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Old 06-23-2010, 07:56 PM   #61
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Originally Posted by Lo Zeno View Post

The Iliad, for example, and the Odyssey, are both poetry and fiction, but also religious texts, political texts, propaganda and adventure.
It's also a how-to manual for Greek culture and includes instructions for building a raft.

I love the Odyssey.
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Old 06-24-2010, 01:25 AM   #62
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Now, I'll admit that my attitude is a by-product of an academic education studying literature at the Masters level.
...
Now, let me say that my perception of science-fiction's juvenile nature (along with most other genres) is in part because of my age. I'm in my mid-thirties and it would be a very dull life indeed if I still could muster enthusiasm for the same levels of literature I did at the age of fifteen.
Oh, please.. I don't think your age has anything to do with your perception of scifi, nor "academic education studying literature at the Masters level". I think it is simply "attitude", in the "throwing thereof" sense. If you don't like a body of literature, just say so. Don't try rationalizing it with older-than- or more-studied-than-thou lines.

It's an unfortunate fact that science fiction fandom, as a whole, is in fact *aging*. The younger crowd is much more media-centric than book-centric, and that's been increasingly true for the past 20 years. Go ahead, go to a literature-focussed scifi convention (if you can find one.. they're dropping like flies).

All the authors I know are in or near their 60s (or older -- John Dalmas is over 70). Most of them *are* academics -- VE Mitchell's grad work was in geology, and wasn't LeGuin a professor?

These people write largely for their friends: hardly juvenile or literary philistines (unless paid specifically to write a children's book). If that's truly where you believe your perception stems, I question how extensive your exposure to scifi truly is.

As for scifi author politics, I find at least the fanbase tends toward self-identified libertarian, with the more conservative elements thereof attracted toward the military scifi authors.

(For the record, I'm in my late 30s. I rather enjoyed Starship Troopers -- both movie and book -- as well as the rest of Heinlein's work even though he would probably find me a flaming left-wing nutjob "parlor pink".

My partner, early 40s, also for the record loves Ender's Game, despite serious religious and political differences that would keep Card from being truly welcome at dinner.

Academically, I got my degree in astrophysics, but strongly considered majoring in English lit. I still remain in touch with my HS English teacher after twenty years.)
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Old 06-24-2010, 01:26 AM   #63
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Originally Posted by DawnFalcon View Post
I am yet to know someone with Masters Lit. who is not a snob about what he/she reads.
I was introduced to "Bimbos of the Death Sun" by a gentleman who was once a doctoral student in Humanities.
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Old 06-24-2010, 01:53 AM   #64
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Something doesn't become 'not science fiction' because it has literary merit.
Indeed.. The same can be said about comics (which gets even shorter shrift than scifi and fantasy). Consider MAUS, for example, or Mouse Guard. Both (especially MAUS) are very strong, adult-level stories told using drawings of mice.

Also consider for that matter: Neil Gaiman, one of the best story tellers of the past couple decades, whether in panels or prose.

I am now at the point in my reading where the "classics" I'm acquiring are classics of scifi and fantasy. I've got my Shakespeare (several different editions, plus Asimov's), and so I'm getting caught up on my Lovecraft, Burroughs, and special editions of Asimov and Bradbury. It took me years to locate some HR Rider (why???).

They definitely show their age -- Burroughs especially, with the whole noble savage thing on Barsoom -- but they are at least as important to our cultural history as anything Twain wrote, and I'd argue will have had greater, longer-lasting impact. Certainly more people recognize and identifiy with Darth Vader or Mr Spock than have even heard of Nigger Jim, no matter how important his character was.

For that matter, I also started collecting children's lit -- Winnie the Pooh, for example, and re-discovering Roald Dahl. More adults should read books intended for children; they're missing out.

