Why I don't buy much SF these days

[chipotle]

That's SF as in science fiction, not San Francisco. But you knew that, right? In his weblog today, Greg Costikyan writes about "Elfy-Welfies, War Bores, Decadent Vamps and Licensed Crap":

Categories ... exist for readers who do not want to be challenged. They like sinking in to the warm familiarity of something they know they like. The problem is that I do want to be challenged. I want to be challenged with interesting ideas, distinctive writing styles, unconventional ways of looking at things, and transportation to a world very different from our own.

Costikyan takes his typical pull-no-punches approach. As is also typical for him, his observations ring very true to me, and explain a lot of why I don't come home with much written in my supposedly chosen genre -- and why I almost never get involved with open-ended series.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I don't know what genre he's reading, but it's not mine. I still find plenty of challenge in SF.

I find it funny that someone who belittles other people who buy easily-classified books for their own convenience also can't be bothered to go out of his way to actually look through the bookshelves for the books in the section that aren't standard fantasy epics or military SF operas. Shall we create a new subsection of the section for him? Perhaps we can title it the 'Different From Everything Else' section.

So not impressed.

[chastmastr.livejournal.com]

I pretty much follow writers more than anything else these days and when I like one a lot I accumulate them -- not only in comics but novels. Neil Gaiman is always good, and Alan Moore just published his first text novel, Voice of the Fire.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I'd noticed the same stratification of SF years ago. Hell, it's the reason one of my favorite novels in SF/Fantasy of the past year was one that never made it to the shores of the US, except as an import. It's "Fey" by Paul Kidd, and it lampoons most of the publishing industry as it stands today.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

haikujaguar went and said what I was thinking. Except I'll go further, the welfies and military fic ISN'T science fiction. And there is plenty of very good stuff that doesn't fall into that category.

But I tend to follow specific authors that I have either enjoyed before, had recommended to me, or enjoyed listening to/seeing at a convention.

[dour.livejournal.com]

Quite so. 90% of the examples cited are things that I would never, ever, ever call science fiction. Tolkein does not fit alongside Asimov and Clarke. But the split is not "elves" versus "androids;" it's not the subject matter that's really important, it's the ideology. Star Wars, for instance, belongs on the fantasy side of the split; examples are harder to find in the other direction, but I'd suggest that perhaps Glen Cook's Black Company (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/15CK0PKJXUI44/102-5972666-6674510) series belongs with the science fiction, especially after you get past the first trilogy. (Yes, by the way, this is a very long series which, I insist, I swear, actually gets progressively better as the books go on, and not because it's mostly disjointed like Discworld.)

David Brin (http://www.davidbrin.com/), in addition to being an excellent and challenging author, has written a slew of articles (http://www.davidbrin.com/fictionarticles.html) which articulate the differences fairly well. Probably the most direct of them is this one (http://www.davidbrin.com/matrixarticle.html), inspired by The Matrix. Among the criteria he mentions: does the author portray a Golden Age as something that could come, and should be strived for, or something that has passed and can only be lamented? and, are the heroes chosen by fate and marked by destiny, or are they people who made a personal decision to do something?

This doesn't get into the issue of pop-fiction, really... except that most pop-fiction falls solidly into the Romantic (fantasy) camp. But it's a lot of good stuff to think about.