afraid of. Supersonic travel and nuclear power come to mind. In fact,
the inspiration for much early American SF was the can-do attitude
expressed in the works of Jules Verne.
ag...@primenet.com | "Giving money and power to the government
Alan Gore | is like giving whiskey and car keys
Software For PC's | to teenaged boys" - P. J. O'Rourke
http://www.primenet.com/~agore
Dan Goodman
In article <6kq21k$5...@nntp02.primenet.com>,
Alan Gore <ag...@primenet.com> wrote:
>Emmanuel Baechler <ebae...@hospvd.ch> wrote:
>
>>Science fiction has one more problem, it contains the word "science".
>>The mere word causes a quite strong repulsion in many litterary circles.
>>This is especially strong in the french speaking world. Here the
>>opposition is almost schizophrenic. A "traditionnal" writer cannot
>>consider the possibility that an enginneer or a sciencist starts
>>writing.
>>That a such person may be a good writer and that his (her) production
>>may be of interest is unthinkable.
>
>This is a very strange attitude when you consider that France has been
>a leader in high tech for years,
No stranger than Ireland having both a whiskey industry and a temperance
movement. Or the US having an anti-capitalist tradition on the right,
while others on the right consider capitalism one of the good parts of
American tradition. Or northern Italy having had political parties and
factions which opposed the Pope for several hundred years.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Phil Hunt
In article <356EA0...@hospvd.ch>
ebae...@hospvd.ch "Emmanuel Baechler" writes:
> Science fiction has one more problem, it contains the word "science".
I think this is at the root of the phenomenon. Many literary types
are too stupid/lazy to understand science, so they fear and hate it,
and consequently are emotionally predisposed to dislike SF. Some go
so far as to calim that anything that is good cannot be SF (_1984_
being a good example of this).
--
* * Phil Hunt * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Eurolang, la lang qui tu pos lernar in week-fini. Vidu: *
* Eurolang, the language you can learn in a weekend. See: *
* <http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/eurolang.htm> *
* * * * * * * * * Comuna dua lang per la EU * * * * * * * * * *
Simon van Dongen
On or about Fri, 29 May 1998 04:11:49 GMT, Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>In article <199805290333...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>EllenDat <elle...@aol.com> wrote:
>> radi...@mindspring.com (jonathan dale mccall) responding to
>>
>>>Actually, DL was one of the people I had in mind when I wrote that.
>>>She was, as far as I'm aware, not at all amused at being lumped in
>>>with science fiction writers.
>>
>>and a great big snip.
>>Lessing gave out the Hugo Award for Best novelette at Brighton several years
>>ago so she couldn't be that annoyed at being associated with the field.
>>
>IIRC, she said in the introduction to one of the Shikasta books that
>she knew very little about science fiction. Does anyone have the
>books handy so that this can be checked?
>
I think you must mean the introduction to 'The Sirian Experiments'.
But the only point she makes relevant to this is that she knows very
little about *physics*: it ends:
"What of course I would like to be writing is the story of the Red
and White Dwarves and their Remembering Mirror, their space rocket
(powered by anti-gravity), their attendant entities Hadron, Gluon,
Pion, Lepton and Muon, and the Charmed Quarks ant the Coloured Quarks.
But we can't all be physicists."
Note that she uses the Tokienian 'dwarves' rather than the official
'dwarfs'.
Jay Random
jonathan dale mccall wrote:
>
> tre...@wco.com (Beth and Richard Treitel) wrote:
>
> (snip)
> >Indeed, SF has been spared the meticulous attention that is given to
> >fossilised art forms, and I'm glad SF isn't fossilised, though I'm not
> >sure which way the causal connection goes (if there is one). But once
> >an art form fossilises, academia has no choice but to find new ways in
> >which to criticise it (and criticise the criticisms), because there no
> >longer is any new material to criticise. Poor chumps. Scientists can
> >make their new material by doing experiments, but lit profs are stuck.
>
> its literary wagon to a discipline that's in a constant state of flux.
>
> I'm afraid I'm a hypocrite in this regard. Half of me wants to see SF
> authors get the recognition they deserve in lit. courses; my other
> half wants to "kick SF back into the gutter where it belongs." ; )
I'm with you on _both_ sides, & _I_ don't see any hypocrisy involved.
To wit: _I_ want to see SF authors get the recognition they deserve in
lit courses; & I want to see ALL literature back in the gutter (or at
least in real, living, breathing societies) back where IT belongs!
`Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead &
pinned to a card.' Eustace would have made a perfect English Lit
professor. Bleah. Give me _Silverlock_ over _any_ volume of standard
literary criticism by _any_ academic, _any_ time, for _any_ purpose
except bibliography.
--J. Random Myers Myers Myers Myers Baked Beans & Myers, D.G.F.V.
WooF
On the subject of the Liberal Arts Professors' distain for science, Isaac
Asimov described a faculty meeting at Boston University: When mention was
made of a student named Milton failing English, and one named Keats doing
the same, everyone laughed, science and liberal arts professors alike;
when mention was made of a student named Gauss failing math, only the
science folk laughed. When they explained to the liberal arts folk that
an earlier Gauss was one of the greatest of mathematicians, the liberal
arts folk made it clear that they intended to forget that as soon as they
could.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <35710F...@shaw.wave.ca>,
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>jonathan dale mccall wrote:
>>
>> I'm afraid I'm a hypocrite in this regard. Half of me wants to see SF
>> authors get the recognition they deserve in lit. courses; my other
>> half wants to "kick SF back into the gutter where it belongs." ; )
>
>I'm with you on _both_ sides, & _I_ don't see any hypocrisy involved.
>
>To wit: _I_ want to see SF authors get the recognition they deserve in
>lit courses; & I want to see ALL literature back in the gutter (or at
>least in real, living, breathing societies) back where IT belongs!
>
seen good literary criticism of sf. In particular, Attebury's
_Strategies of Fantasy_ was excellent, and there was a lot of
good stuff in Stoppard's (?) _The Road to Middle-Earth_ even if
there was also some very dubious allegorizing.
Jay Random
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
> I have a lot of emotional sympathy with this....except that I've
> seen good literary criticism of sf. In particular, Attebury's
> _Strategies of Fantasy_ was excellent, and there was a lot of
> good stuff in Stoppard's (?) _The Road to Middle-Earth_ even if
> there was also some very dubious allegorizing.
Isn't that Shippey? (Stab in the dark.)
Yes, I agree, there's been some damn fine criticism of sf -- mainly, I
think, because sf critics just lack the, ahem, `erudition' &
`sophistication' to see the Emperor's New Clothes in all their glory. I
haven't seen a _mainstream_ literary critic whom I respected since
George Orwell died.
(Orwell's reviews & critical essays ought to be published as a single
volume; it would make a dandy textbook for a freshman course in DWEM
English Lit. But I almost forgot, it isn't a textbook, is it, unless it
has 42 stupid leading questions at the end of every chapter.)
--J. Random Oh-Forget-I-Mentioned-It, D.G.F.V.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <3572DB...@shaw.wave.ca>,
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>>
>> I have a lot of emotional sympathy with this....except that I've
>> seen good literary criticism of sf. In particular, Attebury's
>> _Strategies of Fantasy_ was excellent, and there was a lot of
>> good stuff in Stoppard's (?) _The Road to Middle-Earth_ even if
>> there was also some very dubious allegorizing.
>
>Isn't that Shippey? (Stab in the dark.)
Shippey sounds plausible.
>
>Yes, I agree, there's been some damn fine criticism of sf -- mainly, I
>think, because sf critics just lack the, ahem, `erudition' &
>`sophistication' to see the Emperor's New Clothes in all their glory. I
>haven't seen a _mainstream_ literary critic whom I respected since
>George Orwell died.
>
I'm not sure what you mean by 'mainstream'. Shippey is an academic,
though I wouldn't be surprised if he'd read sf even if he weren't
paid for it.
Joy Haftel
In article <356cc8e7...@news.mindspring.com>,
jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In the course of pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Lit
>(graduated in '95), not <once> was I ever assigned a story or novel
>that could be remotely construed as science fiction (nor do I recall
>any SF being included in any of the many anthologies we used). No
>fantasy either, unless it was categorized as postmodern fabulation
>(Pynchon, Barth, etc.).
This may be due to the courses you chose to take. If your program was
anything like mine, there is a great deal of flexibility outside of
mandatory survey and Shakespeare courses. My university had an
entire course on the Arthurian legend. I don't have the reading list
handy, but I bet a lot of it is fantasy.
It also depends on how you define sf and fantasy.
What exactly is _Gulliver's Travels_? _1984_? _Animal Farm_?
_Fahrenheit 451_? All of these were required reading either in high
school or college. I would call them sf.