So for all this attitude of "no adult should ever be interested in these books" -- Moejoe completely missed the point of what it was he spent so much money studying. Sad waste of money, there.
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Old 06-24-2010, 09:22 AM   #65
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Originally Posted by kfarmer View Post
Indeed.. The same can be said about comics (which gets even shorter shrift than scifi and fantasy).
To a large extent, that was because for some decades, the comic book industry WAS producing only pulp - the comic code prevented discussion of any real human issues.

Despite the fact that the code is pretty much a dead letter these days, it's influence remains, especially in the perception that comics are "For kids".
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Old 06-26-2010, 06:35 AM   #66
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I'd like to claify that Orwell was not pro socialist
That's not a clarification: it's a statistic. Orwell was a socialist, said so often. Here he is :

Quote:
“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
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Old 06-26-2010, 09:42 AM   #67
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Originally Posted by kfarmer
More adults should read books intended for children; they're missing out.
I second that.
for me the Taran series by Lloyd alexander are a perfect example of WHY they should.
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Old 06-27-2010, 11:49 AM   #68
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Going back to the original question, the Taxpayers' Tea Party is a reprint of a Baen book published in 1994. Amazon.com (US) lists both editions (1994 and 2010). My guess is that they figure they can get money by reprinting it since there is now a "Tea Party" movement in the U.S.

And for the record, I don't agree with the politics and was glad to see the option of the PC Webscriptions package for July
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:00 PM   #69
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That's not a clarification: it's a statistic. Orwell was a socialist, said so often. Here he is :
I'd love to carry this further, and maybe we will in another thread, but I'll just say that Orwell's 'socialism' as he clearly defines as 'his' was only socialist in the same way that capitalism is the same as neo-liberal capitalism. Orwell's socialism, as he proved in deed, was nearer to the anarcho syndicalist tradition in Spain (where he fought). He wasn't as interested in state, classical socialism that grew from the early labour movements (which he did see as dangerous and I'll find the essays to post here where he talks about the dangers of socialism) but more in the free-form nature of anarchism and syndicalism that grew strong during the Spanish Civil War (worker owned, community run etc).

We should have a thread on Orwell, because he's infinitely fascinating as a writer, essayist, satirist and as social commentator.
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:11 PM   #70
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Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
I buy every edition of Baen's "Webscription" release, and have done every since they started. I don't always enjoy every book, but at least I know that they're going to be SF or Fantasy, which I'm likely to enjoy.

So I look at this month's webscription release, and what do I see:

Taxpayers' Tea Party
A Manual for Reclaiming Our Country

What the heck? This appears to be some right-wing political clap-trap. I suppose it could loosely be categorised as "Fantasy", but it's really not what I want to see in my beloved Webscription release. I do hope that Baen aren't going to start publishing political manifestos like this on a regular basis .

Very disappointing.
It's not so bad. I think a nonfiction book on politics is less objectionable than when the politics of the author is pointlessly written into a book. Take Live free or die, for example. That book has a number of scenes that could be removed without affecting the story.
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:23 PM   #71
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Except you did directly dismiss it in the same breath, as "sci-fi". So all we've established there is that you're prepared to lie in defence of your literary snobbery. Again, I am utterly unsurprised. I'm convinced they slip you some sort of magic pill when you take Masters Lit, honestly...

And yes, the Hero's Journey is *common* in fiction, but the super majority of high fantasy uses it, and the vast majority of low fantasy too. With Elves.
It's not literary snobbery at all, because I'm as ill at ease with the classification known as 'literary' (all books are literature and a great deal of 'literary' works are not well written or even interesting to me either. This classification barely exists within academic circles). For me genres (all genres including literary) are an invention of marketers, shelf-stackers and pigeon-holers. An invention that soon becomes an expectation. These expectations are like boxes placed around writers that they very rarely break free from (look at the endless Honor Harrington books as we're discussing Baen.) Genre classification reduces literature (on the whole) to same or similar (at least that is the intention). A product on a shelf that you approach because you are already familiar with what has been sold before. A safe and often bland repetition of what has come before and what will inevitably come again. It becomes Kellog's Cornflakes for the mind and soul (despite the finding of one really interesting flake in amongst the dull corn from time to time).

