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Tue Dec 8
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@Greasy Breakfast: Truth!!
At this point I would like to paraphrase Greg "Shock G" Jacobs of Digital Underground,:
"Doowutchyalike. Ritewutchyalike. Reedwutchyalike."
Can it get any simpler? #books
@Therem: It's worth it for the addition of the introductory essay and the quotes. also it makes a handy portable volume to beat your Literary friends on the head with.
I apologize about the typo in Lady Ursula's name. I get it right about half the time. Bad of me. But as someone with an easily misspelled family name, I'm sure she's gotten used to it.
She knows we love her and her work.
"To me these concerns over genre distinctions are silly but will probably never go away."
You are so right on! It is ridiculous.
I don't get why the li-fi's and the escapists can't get along. That is why no matter what type of government and what people have people will always find stupid reasons to hate and fear each other. #books
What if all those li-fi writers disassociating themselves from what we've come to recognise as the genre are the true SF authors...as in, the ones really doing the genre justice? #books
"The Nine Billion Names of God." Did somebody borrow something there?
At any rate, by the definition of the Literati, "literature" cannot include SF. If a work appears to be SF, it must not be called SF.
Now, if _you_ have a work that you think is SF but you want it to be labeled "literature" you must have it translated into Lowland Finish, set it in Estonia, rename all the characters "Yerkil" and arrange for your friend the Grad Student to "find" it among the papers of some long dead scholar. #books
@firstofnormalin: "The Nine Billion Names of God." Did somebody borrow something there?
And therein lies the gag. Do check it out.It's a very wry take on the whole PoMo Deconstructionist Metafictional Whatchawhozits movement as well as a look at the current state of SF short fiction digests these days. No, really.
I used to have patience for people who keep bring Atwood into this discussion, but that whole thing is starting to really irritatingly creep up on me.
At the start of Atwood's career, before she published things like "the Handmaid's Tale", she was an esteemed poet and literary critic. She also wrote about three or four novels before the handmaid's tale. To say that she's a "sci-fi author" who has "turned her back on the genre" is just kind of childish, and shows a lack of knowledge about her career.
She's always been a multi-genre writer, and has been one of the few to actually successfully write globally-interesting speculative books.
From my point of view, Atwood is simply a great writer PERIOD, who has in fact been victimized and ghettoized by the vainer members of the science-fiction community, who out of an insecurity in their genre, can't abide when an author doesn't want to be lumped in with that category, and so makes them out to be an "elitist" when it's in fact the same thing they've been doing since 1970 - defying genre expectations. #books
@Pope John Peeps II: It's all about the quote about how the new book isn't sci fi "because it could actually happen (paraphrasing here)." That really sounded snotty on her part. #books
@Wookie1972: But that's the difference between science fiction and speculative fiction, isn't it? Spec. fic is so tantalizingly close to our time that it becomes more real, and more plausible? Her novels are basically much, much closer to south american-style magical fiction than they are to science fiction, so I can understand what she's trying to say. #books
@Pope John Peeps II: Speculative fiction is fancy literary fiction speak for sci-fi, only without being 'genre.' Broken down, the phrase is inane (all fiction is speculative, these things are not really happening), and taken as it is meant: things which could happen with future advances is so close to sci-fi that it is embarrassing watching people of intellect try to defend it as different. Also, while a fantastic novel, Year of the Flood is closer to Ender's Game than it is to 100 Years of Solitude. In fact, it is more Sci-Fi than William Gibson's recent books, which he's still happy to classify as science fiction.
Atwood, sadly, is a bit an elitist snob when it comes to classification, often fighting against any sci-fi labels that her books have deserved, but you're definitely right in that she has always been a multi-genre writer and an amazing one at that. She certainly never turned her back on sci-fi, but she also never owned up to her very obviously sci-fi books. #books
@dragonfliet: Of COURSE she owned up to them, she WROTE them. It's silly to claim that she doesn't own up to them. Maybe she just doesn't want her work to be limited to a single category. Isn't that what all serious authors really want?
And to say that "Year of the Flood is closer to Ender's Game than it is to 100 Years of Solitude." is ridiculous. In theme, in tone, in use of language, ability to wrte and in how seriously she takes her literary endeavour, and in the underlying reasons why she's writing with elements of the fantastic she's WORLDS past Ender's Game; which is, at best, a relatively serious space opera. #books
@Pope John Peeps II: You're missing my point. I'm not making a quality comparison, I'm making a genre comparison. Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood are such obvious cases of science fiction it is absurd to argue otherwise. When it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck anyone that insists it should be instead called a flighted waterfowl and is most certainly not a duck is in denial.
