SH Comments
Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
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This thread is for comments about The Old Equations, by Matthew Cheney.
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Anonymous
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I found the article interesting -- though it skirted some of my pet-opinions regarding SF and literature -- and it led me over to Cheney's blog. While I agree with him that nothing particularly new was said in "The Old Equations," the column is about how nothing particularly new is being said in SF either. Rather clever, I think. An eye for an eye, the blind leading the blind.
What did he skirt? While he mentions the drop in readership for A, A's, and F&SF, he never seems to question the marketability (or readability) of more literary or experimental work. Books like THE NAKED LUNCH or FINNEGAN'S WAKE are often mentioned, seldom read. What is their effect on the public at large? Superficial, at best.
Literary or experimental work does not sell magazines, is not a viable alternative to the cliches of the genre. The cliches, the literary affectations, the experimental gobbledegook... each acquires its own clique, its own dwindling reserve of die-hard fans, and perhaps that is what the majority of magazines are looking for these days.
There is nothing wrong with this. Some people want to "keep it in the family," and there is no law against _literary_ incest. But it doesn't appeal to me. This seaman would rather drown in the mainstream than be left wallowing in the mud when one of those shallow gene pools dries up.
--José
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bagoink
New user
Reged: Jan 27 2005
Posts: 24
Loc: New Castle. PA
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Thanks, José.
What he said.
Drew
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all the same writing a story makes you sweat even in winter also Im afraid because the lamp has gone out and as the man said my thumb akes
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Anonymous
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Books like THE NAKED LUNCH or FINNEGAN'S WAKE are often mentioned, seldom read.
Compared to what? Those books are still in print, while plenty of meat-n-potatoes fictions of all sorts (genre, mainstream, whatever) had their day in the sun, then vanished.
Here are the bestsellers for 1962, the year NAKED LUNCH came out:
1962-Fiction
Ship of Fools – Katherine Anne Porter
Dearly Beloved – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
A Shade of Difference – Allen Drury
Youngblood Hawke - Herman Wouk
Fail-Safe – Eugene Burdick
Seven Days in May – Fletcher Knebel
The Prize – Irving Wallace
The Reivers – William Faulkner (audio also)
1962-Nonfiction
O Ye Jigs & Juleps! – Virginia Cary Hudson 817.54 H886O (1963 also)
The Joy of Cooking – Irma S Rombauer 641.5973 R762j
My Life in Court – Louis Nizer 345.07 N737m
The Rothschilds – Frederic Morton 929.2 R847M
Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck 917.3 S819T (LP also)
Not a bad bunch of books, really. How many have you read? How many are still in print right now? Some are, to be sure, but not because Faulkner was an incredibly accessible thrill-a-minute kinda guy.
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David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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All I know is that the Atlantic doesn't run enough stories about spaceships blowing each other up.
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-- David
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Anonymous
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Didn't the _Atlantic_ have any stories of Columbia blowing up over North America? I think that kind of story is old hat, rather like the space shuttle itself. Most of the people reading that magazine probably don't drive cars as old as that space shuttle, and when you're so many miles above the earth you can't pull over to the side of the "road" and call for a tow-truck. You just crash and burn, baby.
That should be part of "The Old Equations" too: You either have nerds writing stories for other nerds, and science fiction isn't cool, or you have science fiction for the masses -- and what is that? Columbia blowing up. Or the Challenger. Pyrotechnics! Americans love to see things blown up.
That's why they threw a fit after 9/11 while they don't give a rip that drunk drivers (like our esteemed president of the US and his vice president) kill about five times that many Americans _every year_. Why? Pyrotechnics. Car crashes, even fatal ones, are mundane. Planes flying into a skyscraper, and that skyscraper crashing down? "Awesome!"
Not only that, but it's an excuse to go over to Afganistan or Iraq or wherever the Bushies can point their finger and BS a gullible (and scientifically illiterate) public. Why? Because the _Atlantic_ doesn't run enough stories about spaceships each other up.
Like that wonderful movie, _Brazil_, SF (its fans and writers) has failed to make this a better world, but maybe we can lose ourselves in it to the point that we don't give a rat's bastard if everything else goes down the tubes. SF is a style, right? Hare-style. "I'm late, I'm late..."
