Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
The vote is for best science fiction (or fantasy). So there is also the science fiction/fantasy component.
But I just cannot understand the opinion that if you compare two novels the best one is the one you enjoy the most. And what does "enjoy" mean here? Is it simply that the book was fun? Or how do you compare a "fun" book with a "intellectually stimulating" book? And to be a choose a better sf book an intellectually stimulating book always win over a fun book. A book that is just fun to read can never be the best sf book.
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I think you fall into the classic art verse entertainment trap. The most extreme form of your argument is that anything that the masses might like can't be art because art doesn't exist to be liked. You seem to imply that a intellectually stimulating book can't be fun and that angst ridden philosophical debate is the only literature that can be intellectually stimulating. That might be a slight exaggeration, but the idea really at the core of your argument.
While a work may not be intellectually stimulating from the stand point of what your freshman literature professor declaimed in literature 101, but for the most part, the great literature of the past was originally fun filled fluff at the time. Much the deep philosophical meanings of Shakespeare, Defoe and Dickens were added later by generations of literature critics. Shakespeare in it's original was entertainment for the masses. Defoe was adventure fiction at it's finest, while Dickens was pure soap opera.
For much of history, story telling was designed to entertain and instill moral truths in the people. I would argue that a fun book, as you put it, could not be fun unless it touched on moral truths. Part of what makes a fun book fun, is that the reader is drawn in to the story. He or she cares about the protagonist and other characters.
For me, a great book is a book that I want to read over and over. To give an example, I read Scalzi's book "Red Shirts". I thought it was interesting, I liked the plot twists and it made some thoughtful philosophic points, yet I have zero interest in going back and re-reading it. It may have been great literature, but it wasn't a great story. The flip side is that I've read Correia's Monster Hunters, International many times. MHI may be fluff from a literature point of view, but it also is classic story telling which embeds many important moral lessons. Sometimes the best is the one that the audience likes the most, not what the critics like the most.