What exactly (besides drama/poetry), is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? _The
Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_? _The
Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in college. I would
call them fantasy.
I think English departments are less prejudiced against fantasy than they
are against sf. Fantastical elements are present in epics and many of the
classics. SF is a more recent development, and, unfortunately, has to
shake off the "pulp" sterotype in the professors' minds. Which is too
bad, because there are many sf works out there with as much or more to
analyze as, for example, a Hardy novel.
Joy Haftel
In article <356D6D89...@erols.com>, Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com>
wrote:
> who do stick a toe into the ghetto invariably produce tedious SF. Look at
> John Updike.
I don't know about invariably. I thought Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_
was quite good. By far my favorite of hers, actually.
Brenda Clough
Joy Haftel wrote:
Yes, HANDMAID was a good book. Some SF writer or another might have handled the
same themes earlier, but not so well.
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
jonathan dale mccall
jkh...@netcom.com (Joy Haftel) wrote:
(Snip)
>
>This may be due to the courses you chose to take. If your program was
>anything like mine, there is a great deal of flexibility outside of
>mandatory survey and Shakespeare courses. My university had an
>entire course on the Arthurian legend. I don't have the reading list
>handy, but I bet a lot of it is fantasy.
>
>It also depends on how you define sf and fantasy.
>
>What exactly is _Gulliver's Travels_? _1984_? _Animal Farm_?
>_Fahrenheit 451_? All of these were required reading either in high
>school or college. I would call them sf.
>
>What exactly (besides drama/poetry), is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? _The
>Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_? _The
>Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in college. I would
>call them fantasy.
>
>I think English departments are less prejudiced against fantasy than they
>are against sf. Fantastical elements are present in epics and many of the
>classics. SF is a more recent development, and, unfortunately, has to
>shake off the "pulp" sterotype in the professors' minds. Which is too
>bad, because there are many sf works out there with as much or more to
>analyze as, for example, a Hardy novel.
>
>Joy
>jkh...@netcom.com
Fair question. Let me just say I never encountered any sf in the
general survey courses. Nor did I encounter it in 20th C Lit courses,
including britlit, brit novel, am lit, am novel, etc. There <was> a
course on epics (not an English course - it was a widely crosslisted
Freshman survey course) that featured, among other things, <The Lord
of the Rings>.
As for your examples above, I'm afraid they are precisely symptomatic
of the problem I've been lamenting. The ones you've listed are the
"safe", ubiquitous token sf entries (I'm not, btw, disparaging their
innate quality). A little Bradbury and Orwell...why is it that the
only modern SF that makes it into the curriculum is of the dystopic
subgenre, I wonder?
The non-modern entries you mention (Spencer, Dante, etc.) may hold
historical significance as proto-SF or proto-big-F-Fantasy, but I
would not consider them in the same category as, say, <A Wizard of
Earthsea> for a number of reasons, one of which is the framing
conventions of the story. Don't ask me to expand unless you really
want a spiel, though. ; )
I do agree with you, though, that academia is more sympathetically
disposed to fantasy than SF.
--
Jonathan McCall
jonathan dale mccall
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
(Snip)
>I'm with you on _both_ sides, & _I_ don't see any hypocrisy involved.
>
>To wit: _I_ want to see SF authors get the recognition they deserve in
>lit courses; & I want to see ALL literature back in the gutter (or at
>least in real, living, breathing societies) back where IT belongs!
>
>`Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead &
>pinned to a card.' Eustace would have made a perfect English Lit
What a perfectly apt quotation!
>professor. Bleah. Give me _Silverlock_ over _any_ volume of standard
>literary criticism by _any_ academic, _any_ time, for _any_ purpose
>except bibliography.
>
>
>--J. Random Myers Myers Myers Myers Baked Beans & Myers, D.G.F.V.
I hope I haven't come across as some cankered wretch who's totally
soured on the academic environment. Most of my instructors were quite
good; a few were marvellous, gifted teachers. Still, I can't forget
an incident that happened in one of my creative writing classes.
Early on in the semester, my prof (a published novelist, btw) asked us
to bring to class some passage from a novel or a story that we found
particularly moving, and read it aloud. I chose the description of
Fingolfin's fall in JRRT's <Silmarillion>. I'll never forget the
pained, pinched expression that came over my prof's face...and the
remark: "um, yes, well, if nothing else, Tolkien certainly had a vivid
imagination."
Sealed my fate in <that> class, it did.
--
Jonathan "But I Ain't Bitter" McCall
Jay Random
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
> In article <3572DB...@shaw.wave.ca>,
> Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
> >I haven't seen a _mainstream_ literary critic whom I respected since
> >George Orwell died.
> >
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'mainstream'. Shippey is an academic,
> though I wouldn't be surprised if he'd read sf even if he weren't
> paid for it.
Mainstream: a critic of `mainstream fiction'; one who eschews anything
labelled genre fiction, on the grounds that all genre fiction is crass
commercialized hackwork; one with `mainstream' lit'ry connexions; the
sort of person whose stories would be published in _The New Yorker_,
always supposing the impossible, that a modern literary critic would
stoop to writing fiction when it's _sooooo_ much more prestigious &
academically sexy to deconstruct it.
I have seen critics whom I respect in various different genres; I have
not seen a generalist in the field of fiction criticism of any value in
the past half-century, largely because the generalist tradition has
dwindled away into a clique of reviewers & academics who make it their
business to turn up their noses at a larger percentage of new fiction
(on grounds of genre or simple salability) with each passing year.
Orwell noted that the great English novelists of the 19th century wrote
books that were accessible, vital, & had something to say, because those
novelists were an integral part of their culture, & took all of
contemporary life for their subject matter; whereas in his own time,
novelists were so isolated from society that the typical novel was a
novel about a novelist. We have gone that one better: The typical
`literary' work these days, it seems, is a deconstructionist criticism
of a small-press novel (by a tenured English professor who teaches
deconstructionist criticism) about the existential angst of a tenured
English professor who teaches deconstructionist criticism & is cruelly
hurt at other English professors' deconstructionist criticism of his
small-press novel about a tenured English professor who teaches
deconstructionist criticism.
OK, I shall now pull Gertrude Stein off the mound & send in the
reliever:
`Literature' has eaten itself; it has become incestuously
self-referential; it is not about writing books for people to read, but
about getting grant money & choice teaching positions at liberal-arts
universities. Critics even more than authors have been sucked into the
death-spiral of literary autophagy. The only critics I have seen for a
long time who were worth a rat's ass were those who deliberately stayed
outside the `literary' nexus of academe, & specialized in one branch or
another of commercial fiction. Unfortunately, these people are
specialists; it's been a long time since I heard of a critic who could
say anything about more than one major publishing category without
making a blithering fool of himself.
(No, I take that back. Harlan Ellison is a scathingly capable critic in
both SF & horror, which I do not really consider kindred fields. But his
recent criticism in the horror field can be summarized, really, in his
amazingly accurate prophecy, circa 1991, that the field had terminally
overgrazed its subject matter & would disappear as a commercial category
in about three years. Hey presto! Not one mass-market house today has a
horror line; it's been several years since the last one folded. Good
thing Harlan has SF to fall back on. But he's, well, Harlan; as David
Gerrold said, Munchkinland's answer to Godzilla, & SF's answer to the
world.)
--J. Random Non-Autophage (Except Fingernails), D.G.F.V.
Joe Bernstein
Newsgroups snipped (what *was* this doing in rasfc?).
Jonathan Meltzer <jmel...@world.std.com> wrote:
> In article <6kh9ld$b8t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kraz...@usa.net> wrote:
> >I am writing an essay on whether or not Science Fiction is a valid form of
> >literature, and I'm having troble forming arguments. Anyone out there got
> >any suggestions?
>
> You might want to get Thomas Disch's new book
Whose wonderful title - <The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made of> - persuaded me
to look a buncha times, but not yet to read anything like through.
You might also or instead want to get the latest VLS (that's <Voice
Literary Supplement>, as in <Village Voice>), in which Jonathan Lethem,
a reasonably well-respected, um, sf as speculative-fiction author,
provides a much more succinct and coherent argument on the same topic.
The publication banners it as "Jonathan Lethem Laments the Lost Promise
of Science Fiction", and, well, ok, he does; but the essay is actually a
good bit more interesting than that.
For some reason (there's also an essay on Russell Hoban's <Turtle Moon>
in there; ?) they dropped dozens of copies off at this store to hand out
free; they may have done so at other SF specialty stores.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer and bookseller http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Speaking for myself alone jos...@tezcat.com j...@sfbooks.com
Joe Bernstein
Phil Hunt <ph...@vision25.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <356EA0...@hospvd.ch>
> ebae...@hospvd.ch "Emmanuel Baechler" writes:
> > Science fiction has one more problem, it contains the word "science".
