Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
FTFY
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Thanks, but no.
I *meant* student, not reader.
If we're to seriously discuss the fate of SF we should have a deeper understanding of the genre than "merely" reading a couple thousand volumes of it.
That requires an understanding of the history and disciplines of its best practitioners; what works, what doesn't, and why. Where it comes from, how it got here, where it fits in our world.
A serious "student" of the genre ought to be familiar with the field and its works from its pre-Gernsback origins through the pulp era, the Astounding years, to the first books, the New Wave and all that has followed. Likewise familiarity with the core of the field as well as the fringes and the hybrids.
Reading lots of SF for enjoyment and understanding is great unto itself; reading it to appreciate *how* it works is a wee bit different. It is the difference between discussing the best stories of a given decade and discussing what makes great SF stories great. (Or deconstructing the genre as a whole like we did in the other thread.) The avid reader will devour as much of the field as he/she can get, the student will systematically hunt and study as many samples of the breed as possible, trying to understand as much of the field as possible. The student will not only be interested in the story, but also the context it fits into; not just what the author is saying/doing, but the why.
SF is fun entertainment, but for a lot of people it is a dead serious "business"; it is their life's work. They have collectively built up a field that is more than just an accumulation of fun stories.
Which is where the ebook re-publishing of the "lost" (hard-to-find) works of the past comes in. Because of its history, a fair amount of great SF from the early and mid-20th is and will be hitting the PD shortly. Add in the re-publishing of the still-copyrighted backlist and the opportunity to really understand SF will be open to a lot more of us at more reasonable terms.
And the more people *understand* SF, the less we'll see of the whole "too good to be SF" or "transcends the genre" talk. Or "SF is dying".
Fair 'nough?