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This should really be a comment to a discussion thread on Making Light, but I have not felt particularly welcome posting there, and am not anxious to be shouted down.
The thread centers around the relationship of science fiction to the fiction traditonally taught in English classes -- to call the latter "literary fiction" and the former "genre fiction," as I have in the past, is to use fighting words. ML's readership, composed mainly of the readers, writers, and editors of science fiction, seem to believe that the institutions of high culture have attempted to suppress and denigrate science fiction in favor of its highbrow counterpart. This attempt seems not to have been completely successful; several posters remark with glee that the sales figures for science fiction so utterly outstrip those for highbrow fiction as to render the latter irrelevant. At the same time, apparently highbrow fiction retains just enough relevance, thanks in large part to a cadre of committed, joyless English teachers, to carry out its work of suppression, denigration, etc.
I have now set up enough strawmen to frighten murders upon murders of crows. There are quite a few posters on the ML thread who are at home in both worlds, and take up relatively nuanced positions. But the less nuanced posters get my goat, attributing all virtues to science fiction and all vices to highbrow fiction.
In particular, there is one canard that sticks in my craw: that university-based practitioners of highbrow fiction crank out reams of uninspired books to meet tenure requirements, which are then consumed only by their MFA students. I have two words for the first part of this assertion: Bernard Malamud. Read "The Magic Barrel" and tell me that that was cooked up for a merit increase. And don't the vast majority of writers find themselves in situations where they must produce crap in order to survive? I can think of many SF writers -- Robert Silverberg, for example -- who had to plumb the depths in order to keep the checks coming, and no one told them that what they were doing meant that the genre had somehow lost its standing as a result.
For several years during my childhood, I read very little besides science fiction, much to the consternation of my parents. When I was a teenager, I found other kinds of literature, and found that there were dimensions to reading that the SF authors I had read had left unexplored. Asimov was not the last word on gender relations, and Heinlein was not the last word on plotting. In truth, I have rarely gone back, except when my work demanded it. There are some writers, like Neal Stephenson, who have captured my interest, but there are many satisfactions on my side of the fence.
What is to stop pluralism from breaking out? Only the usual demands that take place when both sides are aggrieved. "You stop teaching people that my literature is beneath notice and I'll stop saying that your literature is elitist and irrelevant."
In the end, all such conflict may be to no end, as literacy in general becomes endangered. I recently heard World of Warcraft described as "fantasy for people who don't know how to read." Surely that constitutes a bigger threat than obscure academic novels with press runs of 1500.
The thread centers around the relationship of science fiction to the fiction traditonally taught in English classes -- to call the latter "literary fiction" and the former "genre fiction," as I have in the past, is to use fighting words. ML's readership, composed mainly of the readers, writers, and editors of science fiction, seem to believe that the institutions of high culture have attempted to suppress and denigrate science fiction in favor of its highbrow counterpart. This attempt seems not to have been completely successful; several posters remark with glee that the sales figures for science fiction so utterly outstrip those for highbrow fiction as to render the latter irrelevant. At the same time, apparently highbrow fiction retains just enough relevance, thanks in large part to a cadre of committed, joyless English teachers, to carry out its work of suppression, denigration, etc.
I have now set up enough strawmen to frighten murders upon murders of crows. There are quite a few posters on the ML thread who are at home in both worlds, and take up relatively nuanced positions. But the less nuanced posters get my goat, attributing all virtues to science fiction and all vices to highbrow fiction.
In particular, there is one canard that sticks in my craw: that university-based practitioners of highbrow fiction crank out reams of uninspired books to meet tenure requirements, which are then consumed only by their MFA students. I have two words for the first part of this assertion: Bernard Malamud. Read "The Magic Barrel" and tell me that that was cooked up for a merit increase. And don't the vast majority of writers find themselves in situations where they must produce crap in order to survive? I can think of many SF writers -- Robert Silverberg, for example -- who had to plumb the depths in order to keep the checks coming, and no one told them that what they were doing meant that the genre had somehow lost its standing as a result.
For several years during my childhood, I read very little besides science fiction, much to the consternation of my parents. When I was a teenager, I found other kinds of literature, and found that there were dimensions to reading that the SF authors I had read had left unexplored. Asimov was not the last word on gender relations, and Heinlein was not the last word on plotting. In truth, I have rarely gone back, except when my work demanded it. There are some writers, like Neal Stephenson, who have captured my interest, but there are many satisfactions on my side of the fence.
What is to stop pluralism from breaking out? Only the usual demands that take place when both sides are aggrieved. "You stop teaching people that my literature is beneath notice and I'll stop saying that your literature is elitist and irrelevant."
In the end, all such conflict may be to no end, as literacy in general becomes endangered. I recently heard World of Warcraft described as "fantasy for people who don't know how to read." Surely that constitutes a bigger threat than obscure academic novels with press runs of 1500.
