Taking SF Seriously
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Why Science Fiction Hasn’t Been Taken Seriously
or "All of my Literati friends look down at me when I say I read SF, so why doesn't SF come together as a collective whole and change it's image?"
This article pretty much confirms my suspicions that Basilieres is a bona-fide snob. His previous article on Philip K. Dick was so full of inconsistencies that it actually had me laughing in places. I pretty much knew from the title of this article that I was going to disagree with him again. Why hasn't SF been taken seriously? Um, wait, last time I checked it was being taken seriously! Hell, college professors are including SF in literary analysis courses, it's discussed in scholarly journals - I don't know how much more seriously it can be taken.
But if we're talking about the opinions of mainstream literati book reviewers, then okay, maybe it's not being taken too seriously.
Basilieres seems to be of the mindset that the opinion of the "outsider" (someone who doesn't regularly read genre fiction) is important to the health of the genre. The critic Gabe Chouinard was talking for a while about bringing SF out of the "literary ghetto". I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't really care what the "outsiders" think. The genre is functioning just fine, regardless of the opinions of people who don't read it. There is still innovation, experimentation, movement, and change going on inside the genre, and I don't think that this is going to cease just because certain people look down their nose at SF.
Another problem with this article is that Basilieres is focusing on the specific cases that will prove his point, in particular, Heinlein and Asimov. I actually agree with him regarding the state of American SF (although I don't think it's really as bad as he claims), and on the fact that Heinlein was a terrible writer. The trouble with his argument is that there are people like Samuel Delany (a contemporary of Heinlein) who wrote incredibly lyrical, "literate" SF. However, Delany is only briefly mentioned in this article.
"We must be as hard on the genre writers as we are on anyone else. If they are to be considered of literary value, they must meet literary standards."
It's like these "literary standards" are commandments etched by the divine hand of the criticism gods onto stone tablets. There is always going to be poorly written fiction, in any genre. Back in the first half of the 20th century we had the pulps, now we’ve got media tie-ins. Nothing has changed. You can choose to focus on the good stuff or the bad stuff, and draw conclusions from either.
or "All of my Literati friends look down at me when I say I read SF, so why doesn't SF come together as a collective whole and change it's image?"
This article pretty much confirms my suspicions that Basilieres is a bona-fide snob. His previous article on Philip K. Dick was so full of inconsistencies that it actually had me laughing in places. I pretty much knew from the title of this article that I was going to disagree with him again. Why hasn't SF been taken seriously? Um, wait, last time I checked it was being taken seriously! Hell, college professors are including SF in literary analysis courses, it's discussed in scholarly journals - I don't know how much more seriously it can be taken.
But if we're talking about the opinions of mainstream literati book reviewers, then okay, maybe it's not being taken too seriously.
Basilieres seems to be of the mindset that the opinion of the "outsider" (someone who doesn't regularly read genre fiction) is important to the health of the genre. The critic Gabe Chouinard was talking for a while about bringing SF out of the "literary ghetto". I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't really care what the "outsiders" think. The genre is functioning just fine, regardless of the opinions of people who don't read it. There is still innovation, experimentation, movement, and change going on inside the genre, and I don't think that this is going to cease just because certain people look down their nose at SF.
Another problem with this article is that Basilieres is focusing on the specific cases that will prove his point, in particular, Heinlein and Asimov. I actually agree with him regarding the state of American SF (although I don't think it's really as bad as he claims), and on the fact that Heinlein was a terrible writer. The trouble with his argument is that there are people like Samuel Delany (a contemporary of Heinlein) who wrote incredibly lyrical, "literate" SF. However, Delany is only briefly mentioned in this article.
"We must be as hard on the genre writers as we are on anyone else. If they are to be considered of literary value, they must meet literary standards."
It's like these "literary standards" are commandments etched by the divine hand of the criticism gods onto stone tablets. There is always going to be poorly written fiction, in any genre. Back in the first half of the 20th century we had the pulps, now we’ve got media tie-ins. Nothing has changed. You can choose to focus on the good stuff or the bad stuff, and draw conclusions from either.