I am old enough to remember when ALL SF was considered absolute mindrotting
precious-bodily-polluting (thanks for Harlan Ellison for that term)
communist atheist weird perverted trash that should be BURNED. I was born
in Idaho in 1955. I had to get special permission and signed notes and all
sortsa stuff from my parents when I wanted to start checking out books from
the "adult" section of the public library when I was in junior high (the
"children's" section was supposed to last us until we were 18). I remember
when watching _Star Trek_ was considered weird, and I was part of the letter
writing campaign that supposedly saved it for its third season. NOt until I
was in college in another town (Bellingham, Washington) far from Moscow did
I find ANY OTHER PERSON except my father who read SF--and these were fellow
Trekkies. Most of my English teachers through college considered all
literature by LIVING WRITERS but especially GENRE fiction to be trash. I
had horrible experiences in creative writing classes when I turned in "that
weird stuff."
And I remember wonderful days within fandom talking endlessly about the
stuff we loved, books and media, arguing for distinctions, categories, etc.
It was obvious that different writers were doing different things: that
there was a distinction to be made between the 90% of stuff that, as
Theorodre Sturgeon so famously said, is crap (or mediocre, but which is
necessary for the other 10%), and the other stuff. It was fun--and I don't
remember it as being divise. Comics came in here too, though I wasn't as
much into comics myself. J.R.R. Tolkien is not the same as John Norman,
though both technically write "fantasy."
Plus, literature, the field I work in, is defined by setting genre
categories. Distinguishing is neither good nor evil--certainly setting
hierarchies of what is "good" or "bad" can be problematic and often tied to
institutional ideologies. But if you are thinking analytically about any
text, you are making distinctions, comparing and contrasting, and defining.
It is interesting to ask what defines science fiction, compared to fantasy,
compared to speculative fiction, compared to alternative histories, compared
to utopias and dystopias. The interesting thing is deciding what criteria
to use--and learning the examine the techniques (which are often similar to
those used in other literary genres).
I'd say there was some SF that was "postmodern" before that term was invented.
My general belief is that people can use anything to exclude people or
material that makes them uncomfortable. But genre categories do not have to
be used that way (any more than skin color), and the study of texts can be
fascinating and wonderful and fun and nifty, using definitions,
distinctions, similarites, etc.
Robin
he other stuff. Why do people think it has to be divisive or bad?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:38 PDT