>
> I think this is at the root of the phenomenon. Many literary types
> are too stupid/lazy to understand science, so they fear and hate it,
> and consequently are emotionally predisposed to dislike SF.
Um, in that case, why don't they embrace fantasy with open arms?
(Really, they don't. Honest. SF is *much* more respected than fantasy.
And *don't* try to convince me that either the average fantasy novel or
the average literary-quality fantasy novel calls for any understanding
of science.) - JLB
Joe Bernstein
Tharsia <tha...@aol.com> wrote:
> I'd also like to point out that when most hs students do make it to college
> and get to read classic 'fantasy' such as Odyssey or Beowulf, they try
> vehemently to explain why the dragon is not a dragon and Grendel isn't
> really a monster who eats people and the clashing rocks aren't supposed
> to be understood as things that squish ships -- all the 'solar myth' and
> symbolism stuff that was popular around a century ago, only they've
> come to it not through first hand sources but through the emphasis/
> assumption in English classes that Intelligent People in the Past Wrote
> Books to Edify and Inform People, Not For Fun.
If they knew what they were talking about they'd know better.
The single manuscript that gives us <Beowulf> also contained a shorter
monster story and a bestiary of monsters, as best I recall (not having
researched this one in depth). We know very little about the story's
reception in the original, but it sure looks like it was considered a
fantasy by the time Cotton Vitellius whatever was written out, unless
you think people invested in writing manuscripts for the purpose of
monster-hunting in tenth-century England.
Disclaimer here: I did *not* know the following when I wrote the entry
on Homer for the <Encyclopedia of Fantasy> and as a result, might I add,
wrote a pretty lackluster entry that I considered my worst even before
learning what follows...
About fifty years ago, an extremely prominent classical scholar, Denys
Page (the "Page" in for example the Lobel-Page edition of the lyric
poets), gave a series of talks on "Folktales in the <Odyssey>". What he
did was sit down with basic folklore materials of the time - Propp and
Stith Thompson and so forth - and sort out how Homer used his themes as
opposed to Just Any Old Storyteller. Turns out many of his stories are
repeated far and wide, and *almost without exception* Homer toned them
down: removed magic, or made it less specific and more a matter of
hand-waving, turned monsters into people, you get the idea.
This argues strongly, I suspect, that Homer a) knew Odysseus' wanderings
looked like fantasy and b) was not overly happy with this. But even
this much needs a good deal of qualifying and I am not confident enough
to go any further with it. One Uvo Holscher has done so, and has
published an introduction to the <Odyssey> on this basis: <Die Odyssee:
Epos zwischen Marchen und Roman> (The Odyssey: Epic between Fairy-Tale
and Novel). This got excellent reviews and appears to be in excellent
German, but I've heard nothing indicating that it will be translated and
have not had the time to read it myself yet.
(end of stuff that should've gone into that entry but didn't)
English-language treatments of the <Odyssey>, few and far between though
they are, tend to confirm your previous remarks about classicists a) not
thinking much of the poem (or there'd be more and better such
treatments) and b) not wanting to admit to the reasons (they tend
instead to gloss over the Wanderings as fast as they can). Curiously
enough, they don't have this problem with Aristophanes: almost any book
on Aristophanes will explicitly and at length discuss "fantasy". But
strangely enough :-) Aristophanes is not taught in schools much.
I am in general a bitter opponent of the "It's all fantasy!" brain-dead
pseudo-school of fantasy criticism that has resulted in people talking
about stuff like the <Divine Comedy> and, Heaven help us, <The Lives of
the Saints> as fantasy. But in <Beowulf> and the <Odyssey> you picked
easily the two best examples you could have, save maybe Ovid, who for
some strange reason :-) is not taught much in schools.
Joe Bernstein
PS Oh dear, for those who don't know - the reason Aristophanes and Ovid
don't get taught to innocent virginal youth is that they're both
screamingly lewd, *not* that they both wrote fantasy. Thoroughgoing
realists like Catullus and Martial are also avoided by and large for the
same reason.
Joe Bernstein
jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> jkh...@netcom.com (Joy Haftel) wrote:
>
> >It also depends on how you define sf and fantasy.
> >What exactly (besides drama/poetry), is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? _The
> >Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_? _The
> >Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in college. I would
> >call them fantasy.
> >
> >I think English departments are less prejudiced against fantasy than they
> >are against sf. Fantastical elements are present in epics and many of the
> >classics. SF is a more recent development,
But "fantastical elements" are often brushed over with the claim "But
everyone believed in that stuff then". And this is often true: I'm not
sure about the others you name, but I'd be hard pressed to defend a
claim that Dante wrote the <Comedy> as fantasy. For a while there the
Catholic Church was pretty close to calling it doctrine...
I'd have very little patience with a claim that the <Iliad>, say, is a
fantasy, although people insist on reading it that way nowadays and
there are even folks out there treating the Bible thus. When I see
broad-brush claims that essentially *all* pre-modern literature is
fantasy, I go into fits of foaming-at-the-mouth rage and start spewing
names like Menander, Sinuhe, Terence, Chariton, and so on until sedated.
Such claims may possibly have something to do with academics' general
uninterest in engaging the genre that until recently was making them, I
would hazard; but maybe I'm just projecting.
> The non-modern entries you mention (Spencer, Dante, etc.) may hold
> historical significance as proto-SF or proto-big-F-Fantasy, but I
> would not consider them in the same category as, say, <A Wizard of
> Earthsea> for a number of reasons, one of which is the framing
> conventions of the story. Don't ask me to expand unless you really
> want a spiel, though. ; )
>
> I do agree with you, though, that academia is more sympathetically
> disposed to fantasy than SF.
Um, maybe in the small-f sense that I'm disagreeing with y'all about.
But when I started raving to my brother about <Little, Big> - which, NB,
is one of the genre books listed in Harold Bloom's canon - he wrote back
saying the'd searched the MLA database and found only one reference. I
searched myself a couple of years later and found three more, all within
the academic sf-studies ghetto.
It's my impression that there's more freedom to write about / more
actual *interest in* writing about certain now-accepted SF texts of
previous generations, than about any texts yet published as Fantasy in
our current sense (which is to say, since c 1969). Tolkien gets a small
amount of attention, as do some books by people like Disch and LeGuin;
and of course the cyberpunks got a Get Out of Jail Early card. So far I
don't think anyone's been picked from the Fantasy market category for
the same sort of interest, and I'm beginning to lose hope that Crowley
will be the first.
(My brother, who is an English professor, also expressed no interest
whatever in reading <Little, Big>. I nevertheless keep foisting this
fantasy or that on him, thus far without any reaction; <Moonwise> is
next. Strangely enough, his dissertation was on the Gothic in Dickens,
and the book he just finished is on Alasdair Gray.)
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <199806020...@josephb.tezcat.com>,
Joe Bernstein <jos...@tezcat.com> wrote:
>
>I am in general a bitter opponent of the "It's all fantasy!" brain-dead
>pseudo-school of fantasy criticism that has resulted in people talking
>about stuff like the <Divine Comedy> and, Heaven help us, <The Lives of
>the Saints> as fantasy. But in <Beowulf> and the <Odyssey> you picked
>easily the two best examples you could have, save maybe Ovid, who for
>some strange reason :-) is not taught much in schools.
>
believed he was telling the truth? (I doubt he believed that Hell
was a literal material pit extending into the center of the Earth,
but he believed in Hell.)
Would it be fair to say that Divine Comedy offers some of the
pleasures of fantasy?
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <357390...@shaw.wave.ca>,
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>
>I have seen critics whom I respect in various different genres; I have
>not seen a generalist in the field of fiction criticism of any value in
>the past half-century, largely because the generalist tradition has
>dwindled away into a clique of reviewers & academics who make it their
>business to turn up their noses at a larger percentage of new fiction
>(on grounds of genre or simple salability) with each passing year.
>
there's simply too much fiction? The decline of basic theory could
be a problem, but the task might be impossible anyway.
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <357352f0...@news.mindspring.com>,
jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>The non-modern entries you mention (Spencer, Dante, etc.) may hold
>historical significance as proto-SF or proto-big-F-Fantasy, but I
>would not consider them in the same category as, say, <A Wizard of
>Earthsea> for a number of reasons, one of which is the framing
>conventions of the story. Don't ask me to expand unless you really
>want a spiel, though. ; )
>
pleasure of the net.
Mitch Hagmaier
Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
>
> Um, in that case, why don't they embrace fantasy with open arms?
Sure they do, so long as it's properly labeled as "magic realism"
and hasn't been mis-catagorized in the fantasy shelves. This
generally means foreign works recently imported (primarily
South American) and new authors whose publishers were ambitious
for praise.