Steinbeck was a popular writer and he will always be that because he wrote 'stories'. He wasn't a sci-fi writer or a literary writer or any other reduction, he was merely (and there is no mere when it comes to Steinbeck) a good writer. Any expectation you have of Steinbeck is because of Steinbeck's writing and not because he was placed in a ghetto of literature.

Our whole culture has steadily declined towards a form of extended juvenilisation. And that's not really a criticism, merely observation of the current state. We're living longer so there's an expectation that our kidulthood spreads further through the years than it did before. We get married later, have children later, and so all of this has an effect on the culture we consume (hate that word with a passion, but it is the only one that fits). I, over time, have taken enough doses of that culture to become dulled by its effects, I have built an immunity. I've read enough and am familiar enough with the genres that they hold very little interest to me now. Coupled with other works being made available to me through studymy tastes have changed and so have my opinions of what I used to love. When I was a child I spake as a child...etc

You've already decried Fantasy; for different reasons than I decry all genres, but still ignoring that there might be a diamond in amongst the cut stones. So what makes your literary snobbery, or your elitism any different than my supposed snobbery? You get a pass, do you, because you like science-fiction and I have little time for that genre? And to call me a liar is an egregious and childish simplification of my viewpoint, or any of what I've said here.
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:34 PM   #72
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One SciFi author not mentioned here is John Scalzi. His Old Man's War series at first appears to be a fast paced military piece and it does have its fair share of action. However, as the stories develop it becomes clear that there is a clear anti-military, anti-authoritarian and anti-oligarchical message contained within.
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:36 PM   #73
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On the edge of all genre literature is Michael Chabon. He happens to be a strong peace activist as well.
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:43 PM   #74
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Originally Posted by weateallthepies View Post
It so clearly is science fiction though, even if it is many other things. Something doesn't become 'not science fiction' because it has literary merit. It's just a classification, not a restriction. Sure the publishers use genres as a way of marketing to specific audiences, and modern literary fiction is as much a genre in that sense but that doesn't mean literary fiction can't also be science fiction.
You are bang on in many respects. 'Literary' fiction is, for all purposes, just another genre, and it fails just as hard as all the others to provide anything but similarity and sameness in an attempt to cater to a specific audience. There are identifiable patterns and repetitions in a lot of what is called 'literary' - the professor who has a mid-life crisis, the semi-autobiographical memoir, the unreliable narrator in a post-modern coming-of-age story, the list goes on and on. Orwell, and I'll say this again, in my analysis, does not fit into these genres either. Neither does Joyce, or to take an author who many believe to be science-fiction, neither does Ray Bradbury. Once they break the expectations of genre (any genre), then genre no longer can be applied to said writer.

Bradbury's lyrical and poetic tales of Mars colonisation (The Martian Chronicles) bare little in common with science-fiction, despite the presence of space rockets and space men. Chandler did the same with his Marlowe books, where mystery and murder took a back-seat to language and the introduction of Los Angeles as a character (nobody has even come close to this since). These examples transcend genre, so that you cannot expect anything from a cold reading of either description or from the cover.

My rule of thumb is quite simple nowadays, if I don't know what to expect when I pick up the book and still don't know what to expect after a page or so, then I'll continue reading. Literary merit or otherwise, the book has to surprise me in some way, and that way is very rarely going to be with genre any more (just by dent of experience).
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Old 06-27-2010, 12:46 PM   #75
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On the edge of all genre literature is Michael Chabon. He happens to be a strong peace activist as well.
Thank you! Chabon is a perfect example of a writer (without prefix). Here is a writer steeped in popular culture, he knows comics and sci-fi and all the geek stuff inside out, but whenever you pick up one of his books you don't really know what story is going to be told.

EDIT: Okay, I'll shut up now as I believe I've hijacked this thread way too much. Sorry, Harry for any inconvenience (although I do think the debate has been quite interesting).

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