Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!unc!wfi From: wfi@unc.UUCP (William F. Ingogly) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY - PART I Message-ID: <282@unc.UUCP> Date: Sat, 25-May-85 14:58:50 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.282 Posted: Sat May 25 14:58:50 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 27-May-85 02:49:08 EDT References: Reply-To: wfi@unc.UUCP (William F. Ingogly) Organization: CS Dept., U. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill Lines: 102 Summary: Davis Tucker raises some interesting points in his well-written essay on quality and contemporary SF. > ... Unfortunately, this > degradatation of critical faculties is unavoidable, just by human nature, > and it takes a very strong sense of self to keep it in check. The above > statement puts it very succinctly - and is a very good example of what is > so often wrong with science fiction fandom and its rationale for giving > accolades or insults. It's precisely SF fandom's insularity that has led to the slow acceptance of SF as a 'respectable' genre by people outside the SF community. Cults of personality lead to the overemphasis of the mediocre and the neglect of the superior. Was it Arthur C. Clarke or someone else who said that 90% of EVERYTHING is garbage? It's time that the myth of SF's persecution by mainstream critics be laid to rest. The quality of writing in the average SF mag is uneven because most SF is written for a fifteen-year-old mentality by hacks who wouldn't know quality writing if it jumped up and bit them in their warp drives. Most people who care about fiction as art don't have the patience to wade through five tons of horse manure in search of a single gem (what, me opinionated? :-). > ... Alcoholism and drug abuse seem to be the congenital defects > of writers, coupled with a large streak of self-destructiveness. > Now, it's true that there are many likeable people who could fit > into this company. But the point is that someone's congeniality is not > his or her writing. It just flat out has no bearing whatsoever on the > quality of his or her prose. Neither does a person's good sense when it comes to issues outside the field of writing. Consider, for example, Ezra Pound's infatuation with fascism which in no way diminishes his stature as a 20th century poet. As an aside, I wonder if the self-destructiveness isn't a byproduct of our romanticization of the creative act. I seem to recall reading that this redefinition of the artist's role in society is our inheritance from the likes of Blake, Shelley, Coleridge et al., and that writers before Romanticism reared its ugly head tended to be ordinary Joes with a family and payments on a Chevy in the garage :-). > So I should, by the above quoted argument, attempt to reach a deeper appre- > ciation of Rockwell's work due to my personal fondness for him. In other > words, if I like him so much as a person, I certainly would like his work. A cautionary note here: the work of a Norman Rockwell may be interesting from a sociological or historical perspective, hence worth studying for reasons that have little to do with its artistic merit. The writings of the worst SF hack may be worth looking at if they have influenced the evolution of the genre in some way. I've sometimes read books I've detested or listened to music that bored me because I felt there was a lesson to be learned from the experience, even if it was a negative one. You can sometimes learn a lot about quality by studying those things that lack quality. > Isaac Asimov, from everything I've heard, is a gentleman - well-mannered, > considerate, helpful to young authors, interested in new talent. Some of his > work possesses merit - his non-fiction. We'll forget about his poetry ... An interesting phenomenon, SF poetry. Why people who are more or less competent crafters of fiction think that their skills automatically carry over into poetry is beyond me. I've NEVER seen an SF poem that was more than marginally competent or revealed an understanding of the nature of poetry beyond the high-school creative writing class level. Yet mags like Amazing persist in publishing one or more of these embarassing efforts in each issue. Even Gene Wolfe (who, I believe, should know better) stoops to writing bad poetry. There's probably a book or article in here somewhere, if anyone cares to write it. > indeed!). His fiction is not that good - yes, it shows some marginal crafts- > manship, some workable ideas, but it's not really that good, as fiction. Ah, yes, the marginal Dr. Asimov. I dearly love The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but his interminable lectures on stale science are getting a bit old. How many years has he been at this? If you want to see real 'marginal craftsmanship,' check out his useless book of advice on writing SF. What a rip-off. > But nothing he has written even comes close to Gene Wolfe. This isn't mere > opinion - I don't truck with the idea of absolute relativism in art. > It is probably an overstatement, but Asimov is to Wolfe as Rockwell is > to Van Gogh. Again, I think even a second-rate craftsman like Asimov is worth reading. He has had an influence on the direction SF has taken the past 30 years or so, after all. And as for Gene Wolfe, I think his Fifth Head of Cerberus is one of the great achievements in the genre. > ... If science fiction were not a field of literary endeavor (and > who knows? Sometimes it really does seem to be something totally different), > none of this would matter. But it is, and it is incumbent upon readers > of science fiction to remember this, and judge accordingly, and not > allow personalities to affect that judgement. I'm afraid there's going to be a flood of irate responses to your posting, because many SF fans would disagree with you. They don't want any surprises in their fiction, and they view the reading of SF as one aspect of their fandom. I've been reading SF since the early '50s, when I used to cadge my grandmother's copies of Worlds of If (believe it or not). If it weren't for the writers who still believe SF is a field of literary endeavor, I'd quit reading it tomorrow. -- In the name of quality, Bill Ingogly