Mitch Hagmaier
Quest Labs
Coyu
>From: jos...@tezcat.com (Joe Bernstein)
>Date: Tue, Jun 2, 1998 09:13 EDT
>Whose wonderful title - <The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made of> -
>persuaded me to look a buncha times, but not yet to read anything
>like through.
I found it deeply disappointing. I discovered some enjoyable
poets from his _Castle of Indolence_, and his theatre criticism is
usually a hoot. But in _Dreams_ he's using the same mature/
immature line of division that he saves for his SF criticism. Do I
trust Disch on SF enough to judge its relative maturity? No. I think
it's a bee in his bonnet, based on his own career.
>You might also or instead want to get the latest VLS (that's <Voice
>Literary Supplement>, as in <Village Voice>), in which Jonathan
>Lethem, a reasonably well-respected, um, sf as speculative-fiction
>author, provides a much more succinct and coherent argument
>on the same topic. The publication banners it as "Jonathan Lethem
>Laments the Lost Promise of Science Fiction", and, well, ok, he
>does; but the essay is actually a good bit more interesting than that.
Really? I found it terribly shallow. The expected names pop up
with dreary regularity: Pynchon, Coover, Barthelme and God help
us, David Foster Wallace.
If you want an interesting comparison, read Barthelme's _The King_,
then read Zelazny. Who was doing it first? Zelazny. Who gets the
kudos? That's a no-brainer.
SFRef: Does anyone else find it interesting that RAH's worst novel
(IMO) _I Will Fear No Evil_ was written as a response to Barth's
worst novel (IMO)?
Brenda Clough
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> OK--is the Divine Comedy not fantasy because Dante more or less
> believed he was telling the truth? (I doubt he believed that Hell
> was a literal material pit extending into the center of the Earth,
> but he believed in Hell.)
>
I am sure Dante was smart enough to know that none of the locales in his
poem could actually be on the physical earth. The poem is a triple-layered
allegory! But there are plenty of fruitcakes who actually did believe that
the Earth was hollow, etc. -- there's a nice article about one of them in
this month's SMITHSONIAN magazine.
David G. Bell
In article <35740277...@csrlink.net>
kyo...@csrlink.net "Mitch Hagmaier" writes:
Does anyone remember "Hawksmoor" by <mumble> Ackroyd? As I recall, it
got onto the Booker Prize shortlist, at least, which led to several lit-
crit types spouting off on TV about its originality.
When I read it, I found it so Lovecraftian in plot (and more
Lovecraft/Derleth than the unalloyed original) that I could only wonder
at the ignorance of these literary professionals.
When it was revealed that "Rats & Gargoyles" had been nominated by the
publisher (getting on the actual shortlist is nearer to a Hugo
nomination -- it isn't so significant a term in the Booker Prize system)
I did take a little bit more interest.
Me, I'm only a wild-eyed SF fan, but I'd have loved to have seen Mary
Gentle turn up for the Awards Ceremony, dressed in a way which would
have made the observant TV viewer wonder if she had been writing
autobiography. And besides, after trying to read some Booker Prize
nominees, I find I prefer authors who are not only dashingly romantic,
and who can buckle a swash, but who can tell a story.
The literary folks seem to have forgotten about storytelling.
--
Cheap Food \
Safe Food > Pick any two of three.
Healthy Food /
David Langford
On 28 May 1998 14:24:14 GMT, jim...@acpub.duke.edu (James Battista) wrote:
>in _Hyperion_ the SF aspects are
>pushing irrelvancy (not surprising given that it's a retelling of
>_The Canterbury Tales_.
Well ... in the same sense that =The Stars My Destination= is a retelling
of =The Count of Monte Cristo=. Both Bester and Simmons inserted some
rather relevant sf bits into their "retellings", I thought.
(Exercise for students: name the precise =Canterbury Tales= equivalents of
the farcasters, the fatline, the cruciforms, the TechnoCore, the Time
Tombs, the Shrike and John Keats. Be prepared to defend your choices.)
Dave
--
David Langford
ans...@cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/
Joy Haftel
>> >What exactly (besides drama/poetry), is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? _The
>> >Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_? _The
>> >Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in college. I would
>> >call them fantasy.
>> >I think English departments are less prejudiced against fantasy than they
>> >are against sf. Fantastical elements are present in epics and many of the
>> >classics. SF is a more recent development,
>But "fantastical elements" are often brushed over with the claim "But
>everyone believed in that stuff then". And this is often true: I'm not
>sure about the others you name, but I'd be hard pressed to defend a
>claim that Dante wrote the <Comedy> as fantasy. For a while there the
>Catholic Church was pretty close to calling it doctrine...
OK, I admit that _The Divine Comedy_ is borderline.
>I'd have very little patience with a claim that the <Iliad>, say, is a
>fantasy, although people insist on reading it that way nowadays and
>there are even folks out there treating the Bible thus.
To me the difference between epic and fantasy is clear. Epics have as
much to do with national identity and religion as they do with the
fantastical. Epics have a lot to say about culture and values of a
specific group at a formative time--all that stuff about the ego of
Achaean warriors in the Iliad, for example..."Sing O Goddess the wrath of
Achilles..."
Arthurian legend (e.g. _Gawain_) is a different case. It's one of those
epic-style stories which has been pre-empted by culture after culture and
viewpoint after viewpoint, and many retellings of it end up on the
sf/fantasy shelf at Crown Books.
_The Faerie Queene_ is an allegorical poem; it also contains witches,
dwarves, and all the standard fantasy elements.
The 2 Shakespearean plays really ARE fantasies, set in mysterious places,
with wizards and monsters and fairies and sprites. They're also poetry
and drama.
>When I see
>broad-brush claims that essentially *all* pre-modern literature is
>fantasy, I go into fits of foaming-at-the-mouth rage and start spewing
>names like Menander, Sinuhe, Terence, Chariton, and so on until sedated.
>Such claims may possibly have something to do with academics' general
>uninterest in engaging the genre that until recently was making them, I
>would hazard; but maybe I'm just projecting.
Plato (except the Republic).
I'm certainly not claiming that label for all premodern lit (where do you
draw the line at modern, BTW?). But some literature simply defies
classification. What, for example, would you call the _Dunciad_? I'd
call it an incredibly literate flame in epic poem form. _Joseph Andrews_
is Fielding's conception of a novel as the Prose Epic. That concept
failed, but the novel took on a life of its own.
>> The non-modern entries you mention (Spencer, Dante, etc.) may hold
>> historical significance as proto-SF or proto-big-F-Fantasy, but I
>> would not consider them in the same category as, say, <A Wizard of
>> Earthsea> for a number of reasons, one of which is the framing
>> conventions of the story. Don't ask me to expand unless you really
>> want a spiel, though. ; )
I'd like to hear the spiel.
jonathan dale mccall
nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>In article <357352f0...@news.mindspring.com>,
>I'd like to see that spiel--to my mind, good spiels are a major
>pleasure of the net.
>
>--
>Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
>
>May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Well, I'll take a stab at it. Actually, this will have to be an
abbreviated spiel, as I am in the process of packing and moving right
now, but I'll try to expand on it as I have an opportunity.
A disclaimer: none of the following is meant to perscriptive, or
advanced in some dogmatic way. Moreover, if someone feels inclined to
shoot holes in it, please be my guest - I'm really just thinking out
loud here.
The greatest difference, to my mind, between modern, genre fantasy,
and older works that contain elements that seem fantastic to modern
(and perhaps to their respective contemporary audiences as well) is
strongly linked to the element that Tolkien referred to as
subcreation. I think all modern fantasy is subcreated to a greater or
lesser degree - that is, a fictional world is presented to the reader
which the reader knows rationally does not exist, but which the reader
agrees to enter for awhile, subject to conditions the author has laid
down (i.e., the willing suspension of disbelief). This is why place
and landscape are so important to modern fantasy, sub-Tolkien or not.
Does this apply to the previous examples in the thread? I don't think
they do, really. Spenser's <Fairey Queene> and Swift's <Gulliver's
Travels> are both too "topical" to involve an audience in the way that
modern fantasy does - there's an essential difference of intent.
Works with strong allegorical or satirical siginificance are at least
as concerned with an audience getting the point as they are with
entertaining them. These two works are not trying to pull a reader
(or viewer) into a subcreated world - they're both involved, in
different ways, with holding a mirror up to their contemporary
societies.
I personally think Dante has a better claim at a spritiual kinship
with modern fantasy because the <Divine Comedy> is a subcreated world
born of Dante's vision. But the satirical and allegorical elements
there also tend to pull the reader back to the "real" world. The <DC>
is, in some ways, a didactic work with specific purposes in mind.
