Unlabeller

[coalescent]

There is a rage shared by most critics of the literature of the fantastic. It is the rage we feel when some iteration of that literature--a novel by Jeff Noon, perhaps--is mufflingly misdescribed as non-generic by its publishers, or by some moat-defensive critic more concerned to defend his patch than to tell the truth about the text before his

Comments

[swisstone]

I cite that review in my chapter on Vurt in the Clarke volume. I do rather agree - read as avant-garde mimetic it holds together even less well than as an sf novel. And it's not a very good sf novel, as I'm sure greengolux will affirm.

[grahamsleight]

I think an underlying Clute argument - not stated here, though elsewhere in plenty - is that sf is a literature in uniquely intense conversation with itself. (Hence, for Clute, why it matters so much to get dating right - dating is the crucial anchor in that time-bound conversation.) Disowning sf is disowning that conversation. The real problem with the treatment of Noon (or, also Karen Joy Fowler's Black Glass or Bear's Darwin's Radio) is the presumption that sf is in some way inherently *shameful*, either in a marketing sense or an aesthetic one. As Delany has suggested more than once, sf might do well to ditch the anxiety about "As Others See Us" and adopt the rhetorical and mental stances of queer rights. ("We're here! We're geeks! Get used to it!")

[swisstone]

In Noon's case it's not just how others treat his work, but how he treats himself. I probably shouldn't, but here's a taster from the Clarke anthology that's relevant:

Noon, therefore, is not really coming from an sf tradition. He did not emerge through the fanzines and sf magazines, though he read American superhero comics avidly as a child. He was a playwright who could not get his plays mounted, until Stephen Powell persuaded him to write a novel for Powell's new imprint, Ringpull Press. Noon extracted a subplot he had inserted into an unproduced stage adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden, and Vurt was born.

It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that Noon is ambivalent towards sf. On the one hand, he is [or was] happy to be interviewed by Vector and Interzone, and appear at sf conventions. On the other, he is keen to distance his writing from science fiction (about which he has some strange ideas), and Falling Out of Cars is marketed as a non-genre work (to the annoyance of Clute). Interviewing him, [

[immortalradical]

Disowning sf is disowning that conversation.

I think this is getting there. Though it could just as easily be simple disinterest in the conversation (though clearly some knowledge of it is required to write an interesting fantastical work), rather than any pejorative dislike of it.

Though of course I dispute rather strongly that sf is a literature in uniquely intense conversation with itself. (In fact, I don't see how this argument stands up to a moment's scrutiny. Feel free to enlighten me.) Its writers made be in uniquely intense (and uniquely minute) conversation with their readers, but that's not quite the same thing, is it?

[despotliz]

Here's a question: what does "a literature in uniquely intense conversation with itself" actually mean?

[pigeonhed]

When the Clarke Award judges gave the 1992 award to Marge Piercy John Clute was one of the more vociferous critics of our choice. In a guest editorial for Vector he referred to how Body Of glass made no mention of SF on its cover, and implied that this was one of the reasons we had made the wrong choice. In the same article the judges decision to exclude Karen Joy Fowler's Sarah Canary was condemned.
In fact the judges chose to give Fowler a special mention, along with M John Harrison's The Course Of the Heart as notable but not SF. As with most other years there were many good SF novels under consideration, many of which did not have the label SF on their cover, and we felt no need to include novels which clearly were not SF simply because the author had also published SF previously.
What is relevant here is that Clute's preferred winner that year did not bear any mention of SF in words on its cover either. Kim Stanley Robinson would never deny that Red Mars is SF of course (though I could envisage a case for that

[coalescent]

*hauls out his copy of Look at the Evidence*

In a guest editorial for Vector he referred to how Body Of glass made no mention of SF on its cover, and implied that this was one of the reasons we had made the wrong choice.

Well ... sort of. What he actually says is more along the lines of "not only has this award been given to a book that I think doesn't deserve it, but here is some evidence that the recipient and publisher don't care that they've received it, which makes it a double slap in the face". It's the fact that they didn't mention the award after the book had won that annoys him, not that it originally didn't mention sf on the cover.

Kim Stanley Robinson would never deny that Red Mars is SF of course (though I could envisage a case for that.)

*boggle*

My edition (which is, admittedly, US paperback) has a quote that calls it "epic science fiction in the best tradition of the term".

[peake]

Like Graham I will be careful not to say anything which touches on this year's Clarke Award, but

[coalescent]

Basically Clute was pissed that Stan Robinson didn't win the Award

Yes, and he's pretty up-front about that. I keep meaning to read Body of Glass, because Red Mars not winning is one of the decisions that boggled me when I first came across it.

I am all in favour of a person's opinion of their award having no bearing on their eligibility for said award. That said, my impression of Clute's rant was that it was more about the insults that were added to the injury. I actually thought he was insinuating the opposite to you: not that the jury should have taken non-artistic considerations into account, but that they did take such considerations into account, through a willful snub of better books because they came from the genre.

[despotliz]

Current music: Ashes - Embrace

You're just doing this to torment Nat, aren't you?

[coalescent]

Of course.

[andrewducker]

I do agree that the type of book I'm expecting to read directly affects my interpretation (and thus my enjoyment and anything else I get of it) and this is also true of other media. Trying to watch V for Vendetta as literal, rather than as a parable, would have significantly decreased my enjoyment of it (for instance).

I also object to people saying "It's not SF" purely because they mean "It's actually good.", but that's because I view this as a simply baffling way of looking at the world and makes no sense to me.