Question: when did “literature” become defined as “anything you read that makes you miserable, guilty and hopeless about the universe” whereas any story that not only entertains you but makes you feel happier when you come to the end has been relegated to the status of inferior pulp dreck for rubes and morons? Once science fiction was all of the latter, but then somehow the genre attracted the attention of the Littritchur Brigade, and it’s been downhill ever since. Personally I think someone at a university somewhere had their stacks of “Princess Theta and the Moonbeasts” paperbacks discovered and had to come up with an excuse quick lest they become the laughing stock at their next faculty party. Tell me the truth, is any of that “thought-provoking” “speculative” science fiction about how White Anglo Saxon Males (“metaphorically” disguised as humans) oppress women ‘n’ minorities ‘n’ other-sexuals (“metaphorically” disguised as aliens) really fun to read? Is it uplifting? Does it make you feel hopeful — which is the base mental state necessary to enable human beings to actually work towards improving the conditions of our life on earth?
No it does not. Barring a few exceptions, most of the “literary” science fiction that has been published is depressing shit that I wouldn’t let my kids near if I had any. I’d let them glom up piles of “racist, sexist” pulp about evil Martians and Space Princesses in peril, because they’d know it was fantasy, but they’d learn valuable lessons on fighting evil and protecting good, but let them absorb the lesson that the human race is destined to misery and oppression forever and that there is no good or evil, just blobs of arbitrarily arranged molecules, as so much “important” science fiction promotes? That would be child abuse.
And that, folks, is why I don’t like the new Battlestar Galactica, and much prefer the old series despite it’s late 70s-style cheesiness. Also, coming up, my list of sucky science fiction books and why you should never let college professors write the stuff.
9 Responses to “The Dim Fantastic”
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November 25th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Read The January Dancer, Eifelheim, The Wreck of the River of Stars, or the Firestar series by Michael Flynn. Excellent writing and very, very entertaining.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Current sci fi, esp. current literary science fiction, is mostly dreary and pessimistic. And they’re praised for it!
BSG partly earned its “so good, it doesn’t feel like science fiction” – the second part is true.
I believe that so-called serious science fition doesn’t want the optimistic readers looking for drama, struggle against the odds, the triumph of the human spirit or human triumph in any form. Rather it cultivates a cynical, techno-pessimist preferring a dystopian future.
Books are a load of crap.
November 25th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
How about John Ringo and David Weber if you like military or geopolitical science fiction?
November 25th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I’m afraid I don’t like military and/or geopolitical science fiction very much.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I should add: it’s not my favorite genre (subgenre?) to read, but that isn’t to say that it can’t be well done. I just find politics boring, and I tend to get lost in battle scenes if there are too many of them in a book.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I bought some great old books at a garage sale recently: Andre Nortons’ Starman’s Son, A.E.Van Vogt’s Empire of the Atom and The Weaponshops of Isher (“The right to buy weapons is the right to be free!”) – all of them old school Golden Age of Science Fiction meaning they’re hopelessly straightforward heroic tales. It sure beats reading stuff like Gardner Dozois’ anthologies of the Year’s Best Science Fiction which is filled mostly with stories trying desperately to be original, inpenetrable, and ambiguous. Best science fiction, my a$$.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Andre Norton is one of my favorite writers. In fact, she’s one of the first science fiction writers I read. I have most of her books.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I think that Lem counts as “literature” and isn’t particularly depressing.
(Okay, sure, Solaris and Fiasco aren’t super-upbeat, but they’re not that kind of depressing.
Not dystopian, and full of human struggle (successful, in the sense of achieving grand technological feats and pursuing science with dedication)… that just can’t penetrate the utter alienness of the aliens involved.
On the other hand, I’ve mostly given up on reading modern SF – unless we consider Neal Stephenson SF, and I don’t think I do, though he gets to be Speculative Fiction – because Sturgeon’s Law applies to it as much as anything else, and I don’t have the time or desire to sift through it.)
November 26th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I tried reading something by Lem, and I just gave up. I don’t remember the name of the story — it was a long time ago — but I do remember that I couldn’t get into it; that something I needed was missing. Maybe it was over my head. I generally can’t get into Eastern European writers, either pre- or post-Berlin Wall.