I'd like to see more stories about hollow teeth and indentured servants, or perhaps the Bush administration crucified upon cross-examination. To be honest, I don't know anyone who actually reads the _Atlantic_. I only know nitwits. They don't read, they knit.
Maybe I should take up knitting...
--José
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Gregory Benford
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True, in part.
Alas, most imitation sf or specfic is like THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA -- inept & ignorant.
What to do? Keep on keepin' on.
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David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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Didn't the Atlantic have any stories of Columbia blowing up over North America?
I meant fiction. My point was that out-of-ghetto acceptance of SF "terminology, settings, and set pieces" only goes so far.
But, to Mr. Cheney's main point. It may be the case that, as you (Jose) say, "literary or experimental work does not sell magazines". However, since nothing seems to sell magazines, it probably wouldn't do any harm, either. And I think Mr. Cheney would say that there's nothing particularly "experimental" about writing techniques that have been around for a hundred years.
That said, Mr. Cheney is a teacher of literature and a fan of Samuel Beckett, so I suspect that his idea of what would "revitalize SF and make it a less moribund genre" has a certain slant. If by "moribund" one means that interesting work is no longer being done, I think it's an unfair generalization, and one that probably could have been applied to the genre with as much justice at any point in the last 50 years. (I'll see your Ballard and Aldiss and raise you a Link, a Chiang, and a Sterling.) And if by "moribund" one instead means "irrelevant, in the larger scheme of things", I'd say the difference between Conjunctions and SCI FICTION is no more than the difference between, say, farriers and buggy-whip makers.
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-- David
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Nothing sells magazines? B&N sells magazines. I think that Tower Records probably does too. So does Oprah.
I'm split, myself. On the one hand, escape a la _Brazil_ because it's hopeless. "People are stupid." That is my attraction to surrealism -- and alcoholism. But I quit drinking last November, and I see in surrealism the generator of ideas and associations that can work in the real world too. That other side is trying to solve problems, to change the world and make it better. Andrei Codrescu got on PBS after 9/11 and described the conflict as that between religious fundamentalism and principles of the Enlightenment. Not so much us against them, because there are many factions of religious fundamentalism on our side too. Now: What can we do about it?
More specifically, what can science fiction do about it? In the ideal world it would not only entertain a la _Brazil_ but it would also inspire the public to humanistic values and scientific literacy -- and perhaps Gregory Benford has interesting things to say about this.
Personally, I don't agree with Stephen Jay Gould when he says that religion and science can ever peacefully coexist. There will always be an idealogical "war" between those who would base their beliefs or convict a person/nation as a matter of faith, and those who require sufficient evidence and a good reason. The one are puppets, and the others are ethical.
I would never say that literary or experimental work should not be written, and I wonder what Benford means when he says that THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA was "inept" and "ignorant." If he were a carpenter, and I used a hammer for a paperweight, would he call that "inept" and "ignorant" too? But a hammer can serve as a perfectly good paperweight, regardless of what it was originally designed for. In the case of Benford v. Roth, is science fiction that hammer?
I would argue that any use of FTL and time travel into the past is "inept" and "ignorant," though I wouldn't be surprised if Gregory Benford used this kind of hocus-pocus in many of his stories. Ultimately, who cares? I wonder how many of today's scientists were inspired as children by the hocus-pocus that they found in science fiction, and how many children of religious fundamentalists broke out of their mental chains and become ethical humanists because they were inspired by the ideas found in science fiction.
Science fiction can be a "gateway drug" because it is a genre of ideas, and those ideas are tied to those principals of the Enlightenment.
The experimental methods of Burroughs or Joyce, for example, are very much like those of surrealism. Tristan Tzara used the cut-up technique long before Burroughs ever did, and Andre Breton expounded on stream-of-consciousness or automatic writing to the point of compiling games and devices to aid this process. I think that these techniques may be invaluable to mining gray matter, but the ore needs to be refined and set in a proper context before it can win over a "normal" audience. Otherwise we are merely "preaching" to the choir, or showing off for our friends, and that does not sell magazines.
--José
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Tom Doyle
New user
Reged: Aug 09 2004
Posts: 6
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Without speculating on the causes right now, it seems to me that the situation described in this column is substantially worse in the major print short story markets than in the major markets for novels. But perhaps that's only because I haven't tried to sell a novel yet? Tom.
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