(no subject)
Every plan I had to go out and do things with people in the past week and a half now has failed miserably, whether it is because of last-minuate cancellations or simply accidents. I am kind of miserable, but not really surprised.
So I stayed home the last week and revisited some science fiction and fantasy works works. It occurs to me that literary critics don't take science fiction or fantasy all that seriously because really, the writing's not that great by their standards. The characters are ususally quickly sketched out, some setting elements are exhaustively defined while others are up in the air, and science fiction plots especially depend on really flemsy premises and occasionally gets thrown out of wack by questionable plot devices. But it's precisely what makes these genres repugnant to literary critics that endears me, and others, to sci-fi and fantasy.
To the contemporary literary world:
I don't care about your personalized struggles, growing-up stories, attempts at personal redemption, or the hurdles of unrequited love; reading them in the background of a story provides humanity to the plot, but reading it for its sake alone is pretty annoying. Maybe once, when such thing were hidden away by repression and innuendo, literary exploration of these areas provided an outlet against opression and inspiration for personal action. But concentrating on these themes alone at the detriment of other topics is wrong. Please take note of sci-fi and fantasy. Yes, it is fairly more setting-driven than you're used to. But at its best it brings readers to a world of broad forces where man is reduced to ants looking up at the clash of titans, where the best heroes can still only ride the technlogical, economic, sociological, and ecological forces around him. Such a world offer new perspectives and insights on humanity, and has its own engrossing effect on the reader.
- Love, Eric
So I stayed home the last week and revisited some science fiction and fantasy works works. It occurs to me that literary critics don't take science fiction or fantasy all that seriously because really, the writing's not that great by their standards. The characters are ususally quickly sketched out, some setting elements are exhaustively defined while others are up in the air, and science fiction plots especially depend on really flemsy premises and occasionally gets thrown out of wack by questionable plot devices. But it's precisely what makes these genres repugnant to literary critics that endears me, and others, to sci-fi and fantasy.
To the contemporary literary world:
I don't care about your personalized struggles, growing-up stories, attempts at personal redemption, or the hurdles of unrequited love; reading them in the background of a story provides humanity to the plot, but reading it for its sake alone is pretty annoying. Maybe once, when such thing were hidden away by repression and innuendo, literary exploration of these areas provided an outlet against opression and inspiration for personal action. But concentrating on these themes alone at the detriment of other topics is wrong. Please take note of sci-fi and fantasy. Yes, it is fairly more setting-driven than you're used to. But at its best it brings readers to a world of broad forces where man is reduced to ants looking up at the clash of titans, where the best heroes can still only ride the technlogical, economic, sociological, and ecological forces around him. Such a world offer new perspectives and insights on humanity, and has its own engrossing effect on the reader.
- Love, Eric