In Atwood's case, brilliant as she is, she needs to just own up to her sci-fi books as just that and we can get on with it. #books
@dragonfliet: No, I understand you. I'm saying that your distinction is too primitive. Something is science fiction just because it involves the future? and technology? Isn't that exactly the kind of silly ghetto that all science fiction authors seek to avoid? Because it doesn't make sense. A complex meditation like Oryx and Crake deserves better than to be lumped in with a far different, and let's be honest, inferior thing like Ender's Game just because they both involve technology in some way. When you're considering literature, consider literature. Don't just jot down plot points and then make a crude distinction. #books
@Pope John Peeps II: Just because a priest levitates, it is magic realism and just because it happens to involve cowboys in the late 1800s it is a western.
Science fiction doesn't equate to bad writing just as good writing doesn't equate to realistic, epiphany based literary fiction.
I mean, you're arguing that because it's good it shouldn't be called science fiction, essentially. The genre is defined by the plot points (Blood Meridian is a Mexico Western, 1984 is sci-fi, Wuthering Heights is romance, The Yiddish Policeman's Union is alternate history, Frankenstein is Horror, Inherent Vice is a detective novel, etc.). So yes, "just because" it takes place in the future with imagined technology and situations, it is sci-fi. how GOOD it is is determined by the writing. Just because something is also genre doesn't make it bad and just because something is expertly written doesn't make it non-genre.
The way of the ghetto is to stop saying that the term only applies to BAD writing and to include great works of fiction (past and contemporary) reside in the same place. So sci-fi is no longer the repository for crap stories, but is merely a framework in which to tell tales.
@dragonfliet: You're just redefining category names. Sure, you make Sci-fi the "framework in which to tell tales" and then someone has to invent a new category to separate the shit stories from the good ones. Which inevitably happens because we as humans just like certain things better than others. So then you're just back where you started. Isn't it more appropriate to simply leave the categorical ideas alone and just concentrate on worth, and concentrate on value and excellence in literature? We'll never dispense with categories of literature, because we need them for identification, but ignoring them allows to be fluid based on the quality of the work, resulting in more freedom. That's what Atwood is doing. She just writes what she wants. Same with all spec. fic writers.
Oh and by the way, saying spec. fic is an "inane" name is sort of an incorrect pedantry. All fiction is not necessarily "speculative". That's silly. "speculative" doesn't mean "imaginary". #books
That sounds pretty damn good, actually - pay day may have come at just the right time...
Just a thought, apropos of almost nothing - why don't publishers produce two editions of their author's work? One cover showing the traditional sci-fi " 'splodey spaceships and silver bikini-clad women" and the other a simple abstract image with the title in an unassuming font (think Never Let Me go and the like). It worked for Rowling, after all. #books
"The Ziggurat" by Wolfe is a terrifying story. Not because it's a horror story, though. Because it is an excellent exercise in unreliable narrator that, by the end, leaves you realizing that the narrator may very well be the monster. #books
I am very much looking forward to checking out this book. The debate is headache enducing but I think is still one worth engaging in. I think the first time it really hit me in a practical way (as opposed to a defending speculative fiction as being literary and relevant to those who know very little about it) was when I was in a bookstore looking for Handmaid's Tale and Jennifer Government, both of which ended up being in the general fiction section and not the science fiction section. It made no sense to me. #books
Speaking of the borderlines between mainstream and SF, is there anyone else wondering why Richard Powers (author of such novels as Galatea 2.2, Plowing the Dark, and his latest, Generosity) vary rarely gets associated with science fiction in spite of novels featuring an artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the genetics of happiness? #books
Twice now, Hsiang, you have made me want to actually go out and get the book in question with your review. (The other time was The City & the City.) That's like a record, man. #books
10/30/09
11/02/09
At this point I would like to paraphrase Greg "Shock G" Jacobs of Digital Underground,:
"Doowutchyalike. Ritewutchyalike. Reedwutchyalike."
Can it get any simpler? #books
10/30/09
On a nitpicky note, you spelled Le Guin's last name wrong. It has a space in it. (Boy, am I getting tired of pointing this out.) #books
11/02/09
I apologize about the typo in Lady Ursula's name. I get it right about half the time. Bad of me. But as someone with an easily misspelled family name, I'm sure she's gotten used to it.
She knows we love her and her work.
10/29/09
You are so right on! It is ridiculous.