Is <Beowulf> fantasy? Not on your life. I think that the elements
modern readers find fantastical in <B> would not be taken as such by
the poem's contemporary audience. For them, <B> would be (perhaps
slightly embroidered) reportage.
I don't mean to suggest that the presence of satire or allegory is
somehow antithetical to modern fantasy. But the preponderance of
various elements does seem significant. I may be entirely wrong on
this - and I certainly welcome anyone to shoot holes in this. It may
in fact be that the seeming difference between modern genre fantasy
and its forbears is a mere difference of literary mode - the favored
form for genre fantasy being the novel or the short story, neither of
which really existed before the 19th century (before anyone jumps on
me for this, yes, I'm aware that there are examples of novels in
English that predate the 19th century).
I'm going to mull this over for while, and see if it holds water.
"Tread gently, for you tread on my half-assed theorizing."
--
Jonathan McCall
William Clifford
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>Orwell noted that the great English novelists of the 19th century wrote
>books that were accessible, vital, & had something to say, because those
>novelists were an integral part of their culture, & took all of
>contemporary life for their subject matter; whereas in his own time,
>novelists were so isolated from society that the typical novel was a
>novel about a novelist. We have gone that one better: The typical
>`literary' work these days, it seems, is a deconstructionist criticism
>of a small-press novel (by a tenured English professor who teaches
>deconstructionist criticism) about the existential angst of a tenured
>English professor who teaches deconstructionist criticism & is cruelly
>hurt at other English professors' deconstructionist criticism of his
>small-press novel about a tenured English professor who teaches
>deconstructionist criticism.
Pardon me but I must disagree.
I haven't read any novels like that. I haven't read any reveiws of
such novels or any interveiws with such writers. I haven't seen any
novels like that on the fiction shelves where I shop for books. I
haven't read about any such books except in essays by subgenrephiles
who spout blazing generalisms against what they perceive as the
incestous pavilions of 'mainstream' fiction. I used to think this
myself until I discovered there are many, many fine books and writers
in the Fiction section. I don't know the source of this perception but
I suspect it comes from disgruntled writers.
Now I have read reviews, and interveiws, and profiles of 'mainstream'
writers that were full of undeserved breathless praise after further
investigation. These are individual cases, but instead of making a
general case from them I will simply refrain from naming names.
But the perception that the post-modern state of general fiction is a
confused jumble of pop-kulture and inbred acadamia is simply Not True
(Nicholson Baker notwithstanding). There's nothing wrong with
mainstream fiction that isn't wrong with the other genres. What is
true that the division by genre has lead to bad cases of conceptual
inbreeding and stylistic deformities. The division wasn't arbitrary
and it has been useful, but it is obsolete. In my opinion the time is
past for the fiction sections in the bookstore to be intermixed.
Here's a generality you may test the truth of:
Writers (whose voice is loudest heard) blame the Publishers for
pushing them into a category out of which they strive to get. (A plant
which does not out grow the pot it is has already lived half it's life
after all). The Publishers defend this practice (they can't deny it)
with market studies which prove that it is the Reader's fault for
being too picky and not shopping widely enough. And the Readers, the
body of the Readers is too vast and contradictory for much to really
be generalized about it.
It's late. I should sleep. But I don't think I've made a blithering
fool of myself. At least in this post.
-William Clifford
Warning!! From fields foiled! (you figure it out)
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <3574d0af...@news.mindspring.com>,
jonathan dale mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>A disclaimer: none of the following is meant to perscriptive, or
>advanced in some dogmatic way. Moreover, if someone feels inclined to
>shoot holes in it, please be my guest - I'm really just thinking out
>loud here.
>
>The greatest difference, to my mind, between modern, genre fantasy,
>and older works that contain elements that seem fantastic to modern
>(and perhaps to their respective contemporary audiences as well) is
>strongly linked to the element that Tolkien referred to as
>subcreation. I think all modern fantasy is subcreated to a greater or
>lesser degree - that is, a fictional world is presented to the reader
>which the reader knows rationally does not exist, but which the reader
>agrees to enter for awhile, subject to conditions the author has laid
>down (i.e., the willing suspension of disbelief). This is why place
>and landscape are so important to modern fantasy, sub-Tolkien or not.
I don't think it's just "willingness to enter a world", but also
a belief that a well-structured world is easier/more satisfying to
enter.
I think that there's some important difference between primarily
wanting consistency that holds up to logical examination and primarily
wanting vivid moments. (They can work together, but not reliably
for all readers. Tolkien is a notable example of a writer who's
relatively successful at doing both, but some readers find that
the historical and geographical apparatus gets in the way of the
intensity.)
I was impressed with Paula Volsky's first novel (_The Witch Queen's
Daughter_ (?)) because it had a giant which was unspecifiedly large--
it was a nice myth/fairy tale touch.
Where does urban fantasy fit in with your theory? It generally has
less world-building than most other-universe fantasy.
>Does this apply to the previous examples in the thread? I don't think
>they do, really. Spenser's <Fairey Queene> and Swift's <Gulliver's
>Travels> are both too "topical" to involve an audience in the way that
>modern fantasy does - there's an essential difference of intent.
>Works with strong allegorical or satirical siginificance are at least
>as concerned with an audience getting the point as they are with
>entertaining them. These two works are not trying to pull a reader
>(or viewer) into a subcreated world - they're both involved, in
>different ways, with holding a mirror up to their contemporary
>societies.
Some urban fantasy (deLint, Scarborough's Godmother books and her
song-killer saga) is very oriented toward current issues. I'm not sure
that this makes it less part of the genre.
Martin Wisse
jonathan dale mccall (radi...@mindspring.com) wrote:
: A disclaimer: none of the following is meant to perscriptive, or
: advanced in some dogmatic way. Moreover, if someone feels inclined to
: shoot holes in it, please be my guest - I'm really just thinking out
: loud here.
:
: The greatest difference, to my mind, between modern, genre fantasy,
: and older works that contain elements that seem fantastic to modern
: (and perhaps to their respective contemporary audiences as well) is
: strongly linked to the element that Tolkien referred to as
: subcreation. I think all modern fantasy is subcreated to a greater or
: lesser degree - that is, a fictional world is presented to the reader
: which the reader knows rationally does not exist, but which the reader
: agrees to enter for awhile, subject to conditions the author has laid
: down (i.e., the willing suspension of disbelief). This is why place
: and landscape are so important to modern fantasy, sub-Tolkien or not.
But is subcreation a necessary element or defining element of modern
fantasy? There are fantasy works which do ake place, partially or
fully in a fictional world which does resemble the real world,
e.g. the beginning of Zelanzy's Amber series or some of Tim Power's
work. In these works the fictional world is more realistic then
wolrds like Middle Earth, as we know at least some or even most
elements of such a world do exist, the same way we can believe
detective stories to have really happened, "around the corner"
as it where.
Furthermore, subcreation isn't unique to fantasy, it also crops up
in science fiction, obviously. (alternate histories, far future tales
and planetary romaces all require subcreation)
: Does this apply to the previous examples in the thread? I don't think
: they do, really. Spenser's <Fairey Queene> and Swift's <Gulliver's
: Travels> are both too "topical" to involve an audience in the way that
: modern fantasy does - there's an essential difference of intent.
: Works with strong allegorical or satirical siginificance are at least
: as concerned with an audience getting the point as they are with
: entertaining them. These two works are not trying to pull a reader
: (or viewer) into a subcreated world - they're both involved, in
: different ways, with holding a mirror up to their contemporary
: societies.
There is some modern fantasy which can be accused of doing the same,
more or less. I'm thinking here of the Discworld series, where
there are satirical equivalences of real world institutions
and practises.
: I'm going to mull this over for while, and see if it holds water.
It's food for thought, at least...
Martin Wisse
jonathan dale mccall
nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
(Snip)
>
>I don't think it's just "willingness to enter a world", but also
>a belief that a well-structured world is easier/more satisfying to
>enter.
>
>I think that there's some important difference between primarily
>wanting consistency that holds up to logical examination and primarily
>wanting vivid moments. (They can work together, but not reliably
>for all readers. Tolkien is a notable example of a writer who's
>relatively successful at doing both, but some readers find that
>the historical and geographical apparatus gets in the way of the
>intensity.)
>
>I was impressed with Paula Volsky's first novel (_The Witch Queen's
>Daughter_ (?)) because it had a giant which was unspecifiedly large--
>it was a nice myth/fairy tale touch.
>
>Where does urban fantasy fit in with your theory? It generally has
>less world-building than most other-universe fantasy.
>
Hm. I may have been unwise in using Tolkien's term here, as it seems
to suggest that my criterion for saying "fantasy" or "not-fantasy" is
the depth of the world-building, which is not the case for me. I'm
afraid I'm woefully ignorant of urban fantasy (unless some of the
Latin American magical realist stuff counts as urban fantasy).
