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 II Message-ID: <284@unc.UUCP> Date: Sat, 25-May-85 16:17:22 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.284 Posted: Sat May 25 16:17:22 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 27-May-85 02:49:45 EDT References: Reply-To: wfi@unc.UUCP (William F. Ingogly) Organization: CS Dept., U. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill Lines: 113 Summary: A few additional comments. By the way, Steve Brust is right on the mark; Capote (RIP) and Mailer ARE miserable hacks... > ... To be merely competent is to never rise > above a given level. In science fiction, competency and mediocrity go hand > in glove, dancing merrily into justifiable oblivion. Well ... I think this is probably true of fiction in general. Take a look at what passes for 'fiction' in many literary quarterlies and little magazines, for example. The difference may be that mainstream writers have an outlet for the fiction they write while they're learning their craft (i.e., the little mags), but new, old, good and bad SF writers all publish in the same small set of magazines. And if you want to see REAL mediocrity, take a look at ten or fifteen of the current top-40 mainstream bestsellers at your friendly neighborhood bookstore. Sidney Sheldon, indeed ... I think we need to keep on criticizing SF to keep the juices flowing, but we need to make sure we stay on target. I'm not sure your criticism here can't be levelled at the 90% of ALL fiction that's mediocre ... > We all have heard the lame excuse that science fiction has different rules > than mainstream fiction until it sounds like a broken record. ... > But the basic fundamentals of mainstream > fiction still apply - realistic characaterization, depth of understanding, > plot development, correct use of descriptive passages, realistic dialogue, > structural integrity, everything that is important to literature. > ... But incredibly, many science fiction writers get > away with cheap puns, absolutely wretched dialogue, ridiclously constructed > plots, inconsistent character motivation, terminal cuteness (Gidget's Disease) > and worst of all the "And-Then-He-Woke-Up" ending, or some kind of deus ex > machina ending (sometimes both together). ... I think this all goes back to the SF-as-pariah syndrome I mentioned in my reply to part I of your posting; poor, poor SF has always been picked on by the mainstream critics because they simply don't understand that SF writers are capable of producing quality fiction. This simply doesn't work anymore. In the late '60s, many mainstream critics began examining SF as serious fiction. The late Theodore Sturgeon, as I recall, was one of the first hailed as a quality writer by the non-SF critics. Since then, countless MA theses and PhD dissertations have been written on SF works. Writers like Delaney, LeGuin, Wilhelm, Wolfe, and Lem are acknowledged by mainstream critics as well as SF critics. A conspiracy against SF? Hardly. Yet some SF writers and fans seem to have decided that the trappings of mainstream literary criticism don't apply to SF; consequently, we've seen claims by members in the SF community that the only important or good fiction being produced is SF, or that only SF writers are still producing solid stories, or that the novel is dying everywhere but in the SF genre (I've actually seen all these claims in one place or another over the last 15 years or so, but I can't quote my sources, unfortunately). By isolating the genre from the rest of literature, some members of the SF community would place it in a position where the standards applied to 'ordinary' fiction no longer apply to SF. Thus, some 'purists' seem to believe that idea is everything, and that well-crafted characters and believable dialogue are unnecessary or secondary to the conceptual goals of the story. Much of this fiction reads like socialist realism, another genre where function takes precedence over form. > ... It's a shame, > but science fiction, unlike almost any other creative field, has almost > no true masters that are recognized as such, no people who are held up by > the aficionados as examples to young acolytes. Instead, the old hacks > are deified and glorified. Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. What would > science fiction be like if instead, the examples for new writers were > Aldiss, Ballard, and Silverberg? > 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? I see a number of newer writers out there who seem to be heading in interesting directions. For example, Ed Bryant, Greg Bear, Ian Watson, Lucius Shepard. The deification and glorification seems to be going on at the conventions and in the fan magazines, but there are at least some of us who have followed SF closely for a number of years and who have no interest in getting involved in the fandom nonsense. A writer is his own best and severest critic; if he wants to be a GOOD writer (as opposed to a hack), he'll approach his reading of SF critically and eventually realize that Aldiss, Ballard, and Silverberg have more to teach him about writing than Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. > ... 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. A readership that demands an endless stream of mediocre trilogies and tetralogies. Let's face it, this junk SELLS and an author who has a family to feed may be sorely tempted to crank out a quick trilogy instead of a finely crafted 100 page novel or novella ... > ... 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. ... I'm not so sure about the 'kiss of death' theory; see my above comments about mainstream critics and SF. The interested reader will also want to check out Stanislaw Lem's works (of course), and Italo Calvino. A book I'm starting soon is the newly-published mainstream novel The Eleven-Million Mile High Dancer, but it looks like it may be a bit too stylized and trendy for my taste (I'll post a review). And there's Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star, Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, and The Waltz Invention, and so on. Of course, much of this fiction barely qualifies as SF, but SF has had a great impact on many so-called mainstream writers. -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly