Should Scientists Write SF?

Peter Watts and I are of one view on this: some of the worst sci fi writers in the world are/were scientists. He's written and spoken on this subject and I just penned a piece for my blog titled "Good Science = Bad fiction". Check it out (I can hear the teeth grinding now). Google "Beautiful Desolation" or go to
cliffjburns.wordpress.com. You'll find lots of food for thought there...er, but some
of it might not be palatable for all.

And there is is tons of bad (science) fiction written by non-scientists.

Painting with that broad of a brush is pointless.

OK, I read the blog post, and I remained convinced that you and he don't really like science fiction, you like literature that happens to be weird/futurish/speculative. This is not a criticism, but where he says "...the deployment of nanometer thick solar sails or the operation of ram scoop starships, etc. etc., blah, blah, blah", many science fiction fans could say "detailed descriptions of universal neuroses that give insight into the human condition, man's inhumanity to man, the redeeming power of love, etc. etc., blah, blah, blah". Science fiction is very much a genera of the now in science, or at least has been, despite many attempts to turn it into something "more meaningful."
There is a large body of good literature out there that causes a person to go from less understanding to more, and some of it is even in the realm of science fiction. I think however that to denigrate people who wrote and enjoy things like Dragon's Egg or The Integral Trees merely because they give detailed scientific explanations that accompany the plot, and that certain of those details may be obsoleted by current findings. That is indeed what science is, and works like Destination Moon or The Fountains of Paradise inspire real world scientific and engineering achievement, even and especially when they are wrong in the details. Does it really matter that Heinlein's characters were two dimensional if it inspired real live three dimensional astronauts to do what they do?
If you want literature, go pickup Nabokov or H. Melville or Calvino, or whoever, and enjoy. If you want to be a part of the discussion of the present and future science and technologies that will shape the people will be writing literature 50 years from now, pick up some science fiction.

Actually, there's a point to it - I once read an essay that talked about how in academic writing, authors who actually write anything that a normal person could understand, who write clearly and coherently and accessibly, are known as "populists" and are generally looked down upon.

Basically, writers that the academic community considers reputable, in the eyes of everyone else, SUCK.

Some food for thought before you start saying the idea that scientists make bad sci-fi writers is pure bunk.

Not saying I agree with it. While I can't name any novelists, some of my favorite sci-fi shows were written by people with a mind for science (like Futurama - at least two physicists on the writing staff).

The point is if I want to read good writing, I don't look to (many) science fiction writers. It is, to its detriment I think, a genre of ideas and ideas go quickly out of date while good writing persists. That, I think, was one of the points of the blog posting. The tone of the post on "Beautiful Desolation" was mocking and satiric and perhaps that is what's annoying to you (#3). Drop a note to Peter Watts and ask to see his comments vis a vis bad scientist/SF writers--he takes a different tack to utter similar sentiments. "Does it matter that Heinlein's characters are two dimensional"? Er, yes it does. It means that Heinlein is a terrible author (have a skim through NUMBER OF THE BEAST if you need any further proof of that) and many of his works are a crime against the printed word. Asimov had no ear whatsoever, completely tone deaf. I HAVE read Melville, Nabokov and Calvino--the problem is too many SF scribes (and fans) haven't. Perhaps then they'd learn more about characterization, plotting and, um, syntax. I welcome further thoughts and discussion on this point.

i definitely have to agree with #2 and say you're "painting with too broad a brush."

of the first sci-fi i ever read, two authors stand out to me as being heavily influential in my continued reading of the genre - and both of them are actual scientists (or were, before turning to writing). i'm thinking specifically of kim stanley robinson, who has quickly become one of my favorite authors, and alastair reynolds, who while his fiction may not be "literary", it is still quite entertaining and worth a read.

no, not all sci-fi authors are good "writers," but as #2 points out, that's a generalization that can be extended to writers of any genre. i saw a book by nicole richie in the "literature" section of my local b&n the other week and almost gagged. i think what you point out, re: writers such as asimov (good ideas, bad execution), can be seen throughout any genre, but perhaps because science fiction is so specialized, and therefore has fewer well-known authors, it is easier to point out the bad writers and have them be big names. when seeking good sci-fi at the book store, i find more garbage than books worth reading, i'll grant you that. but the same can be said about the "literature" section and the drivel that often ends up on the ny times bestseller list.

Some of the worst published writers studied writing.

Re: 5

Conversely, I'd say a lot of literary authors could read some more genre authors and get, you know, an actual plot.

:)

The debate can science fiction be literature, is very different from the debate, can scientists write good science fiction.

Much science fiction is not written by scientists! Writing is after all a full time profession, Science is a full time life, there is seldom the opportunity for both to meet.

Off hand I can only think of Issac Asimoc, Arthur C Clark and Ben Bova who are both authors and scientists. None of who's work would pass as literature, although it does contain some groundbreaking ideas.

Non-scientists who write scientifically detailed SF, Stephen Donaldson's less well know Gap series (starting with Real Story: is a good example, of well detailed characters, a fascintating world, some technical descriptions and a plot!

Scientists who are SF writers.

Alastair Reynolds - science PhD and used to work at ESA.
Geoffrey A. Landis - science PhD and works at NASA.
David Brin - science PhD and physics prof.
Greg Benford - physicist working at University of California, Irvine
Catherine Asaro - science PhD and classically trained dancer.
Sir Fred Hoyle - 'nuff said
Charles Sheffield - was chief scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation

Those were pretty much off the top of my head. I did have to look up some of the details.

If you include related fields like Computer Science, Philosophy Of Science, and people like Stephen Baxter - BSc in Maths, PhD Aeronautical Eng. you have a much wider field to choose from.

Finally, I like this quote from Chris Moriarty's website - "Many hard sf writers actually are scientists, of course. But some of the best writers in the field have the same relationship to real scientists that mafia movie directors have to real gangsters: they want to hang with them and carry the 'big iron' (or at least pretend to), but they don't want to do the jail time."

Re #5, "The point is if I want to read good writing, I don't look to (many) science fiction writers."

This takes me back to the thread on why "literary" writers refuse to admit they're writing sci-fi ... that is, I think there's plenty of good sci-fi writing out there, but a lot of it happens to be written by people who want to avoid the actual "sci fi" tag ...

On the topic of whether scientists make good sci-fi writers, I would be willing to bet that most people who already hold one non-writing job probably aren't good writers ("Good" in the literary sense mentioned in the first post.) ... how many lawyers write good courtroom dramas? How many actors have written good novels on Hollywood? How many doctors have written good medical novels?

Frankly, one should be surprised when anyone can pull this kind of double-duty.

What an odd thread, given that I remember Kurt Vonnegut portraying Kilgore Trout as absolutely ignorant of the most basic science in either Slaughterhouse Five or Breakfast of Champtions. He even went on to say that this was typical of science fiction authors.

Thanks for the debate, folks, which is why I posted (and wrote the article in question on my blog) in the first place. I point out that Peter Watts too is a scientist and his latest book has been short-listed for ye venerable Hugo Award. Peter's views are worth exploring--contact him through his Rifters.com website and I'm sure he'd be happy to send you excerpts from a speech he gave that, in many ways, was tougher on scientist/authors than my mini-essay.

It has been alleged in one of the above posts that neither Peter nor I like SF which is palpably not true. But we do recognize the limits of the genre and I think we'd like to see its readers and writers become more discerning and critical when it comes to its stylistic and literary lapses. I don't think too many of you, in all honesty, could defend the writing abilities of most of your favorite SF scribes and in other forums I've heard SF readers claim they're not looking for good writing, they're looking for escapism or "neat ideas". SF fans get downright defensive when they're told the abilities of their writers don't really measure up. I like Philip K. Dick's work but I'm forced to concede that vast majority of it is hack work, redeemed every so often with terrific efforts like SCANNER DARKLY, UBIK and PALMER ELDRITCH. I like Richard K. Morgan but he seriously needs an editor to pare down his efforts considerably. Profligate imaginations often lead to undisciplined, bloated prose (scientist/scribes love to expend pages giving the latest theories on FTL, etc. in mind-numbing detail). Too many SF novels would be better served as novellas or short stories. Currently the worst transgressor in that respect is Robert Sawyer. I urge you to read my original article to view my points in more detail.
Then I'd be happy to entertain and listen to further thoughts & opinions.

I don't know what SF you are reading - I've not read the authors you mention, but
" (scientist/scribes love to expend pages giving the latest theories on FTL, etc. in mind-numbing detail). "

Is possably the least accurate description of poor SF writing that I've come across. I just haven't met anything like that at all. Some of the criticisms about characterisation have some validity to some authors, but I've never encountered pages of technical detail in a novel. Of course all scientists do write non-fiction too, that's why they are scientists. Are you sure you are reading the right bits?

#10's list gives some supurb authors, writing excellant SF. Read them, let us know what you think.

Of the writers listed in #10, I would say only Alastair Reynold's the only one who passes muster for me. Benford and Brin make me wince (Benford's characterizations and Brin's...well, Brin's EVERYTHING). Hoyle...well, I think Hoyle is better known for his contributions to science than fiction, wouldn't you agree? Asaro, I concede, I haven't read. Are you denying that exposition is a major problem for SF? Over-writing in general (those profligate, undisciplined imaginations I spoke of above)? Again, I suggest you read my piece in toto before commenting further. AND solicit Peter Watts' views. I'm necessarily paraphrasing myself in this forum, for brevity...

15>

Well just because he is a superstar in the science field doesn't mean we should discount Hoyle when it comes to SF. Both by himself and with his son.

Asaro - well I have only read one of her novels myself (serialised in Analog). But from what I remember it had very little in the way of techno info-dumps.

Also I am confused by your message 13. None of Philip K. Dick, Richard Morgan or Robert Sawyer are scientists. Or scientist wannabes. If you want I can probably name writers writing SF who are much worse than those three for infodumping, poor characterisation, and plain and simple bad writing. Guess what? They ain't scientists either.

It seems your real complaint is that not enough SF writers are writing the books you want to read. To tell you the truth, the writers you hold up as paragons sometimes leave me cold. As you mention in your blog entry mentions you are a snob.

Also I am not sure why you keep on asking us to talk to Peter Watts. Appealing to authority isn't a particularly attractive trait. Peter is just an individual with his own preferences. Just because he is a scientist/SF writer doesn't make him any more right than any other person. It does give him a certain knowledge about writing SF though, but no more than any of the other scientist/writers that have been mentioned.

I think you have scientific papers and fiction confused here. Or you just read the end notes of Watts own latest novel, which is exactly what you describe, so are you sure he is not taking the piss? :)

We certainly don't need him to hold our hands before we can have an opinion, or to read whatever you might have happen to written that you can't even be bothered to copy and paste to here if it is so interesting. One might suspect pimpage in this case. As in, said blog might be by an unsuccessful writer?

Are you seriously suggesting SF is over-written compared to literary fiction, in general? 160 pages of the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy compared to whatever 400-500 page piece of rubbish with someone contemplating that they are a bit depressed and not shagging enough for the whole of that, and nothing else happening? :) (with a lot of thesaurus work and profligate punctuation). That would just about be the definition of overwritten, the latter. It is about nothing, so why would anyone give a piece of faecal matter?

If the story is crap, it makes no difference how well written the book is, unless you are in some technical analysis class, then the book is crap and not worth wasting your time on, if you looking for entertainment, which is the case for most people.

A lot of books could be shorter, Blindsight itself is 400 pages or thereabouts.

I agree with reading_fox that I have never seen a book like that. I have seen scientific papers like that, because, well, they are supposed to be. The simple solution if you don't like physics, or can't grasp enough of the basics to enjoy it, and never will, then don't read it. That ain't rocket science, as they say. I am not interested in basket-weaving, so I am not too likely to read novels featuring basket-weaving in any amount of detail, for example. If you know that, and still do it, you are being masochistic, or stoopid, or both.

I think anyone who can write should write whatever they like to. Writing is hard. Also, there are different schools telling which style is better than the other. And style is, to some extent, personal.
I happen to enjoy characterdriven plots, preferably with some added complexity like loyalty, culture, technical progress, politics, etc. And I think there are some good authors out there pulling the trick, in SF and F alike. If the authors are also engaged as something else; I don't care, as long as they deliver.

I'll give anyone that there are plain bad writing that gets published,; that is the case for almost any genre publishing houses has targeted as major cash flow. Be it fantasy or chick lit or historical romance or... sf.
If only what passed as high standards to some self appointed elite got published, this would be a sad world to live in.
We maybe don't need the outright technically bad works written on pure speculation, but I bet authors like Asimov and Arthur C Clarke did write at least partly for other reasons. And while maybe not technically accomplished in their writings they had things to say...

Hmmm. Let's see if I have this straight.

Scientist SF writers put in too much technobabble. (Rather like interminable descriptions of how to cut up and process a whale.)

Non-scientist SF writers create one-dimensional characters and have poor writing skills.

So why read the stuff?

more crap technobabble :-
------------------------------
Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and
countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often
forced, none exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called
pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises
boasts nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an inveterate
running whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful distance
to which the long lance is accurately darted from a violently
rocking, jerking boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood
included, the entire spear is some ten or twelve feet in length; the
staff is much slighter than that of the harpoon, and also of a
lighter material--pine. It is furnished with a small rope called a
warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to the
hand after darting.

But before going further, it is important to mention here, that
though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance,
yet it is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently
successful, on account of the greater weight and inferior length of
the harpoon as compared with the lance, which in effect become
serious drawbacks. As a general thing, therefore, you must first
get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play.

Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness
and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to
excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed
bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is
forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or
thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb
whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to
secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed.
Then holding the lance full before his waistband's middle, he levels
it at the whale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses
the butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon
stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He
minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin.
Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the
bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot
of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.

"That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's
immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it
were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old
Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the
jet, and we'd drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew
choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that
live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff."

Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is
repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in
skilful leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line
is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands,
and mutely watches the monster die.
-----------------------------------------

:-) :-)

"Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the
bright steel spans the foaming distance. . . ."

The bright steel had a nameless impulse?? :-)

To add to andyl's list:

Joan Slonczewski, Yale University, Ph.D., Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; current chair of the biology department of Kenyon College. Hasn't written for a while, but wrote some decent novels (my fave is Door into Ocean). Mind you, she won't make any Modern Library top ten lists...

Mary Doria Russell, PhD in biological (forensic) anthropology. Granted she only wrote two books which can be considered SF but I include her here, nonetheless.

(This thread was a very amusing read. :))

There seems to be two topics of discussion going on here.

1. As the title of the thread suggests, should scientists write SF? These seems like an interesting topic for a group of SF fans to discuss.

My opinion here is that scientists (and I am married to one) can do what they like. If they want to write fiction, I say, go for it.

2. Science fiction as literature with a capital "L". Much of this has already been discussed on the thread about why literary authors don't admit they write SF or something like that.

I think, as others have said before, that science fiction is a literature of ideas (not just scientific) at its best and storytelling genre at the very least. If the prose does not equal that of literary novels it is because the readership has not demanded it of them. All literature doesn't have to play by the same rules, nor does it have to have the same intent. And different readers like different forms of entertainment or look for different things from their novels. I see no reason why the two cannot coexist, they do at our house.

Will anyone be quoting Benford/Brin/Bova a hundred and fifty years from now (see #20--"bluetyson")? But I leave it there--the floor's yours, folks, I've got two writing projects on the go and a deadline looming. Keep popping by my blog on occasion and don't be afraid to drop a remark or two my way. Comments, pro or con, are always welcome. You should read the one left by the chap responding to "Good Science = Bad Fiction" on my site. I think he saw where I was coming from. And in terms of disliking or having little knowledge of SF, one glance at my "Prometheus Mission" piece (Click on "Non-fiction" on my blog) should disabuse you of that notion. I'll let Peter Watts speak for himself--his credentials and abilities are beyond dispute, at least to my mind.

In 150 years, absolutely, presuming we haven't killed each other off and lost the tech, and extrapolating storage, then all the public domain books will be on the back of a wristwatch, or just network accessible, so absolutely. Given they have scientific work as well, it is far more likely than any garden variety writer. You are happy to ignore the horribly turgid infodump example above by one of your paragons? :)

You are a writer? Why I am not shocked. :)

Marketing guru you ain't, so please stop with the third-rate spam and pimpage.

>>Keep popping by my blog on occasion

Uhh... no thanks.

I would agree with bluetyson.

People still read Wells and Verne despite their dodgy science.

The Black Cloud is still eminently readable. Hal Clement's hard SF is still readable. Asimov (The Caves Of Steel in particular) is still readable. Heinlein's short stories are still readable. All of these are at least 50 years old. They haven't faded from view as the SF of the 20s did (eg. E.E. 'Doc' Smith et al.)

Of course, most novels will fall by the wayside and become relatively unknown. This happened to most of the early gothic novels and most of early Victorian literature. As the pool of choices (the total number of books published in a particular timeframe) increases the probability that any one book is widely read by the public decreases. This may even occur regardless of quality of significance.

And the science fiction (and fantasy) community is working hard - quite successfully, I think - to establish an aesthetic of its own, a literary canon, through scholarship, criticism, intelligent discussion..etc.

Whether our sentimental favorites are readable to subsequent generations.. well...

Blog pimpage is a good term. I don't think I've seen one post of his that doesnt mention his blog. I heartily dislike, to put it mildly, book snobs - why would I read one's blog?

Uck.

And that's really all this thread is about - more book snobbage.

Heh, book snobbage and blog pimpage.

One final clarification: I refer you to my site because I discuss these issues in more detail there--where the original article is posted along with essays on themes relating to the writing life. I don't think that's pimping. And as I've mentioned in other forums, I'm tired of braindead sci fi fan-boys whose only method of debating is "Oh yeah? You suck!". Isn't there a higher level of discourse here? That's what I was seeking when I posted my comment. If I've broken some unwritten rule about mentioning my blog, apologies to all concerned. The protocol is still new to me. Basta...

No one said you suck. We did say you were a lazy blog pimp though. :) Oh, and that some of your suggestions of great writers are guilty of the sins that you don't like in other writers. I read a 6 page excerpt of a Cormac McCarthy book the other day and it was horrible. Short, kid sentences one after the other with no flow, followed by purple overwriting, and the odd ridiculous adjective. He 'glassed' something when using binoculars? Unreadable, to me.

If you are completely too slow to get any of this, despite professing some sort of decent level of comprehension and reading ability, then:

If you go on and internet forum and all you do is tell people to go and look at something, that is nothing but advertising. An obvious sign of this to anyone that has used the internet for more than 5 minutes is exactly what you have done. Complete disinterest in saying what you have to say in that particular location and multiple mentions of some website or other location.

That is pimping, not to mention rude.

Coming off like an arrogant tosser won't help either. Those with decent communications skills that are interested in polite discussion would not seriously do any of the above. Nor would they make ridiculous generalisations.

e.g. 'I think all the stuff you read is bad, why do you read it, etc. Multiple reasons have just been detailed for people not to give a rat's patootie what you have to say.'

Notice how no-one here has suggested that you shouldn't read what you like, or that you are stupid if you do? If you don't understand the difference between that, and 'I don't read writer X, he sucks', then try harder.

If you seriously didn't mean any of the above then you could definitely benefit from reading some internet etiquette guides. Not very many of us will be believing this at the moment, though. If you happen to be an SF writer, too, then apart from being handicapped by not being very well read in the literature, you just managed to make a large number of people have no interest ever in reading, let alone paying for, anything you have ever done, or will do.

Morphidae, snobbage is definitely a good one too.

'I do not care to peruse blogs that display incidence of snobbage.'

:-)

Actually, I think the book snobbishness here goes in both directions.

It is quite possible that >1 CliffBurns: intended to be provocative so as to start, what he hoped would be, an animated and somewhat intelligent discussion; and, perhaps, he may not have done it with great internet savvy or savvy of any kind but I think >33 bluetyson: you can lower your weapons now (one too many Baen books for you, me thinks:-))

Many of Literature's classics were once "populist" literature of the past - Dickens, for example. Even earlier, fiction itself was frowned upon. It is entirely possible that many SF novels will survive 150 years but, imho, they probably won't be the titles we think will.

I think there are some very talented prose writers in the SF genre who know how to use the novel (or short fiction) form as art. There are more than a few very fine storytellers in the SF genre. There are some very wonderful visionaries (the ones with the coolest ideas) also; and there are also some writers who have some thoughtful things to say about life, the universe and everything. Things that really stick with us.

Most of us are pretty happy with a book/author who does any one of those things....but every now and again a master comes along who is more than any one of these individual things... say, not just a great storyteller, but also an artist and a visionary. I think these will be the greats. Out of my favorites, I think Ursula Le Guin has been one of these, quite possibly Octavia Butler. According to this "theory", who would you nominate?

Actually, not many Baen books here. :) Apart from Thraxas and he is more the beer and pies relax in the pub kind of guy, as opposed to blow up the commies/those that don't think like us type. :-)

I happen to have quite liked Moby Dick, but it isn't a secret that in general, I am not too interested in the mundane side of things. Occasionally, yes, and then it is most likely to be Australian, these days, because that is more interesting to me. Chucky, as you mention was in the newspapers, etc.

There are millions and millions of books to read, and I will only ever get to some thousands of them. Is it snobby to choose to read mostly what you think you will like, given a past history sample and probability distribution of thousands of titles? Quite possibly. Sensible and logical, though.

You yourself have professed the same sort of thing in the above post, and before in that you don't want to read military Sf. Possibly you aren't reading a lot (or any) of books about sport, or mathematics, or Batman, or whatever. Looking at it like that, everyone is a snob if there is a whole range of things they will never even consider touching.

The OP latched onto Peter Watt's thoughts as though they were his own and then tried to expand Watt's claims. Watt's is a prickly enough writer, he's griped about many things in his short writing career, which is not all bad. I think Watt's has a few critical books in him about the genre. Like all other SF critics his thoughts on the field will be highly subjective.

Brian Aldiss has ranted just like Watts does but turned out some good critical work. He thinks everything he writes about the field is correct but many others disagree with him on many points. Damien Broderick can be a viscious critic as can Thomas Disch. A critic needs strong opinions but along with that comes stubbornness.

David Hartwell is a more level-headed critic than most and his understanding of the genre is pretty wide. Gary Westfahl has done some in depth work and is the critic that claims SF and fantasy are so intertwined as to be inseparable for the most part, the science part be damned. Put all the above critics in the same room and one would drown in opinions and interpretations.

But coming here and saying go to my blog to see the whole argument because I can't be bothered to reiterate it here is just galling.

Cliff Burns did say on the pimped blog that he was a snob. He claims he doesn't read for pleasure. So for a start he is coming at this from a completely different angle to most of us. We mostly read entirely for pleasure. We don't particularly care if the artistry is somewhat missing as long as the story or the innovation compensates.

I think the point that Dickens was regarded as a populist is a good one. Many contemporary critics also technically slated his work. "Bleak House is, even more than its predecessors, chargeable with not simple faults, but absolute want of construction".

As to which are going to last 100 or 200 years it is anyone's guess. My guess is it will be those books that have been constantly in print for a while now, and which have had big budget TV/films made of them. Dune and The Day Of The Triffids. Ursula Le Guin is likely to be remembered, although it may be more for the Earthsea novels than the serious SF. Similarly Octavia Butler will be remembered mainly for Kindred because of its importance as a piece of Black literature rather than as a SF writer. There are plenty of writers who I think should be remembered (both for story-telling ability and artistry and for having something relevant to say) but I don't think that they sell in enough quantity now to be classed as well-known today let alone in 150 years time.

Finally as bluetyson is Australian his message 33 is more of a mild rebuke than a full-bore attack.

>36 VisibleGhost: You aren't kidding about Disch! I read his The Stuff our Dreams are Made Of when it came out and probably disagreed with most of it but it was thought-provoking. I should pull that off the shelf bet there are some good topics for threads...(i.e. like the subject of the bald woman in science fiction:-))

>35 bluetyson: You are absolutely correct about what I probably have read; however, I don't consider preferences to be snobbishness. I think things get snobby when one adds haughtiness, disdain or condescension to the mix.

>37 andyl: you make good points, as always.

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledonhas managed to survive and be read for 70 years now. I reread it a couple of years ago and I see no reason why it won't be read in 30 more years. Or 50.

No argument there. Star Maker :- http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601841.txt

Be hard for Dune to disappear on sheer number of copies you would think, too, apart from Movie and tv series. Unless, that is, future society has a serious sand taboo. :) There's a SF story for someone.

If there is no collapse, we may well have no concept of the technology that will exist, or what 'survive' will mean.

VG, thanks for the Westfahl mention, wasn't aware of him, perhaps, although that encyclopedia sounds vaguely familiar.

I enjoy Olaf Stapledon extemely. But seriously how well known do you think he is? Even within SF circles let alone amongst the general public. The SF Masterworks reprints or Star Maker and Last And First Men may have helped his profile but he is massively under-valued.

BTW - all of his works are still under copyright in the UK (and I presume Europe and the Commonwealth). The US had a vastly different copyright regime than the rest of the western world until fairly recently.

Other SF from the 30s that still has some recognition today -

Philip Wylie - Gladiator (this should be very familiar to bluetyson)
Jack Williamson - The Legion of Space
Joseph O'Neill - Land Under England

The early works of John Wyndham written as John Beynon.

As I mentioned above E.E. Doc Smith.

Gladiator might be close to the oldest paperback I have, apart from the electronic version, I think. Here :- http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/sf/gladiator.html

Australian copyright is different to New Zealand (same as Canada they are I think, less likely to copy the USA) which is different to Europe which is different to the US. Some Northern Hemisphere nutjobs want to extend it and some insane person wanted it to be infinite recently.

That would make the most at risk works of being lost stuff from the later part of the 20th century pre-digital looking at it from a technology and crazed copyright point of view.

Lovecraft and Howard and Merritt and Nowlan's Buck Rogers of course are around that 1930s time.

Weinbaum's A Martian Odyssey etc. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601191.txt

The best writer I know of in the SF field is Gene Wolfe. His ideas are fascinating, his styles match his stories, his characters are three-dimensional, and he invites me to work with him as I read. By training he is a mechanical engineer, so I would say yes, at least some scientists should write fiction.

Wolfe has a small but ardent following; I suspect he will still be read and argued about for many years. Given the changes in technology that have occurred in the last century, this is a very different question for today's writers than it was for Dickens or even Fitzgerald.

#41- re: Stapledon

Sometimes hanging on by just staying in print gives a work a chance to survive. I don't think Star Maker has ever been out of print. With the rise of the internet it's easier to track works. On LT one can follow the number of copies added to the overall library. I have checked the sales rank for Star Maker on Amazon.com in August and January. It does get a bump so I think it's getting assigned in certain places. Not in huge numbers but enough to keep the work alive. A lot of colleges offer some kind of course or courses in SF now. I'd say more than used to be the case.

Most fiction in any genre written in the 1930s has been out of print for fifty years now and is nearly forgotten but Stapledon is hanging on for the time being.

bluetyson, now I might be inclined to argue with you about Dune. I think of Dune as a fantasy with SF trappings...but is that is perhaps a discussion for another day:-)

Ah, Jim53, Wolfe is a veritable God among the Readercon crowd here on the East coast. (see LT group here).

You'd be one of the few whacky people, then, re: Dune. Possibly form a club with the Tolkien as science-fiction because of the mills people. :-) :-)

From the Road to Dune:

" 'Later in the month, Frank Herbert replied, sending additional chapters. He wrote:

The science in these books is essentially broad-focus—the shaping of politics, the transformation of an entire planet, religion (the transformation of an entire people), and does not dwell long on specific single tools—although I'll be surprised if you don't discover that the "stillsuit" concept is a new one, and it plays a key part in the stories. And for that matter, human individuals are treated as ecological tools, so what this adds up to is that we're looking at science in a different way here.'"

imho, Dune being sold as SF is much the same as SF novels now as fantasy. Remember, in sixties fantasy could not get published (and expect to sell well) until Lord of the Rings got "hot" about the same time and opened the door to a fantasy market. You'll not convince, nor will Herbert - it's still a wolf in SF sheep's clothing, imo. But, I suppose it makes a difference how narrow a definition of SF one has:-)

Here's a disturbing headline from 2003 I came across:Editors crown Tolkien lord of science fiction. This is an article in USAToday. The editors mentioned are the editors of the SFBC. Check out their top ten list here
Now there's a group using the term "science fiction" loosely.

Who was the author that tried to create a sub-genre called hard fantasy? I read the book but can't remember the title. I think it had Iron in the title. The dragons had engines IIRC. I never did quite figure out what would make something hard fantasy and I haven't seen the term lately so I guess it went away.

Michael Swanwick? Iron Dragon's Daughter?

Yeah, that's it.

Even though I am mostly mildly amused by the comments in response to Burns' post (in his Blog) about hard SF writers etc., I figure it can't hurt to repost my own comment on that original piece. Especially since i do read for pleasure (without checking my brain at the door) and am a huge fine of science-fiction/fantasy/horror, etc...:

This is a contentious topic which has bothered me since I was 12 and started reading Asimov, Bradbury, Tolkien, Herbert etc. Quickly I began to lean towards sci-fi or fantasy (or any texts) that actually contained developed/interesting characters, with original narratives/plot and ideas combined with skilled writing. This was further highlighted after reading the ‘Literature’ greats which could be sub-categorized as Speculative, Science-Fiction, or Fantasy: Aldous Huxley, Borges, George Orwell, Zamyatin, J.G. Ballard, Anthony Burgess, Vonnegut, Tolkien, and a host of others I’m surely forgetting (I’ve purposefully left out Atwood due to personal distaste). The fact is many ‘literary’ authors had produced texts where the medium or setting employed a speculative device – whether near/distant future or fantastical/magical elements -- which ultimately was a vehicle, or secondary, to a primarily excellent tale whether didactic/expository or to a degree escapist.
And even in the genre fiction canon there are/were wonderful standouts (depending on one’s personal preferences): Bradbury as Cliff mentioned, Ursula Le Guin, Fritz Lieber, Gene Wolf, Moorcock, Delaney, and even the pulpy likes of Robert E. Howard. Original standouts that sometimes defy categorization are Philip K. Dick (in a hazy class of his own) and William Gibson (spawning hordes of ‘punkish’ imitators) whose near future predictions/visions were either dead-on, or his inventions later made real by the techies. In the ‘new’ generation we are blessed with Banks, Reynolds, Macleod, Stross (there is something in the UK gestalt? Or water?), Jack Womak, Sterling, et al.
Undoubtedly I am forgetting many others worth mentioning, and my own categorical attempts are implicitly doomed to fail. Let us just say, as the crux of Cliff Burn’s essay proclaims, that good writing withstands the test of time somehow… despite the diminishing levels of astute readership in our modern times.
This diminutive capacity of readers and the publishing world is acutely witnessed in contemporary Science-Fiction and Fantasy (we could also add Horror and Mystery or other genres to this list) as Cliff points out. People desire large new scientific ideas, without first demanding good writing. As much as I liked Niven’s Ringworld, I didn’t really try to understand how it all worked, yet this is the focus of the majority of his fans. Diagrams, equations, and 3-D models cannot replace a worthwhile story. Hard Science-Fiction writers: remove your dongs from the hard drive. Enough said. I’m always on the lookout for Fantasy worth reading, but a quick perusal of jacket covers/back blurbs and the first page of 99% of what I am likely to find at major bookstores elicits a Sartrean nausea response. The main problem, perhaps, is most readers are seeking an escape from their reality – we all hunker for a level of escapism in our reading but hopefully not by sacrificing our intelligence. Thus, the publishing/writing world has latched on to this adolescent urge and stagnated the market.
There are some good horror writers out there (Ligotti stands out, even Lumley, etc.) but I have to wallow through gallons of piss first. I truly enjoyed King’s early novels (I was a teenager then) but have read nothing of his published since the 80s… Cliff already acknowledged his overly harsh comment at King’s accident (at heart Cliff is not capable of murder unless you dare threaten his family or integrity) propelled by the extra booze (believe me I’ve made worse drunken comments), but it reveals the frustration towards writers like King who hit the publishing lottery and lost their original impetus, and maybe he wanted to prick the weak skins of the die-hard fans at the convention for a reaction….
The Swanwick incident is funny yet sad. I loved his early work like ‘In the Drift’, ‘Vacuum Flowers’, ‘Stations of the Tide’ – penned in the 80s and 91. Since then he’s produced 3 mediocre novels in 16 years so Cliff’s comments may have rung true and Swanwick knows it (that’s why he walked away) – otherwise what is wrong with healthy/fun/heated debate? But everyone is f**king afraid to speak their minds. Aspiring writers or adoring fans wish to pucker up to famous nether cheeks for a future morsel of approbation. Established writers want positive blurbs from writer friends or good reviews. In the end the blind lead the blind into a reeking morass, swallowing bellyfulls of septic tank eflluence.
Enough with my conjecture and rambles.

#51 said-I’m always on the lookout for Fantasy worth reading, but a quick perusal of jacket covers/back blurbs and the first page of 99% of what I am likely to find at major bookstores elicits a Sartrean nausea response.
____________

Good grief Cliff. This is the age of the internet. One doesn't have to rely on dust jacket covers and blurbs to find books to their taste. Use LT. Use Amazon's various recommendation systems. The books can get as cerebral as one wants. Start with someone like Zoran Zivkovic and his The Fourth Circle for fantasy and go from there. Just don't throw a fit if you don't see this kind of stuff on the bestseller lists.

And the sad thing is, this could have been an interesting discussion (and was, in some parts) about (general) differences between scientist/non-scientist writers and hard/soft SF.

But don't feed the troll, guys :) It only encourages them.

You are operating under a misapprehension (#53, #54). I do not feel the need to use pseudonyms, never used a pen name. I have not posted since message #31--I was utterly turned off by the tone of the "discussion". Too many personal remarks and defensiveness rather than an informed debate.

If it is not you, then ok. However, the tone is you. Three opening sentences. Overly broad generalisation, antagonism, and deliberately pointed out condescension, 1/2/3. Not how to start an informed pleasant discussion (the pimping covered in detail already). (Mentioning Peter Watts, too, and implying perhaps that the biology of Space Vampires is an ok thing to write about, but not something else like quantum mechanics, makes it even sillier.)

Do you understand that, and the criticism of method, at least, if you are taking your ball off in the domestic direction?

As opposed to perhaps something like this and putting a modicum of time and thought into it, and coming up with of the top science fiction writers, x% are scientists, but I think x+10% of these scientists aren't that great at writing, compared to the average SF writer, here's why. Here's a list. What do you think?

That's an informed discussion point, as opposed to 'the worst writers are human, just let the mice write, given the dolphins have left, those humans are terrible.'

FYI:
The LibraryThing TOS are not featured as prominently as they perhaps should be. Here are some quotes from the ones relating to "Talk."

What's not allowed
Do not make personal attacks. As Wikipedia's policy states, "Comment on content, not on the contributor."
. . .
If you come across an abusive post, click the "flag abuse" link. The flag will be visible only after it has been flagged twice. After four different users have flagged a post, it will be deleted.
Please do not flag posts as "abuse" simply because you disagree with what is said, or if someone criticizes your favorite book, author, or idea—that's not abuse, it's a difference of opinion. We welcome differences of opinion!
Discussions can become heated and passionate—never forget that the person on the other side is human. If you're upset by something or someone, try to calm down before responding. Remember that LibraryThing Talk is public space; don't say anything to others that you wouldn't want a room full of people to overhear.

Well it seems you had the second posting removed? again another sign of weakness and the fact you are not able to take it as well as you presume to dish it out especially considiring your own petty attacks.

The way it works is that the general readership decides to flag posts. Once four people have done so that post is hidden not removed. I have no idea if bluetyson decided to flag it or not. My guess (from the strength of his reply) is that he did not. I do notice he had the courtesy to remove his own post now that yours has been flagged as abusive. I did not flag your post (even though I thought it abusive) because bluetyson had already replied robustly.

First, I am not Mr. Cliff Burns. How sad/funny you ignorantly assume no one else might have similar thoughts on the little hobby you call SF reading.

Well your behaviour is mighty strange. You joined LT yesterday. You have no books catalogued. The only place you have participated is here in support of Cliff Burns. Your tone does not match that of a new user without a dog in this fight. Is it any wonder if people thought you a sock-puppet? Even though you are not I would imagine that you have a prior acquaintance with Cliff Burns either in real life or via electronic means. I would also be very surprised if it is by just mere chance that your stumbled upon LT, and the SF Fans group and this discussion.

And isn't it odd you are allowed to use words like 'tosser' and 'pimp' pejoritively but I am not allowed to use similar vernacular?

Again it isn't about allowed / not allowed. It is about whether people judge the post as a personal attack or excessive profanity. 'Pimp' was in context to the over-promotion of the blog and not attempting an on-site discussion. It seems a perfect word for the activity. 'tosser' was only used after 'braindead sci-fi fan-boy'. Neither of which attracted a flag. Your post was probably not flagged for any particular word but for its general abusive tone.

>59 Condor: said "...Fanatics (ironically the origin of the word 'fan'..."

That's only one theory.

I just realized that there's a problem with the group name. In fandom, the plural is fen. :-)

*grabs some popcorn and pulls up a chair*

Hey, guys, I know it can be fun, but seriously, stop feeding the troll. It's not worth it.

"sorry, but i will always be on the lookout for hypocrites and weaklings who might cower behind their 'rules' and 'regulations' and simply end up exposing themselves."

Meanwhile, some of us will discuss books, authors, and such.

65>

Again I feel you are being deliberately antagonistic and verging on abusive behaviour. Calling people worms in your first fragment of text is hardly likely to endear you to people or to open a reasonable debate. Nor does hypocrites and weaklings.

Your attribution seems to be all over the shop as well. You reply to some of the points I raised as if MyShelves had raised them.

I was the one who mentioned sock-puppet It is a term that has been used for well over a decade in association with online communication media. You could quite rightly get offended if I had called you one. I just enumerated the reasons why your behaviour would lead someone to that conclusion.

I was the only one (since your message 59) who mentioned the word 'tosser'. I just pointed out it was in response to a barbed comment about 'braindead sci-fi fans' and that neither was flagged. I did talk about the contextual usage of pimp however. Do you doubt that the word pimp is now used outside its traditional sphere of someone who runs one or more prostitute?

I miss the days of 18th Century reviewers/debates

No you don't. You would have to be well over 200 years old (or a time-traveller) to miss those days. You may yearn for those days to return but you don't miss them.

On democracy (or mob rule). The current rules are there and very few people have had problems with them. Most of us are capable of polite discourse. If you continue posting in the same tone as you have here I wouldn't be surprised to see a reasonable percentage of your posts flagged. If you do not like the Terms Of Service of this website - well that's your hard cheese. You agreed to be bound by them when you joined.

On Cormac McCarthy. You seem to use his age as some kind of excuse for why he might not be at the height of his powers. Which might have had some validity if his last book hadn't just won the Pulitzer (unless you think they gave it to him out of sympathy).

>It seems that Andyl would have done well in Germany during the 30s and 40s

Godwin's Law!

70>

As your words are still here (albeit hidden due to flagging - hit (show) to show them) people can read your contributions and mine and anyone else's and make up their own minds about partisanship.

On your post 51> yes it was (mainly) about books. But it was miles away from the subject that Cliff Burns wanted to talk about. There was nothing about scientist authors at all and whether they can write decent SF or not. Just a general wailing and gnashing of teeth that you aren't getting the satisfaction you are looking for from a heap of books. I notice it is a word for word repost from one of your comments on the Burns blog (well apart from where you resorted to the common copout of putting asterisks in fucking).

As for the mob rule maybe I should have put a (sic) after it as it was your term.

Serious question. Are you trying to obey the TOS? If not why are you bothering? Do you get a jolly out of throwing your weight around?

71>

I am unsurprised by how prescient I have turned out to be.

*already eating popcorn, waves at Morphidae on the other side of the room*

As far as authors go, what sort of stuff does Zoran Zivkovic write? He edited a Queensland anthology called The Devil in Brisbane, but I don't think I have seen a book by him.

I don't think writing has anything to do with science. The reason why a scientist may not write a good story (of any genre) is because they look at things logically rather than imaginatively. If a scientist happened to have a good imagination, they should be able to write a good story.

# 73

whoa, I hope I didn't miss the best part of the show.

* searches the cooling bag and gets out some bottles and a shaker *

Morphi, Avaland, come here and grab a Tequilla Sunrise

#74- Zoran Zivkovic is what I would call a cerebral fantasist. He mostly writes short stories and at novella length. I like him because he has a thing for libraries and books. He's more of a wordsmith and stylist than a storyteller. Seven Touches of Music is a mosiac kind of novel tying together several short pieces. Leviathan 3 sets several stories by others into Zivkovic's 'library'. This is not a direct comparison but names I've seen thrown around describing his work include Calvino, Borges and Kafka.

His work is not for everyone but is an example of an author pushing the edge of fantasy.

re: 72
*yawns*
Hi Andyl! I see you are still on the same thing?

First, I edited the word "fucking" after the fact in my first posting #51 as I was unsure about whether swear words were allowed or not (you will note it states the message was edited by the author); thus was not an intended "copout" but rather an unnecessary precaution in retrospect. It seems that if swears are not directed at a person then that is acceptable and will not be flagged as abusive? I am pleased if that is the case and the adults here are not TOO easily offended... But i did start out hoping to err on the side of caution so I hope that is not an important issue to which you draw attention?

Secondly, yes your 'astute' observation is correct that it is a word-for-word repost from earlier comments. What gave it away? The fact that i mention that in my first line?

Anyway, I hope you were not offended that I drew your attention to the terms 'figurative' and 'literal'? Just some friendly suggestions for a fellow pedant. (since i say 'fellow' please don't think i am being abusive since that implicitly includes me?)

I do notice that not all the posts in this topic discuss the main heading of Should Scientists Write SF, so whether my own original post Explicitly covers that topic I still felt it was a worthwhile contribution to an overall discussion of science-fiction and 'Literature'... lol, gnashing of teeth indeed!

to answer your 'serious' question (*chuckles*) yes I do intend to follow the rules of TOS ('obey' has an ominous tone don't you think?). I am only mildly a dissenter and am happy to tow the party line. *coughs*. I shall gladly stop throwing my "weight around" in case i land on any small mammals or insects.

Lastly, from the OED:
Fan; or Fann, Phan: A jocular abbreviation of Fanatic
1668. New News From Bedlam 13 The Loyal Phans to abuse. Ibid 40 To be here Nurs'd up, Loyal Fanns to defame, And damn all Dissenters on purpose for gain.

Hope that clears up any confusion!

Long live the Mob and enjoy!

now back to discussing Scientists and SF....

How does anyone feel about the work of Stanislaw Lem? And how about a non SF writer like Somerset Maughm who first studied medicine? and of course J.G. Ballard who also was a doctor?

hmmm. Do doctors strictly fall under the category of 'Scientist'? there does seem to be more of a level of humanist studies involved? Since for the most part they are not locked up in a lab somewhere eschewing human contact but, generally speaking, have constant interactions with people and 'real' life situations so perhaps they are sometimes privy to discoveries/thoughts about the 'human condition'?

I think when it comes to swear words. Common sense prevails. As you say swearing at a person would be a no-no. As would gratuitous use. Some groups might flag any swear-word (the juvenile fiction group for example). However it is hard to discuss a swear-word without mentioning the word itself. A couple of the quality newspapers in the UK have no compunction in using swear words when necessary, their style guides view f-word and *ing or -ing out letters to be a cop-out. However most of the journalists are of the opinion that "it's a privilege that we should guard by not abusing it."

Don't worry about the figurative remark - I am difficult to offend. I'm proud to be a pedant.

Well yeah, but there are existing topics in which it would have been more apposite. Or you could even have started a new topic. But in a way it does echo the real point of Cliff's polemic but not the title of this topic.

Well medicine isn't a science but ... I haven't read much W. Somerset Maugham so cannot really comment. J.G. Ballard I like. Both his early SF works, and the more recent stuff he has put out. Not such a big fan of his semi-autobiographical stuff though. I think he often uses a genre sensibility when approaching his recent serious work. As does Peter Ackroyd who is another writer I admire.

re: 80
I agree that the use of expletives carries more weight when used sparingly and at the right moment to deliver a visceral punch.... and normally I would never 'bleep' it out since I am opposed to censorship (of course common sense is also obvious when dealing with children/adolescents). In Canada, the 'laws' are fairly flexible especially when it comes to print and television (and the UK -- EU in general -- is also more 'liberal' in that respect), but I notice that in the USA there is still a prevailing, and paradoxical, taint of puritanism? I say paradoxical because they have no compunction about explicit violence and other sensationalist forms, but they regularly edit films/shows for swears and sexuality...
(i believe an episode of South Park handled the issue well when they won the right to use the word 'shit'? They turned around and employed the episode to overuse swears themselves to make a rhetorical point, but to defend the right to at least use them in the first place.)

Now, whether Medicine is or is not a science I am sure will raise a few eyebrows and interesting debate? My first thought is yes, it is not formally a science, but then it does incorporate the sciences of Biology, Chemistry, etc ?

J.G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical work is thankfully kept at two books, and the rest of his imaginative work is infinitely more fascinating. I do believe his novels (and short stories) defy genre (except for some of the earlier overtly SF texts) and that is one reason he stands above the crowd. His background in Medicine is perhaps sometimes witnessed in what critics have occasionally termed 'clinical' or 'detached' prose, as well his detailed (almost 'anatomical') forms of display and description.

You mention Ackroyd, whom I also admire, but to my knowledge he is not a doctor or a scientist (I believe he studied English)? I have read a handful of his novels, and in particular enjoyed Chatterton and The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde -- both of which I notice are not in your library, or was that just an oversight? Or do I misunderstand your point and you are saying he has used the SF genre in his work? Can you let me know which of his novels employ speculative or SF elements as I would definitely be interested.

Still slowly adding books to My Library. Many of my editions are older or rare (or published in the UK) so harder to find a quick listing to add accurately, as otherwise it is a laborious chore to enter the bibliographical information manually ... Any suggestions?
(it's a shame the free subscription only allows up to 200 entries, as I must consider if it's worth spending the money after all for the lifetime or yearly option -- I suppose that is how they get you, since after one starts it is soon addictive.) Q: if a person pays for a year and enters all their books, after that year is the full library still listed?

Zoran Zivkovic

I thought the name looked familiar--in the sf context at least. He used to publish (and then co-edit) in the Yugoslav science fiction magazine "Sirius". I remember the hoopla around his being the first (IIRC) Yugoslav to gain a doctorate in such a lowbrow "pop culture" field as science fiction. It simply wasn't "done". :)

Does anyone know if his books are translated or if he writes in English?

Yes you are right Ackroyd isn't a scientist. But I just mentioned him as another writer who is hard to pin down a bit like Ballard. He is an author who likes playing games with language, with subject matter and with the reader. This playfulness seems far more prevalent in some SF. However Ackroyd isn't afraid of using SF trappings in his books. Whether it is an alternate history novel about Milton, or some of the the stuff in First Light. Chatterton, Hawksmoor and The Plato Papers are all listed on Sterling's slipstream list.

I haven't read the two you mention. I have fallen way behind in my reading.

For the UK books - try the National Library Of Scotland. It has pretty good coverage.

I'm not sure about what happens at the end of a year. I got in at the start with a lifetime membership. Best ask in the FAQ group.

81 > Q: if a person pays for a year and enters all their books, after that year is the full library still listed?

All books listed after a yearly subscription ends stay in the catalog but if there are more than 200 then no more can be added without resubscribing...

-82-
Yes Zivkovic has several books translated into English that are in print, and I believe they are all originally written in the Serbian language (not 100% sure on that point.)
I highly recommend "The Fourth Circle" recently re-issued in hardcover. will later check a copy to see on the translation question.

I have not read all his work (I am also behind in my ever-growing list of books to read) but he is certainly one of the new shining stars in 'speculative' fiction.

As Visibleghost points out, his work is compared to Borges, Calvino, Kafka (the latter quite a tenuous comparison) as is indicated by the reviews and the blurbs on Amazon. I think Wilkepedia has some good information on him as well...
He has a Website worth looking at as well, and be forewarned that his background is "Literary Theory" but try not to let that dissuade you too too much..

re 83 and 84.
thanks for the information on LibraryThing books/subscription, and the suggestion for the National Library of Scotland.

ok, so I feel that I should defend my profession. In my opinion, doctors are scientists. It is true that "medicine" itself is the incorporation of other sciences (chemistry, biology, more specifically pharmacology and physiology). Most physicians have science degrees prior to their MD (this is not always true, of course). However, medical school is 99% science and 1% "touchy feely" classes, as we called them. I think that if a doctor were to write SF he/she would have to bring this background into the picture and it would be the same as any other 'scientist' attempting to write.

As for doctors having more human contact, lots of MD's work in labs and do not have patient interaction. And, many that do see people in their practices are still not .....people lovers (to put it nicely).

Anyway, this is just my opinion...as a scientist. :)

edited to change format for ease of reading.

I was wondering how long before a Doctor (of medicine) would add some personal commentary ... definitely a useful and welcome addition.

I'm sure you did not mean 'defend' in most literal sense, since by no means were we attacking MDs or the profession itself, so i gather some valuable clarification/opinion regarding scientist was your main goal.
Though I am curious what you mean when referring to "touchy feely" classes? Do you mean History, English, Anthropology, etc (in other words, the Humanities?) or would those classes be taken during undergraduate or premed schooling? Doctors are human, after all, so also susceptible to the same arrogance/pride where we extol the virtues of our own studies while using condescending terms for those areas of studies not directly useful to our own?
(at one point I taught first-year English, which at most universities/colleges is mandatory, and was repeatedly shocked by highly intelligent science majors, engineers, and premed students who were failing at writing in their native language or could not grasp the basic principles of literary study ...)

Generally speaking, don't Medical Doctors (almost by definition as to what they are/study) have more human contact than say other Scientists? Though of course not exclusively. Since their primary goal is to heal/help people medically? I could be missing the mark here, striving for idealism, and of course many MDs are interested in research and non-direct-human-contact fields (and even areas like PR or marketing for pharmaceutical companies but that would involve human contact?).

I do think it is a shame, though I'm not surprised, that many doctors who see people in their daily practice are not actually 'people lovers'. It suggests a lack of human compassion (why become a doctor then?) and don't they make you take the Hippocratic oath anymore..? wink wink. ;)
My wife is a nurse so I am occasionally privy to sad tales of MD degeneracy...

You might enjoy some of the novels by J.G. Ballard for 'SF', though his books don't carry an explicit 'Medical' theme. (when i was a child I did also read some fun stories about a Dentist in space/future by Piers Anthony... though the author is not a dentist)

Also, here in Canada a doctor of medicine recently published a very well-received collection of short stories:
Vincent Lam, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
you might enjoy that collection, and for the most part i found the stories well-crafted and original.

And of course for a literary 'classic' that has a medical theme, the aforementioned Somerset Maughm's Of Human Bondage is recommended.

There are a surprising (or not surprising?) number of MD's (or people who began by studying medicine) that later turned authors (as for SF writers I am now going through my books curiously to see who was a doctor/physicist/entemologist...) Lem, whom i mention in #78, i believe studied Medicine.

For non-SF, there is the wonderful example of the American MD William Carlos Williams who also had a vast literary career (quite good in my opinion). One of the stories regarding Williams (perhaps apocryphal? not sure) is that the majority of his poems were short because he wrote them on prescription pads in between seeing patients....

Zivkovic writes in Serbian. Very slowly. He types using only his right index finger. That alone probably slows him down to concetrate on what word he really wants to use. The translator for his early work was Mary Popovic. She directly worked with him. I'm not sure if they're still a team or not. He mentioned there are only 10 million Serbian language users in the world so he translated into English but even so it was ten years before The Fourth Circle was published in English. Jeff VanDermeer picked it up for his Ministry of Whimsy Press which, sadly, is no more.

I did not mean to be condescending, that is just what they were called while I attended medical school (and it was what they were called by the instructors themselves). Also, I think they are very useful to the study of medicine. However, I am not the average doctor. I am a family medicine doc preparing for a fellowship in palliative medicine. These classes were mostly in communication, empathy, psychology of illness and other similair topics.

As for the motives for becoming a doctor, they are varied. Most doctors want to cure disease (of course). But, that does not always mean wanting to deal with the diseased. Other reasons would include financial gain (though it is not as it once was), family expectation, or (probably my own reason) the love of learning and finding an excuse to stay in school for 8+ extra years.

No, they don't require us to take the Hippocratic oath anymore.

Thank you for the book suggestions. I have been meaning to read some of J G Ballard's works based on other recommendations, and the collection of short stories you mentioned sounds promising.

I think it's probably true that those writing SF tend to have some sort of scientific bent more often than not, but do they tend to write in the field they actually work in?

In terms of the question above, do SF-writing doctors write medical SF?

Two substantial series of SF medical stories that come to my mind are James White's "Sector General" stories (6 novels and 18 short stories) and Murray Leinster's "Med Ship" stories (2 novels and 6 short stories). Neither was written by a doctor - White was a publicity officer for Short Bros., and Leinster a freelance writer.

I eagerly await counter-examples. I'm sure there must be some out there.

I would call Michael Crichton a near-future speculative thriller writer. He doesn't usually get labeled a SF writer but he uses extrapolation as much as anyone in SF.

Are doctors scientists?

Well not really - although mediciine does build on some science. I know a number of doctors who would agree that they are not scientists. Of course some doctors are scientists but that is orthogonal to their doctoring - most doctors are not scientists merely mechanics for the body.

If one reads Karl Popper he defines science as a field of study that generates falsifiable hypotheses. Which doesn't really match up with what doctors do.

Michael Blumlein is a medical doctor and writer of science fiction and horror. He has written well-regarded short fiction and at least one novel I know of. Here is just a line from the Publishers Weekly review for his most recent book, The Healer.

"Sometimes a patient had to be brought to the very brink of death before... he could be healed," Dr. Blumlein (The Movement of Mountains) tells us, and this original, surreal and extraordinary book shows why.

Also, Robert I. Katz, also an MD and professor, has made some attempts at writing science fiction. He wrote a reasonably good science fiction retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo a few years back.

Another doctor written book that veers out of normal fiction is The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian. A hospital wing and its patients and staff float in a apocalyptic setting where the rest of the world is flooded. Lots of speculative tricks in there but not quite SF.

-90-
drsol,
Honestly I did not mean to imply that you directly were being condescending as from the tone/expression of your original message you did a good job of showing how terms like "touchy feely" were commonly used at your med school. But thanks for your message and its sincerity. I can tell you definitely do not fall into the category of an MD that is not a people lover.
I think many people (and if I may generalize a bit, perhaps moreso those whose focus is science) have trouble dealing directly with emotional or 'hands on' situation with other humans, since scientific study does carry a level of detachment for example. So the use of terms like 'touchy feely' is just a human reaction to deal with things that make them uncomfortable?

I am very pleased and heartened to hear your focus is family medicine and you are gearing towards palliative care. My wife recently accepted a full time position at the Palliative Care Unit (9-10 beds) and it takes strength and compassion to work with people that essentially you cannot cure but can only help them in the last days of their lives....

by the way, of course i was trying to be funny with my comment about the Hippocratic oath. but you doctors can be so serious! (as i took your response) perhaps they should once again require that oath, at least in spirit, as a reminder of why they are MDs....?

well, happy reading and for Ballard you might want to try (if you feel brave) his novel Crash though for many people it can be hard to take on some levels...
High Rise is one my favourites, and does feature a doctor as the main character...
a more recent novel is Day of Creation that features a doctor running a clinic in Africa (i think) who goes on his own Heart of Darkness type surrealistic journey/adventure...

speaking of condescension...
-93-
Andyl,
Surely when you state that "most doctors are not scientists merely mechanics for the body" you are not equating MDs with, say, the stereotypical 'grease monkey' where a human goes to get his/her blood changed, or a tune up?
I think it was the use of the word "merely" that struck me as a bit pompous?

While scientists (in the formal sense you outline) are responsible for wonderful new medicines, technological advances, cures for disease, etc., they are also responsible for creating things like wonderful new ways to destroy humans en masse, pollute the earth, etc...
Most doctors (I generalize) spend their day to day with their hands in the muck, so to speak, saving lives and dealing with real emergency trauma. While the stereotypical scientist is a 'mere' lab lackey pushing around ideas and (especially in the past) torturing other life forms to achieve their results?

(you will, of course, note a tone of playful irony/sarcasm in the above not intended as insult to all scientists.)

#89 Visible ghost

Thanks. I'll look for his books in Serbian then, the university library here has a decent selection of Eastern European literatures in the original.

#87 drsol

That's the first time I hear a medic say he considers himself a scientist as a matter of definition. Of course, even clinicians may do research, or even opt for a scientific career (in which case they usually stop being clinicians), but these are in a minority. In my experience, most medics not only aren't scientists, they are often abysmally ignorant of science and/or take outright anti-scientific positions.

In relation to this thread's discussion, I wouldn't consider a scientific education alone to make a scientist, and IMO it's questionable even to continue calling "scientists" people who have abandoned scientific careers to write (or sculpt, or fly-fish), especially if said careers were short. If a physics PhD does a brief postdoc stint and then develops a 30-year long Wall Street finance career, or becomes a science journalist, in what sense is he a scientist? My preference would be to designate such people, having a scientific education/some experience but not actually doing science, by the name of the profession--chemist, geologist...

I don't know if any (how many) of these scientists/sf writers are practising scientists. It seems to me the opening argument is at the bottom against hard sf--or is more correctly framed that way, than made against "scientists-writers". Probably less provocative, at any rate.

Because, as others have already said, there are numerous examples of people with scientific training and background writing excellent literature of any kind. For example, Evgeny Zamyatin was a naval engineer and spent most of his professional life building ships and teaching science. He was also a consummate stylist, a poetic visionary. "We" is a science fiction classic and a literary masterwork.

Lastly, it strikes me that among the scientists with literary ambitions I have known, none wrote nor aimed to write science fiction. I knew two biochemists who published poetry, one who was a jazz authority, with several books on jazz to his name, and several others with various "high literature" projects (including my advisor, who might still be polishing her GAN). These people definitely weren't hampered by their habit of technical writing.

I must add I don't think scientists-sf writers would be embarrassed to own to the fact, we're proud dorks. (I once interviewed with a guy who gave a me a Star Trek quiz at the end. I knew something like that was coming, my chair was leaning against a life-size poster of Lt. Worf.)

I'd hasard a speculation (based on what I've seen) that working scientists are more likely to take a break in topics and arts removed from science. I could construct a fine orchestra with scientists-musicians of my acquaintance, there are several painters (one a fairly well-known watercolourist), several photographers, even competition-class cooks. But, no sf writers... :)

97>

Pretty much for GPs and surgeons. OK they have a very much larger body of knowledge to learn than a car mechanic but it is pretty similar. It is only a small exaggeration for effect.

Development of new medicines are again often fairly lax when it comes to science.

An eminent cancer specialist said (to someone I know) of their current approaches to treatment "it is 10% science, 10% black magic and 80% tradition, and we're the ones who are regarded as science based".

