Your movements suck, and so do their manifestos.

[wombat_socho]

Instapundit linked to this post by Andrew Fox, one of those pretentious twats who feels compelled to make lists of everything and squeeze creation into his narrow little boxes.1

Comments

[polaris93]

I've run into the type in other venues -- politics, pop culture, you name it: always they start cresting new divisions of whatever it is they're into, divisions that turn out to be utterly useless and a pain in the rear to deal with.

In the case of science fiction, they seem to have forgotten, or never knew, that the main purpose of reading the stuff is to get plesure out of it, not start a movment from it, nor spend hours and hours deconstructing the whole thing. I've been reading hard s-f since 1953 and love it all (well, with some exceptions), and writing it since I was 7 years old, and I can't imagine living in the tedious little world so many of these "fans" dwell in.

[wombat_socho]

To quote graffiti allegedly found on the blackboard of an SF 101 class at UMKC: "Get SF out of the classroom and back in the ghetto where it belongs!" Of course, that was back in the days before SF won the culture wars.

[polaris93]

Those fans are still waging the culture wars, just in a different form. Maybe they have our-parents-lived-during-the-real-science-fiction-culture-wars envy, but have no idea how to get embroiled in the same type of warfare. So they make up a bullshit one. ;-)

[wombat_socho]

I think it's simpler than that. How can you be part of the select circle of trufen if everybody knows the password and the good books? You redraw the circle and redefine the list of esoteric knowledge. Good riddance to 'em, I say.

[otherles]

I once owned a copy of Harlan Ellison's sole completed novel. Something from outside the SF genre.

Spider Kiss was a nihilistic retelling of the story of Elvis. While I'm not an Elvis fan I certainly thought that this novel sucked.

I don't have it anymore.

I can live without the "New Wave" or those who emitted it.

[wombat_socho]

I used to like a fair amount of Ellison's work, but I was young and nihilistic myself back then. These days I'd be happy to sell his books for the shipping price, just to get them out of my apartment.

The problem with throwing out the New Wave as a whole is that it actually includes some good writers and some good work, but I think critics tend to give it too much credit for the changes in SF back in the day. The genre has always reflected (to a certain extent) the state of society in the US & UK, so it's no surprise that SF became more interested in sex and antiheroes in the 1960s and 70s. Still, for every dozen Ellisons and Moorcocks, we did get a decent Silverberg and Zelazny.

[otherles]

I would say that I'm fortunate in being able to take mine down to Uncle Hugo's here in Minneapolis.

Now that I'm getting used to working with my new laptop I should be getting back to work on my own novel. (Dammit!)

[wombat_socho]

There is that. One of the major shortcomings of the DC area is that there's no SF bookstore anywhere in it.

[redmartel]

Elf and Dwarf crap? Elf and Dwarf /crap/? Explain yourself!

[wombat_socho]

Best explanation of the term is here. I'm not saying that all fantasy since Tolkien is crap, but 90% of it sure is, and a lot of that crap includes elves, dwarves, and humans off on a quest.