>>Does this apply to the previous examples in the thread? I don't think
>>they do, really. Spenser's <Fairey Queene> and Swift's <Gulliver's
>>Travels> are both too "topical" to involve an audience in the way that
>>modern fantasy does - there's an essential difference of intent.
>>Works with strong allegorical or satirical siginificance are at least
>>as concerned with an audience getting the point as they are with
>>entertaining them. These two works are not trying to pull a reader
>>(or viewer) into a subcreated world - they're both involved, in
>>different ways, with holding a mirror up to their contemporary
>>societies.
>
>Some urban fantasy (deLint, Scarborough's Godmother books and her
>song-killer saga) is very oriented toward current issues. I'm not sure
>that this makes it less part of the genre.
I personally tend toward broad inclusiveness, myself. I'm having
difficulty articulating exactly what I mean here, and I'm afraid I'm
just creating confusion, not least for myself; ) Still, I can't escape
the feeling that in the examples given of Spenser and Swift, these
tales were not meant to be received by the audience in the way that
much of modern genre fantasy is. Why is it, I wonder, that the
literary use of the framing device has all but vanished from fantasy?
You know, the various means by which authors used to encourage
suspension of disbelief: a bump on the head, narrator wakes up,
travellers' tales, etc.
>--
>Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
>
>May '98 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
--
Jonathan McCall
Old Toby
Mitch Hagmaier wrote:
>
> Joe Bernstein wrote:
> >
> >
> > Um, in that case, why don't they embrace fantasy with open arms?
>
> Sure they do, so long as it's properly labeled as "magic realism"
> and hasn't been mis-catagorized in the fantasy shelves.
Or if it's a "children's book". Academics can churn out endless
analyses of "Alice in Wonderland", "The Wizard of Oz", or "Peter
Pan". Heck, even Salman Rushdie, who usually hides his SFnal
roots behind "magic realism" was able to churn out a blatent,
unabashed fantasy ("Haroun and the Sea of Stories", a damn good
book that an adult shouldn't be ashamed to read) on the grounds
that it is a "children's book" (of course even then some might
try to defend it against the accusation of fantasy by claiming
that it is an allegory, as if fantasy can't be allegory).
Old Toby
Least Known Dog on the Net
gcar...@gentner.com
> after trying to read some Booker Prize
> nominees, I find I prefer authors who are not only dashingly romantic,
> and who can buckle a swash, but who can tell a story.
>
> The literary folks seem to have forgotten about storytelling.
I beg to differ. Salman Ruschdie's _Midnight's Children_ won the Booker Prize
in 1985(?) and it is without question one of the most remarkable (and
entertaining) books I have ever read. Not only is it unquestionably fantasy,
it is an awfully good story as well. He is also the author of _Haroon and the
Sea of Stories_ (mentioned elsewhere on this thread).
Interestingly, Ruschdie doesn't seem to get taught much in English courses
either.
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Brenda Clough
Nancy Lebovitz wrote: Where does urban fantasy fit in with your theory? It
generally has
> less world-building than most other-universe fantasy.
>
>
IMO there's a peculiar resonance in using a setting that the reader knows
well. They can see the cruel contrast between the sports-ute and the foot
of Godzilla mashing it flat, whereas Godzilla smashing a barouche carriage
might be less vivid. Remember that in the old fairy-tales featuring the
adventures of the woodcutter's son, that woodcutting was a common
occupation. If you didn't cut wood yourself, you knew somebody who did.
The modern-day equivalent would be a computer-programmer, or a sales clerk.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
On Thu, 04 Jun 1998 13:44:07 GMT, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy
Lebovitz) wrote:
>In article <199806040516...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>Tharsia <tha...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>It's also interesting that you find now stores that specialize in the two top
>>genres together -- sf & mystery combined.
>>I don't think it's simply that these sell best -- ie, pure economics.
>>It seems based on my own reading and what other people here say, that those of
>>us who care about story and suspense and so on will seek it out in the places
>>it is most likely to be well written.
>>
>I think that sf and mystery are related genres--they both at least somewhat
>offer to reward rational thought.
>
>>SF and mystery.
>>
>Do mysteries sell better than romances?
No.
Romance is the best-selling category. SF is second. Mystery is
third. I hadn't been reading this thread or I'd have commented on
that sooner.
Last I heard, in fact, romance outsold SF and mystery combined, though
not by as large a margin as it used to.
The reason you find SF/mystery bookstores, rather than SF/romance
bookstores, appears to be that the sort of people who want to run
specialty bookstores tend to be SF/mystery fans, rather than romance
readers. At least, that's my best guess.
There's a significant crossover readership between SF and mystery.
Also between romance and mystery, and between romance and fantasy --
romance and science fiction doesn't seem to happen as much.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 4/24/98
Paul Clarke
On Mon, 1 Jun 1998 20:40:39 GMT, jkh...@netcom.com (Joy Haftel) wrote:
[snip]
>
>It also depends on how you define sf and fantasy.
>
>What exactly is _Gulliver's Travels_? _1984_? _Animal Farm_?
>_Fahrenheit 451_? All of these were required reading either in high
>school or college. I would call them sf.
>
>What exactly (besides drama/poetry), is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? _The
>Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_? _The
>Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in college. I would
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Science fiction where the science is theology? Or even Hard SF - look
at all the attention to world building in _Purgatory_, even to getting
phases of the moon and the position of the Sun right for the Southern
Hemisphere. BTW, do theologists work in a way analogous to the
scientific method, or are they nearer to philosophers? Or historians?
Or all of the above or something else entirely?
[snip]
Tharsia
David Bell writes--
>The literary folks seem to have forgotten about storytelling.
They didn't _forget_ it-- they fled from it!
It's interesting to me that the genre fiction sells better than literary
fiction by far -- and in every genre you can name, the main thing you'd better
have is a plot, with characters, in a realized-setting.
Some genres place more emphasis on detail and skill, and within each genre
you'll find better/worse examples -- but without these things you don't have a
genre novel.
It's also interesting that you find now stores that specialize in the two top
genres together -- sf & mystery combined.
I don't think it's simply that these sell best -- ie, pure economics.
It seems based on my own reading and what other people here say, that those of
us who care about story and suspense and so on will seek it out in the places
it is most likely to be well written.
SF and mystery.
Tha...@aol.com (aka joan barger)
--Whoever does not study history is doomed to repeat it
If the news today were being written by a satirist . . . how could you tell?
Avram Grumer
> Why is it, I wonder, that the literary use of the framing device
> has all but vanished from fantasy? You know, the various means by
> which authors used to encourage suspension of disbelief: a bump on
> the head, narrator wakes up, travellers' tales, etc.
I'd guess that the modern fantasy audience is perfectly willing to suspend
disbelief without such devices. In fact, I suspect that many of them
would find the "It's all a dream" device offputting.
Let's see... The Thomas Covenant books use the bump-on-the-head device.
Niven's Dracos Tavern stories (SF, not fantasy, but still) sometimes use
the traveller's tales device. There are probably more.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
...and the computer replied "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus -- now."
Joe Bernstein
Mitch Hagmaier <kyo...@csrlink.net> wrote:
> Joe Bernstein wrote:
> >
> >
> > Um, in that case, why don't they embrace fantasy with open arms?
>
>
> Sure they do, so long as it's properly labeled as "magic realism"
> and hasn't been mis-catagorized in the fantasy shelves. This
> generally means foreign works recently imported (primarily
> South American) and new authors whose publishers were ambitious
> for praise.
Sigh. *That* immense thread was enormously worth reading and brought
posts in from something like two dozen writers, some of whom I'd never
before seen gracing this group; but I still don't want to revive it... -
JLB
Joe Bernstein
Joy Haftel <jkh...@netcom.com> wrote:
> In article <199806020...@josephb.tezcat.com>,
> Joe Bernstein <jos...@tezcat.com> wrote:
> >> jkh...@netcom.com (Joy Haftel) wrote:
>
> >> >It also depends on how you define sf and fantasy.
>
> >> >What exactly (besides drama/poetry), is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_?
> >> > _The Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green
> >> >Knight_? _The Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in
> >> >college. I would call them fantasy.
>
> >> >Fantastical elements are present in epics and many of the
> >> >classics.
>
> >But "fantastical elements" are often brushed over with the claim "But
> >everyone believed in that stuff then". And this is often true: I'm not
> >sure about the others you name, but I'd be hard pressed to defend a
> >claim that Dante wrote the <Comedy> as fantasy.
> OK, I admit that _The Divine Comedy_ is borderline.
