Science Fiction
SF has a bad rap. SF novels are never considered for any of the big literary awards. Far from reaching the quarter-finals of the Booker Prize, they have to settle for back-pats from their own peers. In literary terms, the Hugo or Nebula awards are the equivalent of the wooden spoon you get for coming last in the parents'-day sack race in front of your horribly-embarrassed children.
It shouldn't be this way. I read SF. I used to read a lot more; my childhood book-pile was very exclusive: if it didn't have a spaceship on the cover, or at lease some kind of improbably-powerful ray gun in the hands of a mean-looking Galactic Pirate, it simply didn't cut it. There's obviously a lot of trash in the SF library, but I can't imagine it being any more by weight (so to speak) than in contemporary fiction. And hard-core science fiction can be challenging, well-written, gripping and thought-provoking all at once. It shouldn't have to sneak in the stage door marked Satire.
I stopped off at Borders today after work, just to browse the aisles for a while as I had time to kill before boarding my train home. I noticed a that at the ends of the shelves throughout the fiction section, there were little displays titled with the name of a member of staff - "Bekky-Jo's favourite novels" - home to a dozen or so books, each with a hand-written card detailing the plot and why Bekky liked it so much. These books were almost entirely classics: Salinger, Dickens, Golding and some of their mates. That is, until I reached the SF aisle, which took up about a third of a floor (in a four-floor or more store, to be sure) where I discovered that some guy called Gaz or Baz or similar, who seemed to have difficulty holding the pen steady, had said about Dune, "Is it better than the film? Why don't you read it and find out!!!" Also included was Flowers for Algernon (which I'll grant is a good book) and ten pieces of utter schlock. The SF section had none of my favourite authors, instead, David Eddings took up a whole shelf, as did whoever it is who writes those Star Wars books nobody can see the point of.
I don't wonder that SF isn't taken seriously.
It shouldn't be this way. I read SF. I used to read a lot more; my childhood book-pile was very exclusive: if it didn't have a spaceship on the cover, or at lease some kind of improbably-powerful ray gun in the hands of a mean-looking Galactic Pirate, it simply didn't cut it. There's obviously a lot of trash in the SF library, but I can't imagine it being any more by weight (so to speak) than in contemporary fiction. And hard-core science fiction can be challenging, well-written, gripping and thought-provoking all at once. It shouldn't have to sneak in the stage door marked Satire.
I stopped off at Borders today after work, just to browse the aisles for a while as I had time to kill before boarding my train home. I noticed a that at the ends of the shelves throughout the fiction section, there were little displays titled with the name of a member of staff - "Bekky-Jo's favourite novels" - home to a dozen or so books, each with a hand-written card detailing the plot and why Bekky liked it so much. These books were almost entirely classics: Salinger, Dickens, Golding and some of their mates. That is, until I reached the SF aisle, which took up about a third of a floor (in a four-floor or more store, to be sure) where I discovered that some guy called Gaz or Baz or similar, who seemed to have difficulty holding the pen steady, had said about Dune, "Is it better than the film? Why don't you read it and find out!!!" Also included was Flowers for Algernon (which I'll grant is a good book) and ten pieces of utter schlock. The SF section had none of my favourite authors, instead, David Eddings took up a whole shelf, as did whoever it is who writes those Star Wars books nobody can see the point of.
I don't wonder that SF isn't taken seriously.