I'm not trying to minimise the vital job that doctors play - but they are more akin to technicians and engineers than scientists. This isn't a problem to me, technicians and engineers are just as important to society as scientists. Most of the good stuff we have (and the bad) was developed by engineers and technicians and not by scientists.

My original posting was not against hard science SF per se--Swanwick has written some good stuff in that category, as has Vernor Vinge--but the weakness of writing not all, but MANY scientist/SF writers display. That propensity for exposition, long-winded descriptions of how solar star sails work or ramscoops, etc. Hard SF writers work harder to get the actual science right in their stories than building sound, lyrical sentences (Asimov and Heinlein, for instance, are practically tone deaf).

It's a product of their environment, as I think Peter Watts has pointed out, from having to write scientific papers that are long on equations and short on good dialogue, characterization, etc. Again, I urge you to write to Peter at his rifters.com website (is it okay if I pimp for other people's blogs?) and have him send you a copy of an address he's delivered in the subject of scientist/SF writers. His points are good ones and he delivers them with panache.

Lastly, I appreciate the more measured tone this discussion has taken on. I deeply resented the accusation of "pimpage" and trust such personal remarks will not be tossed around so freely in the future. Confine your comments to the discussion at hand and I think we'll have some informed and interesting debates. I reserve the right to change my mind, to be won over by superior arguments. I hope the rest of you will do the same.

Well, there are good reasons there's little dialogue and characterisation in scientific papers. Very little light verse either. :)

I've fallen off the science fiction wagon a long time ago, so I'll leave to others to decide whether MANY sf writers with scientific backgrounds write badly (what percentage of "all" would that "many" be?), but I suggest it would also be necessary to
establish that these people have actually written or write technical papers, if this practice is considered responsible for their writing defects. Demonstrate the link, or look for a different explanation.

Of course, the difficult problem is that what one person considers "bad" writing, another one thinks is good... Making "dialogue" and "characterisation" the absolute hallmarks of good writing would sink an awful lot of modern masterpieces, for instance.

To take a step outside the genre for a second, I highly recommend Allegra Goodman's novel Intuition for a window into the world of scientific research.

Hard SF writers work harder to get the actual science right in their stories than building sound, lyrical sentences...

Ah, but it's likely that that is exactly what their readers are looking for! One doesn't read a Greg Egan novel, for example, for it's lyrical prose; one reads him for the science buzz (which might be why I've only read three).

I just copied the same sentence avaland did, about to reply in the same vein:

Hard SF writers work harder to get the actual science right in their stories than building sound, lyrical sentences (Asimov and Heinlein, for instance, are practically tone deaf).

Why neglect people who LIKE detailed descriptions of scientific principles, or scientifically plausible machinery? I think it's thrilling to imagine that something currently remote or impossible might one day come to pass, and obviously confidence in an author's scientific literacy, the ability to predict or imagine new things based on intelligent understanding of the present, would play a great part in the enjoyment of such stories.

The same things that repel one reader because they sound dry, technical, "unlyrical", might be exactly what another one wants--the "science buzz", as avaland said.

I'm late for the pile-on, but here's yet another vote: what you're describing ("long-winded descriptions of how (things) work") can be a feature, and not necessarily a bug.

I can get 'lyrical sentences ' and perceptive characterization in just about any 'literary' fiction you trip on (the stuff is thick on the ground - look at the assortment of 'literary' novels that Random House is giving to LT reviewers this month); but if I've decided to pick up a work of 'science' fiction, it's because I'm actively seeking out the 'science' part of that label. If I get "good writing", too, as part of the package, so much the better - but "perfectly-adequate-for-the-job writing" is surprisingly common.

(Note that my user-name is a reference to this very discussion....)

"If one reads Karl Popper he defines science as a field of study that generates falsifiable hypotheses. Which doesn't really match up with what doctors do."

On the contrary, it would: the differential diagnosis is the hypothesis - falsifiable by a battery of tests.

At any event, almost anyone would agree that the doctor qua scientist involved in medical research is a scientist. To be sure, a doctor could also be a bit of a counselor (bedside manner?) or an engineer insofar as he is a surgeon working within the known parameters of medical science (just as engineers work within the known parameters of physical laws) - there's no hard and fast rule that a doctor couldn't also be a scientist, among other things.

So let's be clear...SF readers read SF not for the good writing but for the ideas (the "science buzz"), cool extrapolations that imagine future technologies. I don't think that's really in disagreement re: my original posting. If you're looking for golly-gee-whiz-bang ideas, that's one thing but I've heard a lot of folks complaining (SF writers among them) that SF isn't taken seriously as a literary art form. They (SF writers) get testy when you say, as I told Michael Swanwick, that good science is one thing but good writing is another. I have a good ear for lyrical writing and I actually WINCE when I read some of the scientists who turn their hand to sci fi. But, clearly, many of you aren't bothered by it. Fine. But I do want the distinction noted. And if you keep reading only sci fi I think you'll fail to develop your tin ear...and the more good mainstream lit writers you read, the more (I believe) you'll find sci fi scribes wanting. And maybe you'll be more demanding of your SF writers, making the entire field better, improving the overall quality of the prose. My original essay advised SF scribes to spend as much time in the English lit racks as they did their physics texts. I still think that's valuable advice. Recall that in the latter part of his career, Harlan Ellison positively RECOILED from the notion of being called an SF writer (he had higher literary and artistic aspirations than that). Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Kazuo Ishiguro, P.D. James. These folks have written speculative novels set in a possible future yet they would likely rather have their thumbs cut off than be considered SF writers. Is that simple snobbishness on their part or is that reflecting their view that SF writing is prone to all the attendant flaws of "genre" writing? Your thoughts?

Well, first of, you're now talking entirely about questions of taste. Different readers are free to prioritize these questions as they see fit.

Second of all, the standard of "good writing" within the genre IS rising, it's been rising for the entire history of the genre. Today, the best writing in the genre is as good as the best writing outside the genre.

And if you keep reading only sci fi ...

(Well, then, I can't comment on the rest. "SF" is only a minority of my reading.)

Is that simple snobbishness on their part ...?

There's been a recent thread here on that very subject, it's currently at 95 posts, and still active:

Why literary authors can deny writing SF...

Cliff, why do you assume people like only one or the other? Or that all writing capable of giving one a "science buzz" is necessarily bad?

I read your blog entry, btw, and I think you gave good advice, but one that applies to all genre writing.

>I've heard a lot of folks complaining (SF writers among them) that SF isn't taken seriously as a literary art form.

I've heard this too, but then, is ANY genre writing taken as a "serious literary art form"? Mysteries, romance, self-help books? And yet, there are some literary mysteries (Dorothy Sayers, say), romances (Jane Austen--although this is probably too reductive a description), and even self-help books (Walker Percy's "Lost in the cosmos"--okay, I offer this somewhat tongue in cheek. Let's say "De Botton's "How Proust can change your life".)

It seems to me that this reluctance on the part of the "litterateurs" to be called science fiction writers has to do with a refusal to be pigeonholed as a genre writer--to be seen as limited, or a professional hack churning out assembly line junk. I'm hard put to believe much of the worst science fiction is worse than the Harlequin fare (Boons & Mills--or maybe vice versa--for you UK folk), or the Chicken Soup for your toesies and bluesies stuff. Can you picture Atwood, Orwell, Ishiguro etc. placing themselves of their own free will into ANY genre drawer? I can't.

But IS the best writing in the genre being done by scientist/authors? THAT'S the question the original posting asked (and my essay from whence it came). The best SF authors to me are not scientists...or perhaps I'm simply not aware of their scientific backgrounds. I agree that the writing in the field has improved...but is that due to the scientists or the non-scientists? Jonathan Lethem for instance has literary sensibilities (and credentials). Iain Banks. I really like Michael Marshall Smith. Paul Defilippo, Neal Stephenson, Dennis Danvers, John Varley. Are they scientists? (I'm asking). Bob, I really have to say that I disagree that the best writing in the genre is as good as the best writing outside the genre. That's wishful thinking. I love Phil Dick's stuff but he's such a hack 90% of the time (he had 4 or 5 wives to support). Do any of the best SF scribes stand up, word for word, against Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, William T. Vollmann...those are some monumental talents. Sci Fi writers SHOULD shoot that high but how many of their fans would join them for the ride? How many are content with (merely) that "good science buzz" and "neat" ideas? Discussion?

The flipside:

--
So let's be clear...lit readers read lit not for the story but for the good writing.

If you're looking for golly-gee-whiz-bang sentences, that's one thing but I've heard a lot of folks complaining (lit writers among them) that lit isn't taken seriously by the very large number of genre readers. They (lit writers) get testy when you say, as has been mentioned, that good writing is one thing but a good story is another.

I have a good ear for story writing and I actually WINCE when I read some of the people who turn their hand to writing lit.

But, clearly, many of you aren't bothered by it. Fine. But I do want the distinction noted. And if you keep reading lit I think you'll fail to develop your tin ear...and the more good genre writers you read, the more (I believe) you'll find lit scribes wanting. And maybe you'll be more demanding of your lit writers, making the entire field better, improving the overall quality of their stories.

I advise lit scribes to spend as much time in the genre racks as they did their theory texts. I still think that's valuable advice.

--

:) :)

--

Atwood I imagine wants to sell to the chick-lit crowd, as women buy the most books. In her case, likely crass commercialism, given what she has built up. Orwell is dead and has been for a long long time, no idea about the others.

As Bob said, the other stuff is a dime a dozen.

Policemen spend their days in the muck dealing with emergency trauma, has nothing to do with being a scientist. The civil engineer directing the local road building crew, and the guys working on some of the drains isn't a scientist, any more than the GP dealing with colds, cuts, cholesterol and cardio is.

In the time you have spent mentioning Watt's blog, you could have summarised his argument for us - why haven't you if it is so great? The same points apply. For some of us who have seen his website some considerable time in the past, and in the last few months, we have no need to look at it otherwise.

Or, one of my favorite writers is Terry Dowling, who Harlan Ellison has raved about, written introductions etc., go read what he has to say at http://www.terrydowling.com.''

Ellison (and mass capitalisation is generally considered shouting, btw) recoils from this so much he writes for Star Trek, etc, so any statements by him to this effect are hardly credible.

(Avaland, this question is rightfully yours...)

PKD has been dead twenty-five years now, and his best work was 30 years ago and more. That said, he's just earned his place among the Immortals: he has a volume in the Library of America. (*Somebody* thinks his best is pretty good.) Pynchon's best stuff is IN the genre.

One word: Crowley.

CliffBurns, the fact we seem to keep coming back to PK Dick when talking about "do scientists make poor SF writers" seems to me a sign of the problem with your question in the first place. Dick was never a scientist - he worked in a record store before becoming a full-time writer (and, if the bio at philipkdick.com can be believed, he read Stendhal, Flaubert, and Joyce).

Are scientists producing the best work in the genre? Probably not.

But I'm still waiting for some sign that weak prose and extended explanations of technology are actually more likely to appear in the work of scientists-turned-SF writers than in other SF writers.

David Weber's military SF is chock full of extended technical descriptions, but I've never seen anywhere that he has any sort of science background.

Being focused on science and technology may or may not be compatible with literary prose. That's a question that can be debated. But I'm confused why you think only formally-trained scientists fall into the trap of over-describing technology.

I'll quote David Hartwell.

" To the uninitiated observer and to academics approaching the literature, one of the most difficult perceptions to grasp is that the science fiction audience is just as important as the writers and the written work to an understanding of science fiction. Why is the fiction often so badly written but seemingly praised and honored by its devotees? Because the execution is secondary to the wonder aroused by it. Why are science fiction writers, a noticeably bright and creative lot, so paranoiac about the lack of serious attention paid to their works outside SF? Because they know that only the best of them can satisfy the demands of their audience and also pull off the trick of writing according to present literary fashion ( which is of course irrelevant to their markets and supporting audience).

Science fiction is as much a phenomenon as it is a body of written work; outsiders are are in the position of the blind men and the elephant: They tend to arrive at generalizations based on the parts, not the whole..... The science fiction field worships wonder."" End quote.

Fans are huge in SF. In literary circles it's impossible to meet up with the writers and then go drink with them in their hotel room. Remember the "New Wave" movement that tried to abandon the basics of SF and move it up a literary notch. It was driven out by the 'back to the gutter' groups that wanted wonder and awe not pretty sentences.

Asimov and Heinlein have been mentioned in this thread as not great writers. But they sell year after year and decade after decade. Charles Stross is a modern writer that understands the SF field. His work is not literary but he's won the hearts and minds of the fans by bombarding them with new ideas every 800 words or so ala A. E. Van Vogt who is also still read today. Unlike other genres the fans can drive an author from the field or make their writing career thrive. The SF genre differs from every other genre out there and woe to any writer that doesn't unstand the community that makes up the genre. Judgement of the writing quality is only a part of the field.

Re: 113

Right, or that writers of all sorts put in extended technical detail or dumps at length, about whatever, as has been mentioned previously.

For example, for something that is eye-rollingly bad :-

"Pirate's mob gather at the shores of the great refectory table, a southern island well across a tropic or two from chill Corydon Throsp's mediaeval fantasies, crowded now over the swirling dark grain of its walnut uplands with banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed bananas molded in the shape of a British lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for French toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across the quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange to spell out the words C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre (attributed to a French observer during the Charge of the Light Brigade) which Pirate has appropriated as his motto . . . tall cruets of pale banana syrup to pour oozing over banana waffles, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which, this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead . . . banana croissants and banana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy Pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the Pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio transmitter . . ."

--Thomas Pynchon

It was Bob who mentioned Philip Dick, I was responding to his comment. And I know all about Dick, I've got reams of his stuff, read the Sutin and Carrere biographies, etc. He's not a scientist and I prefer his work, goofy as it is, to Benford/Brin/Bova et all.

Hartwell's comment is EXACTLY what I'm talking about: "The execution is secondary to the wonder aroused by it". For literary writers the execution is not secondary. The fact that fans are not demanding enough of literary quality in SF has ghettoized the genre and held it back from attaining bigger and better things. A sense of wonder is fine but unaccompanied by great writing it is transitory rather than transcendant. I thought the New Wave guys were a breath of fresh air compared to the dreadful stuff they were supplanting. Dinosaurs like John Campbell HATED them for their literary pretensions, for breaking the Golden Rules he and those of his ilk worked so assiduously to entrench and codify (Note: Dick also had enormous issues with Campbell's iron tight editorial policies.).

Well, enough. I've enjoyed today's forum--again, nice to see a return to decorum and thoughtful discussion. Have a good one, folks...

112> Somebody better explain to Tommy Pynchon he's a SF writer

AsYouKnow_Bob didn't say that. He said his best work is in the genre. That he has written SF whether he intended to or not. The SFWA must have considered Gravity's Rainbow SF when it gained a nomination for a Nebula.

I think part of the problem with this discussion is that you see best as some kind of objective measure rather than a subjective one.

Gravity's Rainbow is an interesting case. The Pulitzer Prize jury supported the book but the other members of the board overturned this branding the book "unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene."

The central question of this debate - should scientists write sf? The answer is yes, they should write anything they want to.
Can they write good sf? Yes. Do they all write good sf? No. It's as simple as that.

The reason Dick has been embraced outside sf is due to his philosophical stance rather than his style. The way he deals with 'what is reality' or 'who am i' appeals to post-modernists, especially followers of the European philosophers.

Gravity's Rainbow is a (probably) great novel but it's not an easy read, it's wilfully obscure at times and could be used as an example of why the literary novel fails it's potential audience. That seems at the heart of the Pulitzer decision - the literary panel said this is brilliant, the lay panel said you must be joking, so no award was given.

"Fans are huge in SF. In literary circles it's impossible to meet up with the writers and then go drink with them in their hotel room. Remember the "New Wave" movement that tried to abandon the basics of SF and move it up a literary notch. It was driven out by the 'back to the gutter' groups that wanted wonder and awe not pretty sentences...Unlike other genres the fans can drive an author from the field or make their writing career thrive. The SF genre differs from every other genre out there and woe to any writer that doesn't understand the community that makes up the genre. Judgement of the writing quality is only a part of the field."

Excerpted from Message #115, "VisibleGhost"

I've been re-examining the postings of last night and this is the one that really stuck out for me. I'd like to examine this closely (if you're all in favour). It's a bit off topic but it may also relate to some of the discussion re: the quality of the writing in the field.

Does everyone else agree that fans has a disproportionate amount of influence in the genre of SF? If that's true, I shudder. Does a similar situation exist in any other field of writing? I've been to two SF conventions, one large, one small and from the quality of people I met there, I wouldn't want to turn a field of dandelions over to them, let alone SF. Can't recall a single relevant or interesting discussion I had with ANYONE (other than William Gibson who was the guy who turned me on to Cormac McCarthy).

More fans were interested in the movie and gaming tie-ins than they were actual writing. I read about one convention in California where Richard Matheson (Richard Matheson!) spoke and read to a handful of people while a presentation on RPG's (scheduled at the same time) was filled to over-flowing. Is this the sort of people we want guarding the gates of creation? What sort of critical faculties does a guy wearing a latex Klingon mask possess? Any thoughts?

#120> I've only been to one science fiction convention. I ignored the gamers and sought out other readers, largely (but not solely) by hanging around the books-for-sale room. I failed in my primary objective, which was to get some time with Gene Wolfe, whose wife was ill, but I had a very enjoyable chat with John Kessell and conversations of varying degrees of interest with a wide range of folks. It never occurred to me to wonder whether I would "turn over" anything to them. Perhaps my standards were lower than yours.

I don't know if it's true that fans "control" SF more than other genres or areas of publishing. A glance at the best-seller lists tells us that authors are published because people will buy their work, not because you, I or anyone else thinks they're great writers. This is not a meritocracy, it's capitalism.

Writers & titles Cliff might like:

John Crowley, Engine Summer; for fantasy his Aegypt series.
Gene Wolfe. I'll let other recommend specific titles here.
Samuel Delany, Dhalgren
Gwyneth Jones, White Queen, Divine Endurance, and other titles
Ursula K. LeGuin, Always Coming Home
James Morrow, Towing Jehovah, City of Truth
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station (fantasy)
Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground, Shriek! (also fantasy)

Conventions Cliff might like: Readercon
www.readercon. com

>110 bluetyson: blue, dear, you know I'm fond of you but I beg to differ with regards to your Atwood comments. As a 'fan' of Atwood's and the creator of LT's "Atwoodians" group, I can say that Atwood is most certainly NOT a chick lit writer and to suggest so implies that you know little about her work or the various genres and subgenres which are not part of your home turf. Margaret Atwood is a fine, literary writer who appeals to educated women and some men (men, imagine that!) of all ages (adult, that is).

Now, I thought I detected just a teeny weeny bit of denigration of women there - all female book consumers do not read "chick-lit" nor is it all they buy. I know you didn't mean to suggest this, but just in case someone read that the same way I did...:-)

With regards to the question of whether scientists write the 'best' science fiction novels - 'best' in this case as defined by Mr. Burns. I asked this question of dukedom_enough (husband and, as it happens, a scientist) who reads far more SF than I ever have or will, and enjoys other reading like *gasp* poetry. He said, " probably not, but they often have the coolest ideas." He'd perhaps speak for himself but he's busy.

Yeah, I know she isn't a chick-lit writer, I have read some after all (and even some of that antique poetry stuff, as well) :) , and I didn't actually say she was, either, any more than I said all blokes read thrillers and sports books, or all women read romance novels and cookbooks.

However, I am sure she is happy to try and market and sell to those that mostly read that sort of thing if she can, as opposed to being associated with the boys and their spaceship and gun cooties, given there is not a lot of crossover between them and the more romancey end of the reading spectrum, and in fact there will be a deal of 'putting off'.

Someone has actually tagged the Handmaid's Tale chick lit though, which is pretty whacky. (and lots as women's fiction by the size of the tag).

Likewise with say, an Alice Hoffman, who isn't rushing out to be included with Hamilton and Harrison, despite the witches and zombies.

On probability, the best books are most likely to come from the largest subset of a given group. This may not be obvious to those without any grasp of that sort of mathematics. The next Nora Roberts type is very unlikely to be a left handed male ship captain, and quite a bit more likely to be a female.

Following up avaland's suggestions for Cliff above

Geoff Ryman's Air, or, Have not have
Adam Roberts's Polystom and others
Graham Joyce's The Facts Of Life and others (fantasy).
I would definitely add Morrow's The Last Witchfinder (tangentially SF in the same was as Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is).

Thanks for the reading lists, folks. I do have some of those titles--stuff by Wolfe, Crowley, Ryman and I consider TOWING JEHOVAH a great book, regardless of the genre designation (is Morrow a scientist?, by the way?).
I tried to read DHALGREN when I was a teenager and it utterly defeated me--so I guess that's a sign I should try it again. Delaney always struck me as a pretty smart fella, over-developed frontal lobes. I try to shy away from most fantasy (and anyway, this posting was about scientist/SF writers).

Anyway, I wanna get back to a tale I'm in the midst of editing, grinding away at it at this point, debating whether a semi-colon or a comma is more appropriate to a particular sentence. Sometimes I think I'm clinically mad...

There is overlap at SF Cons that have the Trekkies, RPGers and Comic fans. They do have their own get-togethers and some SF people show up at theirs. I was thinking the influence for the writing is more from the fan-zines and semi-prozines. The SF community is not that large (rarely does a SF book hit the bestseller lists) and some of these 'publications' are/were influential. They are even awarded awards at some Cons. Granted, they are not as powerful as they used to be before the internet, when such zines were the only way to keep up with the genre, but they haven't disappeared completely yet. Some have moved online and new ones come and go at a regular pace. The mixing of readers and writers at the conventions continues. China Mieville, while not a strict SF writer, got large hype from the SF community which got his name put out there as someone to read. But then again, every genre wanted a piece of Mieville; horror, fantasy, lit and even mainstream eventually. SF has changed in the past and it will change in the future. Big themes crop up. Outer Space at the beginning, Inner Space and the whole cyberpunk movement later, now The Singularity thanks to Vinge. Many smaller ones were dealt with in the past and many more will be dealt with in the future.

Each individual has a 1 in however many people are involved in the field at a time voice and that voice might by heard by many or it might not even be heard at all. All the voices combined is what the SF genre is, messy and confused though it may be.

#122 avaland >He'd perhaps speak for himself but he's busy.
---------
Good Lord, not another madcap scientist building a doomsday weapon in the basement. Ah well, if I wake up tomorrow and the world is gone I'll know who to blame.

>127 VisibleGhost: he's busy contemplating whether or not the singularity will be televised (so he tells me).

CliffBurns at #117:
It was Bob who mentioned Philip Dick, I was responding to his comment.

Hey, now. Just to keep track of the conversation, my mention of PKD at #111 was in direct response to your #109 - where you brought up Dick and Pynchon. Sure, I mentioned PKD, but I wasn't the one who introduced either of those examples into the conversation.

And, in turn - your #109 (Bob, I really have to say that I disagree that the best writing in the genre is as good as the best writing outside the genre. That's wishful thinking. ) was in direct response to my #107.

And - as I also said in #107: it comes down to a question of taste.

I read a lot in the genre, I read a lot outside the genre. I read enough that I can recognise good writing when I find it. Good writing is good writing, and I find it both inside and outside the genre. You disagree. OK, whatever, I'm fine with that. People are different: tastes can differ. It's not "wishful" thinking: because I'm not the participant in this conversation who is privileging 'literary' fiction over all other genres. I think the best writing in the genre is the equal of the best writing outside the genre. You don't think that's true. My opinion is no more "wishful thinking" than yours is.

One of the lessons I've learned in a lifetime of reading and writing is that the "best" writing is the writing that best communicates with the intended audience.

And audiences differ. Not everybody likes the same style. (Heck, I know dedicated readers who don't have any patience for fiction, finding "made-up stories about things that never happened" to be a waste of their time. You cannot prove that they are wrong - because it's entirely a question of taste.)

The audience for a minimalist like Ray Carver is not necessarily the same audience as as 'maximalist' like David Foster Wallace. Different tools are appropriate for different tasks. A reader can go to Arthur Clarke for clear description of a how humans respond to a technical problem, or to Anita Brookner for closely observed nuances of how humans respond to an emotional challenge. Which is superior? They're different art forms, with different toolkits.

And, finally: people differ in what they want to read about. That's why there are genres. And it seems to need saying that 'literary' fiction is in itself a genre.

*stands up to applaud, popcorn falls from lap*

*joins the applause, cheering wildly*

Er, As You Know_Bob:

I think my reference to Phil Dick was directed to Stephen Shapiro who thought I was lumping Phil in with the "scientist authors".

What I've learned from a lifetime of writing AND reading is that there are qualitative differences between writers. It's not merely a matter of taste--writing is not only an art, it is also a craft and like all crafts requires technical proficiency. The quality of an individual's criticism depends on the quality and range of their mind. My young sons like bad fantasy--God bless them but that does put them on the same critical level as me? I spend every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year bent to the task of creating fiction and non-fiction, dissecting and picking apart sentences. Won't bore you with professional credentials. Does this not mean that I know a bit more about sentence structure, good writing than the "average" reader?

I'm not interested in what most film reviewers say about a film, I'd rather hear from great directors what films they recommend. I don't look for reviewers' comments on the backs of books, I look for a writer I know and admire plugging a book. Their opinion means more to me than that of dilettantes..

I know this posting will draw howls of "elitism" and "snobbery" but I simply can't countenance the notion that everyone has an opinion and they're all equally valid. Some are better-informed and intelligent than others. I have books that I like very much (PKD) but I also have to acknowledge that technically (structurally in Dick's case) they're a mess. People may "differ in what they want to read about". Very true. Vive le difference. And some of us are more demanding in the reading we do, expecting a high level of technical competence--which, as I say, is a measurable quality, a verifiable thing.

I think on this point, there are irreconcilable differences. I stand on my experiences as a writer with two+ decades in the service of the printed word.

Addendum:

Two people are watching a plane land. One, someone who's flown on planes, says, "That was a picture perfect landing." The other person is a pilot. SHE says: "Actually, that was a terrible landing, the nosewheel came down too soon and, look, the plane ended up about two feet from the end of the runway, a tragedy barely averted."

Which opinion is more valid?

And, again:

Two people are watching the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. One likes films, sees sometimes a couple a week and as they comes out says "That was a terrific movie. Some funny moments and Johnny Depp sure is charismatic". The other is a professional film editor and SHE says: "The whole movie was a mess. Structurally it fell apart a quarter of the way through, it was overly long, some of the shots were poorly framed and I spotted at least two dozen continuity gaffes".

Which opinion is more valid?

You see what I'm saying?

('Edited' just to point out that this post is in response to #132; I was writing, and didn't see your #133 until I posted.)

Well, there are a couple things going on here: there's the stuff that you enjoy, and there's the stuff that other people enjoy.

OK, you're a better judge of what you think is good. That's pretty much tautological. Where you're overreaching is in claiming that your judgement is the final word on the subject.

But tastes differ. The 'quality' of writing - even limiting "quality" to the trivial case of "technical competence" - is absolutely not "a measurable quality", not for any metric that I know of. Recognizing something when you find it is a long way from being able to "measure" it. The only way to "verify" the quality of writing is to check with others' responses - "Hey, is this any good?" - and we're right back where we started. ("Nope, doesn't work for me", "Good stuff, thanks for pointing it out", etc.)

You make the non-controversial claim that most people don't read broadly enough to be credible critics. So far, we're in complete agreement. Lord knows, I've had well-meaning friends tell me: "Oh, you like science fiction? You should read X" (where X = something jaw-droppingly unreadable). So, yeah, I too have learned to discount source bias.

However - people generally read for entertainment. You can't tell them that they're enjoying the wrong stuff in the wrong way. You don't like what they like? That too is completely OK, completely uncontroversial.

You don't seem to read for entertainment: "I spend every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year bent to the task of creating fiction and non-fiction, dissecting and picking apart sentences. " That's certainly an interesting approach, but you know, the activity is more generally referred to as "pleasure reading."

If you read to analyse style, and that's the approach you enjoy, that's your choice - more power to you. But I don't see why that makes other people wrong because they read stuff that they enjoy for their own reasons. Each reader reads for their own reasons. Feel free to tell them that "Hey, you might enjoy reading X more than that crap you're currently reading."

But it's the flip side of the experience I was recounting: if somebody recommends something to me, it's quite likely that I won't like it - but I can't tell the other person that they didn't enjoy it.

Interesting analogy at #133.

"Which opinion is more valid?"

Well, the passengers'. If they don't perceive it as a bad landing, it wasn't - to them. OK, they don't know any better: but they're the paying customers.
The more discerning passengers might even have noticed a bump at touch-down. And the pilot might know the difference - especially after the critics explain to the pilot what went did wrong - and the pilot might resolve to do better the next time. But if the passengers got what they paid for, are they wrong?

Same with writing - if the readers are happy, it makes absolutely no difference to the readers that the critics disagee.

In both cases, both passengers and readers got where they wanted to go. The critics' opinions don't change that.

Unless, of course, we're not talking about "Who's the best pilot/writer?" but "Who is the best critic"?

Which is a different question, and one with limited bearing on the question of getting the passengers/ readers where they want to go.

(Sorry, this is deleted as a double post - "Talk" is acting wonky.)

Bob:

I'm talking about credibility, about expertise. When William Gibson recommended Cormac McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN to me it meant a lot more coming from him rather than a cowboy poet.

By the way, I think you soft-pedaled around my analogy. I asked you whose opinion was more relevant, the casual observers' or the expert pilot/film editor? Which has more credibility?

One last thing. A number of times I've referred to Peter Watts' presentation re: scientists who write SF. I've suggested that you folks search out Peter's blog and ask him for it. Now I've gone ahead and asked Peter if it's okay to provide an address for his posting and he has kindly agreed. I have no idea how to make this a link so you can just paste it in and click on it and it should take you to the pdf document.

http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/Watts_York2007.pdf

I'd be interested in further views on this (now that you can see it in its entirety).

So, are we talking about "Who are the most credible critics?", or "Should SF be better written?", or "Should scientists write SF?", or "People should read only the stuff that I approve of?" I'm losing track of the argument.

Peter Watts is a scientist who writes science fiction. I gave his early novels a miss, as there is simply too much to read for anyone to read everything. I read Blindsight - and I read his blog - only because the SF fans (...whose opinions you scorn...) recommended the book to me when they nominated it for a Hugo. I don't recall encountering any other review of it: I read it solely because fandom put it forward as a book worthy of my consideration.

So you seem to be arguing both that people with experience with writing - which, in the case of my learning about Watts, means "organized fandom" - are the best critics; and you're also arguing that lowly SF fans (don't have sufficiently refined taste)/(don't read closely enough) to have credible opinions.

One last analogy:

My brother-in-law is a former elite hockey player, captain of a team that won two national championships. We were recently watching a playoff game and a team scored a goal. He whistled in admiration. "Did you see that pick?" I had no idea what he was talking about...until they ran the replay and he pointed out a player who had run discreet interference on an opponent, allowing his team mate to walk out in front of the net and score the goal. Even the announcer missed it. Eric played the game, understands its intricacies and saw something that I, fan of hockey for thirty-five years, never grasped. That's the difference between even an informed fan and a real expert (someone who has played the game, so to speak, at a high level with personal, intimate knowledge).

No, sorry, I'm still not buying it. We're talking about popular entertainment. One of the operative terms there is "popular."

OK - your bother-in-law is an expert.

Does he let you express your opinion of the game? Do you enjoy the game even though you lack the expertise to comment upon it at your b-in-law's level?

Should nobody in any bar in Canada ever talk back to the game on TV unless they themselves are former national champion? It's entertainment. People are entertained, mission accomplished.

Your b-in-l can enjoy the game at a deeper level than the average fan: good for him. (Really, I mean that, I'm not being snarky.)
But his deeper understanding does not negate your enjoyment of the game.
People can enjoy things at all different levels. He might as well be watching a different game from the one you see. Should you then close your eyes and not watch hockey?

Okay, Bob, we'll let it go.

Thanks for your thoughts. They were appreciated (and I'm not being snarky either, honest). I think we just have two very different views, informed by different experiences. That's the way these things go.

A PostScript: I don't scorn science fiction fans. Some are enlightened, others as dumb as post holes. But I do place less value, for instance, in the opinion of those who read STAR WARS novelizations as opposed to those who seek out more challenging and provocative and innovative works.

#137- I like William Gibson and I like most of his work. I even like some of the authors he recommends. But I'm not going to turn my entire reading list over to him. He also recommends some writers I don't care for.

"Rudy Rucker should be declared a National Treasure of American Science Fiction. Someone simultaneously channeling Kurt Gödel and Lenny Bruce might start to approximate full-on Ruckerian warp-space, but without the sweet, human, splendidly goofy Rudy-ness at the core of the singularity."
--- William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition

I have yet to read a Rudy Rucker book I really liked. As a matter of fact Rudy is on my three strikes and out list. Subjectivity cannot be gotten rid of when it comes to writing and reading.

Five minutes looking at librarything catalogues wil tell you that people's reading interests overlap to a small degree, and often not at all.

The chance that some random guy, just because he has written a book can recommend something and I will like it is quite small. Rucker, to me, as well as VG above, is pretty ordinary.

Like Bob, I have never seen a scientific test that can prove how good a writer is. This is a subjective human judgement. Cliff's comments suggest that scientific analysis is not something he knows a lot about, or is at all interested in. If this is the case, by his reasoning about valid opinions, his opinion on something of this nature has minimal value.

How far a plane misses a runway by is a quantifiable physical measurement, as is measuring how late the landing gear came out, or how late an aileron was deployed. This is not comparable to the subjective judgement of entertainment. An individual person can assign a book a value, but get them to do it 20 years later after they have forgotten all about it, the number can be completely different. This, therefore, is not a repeatable, verifiable scientific experiment.

There are things like the Flesch-Kincaid index that analyse the complexity of a work, as far as sentence and word length, and others even more esoteric than that, but these don't tell you if it is gibberish or not, in general.

You can, of course, test for correct spelling and some grammatical construction. Some writers that people like, or famous books completely disregard some of this, and would fail these tests. People have even written computer programs to write books.

Someone has been writing for 2 decades. If he is a bad writer (and we don't know if we haven't read his work) then that perhaps makes him less qualified to judge what is good, especially after all that time failing. If he is a good writer, then that makes him a better writer, and possibly able to advise on writing, if he is able to teach and communicate with people effectively, but not a better reader.

I have been reading for a lot longer than 2 decades. If someone who is of a similar age has spent a lot of time writing, and not reading, then I am a much more experienced reader than he is, if experience is what matters, and would have read far more. Bob is considerably more experienced than me again. There would be people my age who have read several times as much as I have, so again they are way more experienced.

There are 80 year olds, who, for example, have been watching football and reading all their lives, and would say that football is much better than reading, books are rubbish, comparatively. They are even more experienced than anyone mentioned here.

None of which really matter to how much someone likes what they are reading, and when you look at it like that it seems quite silly.

I remind everyone that Message #137 contains information on Peter Watts'
presentation on scientist/writers. Cut and paste it in and you will have the complete text and then can respond appropriately.

Oh, what the heck, here it is once again:

http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/Watts_York2007.pdf

144: We can easily see that ourselves.

#141

"I don't scorn science fiction fans. Some are enlightened, others as dumb as post holes. But I do place less value, for instance, in the opinion of those who read STAR WARS novelizations as opposed to those who seek out more challenging and provocative and innovative works."

What a ridiculous and offensive thing to say. Do you think that a person who happens to like a STAR WARS novelization necessarily only reads STAR WARS novelizations? Is my opinion of any book less valid because I enjoyed Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry? It was an entertaining book. I happen to like the works of Hal Clement, Jack Vance and Arthur C. Clarke. Outside of science fiction, I've read Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Homer, and countless others; many of them not yet in my LibraryThing catalog.

A person CAN simultaneously love "Clair de lune" and "Funky Cold Medina."

Don't be so quick to judge.

>141 CliffBurns: and >146 Glassglue:

I can see where both of you are coming from.

There are a subset of people who call themselves sci-fi (sic) fans because they read certain media tie-ins (not just Star Wars). These usually do not have wide reading inside the genre but outside media tie-ins. I don't know if they have wide reading outside the genre but I guess most don't.

This is fine for them, if that is what they enjoy more power to them. But I don't listen to their recommendations. So in a way I hold the opinions of the tie-in fan in less regard than I do people who are widely read within SF genre. All that means is that there isn't likely to be much of a cross-over in tastes and what we want to get out of a book.

This is different to someone who has read widely within the genre who also reads one of the media tie-in lines, or even someone who usually reads outside the SF genre but has the occasional forays into tie-in land.

Also to answer the last bit of 141. Many readers (and some writers) enjoy a range of things. Sometimes a deep, challenging book. Sometimes a bit of fluff.

I'd like to add a brief comment here, merely to defend Cliff, esp. post 132 (some things are better than others) and his question about scientists turned authors.

I'm not sure what the anger is all about. Doesn't it make sense that a person trained in science would have a difficult time writing a good novel? They are different skills. To accomplish both would be an extraordinary feat (like Michael Jordan playing pro baseball.). There's no reason it can't be done, I guess, but I wouldn't expect it to become the norm.

It still comes down to telling a story. Does it hold my interest? If yes, I keep reading.

Question:

Has anyone had a look at Peter Watts' comments on scientist/authors yet?

I posted the address to go to twice, in messages 137 and 144. Has anyone had a look? Peter's a literate and articulate guy and I'd like to hear your thoughts on some of the points he raises (which are different and not necessarily complimentary to mine).

Have a peek...

I first looked at Watt's website a few months ago when I followed his notes at the end of Blindsight. (touchstone is bringing up the wrong book by that title...)

Yes, on your recommendation, I read Watts' .pdf file.

He nearly lost me when he claimed that "...scientists are actively trained from an early age to be bad writers."

Bob?

Anything else? He raised a number of points--rebuttals? Thoughts?
Is he partially right? Spectacularly wrong? How so? How not?

...

(Shrug.) The neutral voice of formal science writing is one of the intellectual triumphs of our species. Lots of scientists don't write in that voice very well, either, but it's not that they are "actively trained to be bad writers." It's a tool that's appropriate to the task. In the right hands, it's poetry.

I start losing patience with him when he's critical of those other scientists who "get over-excited" and include actual scientific detail in their stories... and then he seems to exclude himself from his own condemnation:
(to lightly paraphrase) "I had to put in a chapter of stuff like

Behemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis; once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis, using a 532-amino lysteriolysin analog..."

He admits that his inclusion of this sort of deathless prose was probably a good idea for his book, apparently because his stuff isn't like that stuff churned out by those other science-fiction-writing-scientists.

Whether this sort of 'scientific' prose is or it isn't needed, the audience for SF is not offended by the presence of stuff that's supposed to sound like science. Again, we're back to the question of whether the presence of 'science' in 'science fiction' is a bug, or a feature.

But doesn't the gobbledegook and terminology begin to age from almost the moment it's uttered? State of the art technology quickly becomes outdated or obsolete. Again, I draw comparisons to the works of Ray Bradbury. No Big Science, just a reliance on stories and character...and if you want poetry, I'd take him over Benford, Robert Forward (dreadful writer) and their ilk any day.

Ray's Mars may not be scientifically accurate but it's more compelling and ageless and it still sustains the imagination over fifty years later. Ray gives me more of a sense of wonder than the scientists, for all their theories, ever will. Just as I'd rather read a Phil Dick novel (though his dates have caught up with him, SCANNER DARKLY set in the 1990's) than I would Joe Blow, chief physicist for JPL. Not as good a writer as Ray but his kooky characters and mind-bending proclivities prevail over the scientific musings of contemporary, egg-headed counterparts.

I think you are maybe looking too one-dimensionally. Comparing your ideal against your nadir for writing.

Take a look at Fred Hoyle's work. The Black Cloud was listed as one of the top-10 SF novels of all time by The Guardian in 2004. In another of his books the hero spends time hill-walking in Scotland and Ireland and Hoyle captures the emotion and feeling of the hill-walker better than any other writer I have read.

But onto the point of the gobbledygook and terminology ageing. If it is based on real science then it probably won't age that badly. If it is just technology and engineering it may well. But this isn't something the non-scientist can avoid either unless they deliberately go for a pastoral feel (like Bradbury did in his Mars stories). Even the most basic of things can throw future readers. Take the first line of Neuromancer by William Gibson as an example. Today, TV's present a deep dark blue when tuned to a dead or non-existent channel - there is going to be obvious disconnect between the writer and a reader growing up today. Does it make the book unreadable? No. Does bad science (like breathable atmospheres on Mars and Venus) in old SF make them unreadable? No - or at least not for me, and others. Why should a more realistic vision of Mars like in Mars Crossing by Geoffrey A. Landis (good human story as well) fall apart when a detail is invalidated but a deliberately unrealistic vision (like PKD and Bradbury) is still OK?

Can you give an example of where the techno-babble and terminology has aged the book so much that it is not enjoyable?

This seems a far more interesting point rather than your other one which seems somewhat played-out at the moment.

It is also just a little possible that the curmudgeonly whingeing ranting Watts web-act has an undersea monster's tentacle implanted firmly in cheek, at times. Whether for PR or his own entertainment, given the overly brazen hypocrisy, or outright rubbish like the line Bob quotes above. Anyone remember 5 year olds starting school being picked out as scientists and being taught to write differently?

Any book has dated stuff in it as soon as it is written, from Victorian pissfarting around in Hansom cabs, to something in the early nineties with cops using payphones, talking about 'electric clocks' in Dick, to the actual language and speech.

Some people won't read anything old for that reason, and some will, and hence a large number of people will see Dick as dark age rubbish that they wouldn't read if you paid them.

Well, AsYouKnow_Bob, you can ask Mr. Watts anything you like in just three short weeks:-)

You can ask him if he has read or watched Space Vampires/Lifeforce yet.

:)

In terms of pointless tech stuff, I've read, er, tried to read a couple of Robert Forward novels with too much tech, Peter Watts mentions the "info dump" in SNOWCRASH and even Vernor Vinge' s work, most of which I rather like, features sections where a non-scientist editor could say "Vern, buddy, cut this section here and here, maybe your egghead friends will get off on it but it's exposition, man. Just say the Tokarov-Kent drive enabled them to reach the planet in six months, okay? I don't give a shit about tachyons and the rest of it." I'm sure if I had some Benford and Brin here, I'd be able to find relevant passages (I don't, they bore me) and if I wanted to just show you BAD writing, I'd just have to send you any Bova book he's ever written.

And Monsieur Watts is candid enough to sheepishly admit techno-jargon in his own work. He's a credible and intelligent commentator and doesn't deserve personal swipes and cracks that pass for debate. This is a guy who's shortlisted for a goddamn Hugo AND he's a scientist. Doesn't that give his essay just a tiny amount of credibility and relevance to this discussion?

P.S. And if some of you are seeing Peter in person soon, please do pass along my regards and congratulations for his accomplishments. I met him in Edmonton and he's one of the good guys--funny and smart as a whip.

Credibility?

No, because scientists are the worst writers going around and not worth reading.

and

Are you going to go and tell the romance reader group that a whole bunch of the sex etc. should be taken out and more plot put in to make it interesting to you and the editors that don't do this are failing?

Oh, and Watts says he is a Grump on his website, and admits to whingeing and ranting as well. You know, that place you keep telling us to go and look at. :) Don't complain when we, you know, use what he has said.

Zombie detector bits aside, his sense of humor is probably played too straight and too hard-edged for a lot of people.

158>

That is a different point entirely. You can say that you don't get off on the tech stuff and that's OK. Some people do. To my mind Vernor Vinge and Greg Egan write some of the best stuff around. To suggest that they can excise the technology stuff and be left with a better book is missing what they are trying to achieve by a mile.

Your point in msg 153. was that the gobbledygook started ageing from the moment it was fixed on paper. That it quickly became outdated or obsolete and by extension made the book unreadable for that very reason. I don't think that the science in Robert L. Forward's work has become outdated and/or obsolete to any great degree. I have the impression that you would have disliked Dragon's Egg on the day it was published for the very same reasons that you do now.

While certainly it is laudable to strive for idealism, I don't think even a well-presented argument will convince those who are 'Fans' (in the full sense of the word) or, say, "addicted" to their escapist reading material or particular hobby horse-- even if there might be some quantifiable way of proving they are reading junk, albeit junk they highly enjoy and treasure.

If someone primarily listens to New Kids on the Block, we might not be able to convince them that Mozart is 'better', or even the Beatles for that matter (or the countless independent artists that don't easily fall into a marketable mainstream); If they read mostly comic books or superhero stories, then suggesting they try Shakespeare, Melville, or Becket might prove futile. Similarly, someone whose daily fare consists of McDonald's might not have a palate sufficiently developed to appreciate 'fancy' culinary delights.

Of course the above is not necessarily mutually exclusive as a Rule, and i enjoy a Big Mac once in a while (though not on a daily basis) as too much junk makes my body and brain deteriorate.

So I applaud Cliff and others for attempting to argue on the side of superior art over superficial, mildly interesting ideas and inventions (especially those that read like Science Textbooks), but i feel certain 'readers' (like Bluetyson? though not to pick on him/her but just as an example, since it seems he does also enjoy highly 'literate' writers) will ultimately choose the drive-thru window over a well-prepared sit down meal. And of course i defend their right to choose for themselves...

Bob, #152 was a great post.

I was wrong about Cliff, and almost everyone else was right.

Just another time-waster.

163:
dear Lola,
it is always a sad moment when someone utters that "almost everyone else was right"?
who is 'everyone else'? and you are always entitled to your own opinion, but open to adjustments...
sadly it does not seem too many others follow your example for the reverse view... in fact, when i reread most of the above topic string i can see it's degenerated into minute nitpicking of he said/she said with an overt lack of creativity. (sounds a bit like the SF novels written by scientists? most of them anyways? little creativity and a lot of fact - real or invented -- drudgery..)

it takes guts (sometimes rock-headed-stubborness) to stand on your own two feet and not raise your right arm to eye level and shout "Sig Heil'. and even if you are 'wrong' at least you can think for yourself and present arguments, proof, angles to support your view which was presumably well thought out in the first place?

For any of you that are interested Brave new world is being read on BBC7 (listen again). It begins on Monday past and is 10 episodes long.

-165-
Thank you very much! will check out the BBC website to see if can listen online.

Yes you can listen online. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/monday/

why rule42, I didn't know you were a SF fan. You've been entertaining us quite well over on the Anglophiles group:-)

Intellectual nihilists? Are those the guys who scorn the use of complex science, as being, well, too hard, and got rid of any books that smell of such subjects and replaced them with the mediocre easy stuff like French poetry and critical theory?

:) :-)

I find #167 to be borderline offensive. Whatever it is you're responding to, it wasn't in my #152, and I'd prefer you not attribute opinions to me; or if you insist on misreading me, at least leave my name out of it.

My #152 was my response to Watts' essay, where he seems to be inconsistently applying his own critical standards.

If you think i'm expressing a preference for low-brow entaintainment over 'sound, lyrical writing' (CliffBurns' phrase, somewhere above), you've badly misunderstood the argument I've been putting forward in this thread.

-167-
Rule42

One small clarification: In my rhetorical references to Mob Mentality, and being afraid to speak one's mind, I am not implying that someone who does not agree with 'me' is a nazi or otherwise. Again, you use the word 'everyone' which is what i was wryly trying to undermine.
My tongue-in-cheek argument is simply that no one should be afraid to disagree, change their mind, or even agree to differ; once groups begin to think collectively or fall under the assumption that belonging to said group means wholeheartedly adhering to the party manifesto, is when the loss of individualism is at risk (or the chance of people engaging in action or thought that would normally be contrary to their character, morality, ethics, philosophy, religion, etcetera.) Even if one is, for example, a Republican, that does not mean he/she has to agree with everything that the Republican Party states as policy or champions.
Since you and Morphidae like mentioning Godwin's Law you should clearly state that such reference in no way undermines a Nazi analogy, especially when used rhetorically and not to literally suggest some one is a Nazi. Godwin was simply mentioning the probability such an analogy would arise (in 'online' discussions specifically and this only came up in the 1990s) but not necessarily questioning if it was used aptly or not. There are other analogous metaphors or historical incidents (the majority prior to the 20th century) and organized Religions provide enough inexhaustable material, but the Nazi one just seems to hit to the bone, does it not, as still lingering in our recent human history (or at least it used to have such an effect, but now i fear you are right and its usage too commonplace and the final resort in many 'arguments'). In the future i will strive to be more creative or innovative -- or perhaps more relevant for Today and reference Jihads, etc? (would the example of Rushdie and The Satanic Verses from more recent history be more suiting?)

Or I could use Godwin's Law itself as an analogy for Mob mentalitity once an observation/idea becomes an arbitrary 'law' everyone is supposed to follow (orginally based on an idea intended to diminish the overuse or reliance on certain tropes, or one in particular)? It is amazing how people love new rules or laws that control speech/thought in some form...
What about my comments in -162-? i would be curious to read your thoughts on that, as opposed to harping on my -- now beleaguered -- overuse (twice) of the dead-horse Nazi analogy.
But lastly, I do admit your point that it is a weak analogy (and often is overused and inappropriately so, though Godwin's Law makes allowances for figures of speech, figurative language/tropes, and rhetorical forms of speech/argument) and of course Godwin was on the right track when he noticed the disintegration of online discussion groups into non sequiturs, platitudes, and empty analogies.

Here is a quote-within-quote that may be helpful to the discussion (or create further debate):

"Do not, I beg you, pick it up lightly; do not, I urge you, be deceived by its come-hither appearance and easy way with words, into believing that 1982, Janine will let you go before you have been shaken up and rubbed down. Trust me, you will leave go at the end sore and nauseous, in need of balm and vomit.

Why should we trouble ourselves with difficult books? Why should we not slurp fictional mush and be spoon-fed undemanding narratives? For the simple reason that if literature doesn't have a capacity for awkwardness, then it cannot convey anything of the unreality of what it is to be in this world. Alasdair Gray has ... invoked Joyce's view that 'great art should not move us ... only improper arts (propaganda and pornography) move us, but true art arrests us in the face of eternal beauty, or truth, or something like that.' 1982, Janine, with its peculiar mixture of propaganda, pornography and, if not exactly eternal beauty or truth, at least something like that, is thus a stop-go experience."

-from Will Self's Introduction to Alasdair Gray's
novel1982,Janine

The purpose of fiction is to entertain. Non-fiction's purpose is to educate. Non-fiction should be as faithful to facts and as well written as possible. Quality matters in non-fiction because facts matter.

A friend of mine enjoys the music of Buddy Guy, while I prefer Howlin' Wolf. Is my opinion more valid? Is his? Does it matter?

I was greatly entertained by Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; therefore I consider it a good book. I am not concerned with someone else's definition of a good book. Did you enjoy the novel? If your answer is yes, then that's all there is to it.

#174 - to say the purpose of fiction is to entertain is simplistic. Novels are written for many reasons, i.e., political, ideological, philosophical, etc.
And if we accept that fiction is there to entertain and nonfiction is there to inform doesn't it make more rational sense that it should be fiction that is as well written as possible. Doesn't a well-written novel give more pleasure than a badly written one? Does it matter if a non-fiction work is poorly written if you understand the concepts?

Re the Dirk Gently argument - if someone likes a book does that make it a good book? The answer has to be no. What it makes it is a book that an individual likes. For something to be good you have give value to it, but if the value is purely personal, or all values are equal, then the object becomes valueless. The questions of what constitutes a good book are essentially on the level of 'what criteria are we using to judge a book', 'can we agree on these criteria', 'what value are we giving to each criteria', etc.

Of course, none of the above stops the question 'should scientists write SF' from being a pointless, or foolish, question. The phrasing of the question should have been 'can scientists write good, or meaningful, SF', whereupon the answer would have been 'yes, sometimes' and we would all have agreed and nodded our heads sagely.

>175 Jargoneer: Bravo! I must agree on all points!

It's been a long, fun roller coaster ride but can we now find something else to discuss? How about bald women & power in SF or a little revisiting of Judith Berman's wonderfully notorious essay, "Science Fiction Without the Future" or Postmodernist techno-Marxism?

bald women?

Someone actually put together a list?

We could start with Star-Trek:the Motion Picture Novel, and Moondragon from Marvel's Avengers.

:)

Berman essay at:

Science Fiction Without the Future

>171 AsYouKnow_Bob:

My dear Bob,

Calm down. Here, have one of my chill pills - I just received a fresh batch from Canada only yesterday! :)

My sarcasm did NOT attribute the opinion of your having "a preference for low-brow entaintainment over 'sound, lyrical writing'" specifically to YOU, nor have I misread what you are saying (as I will subsequently demonstrate). However, like it or not, there are a number of intertwined debates taking place on this thread which several previous posters, including yourself, have already pointed out. The original issue of "Do scientists write good sci-fi?" still keeps popping back up every now and then on this thread, but that initial topic for debate, like a hurricane spawning twisters, propagated a number of other more pervasive and less focused (i.e., broader) philosophical issues quite early in the thread, and much energy (I'll refrain from maintaining my hurricane/tornado analogy and calling it "hot air") has also been spent here, particularly by yourself, Bob, addressing those issues when they too, in their turn, regularly resurface.

Specifically, one underlying but much broader theme lurking behind (or, if you prefer, intertwined with) the ongoing initial debate re sci-fi writing scientists is that age-old philosophical chestnut - the question of aesthetics. You yourself have stated "it comes down to a question of taste" (post #129) and: "One of the lessons I've learned in a lifetime of reading and writing is that the 'best' writing is the writing that best communicates with the intended audience." (later on in the same post).

If I apply that same argument to the number of velvet paintings of Elvis hanging on the walls of the homes of Americans versus the number of comparably affordable replicas of more high-brow art (name any artist you want - Gauguin, Picasso, Rembrandt, Leonardo, whoever) I have to conclude that the artists that create the "Elvis art" are the ones that "best communicate with the intended audience." Because they successfully sell much more of their "art" than the folks selling the other more high-brow stuff (that is, taking each alternative subject matter individually for comparison - clearly ALL "non-Elvis art" when combined together way exceeds the "Elvis art" taken by itself). Please note that if people didn't genuinely like the "Elvis art" they wouldn't buy it because no one is forcing them to do so.

So in arguing the point that it all comes down to a question of taste so successfully in your post #129 (thus causing at least two posters in the peanut gallery to stand up and applaud you at that point) and later building on that success with your subsequent posts, like it or not, Bob, you are actually establishing that "a preference for low-brow entertainment" is indeed OK. You may not have intended nor wished to champion low-brow anything versus high-brow anything, but nevertheless you did. And quite eloquently so, I might add. I'm afraid you are somewhat a victim of your own success here. :)

In comparison, Condor and CliffBurns over on the opposite side of the debating table are similarly victims of their own passionate beliefs. Knowing that they were competing at a severe disadvantage in a forum full of "sci-fi fanatics" with "red flags" poised to silence anything they didn't want to hear, their zealousness in trying to establish some kind of aesthetic for sci-fi literature - rather than accept the simplistic intellectual nihilism so wonderfully demonstrated by monohex in post #174 - ultimately led the latter to resort to blog pimping and almost post-spamming, while the former had at times (particularly early on in the thread) desperately resorted, out of frustration, to insults and ad hominem attacks.

Reading this thread for the first time yesterday I found myself awarding you all the debating points for your logic and eloquence, Bob, and thus I am intellectually well ensconced in your camp; while at the same time I personally believe, as jargoneer just argued in post #175, that an aesthetic actually does exist in all areas of literature - the sci-fi genre representing just a small portion of it - which I think puts me spiritually in the opposite camp. Hence the sarcasm / satire in my post #167 was equally divided - mostly with the intent to bring some light relief. Just think of my post as being a brief Falstaffian interlude ... now King Henry, let's get back to the more intense historical intrigue ...

Jargoneer, well-written novels can be unpleasant for anyone to read for various reasons mentioned here. Cliff hates to read about physics, it wouldn't seem to matter if you melded Mark Twain and Herman Melville to do it, for example.

Badly written non-fiction will detract from the ability to absorb or use the information in some cases, so yes, it can matter. See the simple example of hideously translated instructions, for one thing. That could kill you, which at least a well-written but padded, plotless, dull and unreadable novel won't. :)

So neither of those suggestions are always true.

As for giving a value to a book, you have the following problems:

Different people will have a different value for it (for example, an editor or publisher)
Different groups of people will have a different value for it
The value will change by area (country, or whatever)
The value will change over time

Therefore it is not an intrinsic quality, it is a perceived non-quantifiable and eminently fluid quality.

>177 bluetyson: Bald Women. Tom Disch has an essay about bald women in SF in his collection of essays The Dreams our Stuff is Made of.

>172 Condor:

"My tongue-in-cheek argument is simply that no one should be afraid to disagree, change their mind, or even agree to differ; once groups begin to think collectively or fall under the assumption that belonging to said group means wholeheartedly adhering to the party manifesto, is when the loss of individualism is at risk (or the chance of people engaging in action or thought that would normally be contrary to their character, morality, ethics, philosophy, religion, etcetera.) Even if one is, for example, a Republican, that does not mean he/she has to agree with everything that the Republican Party states as policy or champions."

Condor, I agree wholeheartedly with what you say about "Mob mentality" a.k.a. the "herd mentality". I suggest you go to the Search Screen and in the field Search Talk type the word "groupthink" (as you can see I prefer more accurate scientific terminology in preference to your own penchant for synecdoche :) ). By my estimation you should see 11 hits - 6 of them all by yours truly on the subject of LT member post flagging and how the current mechanism favors cabals and cliques. The example I gave in one of those posts at the time was ...

(Cabalism) is possibly more likely to occur on the LT MB than even spamming or serious trolling becoming a problem. Right now it takes only one Harry Potter reader with four accounts (or two HP readers each with two accounts, or four HP readers sharing the same college dormitory) to delete any positive posts made about any of "The Lord of the Rings" titles in order to bury them. Ditto for Tolkein fans that wish to bury HP-loving posts. Let the fantasy wars begin ...

I could just as easily have said that it takes only 4 sci-fi fanatics in a sci-fi forum to bury any posts that express anything contrary to the core manifesto of the LT sci-fi clique - a truth I believe you have perhaps recently discovered for yourself. :)

BTW, one of the classic ways for a clique member to identify himself is to call anyone that disagrees with him (or any of his clique buddies) a troll or a sock puppet. After that, everything proceeds just like a scene out of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I do understand your frustration with such characters.

"... but now i fear you are right and its (Godwin's Law's) usage too commonplace and the final resort in many 'arguments'). In the future i will strive to be more creative or innovative -- or perhaps more relevant for Today and reference Jihads, etc? (would the example of Rushdie and The Satanic Verses from more recent history be more suiting?)"

Or the killing of Piggy in WG's LOTF might be a little more Literary. "what would the adults think?"

Vive la coquille de conque!

Edited to add "sock puppet".

Message 181> You know, I've owned that Disch book for years and somehow never quite got around to opening it, but after reading your various recent mentions of it, particularly this one (!), I'm now bound and determined that I will start it next week.

Thanks for the nudge, avaland!

>183 marietherese: The essays were interesting, thought-provoking, but I think I disagreed with most of them (like Poe not Shelley being the parent of SF).

Peter Watts replies:

I've been watching this thread with interest for a few days. Back in #152, AsYouKnowBob said (quote):

"I start losing patience with him (Watts) when he's critical of those other scientists who 'get over-excited' and include actual scientific detail in their stories... and then he seems to exclude himself from his own condemnation: (to lightly paraphrase) "I had to put in a chapter of stuff like:

'Behemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis; once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis, using a 532-amino lysteriolysin analog...'

He admits that his inclusion of this sort of deathless prose was probably a good idea for his book, apparently because his stuff isn't like that stuff churned out by those other science-fiction-writing-scientists. "

End quote.

When I first read this, I expected someone would eventually check what I'd actually written and point out that Bob had got it completely assbackwards. Instead, this bluetyson dude evidently took bob's "light paraphrase" as gospel and remarked upon my "blatant hypocrisy". Shortly thereafter, several others patted bob on the back for having nailed it with his seminal post.

I can't post comments on my own ­ I'm not a member of LibraryThing ­ but Cliff Burns has agreed to pass on my remarks, which are, basically:

Bob, I said no such fucking thing. You did not "lightly paraphrase": you put words into my mouth that conveyed the exact opposite of what I actually said. I did not excuse failings in my own writing: I held them aloft and ridiculed them as a case in point. I was utterly self- deprecating. Here are my exact words, immediately following the lysteriolysin quote:

"I took up an entire chapter with this stuff, and yet I'd be surprised if more than one or two percent of my audience would have even thought to ask the question, much less care about the answer. It doesn't matter. I'm too busy covering my ass against possible attacks from a handful of specialists who probably wouldn't be caught dead reading the book in the first place."

How is this elevating my work to the level of "deathless prose"? How is this excluding myself from my own condemnation? How is this anything but an admission that (to quote from earlier in the same piece) "ass-covering is ... not a great basis for telling a story to a wide audience, but I can't help it: I feel an almost instinctive need to back up my fiction, make it as nonfictional as possible... Sometimes I go too far."?

Call me a shitty writer; tell me my characters are cardboard, that my plotting sucks the one-eyed purple trouser eel, that I couldn't prose my way out of a fortune cookie. I will hold my tongue, because everybody gets their opinion and hey, yours might even be right. But when you start judging me on things I never actually said, damn right I'm going to set the record straight.

Which, hopefully, I have.

-Peter Watts

So he'd prefer to stand by his essay than his novel?

He says that his science fiction includes technical infodumps, too. He says that this is a bad thing.

I say that the presence of infodumps doesn't bother me.

It seems like Mr. Watts is the one attacking his own work, not me.

Puppets live. :)

Speaking of things never said, and taking what others have told you as gospel, 'blatant hypocrisy' would also be one of those things. :)

This is funny.

1. Lots of scientific info in a book is bad writing, but he does it anyway.

2. Scientific arse-covering so a few bad academic memories don't point out something is wrong is a bad writing idea, too, but he does it anyway.

Anyone written a paper on biology excess fiction compulsion? :)

Doing it for only the second reason above, and that reason alone, any addictions/compulsions aside, would be wimpy writing, unless it was for commercial reasons, which would be something else. :)

If I have mis-represented Mr. Watts, it apparently was because I missed the fact that he was holding up his own work as a bad example, another case of the kind of science fiction he disaproves of. I read it as saying "I've done it too, for my own contingent reasons - but my doing it doesn't excuse it when it's done by others."

I don't believe that my quote is the "direct opposite" of what he said in his essay. I thought his point was that sometimes, 'science-fictional' passages get shovelled into works of science fiction, for a variety of reasons. The fact that such passages sometimes go out under Peter Watts' by-line was interesting in the context of this thread, a thread where Mr Watts was being pointed to as arguing that it shouldn't be done.

Mr. Watts explains that his earlier novel should be condemned for this 'fault', as it falls short of his ideal. In future, I will be certain to keep his opinion of his own work in mind.

Cliff I would be interested to see if you still stand by your assertion in msg 153 after my msg 161.

BTW I am still waiting for an example of a book by anyone where the techno-babble has aged so much that the book isn't enjoyable anymore. This doesn't mean a book that you dislike (and have always disliked) because it has techno-babble.

Also for Peter Watts and any other lurkers we may have - why not sign up? It is free or at least it is to catalogue up to 200 books. If you are a published author you can get a LT Author badge if you wish (see this page for more details on that).

Watts has been a fan of the Bruce Smith/Dennis Hopper or Michael Jackson theme of promotion for a while it seems.

:)

Andy: I think Greg Egan is a writer definitely guilty of technobabble and I have mentioned Robert Forward, as well. I like Vinge but, as I've said, if I was his editor I'd pare down scenes from his work that feature too much scientific exposition. I think Forward is a bad writer, whether or not his science stands up. Ditto for Bova. Don't like Benford's characterization skills and don't like Brin's anything. Perhaps so much technobabble gets by editors because the editors aren't scientifically literate and don't feel comfortable saying "I didn't understand any of this crap--is it necessary?"

I have no problem with "lurkers"--especially if, like Watts, they're being misquoted and misrepresented in postings. The more people that tune in to the forum and discussion, the better. Peter has indicated that he's too busy to really involve himself (the man's schedule is hectic and good for him) and that's fine. He made his point, corrected some silliness that has been attributed to him and rebutted some ridiculous assertions.

This forum has taken some odd twists and turns, degenerated into personal attacks when logic and cogent argument no longer sufficed. I can understand to a certain extent--certain pet assertions and favorite authors were being brought to heel. I would like to think that if there are further postings, they will be substantive and thoughtful. Hope I'm not disappointed.
And where we have to, let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Here's a comment related to the original question, or at least to the title of this conversation. It's not just scientists who learn to write in certain ways that are incompatible with good fiction. I work as (among other things) a technical writer, composing information describing the use of software products. I also have a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in higher education, and part of one in English Literature. Each of these fields has a style, or way of writing, that is somewhat standard in its journals, and which its graduate students learn to use. I feel certain that other fields have their own standards, formalized to different extents. I don't think that scientists have a monopoly on learning to write in ways that would result in horrible fiction.

I do find, however, that I can switch without too much trouble from one style of writing to another. My technical writing and my composition of literature essays do not bleed over much into each other, except for a certain minimalism that has carried over into my essays. I find it quite easy to take off one hat and put on another. I suspect that those who write fiction and also have a day job that requires some other form of composition are able to make comparable switches back and forth with varying degrees of ease and success. I suggest that this facility in switching among styles is a significant factor (necessary, but not sufficient) in having scientists, educators, programmers, or anybody else who can write excellent fiction as well as whatever other form(s) of writing they do.

>167 Rule42: and 194

Hi Mom ... hi Dad ... hi Sis. Thanks for letting me know you read my posts OK. *Looks in the direction of the crowd where three red flags are waving and waves a red flag back at them*

>189 andyl:

"BTW I am still waiting for an example of a book by anyone where the techno-babble has aged so much that the book isn't enjoyable anymore. This doesn't mean a book that you dislike (and have always disliked) because it has techno-babble."

OK andyl, I'll fully admit that the book I'm about to mention does NOT fulfil your criterion, but maybe it will spark someone else to come up with a work that actually does. The book is H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Wells uses a theme of illegal eugenics being practiced by a reclusive doctor on a secret South Seas island (I may have got the island location wrong). It is not full of abysmal "techno-babble" of the kind that has been discussed to this point and also quoted by Bob in post #152. Nor is the book not enjoyable anymore.

However, the book is very dated WRT its approach to eugenics, and accordingly the reaction of the reader today is probably significantly different than it was at the time that it was first published. When I read it recently I couldn't help thinking that Wells might possibly have written a very different book if he knew then what we know now about micro-biology, and in particular about DNA and cloning.

OTOH, maybe he wouldn't. Part of the bigger theme in that book is the dark side of humankind and, as in other Wells SF, there is a "good versus evil" motif running through it. Dr. Moreau claims he is pushing the boundaries of scientific research with his sadistic bestiality and that "polite civilization" - which has ostracized him to this remote inaccessible island - just doesn't understand the true significance of his work. He is your typical misunderstood outsider!

However, an alternative take on his "scientific experiments" is that he is simply using his mantle of science as a beard for justifying the pursuit of his own evil passions in the areas of sadism and bestiality. Another issue posed by the novel is the question of moral right and responsibility WRT the "hybrid" man-beast creatures he creates.

Of course, the same question arises WRT to cloned cows and sheep today, and given Bush's stance on stem-cell research etc., the creation of a straight human clone - let alone a "part-man/part-beast" creature - is still a highly contentious issue WRT scientific morality.

Thus I was left wondering after finishing this book exactly how much of it I would actually change in the light of modern day medical and biological science. Wells is very vague how Moreau and his cronies create their hybrid creatures / monsters (unlike, say, Mary Shelley is with her descriptions of the monster being created in Dr. Frankenstein's lab) but he eludes to the fact that it involves excruciating pain and suffering, with lots of blood and gore flying around, in order to "splice" new genetic mutations onto his existing creatures. If he had been more specific Wells would have, of course, crossed over the line into sheer bad taste, not to mention he would have had to create more pseudo-science and/or insert some "techno-babble" to appropriately handle the additional detail.

Perhaps this book is actually more an example of how to write literary SF than how not to write something that will become dated (which was my point of entry here!). Wells adopts vagueness in order to remain on the right side of good taste (viz. he refrained from writing something that we might have expected to have been penned instead by the good old Marquis de Sade) but by censoring himself in that way it also prevented him from getting bogged down in complete pseudo-science and the "techno-babble" that usually goes along with it.

Given that "good versus evil" (or, if you prefer, the light side versus the dark side within each of us) is thematic to this novel, I think the whip-toting and blade gouging sadism of Dr. Moreau that Wells opted for - well he didn't actually have an option when he wrote it, but he would have if he were writing it today - serves this theme much better than a genial white coat-wearing scientific boffin type working in a modern day cloning lab would. That would be the equivalent of RLS writing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Jekyll ... if we as readers are to embrace it, the evil side has to actually look evil and behave in an evil way, and not just have bad hair like Einstein! :(

Nevertheless, I did squirm a little while reading this book, and when I had finished it, I did also consider posting it as the book of the month on bondage.com!

Now here's a question to consider. Has anyone here read any science or fantasy fiction that contains any IRONY?

"Now here's a question to consider. Has anyone here read any science or fantasy fiction that contains any IRONY?"

Terry Pratchett.
Douglas Adams particularly Dirk Gently

#189 "BTW I am still waiting for an example of a book by anyone where the techno-babble has aged so much that the book isn't enjoyable anymore"

Journey to the Centre of the Earth ? I can't say that I don't like it anymore, but the whole premise makes reading it feel very odd.

The technobabble is but one aspect of the discussion to me. Yeah, Greg Egan is guilty of it (info dumps) and Vernor Vinge is guilty and Bob Forward and so is Peter Watts (Peter, at least, admits it). But it's the tunelessness of scientist/SF scribes that gets to me, the lack of music and lyricism in their prose, a sufficiently good ear for the way people speak, real, ordinary people.

In the Robert Fagles' translation of THE ILIAD, Homer as narrator pleads with his Muse to "sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles". I wish more SF scribes would make a similar request of their sources of inspiration. Good writing comes from the right word in the right place, a sense of rhythm, an unerring ear for pitch, getting the tone note perfect. The masters of language have much to teach us and the more reading outside the field of SF we do, the better for the genre as a whole.

Real people speak musically and lyrically? Where do you live, Brigadoon?

The more that writing is made 'perfect' the less it resembles how people talk, with stops and starts, umms and ahs, mistakes, pauses, swearing, etc.

Fiction writing, in most cases, resembles real speech not at all. As far as that goes the tank crews in David Drake's Hammers Slammers or something like that, would be considerably closer to real people talking than any author I can think of that you have mentioned.

"When Lauren was a small girl, she would stand in the Kansan fields and call the cats. One by one they would come to her through the grass, across which lay the ice of the coming winter and she could see them in the light of the moon. The shadows of the crossing clouds formed a thousand small dark junctions before her. The glint of the ice was like the glint of the cats' eyes, and that in turn was something like the glint of the stars through the clouds. She herself wondered why they came. They were wild and heeded no one else; their thrashing in the fields did the farmers no good; and Lauren's father hated the howl they invested in the night, like a thousand bleeding babies in the grass. But they came for her and it was certain therEfore, because of that, that she was in some way special; and perhaps, she was to wonder twenty years later, they came for the same reason she came to them, which was that it was beautiful to see them, all the crucifixes of shadow and the array of lights like knives, and she was beautiful like that too..."

-Steve Erickson, DAYS BETWEEN STATIONS

"These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back. I can tell you of the ones I've seen, of the ones that are no more, but I doubt there will be time. It is all happening too fast now, and I cannot keep up.
I don't expect you to understand. You have seen none of this, and even if you tried, you could not imagine it. These are the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone. A street you walked down yesterday is no longer there today. Even the weather in in constant flux. A day of sun followed by a day of rain, a day of snow followed by a day of fog, warm then cool, wind then stillness, a stretch of bitter cold, and then today, in the middle of winter, an afternoon of fragrant light, warm to the point of merely sweaters. When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it..."

-Paul Auster, THE COUNTRY OF LAST THINGS

(The opening words of two of my favorite novels.)

I am curious as to why folks are flagging one of my recent posts for abuse???? (and for that matter a post by Rule42 also flagged for abuse...)
I did not insult anyone, and in fact was very VERY careful to point out my playful humour/sarcasm, and 99% of the post was speaking in funny, general terms.
Or, as i suspect, did some Harry Potter fans become offended? (or someone else who i will not name)

Why (as one example) is Bluetyson allowed to directly make fun of or insult Cliff Burns or others, and that is alright, without any of us flagging him for abuse, while others (like me) get flagged when not attacking anyone but expressing an opinion in a humorous way?
Is Rule42 right that there exists a clique or Cabal (or various ones) and they work together to exclude/attack those with whom they disagree?

I'm just wondering what people are afraid of, and if they have a response to something specific i have said or implied, then why not post that instead of cowardly flagging for abuse from the shadows?

-198- bluetyson
"Fiction writing, in most cases, resembles real speech not at all. As far as that goes the tank crews in David Drake's Hammers Slammers or something like that, would be considerably closer to real people talking than any author I can think of that you have mentioned."
This has to be one of the funniest comments i've ever read (of course i assume it was meant as sarcastic/ironic?). I read Hammers Slammers (i think i was 12?) and enjoyed that during my testosterone-fueled, lack of real sex, military-obsessed phase of puberty, and perhaps the tank drivers do speak like real people though i might check with my friends in the military.
But i wonder if Bluetyson has read much non-SF or non-comic book fiction at all? I can think of countless novels, plays, and short stories where the author manages to capture 'real' speech quite well (especially when people are actually speaking in quotes, and not just the paragraphs of description, etc.) and of course this will vary in the context/era/setting -- so some readers today may not feel that Joyce's Ulysses reflects how real people speak, or Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting for that matter, if they have never been to Dublin or Glasgow; just as it may be difficult for contemporary readers to feel that Shakespeare captured the nuances and lyricism of the forms of his speech in his day?.

"Real people speak musically and lyrically? Where do you live, Brigadoon?"
What Cliff Burns actually wrote was "But it's the tunelessness of scientist/SF scribes that gets to me, the lack of music and lyricism in their prose, a sufficiently good ear for the way people speak, real, ordinary people." So he was obviously lamenting the LACK of lyricism and musicality in many forms of human speech in SF writing, not explicitly saying we all walk around in a Musical (this might seem like a fine distinction but i assure it is not; again i refer you to forms of Irish, Scottish and even English speech, and even the Australian accent has a certain tone which to North Americans might sound 'musical' or 'lyrical').
Bluetyson, since you live in Australia, i recommend in a friendly way (if you have not already done so) to read some of your countrymen and women (and not just SF please) that have created some beautiful prose/poetry, etc.

*Edited to add: I should not exlude many parts of USA or Canada, where one can hear various accents and forms of speech that most definitely exhibit lyricism and musicality. If you need examples I can list them, but for the most part they are quite obvious and do not require a linguist to ascertain. All you need is an open mind and ear.

CliffBurns: Trying to read between the lines in #199 ... you're not claiming those two novels are examples of well-written literature that people should be reading instead of sci-fi, are you? Because, as you must know having read them, they ARE sci-fi stories.

200>

I can't see much wrong in your post either. I guess there was a side-swipe at bluetyson's writing style (which I can read perfectly well btw) but I thought you made it clear you were talking about your impressions. Plus there was the computer misfits bit of your message. When you first started posting you were too insulting and people may still responding to your robust style rather than any particular personal insult. They may also think that adding a no offence disclaimer doesn't take the sting of the previous sentence away.

I can understand how Rule42 got flagged. Not being very complimentary about Peter Watts or Cliff Burns.

There really isn't a cabal of flaggers although there may be a bit of group-think amongst certain people. It is my impression that some of the flags are coming from people who are reading and not contributing.

Re: Message #201

Again, as with Pynchon, I don't think either Auster or Erickson would be overly delighted to wear the science fiction mantle. Besides, as with the case of Bob, I think you're spreading your net too wide, trying to take credit for writing that transcends SF...or any other genre. Auster and Erickson are more rightly called "fabulists" (a la Borges, Nicholas Christopher). Just because a world is markedly speculative or imaginary doesn't make it SF. And shouldn't the author have any say in the matter? I note there's another forum in this group devoted to "why mainstream writers deny writing SF" or some such thing. Authors who identify their work as belonging in SF are free to do so but if an author declines, why bear him/her any ill will? A number of respondents have brought up the works of John Crowley and Gene Wolfe as having literary credentials...but how many SF fans actually read these guys? The literary is not made welcome among a good many sci fi fans--they're too caught up in other media, movies and gaming and TV tie-ins. The "new wave" caught on these sharp rocks and was swept away by a nasty backlash against all things pretentious and artsy-fartsy. But in the end it's the readers who determine whether the field is innovative and organic or shallow and staid. As readers become more critical and discerning in their tastes the writing will improve, the stories will improve and that sense of wonder we've spoken about will be enhanced all the more.

203>

I think my experience of SF fans is quite different to yours. Maybe it is because I am live on a small, insignificant island just off the coast of mainland Europe. Looking at the BSFA award (an award voted by members of a convention now and previously members of BSFA) I see no bias for simple, traditional SF.

From the year 2000 it has been awarded to Ash: A Secret History, Chasm City, The Separation, Felaheen, River of Gods, Air, or, Have Not Have, and End of the World Blues.

Of course the small number of voters could be the few who appreciate such books. However they are, by and large, the people you have been debating with here.

>203 CliffBurns: Cliff

You're tilting at windmills that don't exist. I just checked the LT numbers for Gene Wolfe. His most popular book has 594 copies in member libraries. John Crowley is represented with more than a thousand copies of his most popular work. The most copies of a Star Trek novel that I found only had 264 copies. Well written SF has survived in the past and I'm sure it will survive in the future. Still, in your mind it seems you think the media tie-in lit is taking over and I'm not sure anything posted here or anyone posting here is going to disabuse you of that notion. It's a meme that lodges in a certain percentage of SF readers for reasons that I'm not completely clear on.

Very little written work ever picks up a second generation of readers much less a third, SF included. Most of the current crop of SF will serve its present-day readers and then fade away. What lasts will not be up to us but our progeny. Just as it's always been.

Ghost:

Yes, but how many LT members actually listed their STAR TREK books? They'd be much more likely to post novels they're proud of reading...and no one is going to impress anyone by listing all fifteen (or how ever many) James Blish original TREK collections they have or the umpteen STAR WARS novelizations (or DS9, NEXT GENERATION, STARGATE, etc.). I didn't list MY Blish titles or the embarrassing TREK-related stuff I've picked up at garage sales or used places over the years. I limited myself to 200 books and that meant I had to be highly selective. I wonder how many others have done the same...