Borderlines are a lot more common than people might think. The stories
about Elisha in the books of Kings are full of miracles; Those Who Know
(and still hold to that good ol'-time Documentary Hypothesis at all)
tend to say they're older than the more 'literary' (and politically
pointed) stories of Elijah that precede them. Well, anyway, one recent
study of Elisha-stories out there is fully convinced that they were
originally spread as royal propaganda, i.e., as not just realistic but
true: journalism, 9th-century BC style. (In a recent book about Kings
whose title I forget, author's unlikely name Tamis Renteria.)
That said, there is nothing older that survives that presents us with
someone who amounts to a magician in the Gandalf sense (actually *very*
near that sense) than the stories of Elisha.
(Again assuming you think any of the Bible is older than Alexander the
Great. Truly astonishing numbers of Bible scholars are now arguing
otherwise, on grounds I think specious but lack the scholarly equipment,
e.g. languages, to argue against properly. Digression anyway.)
> >I'd have very little patience with a claim that the <Iliad>, say, is a
> >fantasy, although people insist on reading it that way nowadays and
> >there are even folks out there treating the Bible thus.
>
> To me the difference between epic and fantasy is clear. Epics have as
> much to do with national identity and religion as they do with the
> fantastical. Epics have a lot to say about culture and values of a
> specific group at a formative time--all that stuff about the ego of
> Achaean warriors in the Iliad, for example..."Sing O Goddess the wrath of
> Achilles..."
Tee hee. Now I get to argue at you in the opposite direction; ain't I
unfair? Ovid's <Metamorphoses> is an epic. "Sing, o my soul, the song
I would sing... oh, and yes, if you're around, o muse, you're allowed to
harmonise quietly." (No, that's not an exact quote, but it's like
that.) The cornerstone argument of D. C. Feeney's <The Gods in Epic>,
which I *did* manage to cite in the <Encyclopedia of Fantasy>, is that
by not long after Euripides' time epic was seen as either fantasy or
allegory, and new epics *were expected to follow this pattern*.
Allegory, I might add, tended to lose the argument until sometime in the
4th or 5th century. I'm not completely sure we have good evidence that
Vergil followed this rule in the <Aeneid>, and I'm totally unconvinced
that Apollonius knew it in the <Argonautica> - the most Feeney convinces
me of there is that Apollonius was consciously doing fiction. But Ovid
was, conclusively, writing self-conscious fantasy; Lucan was,
conclusively, rebelling against a requirement that he do so; and
Statius, mindful of Lucan's fate, was, conclusively (I say, though there
are craven critics who disagree), using fantasy to make a political
point, of his present day, and to do it, constructing a consistent
fantasised world. All epics.
(I did *not* get to cite, apparently for space reasons, Glen Bowersock's
<Fiction as History>, alas. But his central schtick is that the *whole*
literary world got fantasised in Nero's and Lucan's time, and his
evidence is pretty strong. I mentioned Martial as a realist in a
previous post, and, um, strictly by our standards, he is; but he's a
realist of extremes, sort of a <National Enquirer>-style writer if you
will, and he's one of Bowersock's prime subjects. Most of Bowersock's
other topics are foursquare fantasy. In one chapter he argues
persuasively that the Gospels inspired a wave of fantasies about
resurrection by pagans.)
We have an allegorical reading of Statius' <Thebaid> from something like
the sixth century. It's pretty atrocious; even the craven critics do a
vastly better job.
I think a better word, for something like what you're talking about
here, than "epic", which is simultaneously misread as "long" today and
taken technically by classicists as "dactylic hexameter, in the Ionic
dialect, of didactic intent", is what the EoF called "Matter". Problem
is, you go on to say of what is also a Matter...
> Arthurian legend (e.g. _Gawain_) is a different case. It's one of those
> epic-style stories which has been pre-empted by culture after culture and
> viewpoint after viewpoint, and many retellings of it end up on the
> sf/fantasy shelf at Crown Books.
Have you read Caxton's preface to <Le Morte d'Arthur>, in which he
archly professes indecision on whether it's a fantasy or a history, and
urges everyone to buy a copy to decide for themselves?
> _The Faerie Queene_ is an allegorical poem; it also contains witches,
> dwarves, and all the standard fantasy elements.
And gets them, for the most part, from previous Italian poems about
Charlemagne. (I very much doubt the implied comparison to Elizabeth was
lost on her or her court.) I'm just being agnostic about these because
I haven't really studied them in detail (same with Shakespeare,
snipped); but I'd be pretty shocked if such study did not show them to
be fantasies. What I've heard about Spenser and what I've seen in
reading pieces leads me to think he was trying to straddle the fence.
> >When I see
> >broad-brush claims that essentially *all* pre-modern literature is
> >fantasy, I go into fits of foaming-at-the-mouth rage and start spewing
> >names like Menander, Sinuhe, Terence, Chariton, and so on until sedated.
> Plato (except the Republic).
Well, actually, the Timaeus and Critias too. Note how hard he works to
deflate his claims. "Well, this is sort of how I remember being told it
by somebody who remembered when he was a kid hearing from somebody who'd
actually *been to Egypt*, fancy that!" A pity the kooks on
sci.archaeology don't get the point there...
What amuses me is that Lin Carter is alone of fantasy critics before the
1990s in actually getting this *right*. He claims that the ancient
Greeks had *no* fantasy genres except epic, and this is false (Old
Comedy was understood to be fantasy from getgo, as were all eras of
Tragedy starting sometime shortly after Euripides, I'm fairly sure; so
were fables in any event). But at least he doesn't fall into the
idiotville of saying "Yeah, Archimedes and Hippocrates wrote fantasy"
that any number of scholars usually his superiors have inhabited. (I'm
referring here mainly to Carter's <Tolkien: A Look behind [The Lord of
the Rings]>.)
> I'm certainly not claiming that label for all premodern lit (where do you
> draw the line at modern, BTW?).
Oh, it depends on how sweeping you want to make your claims. See, the
Idiot History of Fantasy goes like this (exaggerated without apology):
"Until fairly recently, all storytelling was fantasy. From our
forebears huddled in caves until the ones in castles who wrote High
Romance. But then Realism came along, personified by Wicked Writer X,
and within minutes fantasy had been banished to the nursery, not to
escape it until Tolkien heroically rescued fantasy to Her rightful place
as Queen Of All Literature; and nowadays nobody but incestuous English
professors remembers Realism at all."
Wicked Writer X, depending on the exact cadences you want to give this
idiocy, can be any of Cervantes, Defoe, Austen, Dickens, or Hardy. No
matter which, you will be lying, but you have lots of options as to
*how* to lie. Exempla: Poul Anderson introducing <A Reader's Guide to
Fantasy> (the authors whereof being too smart to follow him there); the
normally sensible David Pringle in <Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best
Novels>; Dennis Krantz, in course of many other errors, in <Fantasy: A
Reader's Guide> or whatever the Neil Barron book is called; and
miscellaneous other people observed over the years thankfully without
remembering them.
Terri Windling and Gardner Dozois have both written vastly more
intelligent brief histories of fantasy in English in recent years,
although I think I disagree on a few details. You can find Windling's
in at least one of the fairy tales collections and also in <The Faces of
Fantasy>; Dozois' is in <Modern Classics of Fantasy>. I would be more
surprised to learn that David Hartwell had *not* written one than to
learn he had, but I don't recall seeing it. Something similar is the
cumulative effect of the EoF but I'm not sure it's present in any one
place there. There is some hope that by the time I finish my full-scale
history, if ever I do, the Idiot History will be wholly forgotten as the
side-effect of genre paranoia it surely must have been; but I'm not that
old, and it was the only history out there as recently as my teenage
years. Hence my hatred for it and all its works.
> But some literature simply defies
> classification. What, for example, would you call the _Dunciad_? I'd
> call it an incredibly literate flame in epic poem form. _Joseph Andrews_
> is Fielding's conception of a novel as the Prose Epic. That concept
> failed, but the novel took on a life of its own.
These I haven't read (admits). But yeah, the axis of possibility-
impossibility does reasonably often show you nothing very interesting
about a work; the same, actually, is true of the axis of true-false. In
these cases, where the author and original audience and a reasonably
well-informed modern reader would all agree that the main point is not
on one side or the other of this axis, I'd rather not push the issue.
I'm fairly sure that neither axis is normally of intrinsic importance in
Persian literature, for example; but other post shortly in this thread
on that.
Nancy Lebovitz
>genres together -- sf & mystery combined.
>I don't think it's simply that these sell best -- ie, pure economics.
>It seems based on my own reading and what other people here say, that those of
>us who care about story and suspense and so on will seek it out in the places
>it is most likely to be well written.
>
offer to reward rational thought.
>SF and mystery.
>
Do mysteries sell better than romances?
