Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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`I don't write sci-fi' is a pretty classic line sf authors peddle, either in a `I don't write skiffy crap' way, or as a `I write speculative fiction' line. Sf covers a multitude of generic descriptors.
(Atwood's genre history is laughable by the way, and is pretty much crankery. Orwell out of Verne not Wells? Whut? It's the British Sensible Left-wing SF lineage, one of the finest and noblest genres in literature.)
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To call Atwood a Sci-Fi author is to ignore most of her work.
Wells and Orwell may both have been British sensible left-wingers, but their fiction is quite different. Wells writes of scientific possibilities, Orwell of human ones. Speculative Fiction is a useful category for works like 1984.
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Yeah, what Keir said.
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This is the nature of her speculative occupation, Atwood explained in her interview with Wired.com (below). Unlike sci-fi, spec-fi — especially her disastrously scary strain — has a chance of phasing into reality within our lifetime. (Just don’t confuse the two, she insists.)
By this token I wonder if Le Guin's Dispossessed is Spec-Fi, as it depicts an ideological version of an Anarchist state, which happens to be on another planet. Le Guin said;
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right, but anarchism as pre- figured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian state (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.
I don't want to start a 'Genre War', but it appears to me they are often a result of the author's own opinion (Atwood) or the readers (Le Guin), or their marketers (JS&MN - Clarke) and therefore the stuff of mythology.
Oh, and where does Iain Bank's Transition fit? In the cuckoo's nest? There has been much discussion on this very point.
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The crux of Transition is that the world we live in is one of an infinite range of parallel worlds, and that, for the best part of a millennium, certain individuals, called transitionaries, have been able to flit between physical bodies in these different worlds using a drug called septus.
The crux of Transition, IMhO, is that all is not as it seems, including the crux of Transition. Tautology or non-sequitur?
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It really doesn't matter. All the excitement seems to come from Sci-Fi readers who try to claim literary fiction writers as their own. Atwood and Banks, like Orwell and Wells, are simply good writers. They do not write for a fanbase or within a genre.
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To call Atwood a Sci-Fi author is to ignore most of her work.
What about calling her an author who has written some science fiction, then?
Speculative Fiction is a useful category for works like ...
...anything that "people who don't read science fiction" like.
I guess that my problem is just that it's so easy for an attempt to classify work to become a tool to pigeonhole it; and from there, to dismiss it. As mentioned, I think that the categories for literature are basically arbitrary and based on marketing - which is why it's so very, very easy to come up with examples of grey areas where it's neither one damn t'ing nor t'other.
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Atwood and Banks, like Orwell and Wells, are simply good writers
Except Banks is an unapologetic rider of the genre boundary, to the point of using a subtly different name to signal when he's being a science fiction writer as opposed to a mainstream one.
Also, I'm tempted to say, call me back when Atwood is worth the little pinky of Philip Dick, or Ursula LeGuin, or Joanna Russ. Her claim that science fiction is "talking squids in outer space" (since revised, to her credit) was just the apogee of stupid.
What about calling her an author who has written some science fiction, then?
She's said as much herself in her wiser old age. But hey, why spoil a good yarn?
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And what about Steam Punk? Sorry, I'm being inciteful. Not a word. Damn, and here I was playing with the big boys. As you were. 'Clappity, clappity'.
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William Gibson is a science fiction writer. He does not speculate.
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Also, I'm tempted to say, call me back when...
You are entitled to you opinion, peculiar though it may be.
The angstyness of Sci-Fi fans is extraordinary. Why should it matter what Atwood calls her own writing and why are Sci-Fi people so determined to prove her wrong?
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Why should it matter what Atwood calls her own writing and why are Sci-Fi people so determined to prove her wrong?
For the reason that Jack pointed out, because it's arrogant and dismissive (just like saying "Sci-fi people", and you know it). Besides, if you are so keen to dismiss a group of authors, it's probably best if it doesn't include a fair whack who are better than you are - it just doesn't look good.
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I am not going to bother with the "better than Atwood" slur; it is not widely held. As for the arrogance and dismissiveness, you tell me what your sub-culture wants to be called (People of Science-Fiction, perhaps) and I will try to remember to employ it in all future correspondence.
I think this is all evidence of a massive inferiority complex. Sci-Fi aficionados want a genre for themselves, but know it is limited; they get offended when anyone from outside criticises their genre; they claim outsiders as their own, to bolster their self-esteem, but still maintain that their greats are better than the outsiders. They want to be left alone and recognised at the same time. In a word: Emo.
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It really doesn't matter. All the excitement seems to come from Sci-Fi readers who try to claim literary fiction writers as their own. Atwood and Banks, like Orwell and Wells, are simply good writers. They do not write for a fanbase or within a genre.
Banks is a sf author through and through, and is probably a fan-with-a-capital-f to boot. If you really think Banks doesn't think of himself as an sf author when writing sf you're, er, a bit out of it.
I mean really, Banks?
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I am not going to bother with the "better than Atwood" slur; it is not widely held
I simply picked three writers who worte magnificent speculative fiction and weren't ashamed of the label that Atwood so disdainfully rejected for her works. She may not want to mix with the rabble, and that's her business, but then she'd probably help her cause by writing a book that bests FemaleMan, The Left Hand of Darkness or Ubik. Otherwise it's like saying I exist outside of culture and this thing you call literature.
(And as for the "not widely held" thing, I could care less, but in Dick's case I think you'll find it actually is.)
I mean really, Banks?
What are you gonna do?
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To call Atwood a Sci-Fi author is to ignore most of her work.
