roseembolism (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roseembolism) wrote2009-12-14 02:00 pm
roseembolism) wrote2009-12-14 02:00 pm
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Here we go again: "Why SF is *gasp* DYING!
So, Mark Charan Newton has posted the latest iteration of the game SF fans like to play: doing a pre-death post mortum as to why Science Fiction (particularly hard SF literature) isn't as insanely popular as it was in the past. Since I've been hearing this sort of stuff for over fifteen years, I have little patience for this whinging, but I'll try.
In his article, Newton hits on all the Usual Suspects:
1. More women than men read books. And evidently, women's brains are unable to understand the complex concepts of Science Fiction.
2. Culture has caught up with our imagination: in other words, we're living in the future, and why bother reading Asimov or Analog, when you can read New Scientist...which is actually a SF magazine under false pretenses.
3. Literary fiction is eating up SF: Those villainous authors who get themselves placed in the general lit section of the bookstore are killing SF.
4. Modern Fantasy readers have seen Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and have thus lost the capacity for a literature of ideas.
From my perspective the big, Number one major mistake that Newton makes (Besides considering Warhammer 40K SF instead of Fantasy) is that he insists on blaming external factors for the decline in SF. He refuses to consider the point that the traditional SF genre itself has a number of problematic elements. For one thing, much of the corpus of the subgenre it is extremely badly written; it has terrible characterization, simplistic plotting, atrocious use of conventions and voice...in short, it's bad literature. In fact the whole "Literature of ideas" nomenclature is basically sleight of hand, where we're supposed to be so enraptured by the concepts that we don't pay attention to the obvious flaws in the writing.
If there's any aspect that the greater presence of women readers has had an effect, it's the problem that SF has pretty much been a "boys club" for fifty years, reflecting the interests and views of a select group of elitist white males. It can be argued that relatively few women are going to be interested in how the bronze-thewed heroic spaceman triumphs in trampling the alien culture through dint of his superior intellect, and wins the beautiful woman to be his bride (or at least gets to boink her). When you have allegedly modern writers like SM Stirling talking about how once you take electricity away women will happily go back to being domestic slaves, when you have writers like Niven and Zelazney and Heinlein and Card regarding women as alien objects that can only be schtupped, not understood...well, that's not going to go over well in a somewhat more egalitarian society. And that's not even taking into account the generally reactionary, ethnocentric, and in many cases downright archaic views that a lot of SF writers have.
In other words, as writer Alastair Reynolds succinctly puts it: "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap."Fantasy seems to have a bit of an easier time meeting modern literary standards oddly enough, or rather it doesn't fall back on the "literature of ideas" excuse, and that's why it's been increasing in relative popularity.
In his article, Newton hits on all the Usual Suspects:
1. More women than men read books. And evidently, women's brains are unable to understand the complex concepts of Science Fiction.
2. Culture has caught up with our imagination: in other words, we're living in the future, and why bother reading Asimov or Analog, when you can read New Scientist...which is actually a SF magazine under false pretenses.
3. Literary fiction is eating up SF: Those villainous authors who get themselves placed in the general lit section of the bookstore are killing SF.
4. Modern Fantasy readers have seen Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and have thus lost the capacity for a literature of ideas.
From my perspective the big, Number one major mistake that Newton makes (Besides considering Warhammer 40K SF instead of Fantasy) is that he insists on blaming external factors for the decline in SF. He refuses to consider the point that the traditional SF genre itself has a number of problematic elements. For one thing, much of the corpus of the subgenre it is extremely badly written; it has terrible characterization, simplistic plotting, atrocious use of conventions and voice...in short, it's bad literature. In fact the whole "Literature of ideas" nomenclature is basically sleight of hand, where we're supposed to be so enraptured by the concepts that we don't pay attention to the obvious flaws in the writing.
If there's any aspect that the greater presence of women readers has had an effect, it's the problem that SF has pretty much been a "boys club" for fifty years, reflecting the interests and views of a select group of elitist white males. It can be argued that relatively few women are going to be interested in how the bronze-thewed heroic spaceman triumphs in trampling the alien culture through dint of his superior intellect, and wins the beautiful woman to be his bride (or at least gets to boink her). When you have allegedly modern writers like SM Stirling talking about how once you take electricity away women will happily go back to being domestic slaves, when you have writers like Niven and Zelazney and Heinlein and Card regarding women as alien objects that can only be schtupped, not understood...well, that's not going to go over well in a somewhat more egalitarian society. And that's not even taking into account the generally reactionary, ethnocentric, and in many cases downright archaic views that a lot of SF writers have.
In other words, as writer Alastair Reynolds succinctly puts it: "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap."Fantasy seems to have a bit of an easier time meeting modern literary standards oddly enough, or rather it doesn't fall back on the "literature of ideas" excuse, and that's why it's been increasing in relative popularity.
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In other words, as writer Alastair Reynolds succinctly puts it: "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap."Fantasy seems to have a bit of an easier time meeting modern literary standards oddly enough, or rather it doesn't fall back on the "literature of ideas" excuse, and that's why it's been increasing in relative popularity.
Indeed. Also, one unfortunate reason that fantasy is doing better than SF is that fantasy isn't on average nearly as bleakly nihilistic as SF has become in the last 8 years. Rather than a "literature of ideas", much of it that isn't simply vile is a "literature of grim & depressing ideas". Given that analog magazine effectively became an arm of the Libertarian Party 20-25 years ago, I wonder how much of what we're seeing is the death of what has too much become, in the US at least, a literature of geeky angry white men. The fact that all but one (Kage Baker) of the SF authors whose books I buy on sight are British seems uncoincidental.
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And the term "Literature of geeky angry white men" is not my go-to term of choice.
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And I can't give fantasy a pass on authoritarian regimes. There is no difference between a king/queen/whatever ruling a galaxy and ruling a medieval kingdom.
I will grant that SF has subscribed more totally to the proposition that characterization means "load your characters down with neuroses." Yes, Stross, I'm looking at you. But Fantasy has it's share of the same.