Brenda Clough
Joe Bernstein wrote: Sigh. *That* immense thread was enormously worth
reading and brought
> posts in from something like two dozen writers, some of whom I'd never
> before seen gracing this group; but I still don't want to revive it... -
> JLB
Nonono! Let's not go there any more!
Joy Haftel
In article <3576778f...@news.clark.net>,
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>Romance is the best-selling category. SF is second. Mystery is
>third. I hadn't been reading this thread or I'd have commented on
>that sooner.
>The reason you find SF/mystery bookstores, rather than SF/romance
>bookstores, appears to be that the sort of people who want to run
>specialty bookstores tend to be SF/mystery fans, rather than romance
>readers. At least, that's my best guess.
Also, what's the point in having a specialty store for the most popular
genre? Romance releases are sold next to bestsellers in drug stores,
grocery stores, mall bookstores, etc. It's hard to move without tripping
over the things--at least I have fewer problems locating a new romance
release than locating a new SF/fantasy release.
>There's a significant crossover readership between SF and mystery.
>Also between romance and mystery, and between romance and fantasy --
>romance and science fiction doesn't seem to happen as much.
You mean the SF fans think of the romance readers as idiots and the
romance readers think of the SF fans as geeks, so nobody actually wants
to be seen in the store? <g>
For what it's worth, I belong to a group of (female) co-workers who lend
each other SF, fantasy, mystery, and romance books. I prefer the other 3
to mystery, myself, while my husband reads nothing BUT mystery.
Then again, individual differences are not statistically significant.
Joy Haftel
In article <35753858.3462782078@proxy0>,
Paul Clarke <pau...@ctxuk.citrix.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 1 Jun 1998 20:40:39 GMT, jkh...@netcom.com (Joy Haftel) wrote:
>>Tempest_? _The Faerie Queene_? _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_? _The
>>Divine Comedy_? All of these were required reading in college. I would
>Science fiction where the science is theology? Or even Hard SF - look
>at all the attention to world building in _Purgatory_, even to getting
>phases of the moon and the position of the Sun right for the Southern
>Hemisphere. BTW, do theologists work in a way analogous to the
>scientific method, or are they nearer to philosophers? Or historians?
>Or all of the above or something else entirely?
Oh, philosophers I think. It's impossible to use the scientific
method to address the kinds of questions theologians ask. (For example,
how would you even go around testing the existence of God? You'd have to
make all sorts of unwarranted assumptions to even *go* there).
If you're interested in SF where the science is theology, Lewis's
planetary trilogy is good.
Jay Random
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
> On Thu, 04 Jun 1998 13:44:07 GMT, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy
> Lebovitz) wrote:
>
>
>
> Romance is the best-selling category. SF is second. Mystery is
> third. I hadn't been reading this thread or I'd have commented on
> that sooner.
>
> not by as large a margin as it used to.
>
> bookstores, appears to be that the sort of people who want to run
> specialty bookstores tend to be SF/mystery fans, rather than romance
> readers. At least, that's my best guess.
>
> Also between romance and mystery, and between romance and fantasy --
> romance and science fiction doesn't seem to happen as much.
Keep in mind that `SF', as a publishing category, includes fantasy, & I
have it on reasonable authority that fantasy outsells science fiction by
a margin of about three to one. If they were separated (& nobody but
publishers & writers seems to confuse the two), fantasy would probably
still be second -- though it might drop behind mystery -- & science
fiction would drop off the list.
If fantasy were not still considered the weak sister in _literary_
terms, perhaps we would not see the rather silly spectacle of genre
houses dividing their lists exactly down the middle between science
fiction & fantasy titles (one for kudos, one for cash) -- & then griping
because they're losing their shirts on the SF side.
--J. Random Chalk-Eater, D.G.F.V.
John VanSickle
Paul Clarke wrote:
>
> BTW, do theologists work in a way analogous to the
> scientific method, or are they nearer to philosophers? Or historians?
> Or all of the above or something else entirely?
Well, some theologians speculate wildly, and then rationalize the
speculations into something coherent. Others rationalize their
personal preferences.
So yes, you could say the operate like philosophers...
Regards,
John
John VanSickle
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
> Romance is the best-selling category. SF is second. Mystery is
> third. I hadn't been reading this thread or I'd have commented on
> that sooner.
I think I'll drop what I'm doing and program my computer to write
romance novels...
Regards,
John
Lawrence Watt-Evans
On Thu, 04 Jun 1998 21:49:10 GMT, Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca>
wrote:
>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>>
>> Romance is the best-selling category. SF is second. Mystery is
>> third. I hadn't been reading this thread or I'd have commented on
>> that sooner.
>>
>> Last I heard, in fact, romance outsold SF and mystery combined, though
>> not by as large a margin as it used to.
>
>Keep in mind that `SF', as a publishing category, includes fantasy, & I
>have it on reasonable authority that fantasy outsells science fiction by
>a margin of about three to one. If they were separated (& nobody but
>publishers & writers seems to confuse the two), fantasy would probably
>still be second -- though it might drop behind mystery -- & science
>fiction would drop off the list.
Naah. It'd drop to fourth or fifth, yeah, but not entirely off the
list. It'd still be competitive with westerns.
>If fantasy were not still considered the weak sister in _literary_
>terms, perhaps we would not see the rather silly spectacle of genre
>houses dividing their lists exactly down the middle between science
>fiction & fantasy titles (one for kudos, one for cash) -- & then griping
>because they're losing their shirts on the SF side.
Who still splits stuff exactly down the middle?
Brenda Clough
Gary Farber wrote:
> William Goldman's THE PRINCESS BRIDE. I'll never forget the sweet young
> woman who picked me up at the airport to drive me into Windycon some years
> ago, when I was representing Avon, whom I was absolutely incapable of
> convincing that Goldman had used a frame as a literary device and that
> there really wasn't an "S. Morgenstern" or a Florin and Guilder. She was
> unshakable in her insistence that I must be wrong.
>
>
I bet she's one of those who believes that there really is a sexy and lovelorn
photographer who used to work for National Geographic, too.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
On Fri, 05 Jun 1998 02:24:48 GMT, nan...@universe.digex.net (Nancy
Lebovitz) wrote:
>In article <jkh107Eu...@netcom.com>, Joy Haftel <jkh...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>In article <3576778f...@news.clark.net>,
>>
>>Also, what's the point in having a specialty store for the most popular
>>genre? Romance releases are sold next to bestsellers in drug stores,
>>grocery stores, mall bookstores, etc. It's hard to move without tripping
>>over the things--at least I have fewer problems locating a new romance
>>release than locating a new SF/fantasy release.
>>
>Backstock. I heard a radio interview with a romance writer, and she said
>it was really hard to find copies of less recent romances. (This was
>important because someone had been plagiarizing her books for years.)
Oh, that would have been Nora Roberts, who was extensively plagiarized
by Janet Dailey. Truly a bizarre case, as they were both bestsellers
before the plagiarism started -- it's amazing that Dailey didn't
realize she'd be caught. She pled psychological problems, and I
almost believe her.
Roberts has been the epitome of grace throughout -- she's donating the
(large) cash settlement to charity.
Gary Farber
In <avram-04069...@avram.port.net> Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
:> Why is it, I wonder, that the literary use of the framing device
:> has all but vanished from fantasy? You know, the various means by
:> which authors used to encourage suspension of disbelief: a bump on
:> the head, narrator wakes up, travellers' tales, etc.
: I'd guess that the modern fantasy audience is perfectly willing to suspend
: disbelief without such devices. In fact, I suspect that many of them
: would find the "It's all a dream" device offputting.
: Let's see... The Thomas Covenant books use the bump-on-the-head device.
: Niven's Dracos Tavern stories (SF, not fantasy, but still) sometimes use
: the traveller's tales device. There are probably more.
William Goldman's THE PRINCESS BRIDE. I'll never forget the sweet young
woman who picked me up at the airport to drive me into Windycon some years
ago, when I was representing Avon, whom I was absolutely incapable of
convincing that Goldman had used a frame as a literary device and that
there really wasn't an "S. Morgenstern" or a Florin and Guilder. She was
unshakable in her insistence that I must be wrong.
--
Copyright 1998 by Gary Farber; Web Researcher; Nonfiction Writer,
Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; gfa...@panix.com; B'klyn, NYC, US
Jay Random
And some look for what, by their standards, constitutes evidence. Much
as you may dislike the idea, a good many people have made fairly
rigorous attempts to analyse `religious experiences', quantify the
efficacy of prayer, etc. No hard-&-fast results, of course; but there
are indeed theologians who _try_ to apply the scientific method to a
very muddy & subjective field.
--J. Random Sympathizer With Theologians, D.G.F.V.