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From: dca@edison.UUCP (David C. Albrecht)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY, PART II
Message-ID: <496@edison.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-May-85 09:25:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: edison.496
Posted: Wed May 22 09:25:20 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 24-May-85 22:11:09 EDT
References: <1091@druri.UUCP>
Organization: General Electric Company, Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 54

> 
> science fiction be like if instead, the examples for new writers were
> Aldiss, Ballard, and Silverberg?

Early Silverberg, yuck!

> 
> All that you will see when you wander through the science fiction section
> of your local bookstore is new authors who are rarely more than warmed-over
> Eric Frank Russell, Keith Laumer, or Gordon Dickson. Hackdom reigns supreme.
> Where is a new Thomas Disch? Another Barry Malzberg? Maybe even another
> Ursula LeGuin? For too long science fiction has built on such a narrow
> pedestal, and now this trash-heap is threatening to fall over on us.
> Barry B. Longyear, Brian Daley, Christopher Stasheff, Jerry Pournelle,
> Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin, Spider Robinson, Joe Haldeman, Marion
> Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, etc., etc., ad nauseum. The fault does not
> lie with the author; it lies with the readership that continues to demand
> the same old crap in different colored toilets, or at the very least,
> continues to buy it. A readership that wants a sequel to every novel,
> a readership that wants a novel out of every short story, a readership
> that has grown fat and lazy on a diet of trash, like metropolitan raccoons.
> It's science fiction's doom as a viable 20th Century artform if its
> readership continues to wallow in mediocrity, merely competent writing,
> and glorification of hacks. Notice that "mainstream" authors who have
> written science fiction for the general reading public have by and large
> maintained a higher standard of craft than is present in current new
> offerings within science fictions. "Duluth" by Gore Vidal. The "Canopus
> In Argus" series by Doris Lessing. A few others here and there, not many,
> because it's the kiss of death for a mainstream author to become associated
> with writing science fiction.

Sorry for the rather large excerpt.

Crap!, I read books because I enjoy them not because they are masterworks
of art.  The cardinal sin for a book, any kind of book, on my reading list
is for it to be boooriiiiiiing.  A fantastically well crafted and written
book that is boring is guaranteed a non-stop one-way trip to the circular
file whereas I have very much enjoyed and will no doubt continue to enjoy
some "hack" novels simply because they were fun (the first couple Xanth books
then it got old, real old) or action packed or funny or ...  you get the
idea.  Art for the sophisticate always gets short shrift in the mass market,
and to my lights rightly so.  You can take classic jazz (random notes),
modern art (random scribbles), and "well written" sci fi (random but well
structured phrases, translate boring) and stuff them for all that I
would miss them.  I read a great deal of science fiction and am willing
to try practically any author but, I don't evaluate a book on how well
they are written (someone else's subjective evaluation) but rather how
well they read (a personal subjective evaluation).
I don't feel any need to apologise or change my taste in
literature just because of someone else's likes and dislikes, I like what
I like and feel perfectly comfortable with that.

David Albrecht
General Electric