I don't get why the li-fi's and the escapists can't get along. That is why no matter what type of government and what people have people will always find stupid reasons to hate and fear each other. #books
10/29/09
What if all those li-fi writers disassociating themselves from what we've come to recognise as the genre are the true SF authors...as in, the ones really doing the genre justice? #books
10/29/09
You get bonus points for working your own handle into the description. #books
10/29/09
At any rate, by the definition of the Literati, "literature" cannot include SF. If a work appears to be SF, it must not be called SF.
Now, if _you_ have a work that you think is SF but you want it to be labeled "literature" you must have it translated into Lowland Finish, set it in Estonia, rename all the characters "Yerkil" and arrange for your friend the Grad Student to "find" it among the papers of some long dead scholar. #books
11/02/09
And therein lies the gag. Do check it out.It's a very wry take on the whole PoMo Deconstructionist Metafictional Whatchawhozits movement as well as a look at the current state of SF short fiction digests these days. No, really.
10/29/09
At the start of Atwood's career, before she published things like "the Handmaid's Tale", she was an esteemed poet and literary critic. She also wrote about three or four novels before the handmaid's tale. To say that she's a "sci-fi author" who has "turned her back on the genre" is just kind of childish, and shows a lack of knowledge about her career.
She's always been a multi-genre writer, and has been one of the few to actually successfully write globally-interesting speculative books.
From my point of view, Atwood is simply a great writer PERIOD, who has in fact been victimized and ghettoized by the vainer members of the science-fiction community, who out of an insecurity in their genre, can't abide when an author doesn't want to be lumped in with that category, and so makes them out to be an "elitist" when it's in fact the same thing they've been doing since 1970 - defying genre expectations. #books
10/29/09
10/29/09
10/29/09
Atwood, sadly, is a bit an elitist snob when it comes to classification, often fighting against any sci-fi labels that her books have deserved, but you're definitely right in that she has always been a multi-genre writer and an amazing one at that. She certainly never turned her back on sci-fi, but she also never owned up to her very obviously sci-fi books. #books
10/30/09
And to say that "Year of the Flood is closer to Ender's Game than it is to 100 Years of Solitude." is ridiculous. In theme, in tone, in use of language, ability to wrte and in how seriously she takes her literary endeavour, and in the underlying reasons why she's writing with elements of the fantastic she's WORLDS past Ender's Game; which is, at best, a relatively serious space opera. #books
10/30/09
In Atwood's case, brilliant as she is, she needs to just own up to her sci-fi books as just that and we can get on with it. #books
10/30/09
10/30/09
Science fiction doesn't equate to bad writing just as good writing doesn't equate to realistic, epiphany based literary fiction.
I mean, you're arguing that because it's good it shouldn't be called science fiction, essentially. The genre is defined by the plot points (Blood Meridian is a Mexico Western, 1984 is sci-fi, Wuthering Heights is romance, The Yiddish Policeman's Union is alternate history, Frankenstein is Horror, Inherent Vice is a detective novel, etc.). So yes, "just because" it takes place in the future with imagined technology and situations, it is sci-fi. how GOOD it is is determined by the writing. Just because something is also genre doesn't make it bad and just because something is expertly written doesn't make it non-genre.
The way of the ghetto is to stop saying that the term only applies to BAD writing and to include great works of fiction (past and contemporary) reside in the same place. So sci-fi is no longer the repository for crap stories, but is merely a framework in which to tell tales.
10/30/09
Oh and by the way, saying spec. fic is an "inane" name is sort of an incorrect pedantry. All fiction is not necessarily "speculative". That's silly. "speculative" doesn't mean "imaginary". #books
10/29/09
Just a thought, apropos of almost nothing - why don't publishers produce two editions of their author's work? One cover showing the traditional sci-fi " 'splodey spaceships and silver bikini-clad women" and the other a simple abstract image with the title in an unassuming font (think Never Let Me go and the like). It worked for Rowling, after all. #books
10/29/09
11/02/09
xxxooo #books
11/02/09
10/29/09
10/29/09
10/29/09
10/29/09
Speaking of the borderlines between mainstream and SF, is there anyone else wondering why Richard Powers (author of such novels as Galatea 2.2, Plowing the Dark, and his latest, Generosity) vary rarely gets associated with science fiction in spite of novels featuring an artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the genetics of happiness? #books
10/29/09
There can't possibly be another site with a more impressive commenter cadre.
I stay in awe of you crazy kids. #books
11/02/09
10/29/09
11/02/09
@Moff: Oh gosh, praise from Cesar!
Thank you very much, Wimmer.
11/02/09
@Grey_Area: Oooh, that guy used to work with Ernest Borg 9! #books
10/29/09