SO YOU WANT TO WRITE TEH SCIENCE FICTIONS

[defrog]

ITEM: io9 has an interesting poll asking one of the great literary questions of our time: Which mainstream author do you wish would write science fiction?

It’s an interesting question, as some of the better sci-fi ever written has been from authors you don’t usually find in the SF section of Borders (Kurt Vonnegut, William S Burroughs, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jonathan Letham, Michael Chabon, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, Gore Vidal’s The Smithsonian Institution, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, etc).

Granted, it depends on what you consider to be sci-fi (space operas, alt.histories, post-apocalypse, speculative fiction, etc), or possibly even what one means by “mainstream author”. (Bestseller? Popular? John Grisham? Jackie Collins? Nicholas Sparks? Slice-of-life historical novels?)

My personal view is: fuck genres. Whatever purpose they might have once served, these days they are nothing more than bullshit marketing categories. The fact that Michal Crichton’s books are still in the “general fiction” section when he’s been writing sci-fi for most of his career is more than ample evidence of this. And I’d pit a “genre” writer like Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman or Robert Shea/Robert Anton Wilson against respected “mainstream” writers like Mitch Albom, Ian McEwan, Annie Proulx or whoever.

Anyway, of io9’s choices, I’ve never read any of the nominated authors, though David Sedaris is the one I’m most likely to read at some point in the future. As for my own choices, the only ones I can think of are the ones who are no longer alive, and would probably have zero interest in SF anyway, though if, say, Bukowski had given it a shot, it could have been fun. Alcoholic layabouts on Neptune – that sort of thing.

As for living authors, I dunno. Tom Wolfe (Charlotte Simmons, Eager Young Space Cadet)? Gabriel Garcia Marquez (The Space Captain In His Labrynth)? James Ellroy (Mars Confidential)? Carl Hiassen (can’t think of a title, but it’d be about greedy property developers raping the Martian environment to build condos)?

Maybe Kinky Friedman would be fun. He’d probably call it Jews In Space.

Ride the silver rocket,

This is dF

Comments

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

I'm so with you on that.

I'm very tired of hearing that works than some people deem to have literary value are exempt from genre classifications. "If it's in a genre it must be bad, right?"

Genre is just a set of tropes or themes, structures and conventions, and 'ungenred' works have these, too. At the end of the day, that's simple close-minded snobbery. The shelves are full of bad work, no matter how it's shelved.

Then again, you could argue that the cultures that evolve around certain genres exclude certain people. I don't wear a beret, I can't read Proulx. I don't wear thick enough glasses, I can't be a fan of SF. Klingon speakers embarrass me just as much as emo haircuts and coffee-shop writers who wear their grandfather's clothes.

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

I will admit that I find it interesting that SF is one of the few genres (aside from maybe mystery) that has such a strong subculture community that's evolved with it. Maybe that stems from SF/fantasy being marginalized for so long and its origins in pulp mags. I can understand that. But too often people let the community define them rather than the other way around, like it should be. I find that too restrictive. I like what I like, and if it can't be pigeonholed to everyone's convenience, it's their problem, not mine. I like having my expectations defied, personally (when it's done well, I mean).

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

I guess you can't begrudge a genre its community. Crime fiction has its own fandom, although it's a less visible one than SF and fantasy. Romance fiction has almost the opposite--there's no community, but there are millions of readers who indulge in secret.

A lot of writers emerge from those fan communities and set themselves to servicing that community only, that, I guess is when things go bad. I want to read books with new ideas and new approaches, books that will that surprise me keep me guessing and maybe even teach me something I didn't know. I think that SF is obliged to do this, since almost by definition it looks to the future.

I dunno, I guess there are always going to be people who want to join a clique, or to put work that they don't appreciate into categories that will make it easier to dismiss. I know that a lot of old school SF writers a little bitter that Michael Chabon and Cormac McCarthy get to reap the rewards of being outside the ghetto, but I can't help but think it's healthy for everyone. It sucks that it's cost some talented authors so much... but surely this is a good step towards making amends.

Sorry for running out the mouth there; I've made three attempts to write an essay on this topic so far this year and I've never managed to put anything coherent together.

-- JF

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Annalee at io9 just did a post about Chabon winning a Hugo about how she was disappointed, but changed her mind after some readers made good arguments for why Chabon deserved it. The best was this: "If scifi fans don't want their favorite genre to be an ostracized ghetto, why do they insist on it being an ostracized ghetto?"

[dinopollard.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with genres. My problem is when people sneer at genre fiction like science fiction. I'd see this happen all the time, people looking down their nose at science fiction but then turn around and praise 1984 or Brave New World.

Kurt Vonnegut once lamented being labeled a science fiction author in his early days because he said so many people have mistaken that particular drawer of fiction for a toilet.