WTF? That's like saying pointing out that Cecil Day-Lewis wrote twenty detective novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake is somehow "ignoring" that he was also a poet, essayist and translator of some distinction.
Can I also show my massive insecurity by pointing out that Margaret Atwood's second and third novels ( Surfacing and Lady Oracle ) were also pretty nifty revisionist feminist take-downs on the then fashionable "women in peril" Gothics and plump thrillers featuring mysterious figures with secret pasts in exotic climes.
Much as I love P.D. James, I always found it rather amusing that someone who made her considerable reputation in the slum of crime fiction still gets so defensive when anyone points out the bleeding obvious about The Children of Men. It sits very comfortably in a long tradition of dystopian British science fiction. You'd think she was being accused of writing kiddie porn or something...
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Ian Banks is a literary author; Ian M Banks is a Sci-Fi author. Pause for a moment to consider why he takes a modified name for his Sci-Fi work? Could it be that People of Sci-Fi are hostile to literary fiction and read books only if they are labelled as part of the Sci-Fi genre?
It is not the books shops that are creating the categories; it is the writers and their readers.
Giovanni: ashamed... disdainfully... rabble... cause; does rejection hurt that much?
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They want to be left alone and recognised at the same time. In a word: Emo.
What an ignorant comment. But to take partial issue with what Jack wrote earlier, genre is not just a matter of marketing, it constitutes its readers and its writers in more complex ways. Operating within the 'labelled', official science-fiction domain of specialised imprints and magazines created its constraints (and they weren't always positive, just ask Philip Dick) but also gave authors certain freedoms. And it produced a readership who became progressively more sophisticated, steeped in kinds of speculation that weren't familiar to the readers of mainstream.
(And incidentally, that's exactly the thing about The Handmaid's Tale - it seemed so groundbreaking precisely to people who turned their nose up at science-fiction, which is why Atwood's rejection of the label was first and foremost an act of self-promotion. Pay no attention to the feminist sci-fi authors behind the curtain!)
Now it's pretty much established that science-fiction was in fact the genre for speculative literature of the last century, and it's in recognition of that that Banks labels his more speculative work that way. But Keir is also right, that just as that veil was lifted the genre also went stale.
This is a reading lust thread so I guess that mentioning Thomas Disch's The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of as one of the best available histories of sci-fi may not be out of order.
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Why should it matter what Atwood calls her own writing and why are Sci-Fi people so determined to prove her wrong?
These sorts of discussions always remind me of a period when people seemed to be arguing about whether Green Day were punk or not. It always seemed unimportant to me.
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Wells and Orwell may both have been British sensible left-wingers, but their fiction is quite different. Wells writes of scientific possibilities, Orwell of human ones. Speculative Fiction is a useful category for works like 1984.
This only works if you ignore the fact that 1984 is a response to Men Like Gods, and in fact only really makes sense within the genre of British socialist sf. (--- see also Methuselah & Philip George Chadwick. As to Wells writing of scientific possibilities, what on Earth is he doing in War of the Worlds or even First Men on the Moon? Neither of those are at all hard.)
Could it be that People of Sci-Fi are hostile to literary fiction and read books only if they are labelled as part of the Sci-Fi genre?
Where by `people of sci-fi' you mean `literary fiction types who are a couple of decades out of date', `literary fiction' you mean `sf', and `Sci-Fi genre' you mean `literary fiction' yes! it could be.
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I'm going to have to consult my 'subtext analyst' because this all seems way more important than it needs to be.
I love books. I'm as comfortable reading chewing gum crime novels like Iain Pears's Jonathan Argyl series as I am his more crafted historical novels like Stone's Fall and An Instance of the Fingerpost. The same goes with Banks in Fiction or Sci-Fi.
Funnily enough I do know the difference, but it doesn't weigh heavily on my mind when I choose a book. It is more important to have 1) a recommendation from I reader I trust 2) positive experience of the author 3) PAS people making me feel stupid if I haven't read it.
Lets get back to celebrating the love of books, not the distaste for labeling, which in any field, gender, genre, education or health, can result in decamping to positions of narrowly defined prejudice, IMhO.
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It is more important to have 1) a recommendation from I reader I trust 2) positive experience of the author 3) PAS people making me feel stupid if I haven't read it.
About The Cat in the Hat, well known speculative work..
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Woops. I genre-bombed.
But back to the wunny babbits...
:DI love books. I'm as comfortable reading chewing gum crime novels like Iain Pears's Jonathan Argyl series as I am his more crafted historical novels like Stone's Fall and An Instance of the Fingerpost. The same goes with Banks in Fiction or Sci-Fi.
I agree to a large extent with this, though I also know certain "types" of book won't necessarily go with my reading style - for instance I'm a terrible, terrible spoiler, so I often find crime or thriller fiction somewhat unsatisfying if the writing doesn't carry it above a fixation on plot.
Having said that though if I hadn't been persuaded (once upon a time a very long time ago) to ignore my initial "fantasy=ack" opinonated stance I wouldn't have bothered reading Pratchett either, so I realise having opinionated stances is sometimes rather stupid of me.
It seems true to a large extent that genre labels have been marketing (or publisher or bookseller) created. There are so many books in the world you need a way to categorise them into more digestible bites of selling goodness. But of course the downside is you then relegate your buyer to a "section" unless they have the motivation to look outside that. There is no solution to this really.
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Cat in the Hat
Bingo! But I've read it. And why do I trust Sacha? No eye deer, but I do... >-)
As mentioned elsewhere, I'm planning to re-read Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve. Put that in a pidgeon hole and smoke it. Whoops, we're back to wild game.
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