>200 Condor:

"I did not insult anyone, and in fact was very VERY careful to point out my playful humour/sarcasm, and 99% of the post was speaking in funny, general terms.?

In my own case, there are more than enough clues in that post to the fact that it is humor and NOT insult. That is, if you read with context and comprehension. I did consider putting "start irony" and "end irony" brackets around the irony portion, but if you have to explain a joke then it is no longer funny. Ironic humor should creep up on you and take you by surprise.

>202 andyl:

"I can understand how Rule42 got flagged. Not being very complimentary about Peter Watts or Cliff Burns."

Until you made your comment, I was assuming that it was the irony at the end that was offending, NOT the parody at the beginning, and that readers of this thread were getting upset at the references to "sci-fi geeks" and "sci-fi freaks" etc.

I hadn't really considered that it was the sarcasm initially directed at Cliff and Peter that might be the problem that is causing others to flag, since Peter posts via Cliff, and Cliff clearly has good reading comprehension. The whole thrust of his body of posts on this thread is that he enjoys authors that demonstrate that they have a precise ear and a lyrical style, and that he finds that much SF written by scientists lacks such a lyricism.

Because Cliff has argued here that, "good writing comes from the right word in the right place, a sense of rhythm, an unerring ear for pitch, getting the tone note perfect," which requires an equally high level of reading comprehension to appreciate as it does a level of writing craft to create, I hardly think that he is the person doing the flagging, even if he is the brunt of the sarcasm (which, BTW, is friendly joshing from me, not abusive insult).

Since Cliff/Peter is the only poster here that could possibly be directly insulted by the ventriloquist portion of the post, anyone else flagging my post because of that portion is doing what is known as "proxy-flagging." That is where someone gets insulted on behalf of someone else (on the basis that that other person might not have liked it) which, if it occurs, makes a whole mockery of the LT user flagging system. If I proxy-flagged every post I that I read which I thought might offend someone else then I would end up flagging all of them because virtually no one can please everyone all of the time.

Heck, using the proxy criteria, I would have flagged my own post #194 immediately after I made it, on the basis that I knew that both Cliff and any sci-fi fan could indeed be offended by it if they didn't read it properly and misinterpreted its intent. The onus in all communication, but especially on a MB, is on the reader to give the benefit of the doubt. The LT terms of service are simply: "BE NICE"! Which I interpret as meaning that one should apply the Golden Rule when posting: "Don't do to anyone else what you couldn't handle being done to you."

But that rule applies equally to how you READ a post as to how you WRITE a post. If my first reaction on reading something is that it is abusing / insulting me in some way (rather than razzing or teasing me) I will read and reread the post looking for alternative interpretations ... maybe I missed the irony, maybe I mistook the intent, maybe I'm being a bit thin-skinned, and so on. I read literature the same way - if I'm not getting it for any reason, then maybe, just maybe, the problem lies with me ... and NOT Plato or Tolstoy!

Condor, look to your own reading first before telling others what they should read, as again you didn't comprehend. Accents and different people's perceptions of how they sound have nothing to do with what I was talking about.

Irvine Welsh is a reasonable example of being closer to reality in speech, than the edited, censored, structurally correct prose that is in the majority of published fiction, even if things like Filth go a bit whacky.

"Hmm.. err... well... not sure I wanna do that..."

will appear in a book as a corrected, complete sentence :-

"I am not sure I want to do that."

as an example of what I mean.

The latter form is of course a lot more readable, but bears little relation to the patterns of speech that actually exist.

*laughs hysterically*
i was wondering when the light would cast upon the shadows...

but i seem to recall you 'criticising' someone else for self-contradiction? or in this case you simply misquoted or paraphrased for your own purposes so i could not resist pointing that out... since Burns was discussing the LACK of something, which you turned to a different statement of your own.

:)

if i misunderstood what you meant in your comments then surely the error/fault is my own, and not that of the author's??? but my point is still valid in a roundabout way, since i was not simply meaning the 'sounds' of words or accents and i did a poor job of explaining that explicitly.

I must confess the latter part of your post 208 rings 'true' to me, and I would add that there are many fine examples of such patterns of speech in good literature (and i would not presume or condescend to point them out to you, since i'm sure you are familiar with such works.)

Yes, it is possible I misunderstood what he meant by the musical bit.

Examples, of course, are just that, not the majority. For every Welsh there are many, many others who use the standard written structure. Even for your examples it is likely in published form they are turned into complete sentences, for one thing, and the same thing is often done in Trainspotting.

Re #203: CliffBurns wrote about "trying to take credit for writing that transcends SF...or any other genre."

I don't mean this in flag-inducing way, but it seems like you're saying that when a science fiction story is written by an author not normally considered a sci-fi writer, and that book is too "good" for sci-fi, it gets lifted out of the genre and no longer counts.

Regarding Erickson specifically, especially when you consider Arc d'X, I think he actually does have sci-fi tendencies.

And regarding #206 about not entering books one is "embarassed" to have read ... I would bet that the people here who have paid memberships, and can thus enter as many books as they want, are entering literally ALL their books ... I know I do ... and that includes my Star Trek books ... generally speaking, I can't think of a single book I'm embarassed to have read.

The tags for Arc d'X are interesting. 7 people tag it science fiction and another 3 sci-fi - out of 72 people. Science fiction is the second most frequent tag for this book behind fiction (21 tags).

A similar ratio occurs for Days between stations which has 69 owners, 17 fiction tags, 7 science fiction tags, 2 sf tags and 1 sci-fi tag.

It seems a substantial percentage of the people who give it a label use the label science fiction (or near synonym).

When we look at some other books that Cliff might claim for literature like Fremder the percentage is even higher and often the science fiction group of tags dominates as in The Calcutta Chromosome

Others which have higher ownership like The Plot Against America the ratio is much lower. In that case science fiction + sci fi + sf = 16 tags. That can be compared with politics (and synonyms) at 23 tags, literature (+ literary fiction etc) at 30 and alternate history (+ alternate universe etc) at 102 tags.

For me all this indicates that what is and what is not science fiction is partly a personal construct inside the reader's mind and not purely a marketing device. That different people have different (and in some cases widely diverging) mental models of what is and what is not SF isn't surprising.

As a matter of interest I have 2 SF anthologies that contain stories by Jorge Luis Borges. Do I think they are SF? Doesn't matter - James Gunn did in one of the cases. The same goes for Jan Morris's Hav and any other work. I fall very much in the inclusionary side of things not exclusionary. If enough people think something is SF then it'll do for me.

Just because a certain work employs a few SF props and tropes or is "otherworldly" doesn't make it a genre offering. I prefer genre-busting myself. I guess I'll stick with my comment previously that it should be left up to the author to decide whether he wants to be stickered with the label SF. Harlan Ellison doesn't want that (any more) and, as I've said, I doubt if Erickson, Pynchon, William S. Burroughs or Atwood would welcome the tag. Was Borges a SF scribe? Primo Levi? Jonathan Carroll? Isaac Bashevis Singer? Adolfo Bioy Cesares? All feature fantastical worlds and situations. This maybe is the subject of another posting--"Defining SF". I don't think, by the way, that just because a book is great denies it SF status. DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP and THREE STIGMATA by Dick are wonderful SF offerings (though he frequently expressed his desire for mainstream success), TOWING JEHOVAH is a magnificent novel and James Morrow doesn't seem to mind being lumped in with sci fi scribblers.

As for your final point, I would have to see more empirical evidence before I can make any conclusion re: the books in LT members' libraries. Many of your members carry books by Crowley and Wolfe but how many STAR TREK, STAR WARS and media-tie in books do they collectively own? How many OWN Samuel Delaney's DHALGREN (or other difficult works), list them in their libraries but haven't read them (or gave up partway through and flipped to the latest Steve Perry or Orson Scott Card)? More people in the SF community should be reading authors like Wolfe, Crowley and Delaney but I still think only a small proportion of today's readers are well- acquainted with these talented authors. Most ordinary SF fans would far more likely boast collections featuring, ah, less distinguished offerings. My view, anyway.

Andy:

One thing: "If enough people think something is SF then it'll do for me".

I prefer to make my own judgments and not go along with the herd instinct. But I'll fall back on my assertion that it should be the author who determines the genre he/she works in. I would not be comfortable being called a SF or horror author, though my works frequently display aspects of both these fields. It's not that I'm a snob, it's simply that I don't think the SF or horror sticker really fits the vast majority of my fiction. It's too limiting. I like my work to have that "transcendent" quality I wrote of earlier. Philip Roth, a real curmudgeon, would likely throttle you if you stated the alternative history in THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA rendered his novel science fiction. The fact is, I thought PLOT a forgettable offering and think that there are some SF scribes who could've done much better with the same material. See? I'm not a snob. No, really...

Again I don't make a judgement on people for having media tie-ins in addition to more worthy titles in their library. I might go out and eat fish 'n' chips from the chip shop tonight but tomorrow I could be eating a a Michelin starred restaurant. Just because I've had chips doesn't mean I can't appreciate or judge the restaurant or its food - even if I have had more chips than fancy dining (and believe me that is the case). Some nights a plate of chips is just what I fancy just like some nights a low-brow adventure story is just what I fancy (I wouldn't choose Star Trek or Star Wars for myself but I have no problems with others doing so for themselves).

You know, I think andyl in #212 hit the olde nail on the head with "For me all this indicates that what is and what is not science fiction is partly a personal construct inside the reader's mind."

Certainly, out of all the definitions, leaving it up to the author is just about my least favorite ... I guess this is the deconstructionist in me coming out ... but also, just for an extreme case, what happens if an author writes a book about creationism and he/she considers it "factual science" ... does that mean it is?

No, a book about "creationism" should be labeled FANTASY.

Tongue in cheek.

I'm not saying I have the answers (God forbid)--I'm speaking as an author, stating my preferences. I resist labels and I certainly resist other people categorizing my work for me (based on their own biases and preconceptions).

Finally...if someone eats junk food on a regular basis I would NEVER ask them for a recommendation to a good restaurant. Likewise, I would never ask someone who reads hackwork to recommend a good author. These novelizations and tie-ins are churned out by crap writers like Kevin J. Anderson, etc. for MONEY. Shame on the authors involved (though many gave up the notion of writing something of enduring power and strength long ago). And shame on people for clogging their mental arteries with CRAP.

1) Any academic will tell you that the author is not a credible source for explaining what's to be found in a work of fiction: they might be the last person to realize what's packed inside it.

2) It's not just me claiming that Pynchon writes SF. The Science Fiction Writers of America nominated Gravity's Rainbow for their Nebula Award. That makes it SF.

3) Now we're rehashing an argument that's fully fifty years old:

"SF's no good!"
They bellow till we're deaf.
"But this looks good!"

"Well, then it's not SF."

-- Kingsley Amis

Well some tie-ins are churned out by poor writers, some aren't.

Off the top of my head I can think of Ian Watson, Barrington J. Bayley, Kim Newman, Brian Stableford (all gaming tie-ins), Vonda McIntyre, Walter Jon Williams, Pamela Sargent, George Zebrowski, KW Jeter, SP Somtow.

None of those I would class as a crap writer.

Robert Silverberg wrote under various names and produced mysteries, westerns and erotica. Presumably in order to pay the bills. Should modern writers be declared 'crap' because they do the same?

(deleted because talk ate half my comment; I'll re-post this when I reconstruct it)

Some different things going on in #217.

First, "if someone eats junk food on a regular basis I would NEVER ask them for a recommendation to a good restaurant. Likewise, I would never ask someone who reads hackwork to recommend a good author."

Why does one eliminate the other? People can eat junk food/read "hackwork" regularly while still enjoying and being knowledgeable about gourmet food/"literature" ...

Regarding "novelizations and tie-ins are churned out by crap writers like Kevin J. Anderson, etc. for MONEY. Shame on the authors involved," what about authors who don't have the economic luxury of only writing "literature"?

Finally, about this: "And shame on people for clogging their mental arteries with CRAP."

Some people might say shame on you for trying to tell other people what's "crap" and what isn't.

(This is what I was writing this morning at #220, but, oddly, "Talk" ate half of it.)

Here's a point I don't believe has been mentioned in this thread:

Let's assume for the sake of argument that "good writing" IS a "measurable thing". Let's assume that "Writing Quality" Q falls out along some sort of normal distribution. Say that half the writing is better than "average", half is worse. The extremes of both good and bad writing are relatively uncommon; perhaps the curve is even biased slightly toward "ungood" writing, but essentially, a normal curve.

What this tells us is that good writing is (by definition) scarce. Go over to the right on the Q axis a couple of sigmas, and you're down to 1% or so of the fiction available. You're now talking about (literally) a handful of books per year.

We've mentioned Samuel R. Delany in this thread - I think that we can all agree that, by any standard, he has produced "good writing".

Now, I've been reading Delany for forty years now. Has he written ANY fiction in this century?

What are we supposed to be reading while we wait for more?

The supply of "good writing" is actually quite finite.

Those of us who read a lot can run through it in a surprisingly short period of time. The Harvard 'Five-foot shelf' can be done in a year or two. Say the entire Library of America series lasts a good reader a decade. Say there are roughly 500 'prize-winning' SF novels (50 years of Hugo Awards, 40 years of Nebula Awards, 25 years of PKDick Awards, 25 years of Clarke Awards, etc.). That's a decade to read everything in the field that has ever been thought prize-worthy.

What do we read after we've read all the 'good' stuff? Cereal boxes?

Yes I am fairly certain Samuel R. Delaney has a written a couple fictional works this century.
Dark Reflections and Phallos are both recent.

BTW how can "the supply of 'good writing'" be "finite" if there are still writers producing works today, and tomorrow, which we might call 'good'?
Ultimately it is finite, since the earth will one day not exist (and perhaps us smart apes will also be extinct), but for now we are safe perhaps?
Also, I'm afraid that good writing is not just indicated by those texts that win awards, so even a voracious reader might be pleasantly surprised by works that dont' accumulate accolades.. You just have to be brave enough to test new waters and independent publishers/writers?
And there are plenty of works written in the last 500 years to keep you busy in your lifetime? Unless you mean only SF books?

*edited for typos/errors*

#206 Cliff

As I said before I have no doubt you believe that the SF community on LT (and elsewhere) mainly owns and reads only the dregs of the genre. I don't think anything posted here will budge that belief no matter the numbers or examples given you.

I don't see it that way. This group has 820,114 books in their libraries. Our most common shared book is Dune. When I got these numbers we had 435 copies. 435/820,114 makes Dune's percentage of the combined library 0.0005304%. Somebody could come along and say, " You guys are all a bunch of Dune heads." but that would hardly be the truth of the matter.

Every genre and every branch of the written word is represented in those libraries. You might believe that a vast majority of those 820K books are media tie-in SF but I doubt they would add up to half a percent of the total library. Also I believe most of the books in these libraries have been read read even the difficult ones.

I'm not trying to change your mind, I'm saying I don't agree with the premise that SF readers are a bunch of dimwits that wouldn't recognize good writing if it bit them on the ass and pad their libraries with unread quality books to make themselves look intelligent.

If we brought Harold Bloom into this thread he might give us about ten SF books that would fit in the Western Canon, just barely, I'd imagine him saying. That doesn't mean only those ten books should be read and the rest of the genre ignored.

>223 Condor:

"BTW how can "the supply of 'good writing'" be "finite" if there are still writers producing works today, and tomorrow, which we might call 'good'?
Ultimately it is finite, since the earth will one day not exist (and perhaps us smart apes will also be extinct), but for now we are safe perhaps?"

Condor, your understanding of the term finite is somewhat confused. There is NO concept of time implicit in either of the terms finite and infinite - they are merely measures of numerical quantity. You are also confusing very large finite quantities with infinite quantities.

The universe is extremely large - but it is still FINITE. It has existed an extremely long time, but unless you reject the "big bang" theory (or even "creationism") it has still only existed a FINITE amount of time. So to answer your question ...

"... how can "the supply of 'good writing'" be "finite" if there are still writers producing works today, and tomorrow, which we might call 'good'?"

... no matter how many writers produce works in the future (whether 'good' or 'bad' by whatever aesthetic you wish to apply) they will only be able to produce a FINITE amount of it ... even if it is a LARGE finite amount and more than the most voracious of voracious readers can consume.

To this reader, your question (the way you expressed it) was totally meaningless ... and dare I suggest that it may indeed also be regarded as scientific "techno-babble" or "gobbledegook" to anyone else that has a mathematical or epistemological background.

So please stand over there in the corner with all those low-brow SF authors that you and Cliff so love to despise. If YOU yourself cannot make a simple post without resorting to "techno-babble" ... why is the author of a whole SF genre novel so despicable (and God forbid that he might also do it to make money in order to feed his family!) for slipping on that same banana?

People in glass houses ... ?????

That part of your post might actually be an argument for why MORE scientists SHOULD write science fiction and NOT LESS as Cliff argues. :)

"You just have to be brave enough to test new waters and independent publishers/writers?"

HERE, HERE ...

"And there are plenty of works written in the last 500 years to keep you busy in your lifetime? Unless you mean only SF books?"

I'm soooo glad you caught that fallacious assumption underlying (and undermining) the whole of Bob's post like a bad axiom in geometry!

>222 AsYouKnow_Bob:

Bob, I read your post as being totally tongue-in-cheek, but just in case you (or anyone else reading it) actually believe(s) your artfully deceptive non sequitur ...

"What are we supposed to be reading while we wait for more?
The supply of "good writing" is actually quite finite."

And so is the Solar System when compared to the whole Universe! Yet I don't expect to get to visit everything in it before I die ... I don't even expect to break away from this rock called Earth that we are all stuck on. The supply of "good writing" is indeed quite finite ... and yet even that miniscule (note the irony!) amount is still much more than I will ever be able to get to read in my own lifetime!

Thus you are purposely performing a little semantic sleight-of-hand here in order to make your bogus point. Although a "limited finite" quantity is indeed quite small when compared with a "large finite" or even an "infinite" quantity, from the perspective of the number of books an average voracious reader (note the oxymoronic irony!) can read in a lifetime it is still HUMUNGOUS (note the irony of my using a non-existent word while attacking your own semantic usage!).

As limited as that small finite quantity of "good books" is out there, most of us will never be able to read them all before we die. So why would I (or anyone else) want to read ANY "bad SF" (or "bad" anything else) that has no literary quality given that I have such an Herculean task ahead of me? Thus you just argued Cliff's point for him?

"What do we read after we've read all the 'good' stuff? Cereal boxes?"

Despite your hyperbole, there is NO danger of any cereal boxes making it into our libraries (of books we READ as oppose to those we just collect) because ...

(1) Most people would revert to reading "bad genre novels" before they did that. If you are a person that regards ONLY SF as "good writing" then conversely you would just resort to reading some of those stuffy and boring old "classics"! Or perhaps some "good writing" in one of the many other genres ... and after that, the "bad writing" in those genres.

(2) Very few people, if anyone, could come anywhere close to your given estimates for polishing off all the "good writing" (whether it be what you listed, or a completely different list constructed according to a different aesthetic).

But let's assume they did. My suggestion is that they start in on that list a second time, this time not only reading their favorite books first, but also languishing and savoring every word ... and hence they will spend longer than 20 minutes reading War and Peace this time around (insert Woody Allen joke here). :)

Edited to fix a long-standing typo - "veracious" chaged to "voracious" in phrase "veracious reader" because my spellchecker didn't catch that one. I am now beating my spellchecker (who's only a Canadian) over the head with Volume 20 of the OED! Hopefully, this won't happen again - but you can never tell with Canadians. :(

Condor at #223: Yes I am fairly certain Samuel R. Delaney has a written a couple fictional works this century. Dark Reflections and Phallos are both recent.

I stand corrected.
(In my defense, Dark Reflections has only been out a month. And I flatly forgot about Phallos, just not my cup of tea.) But my point remains: even at the rate of a-book-every-few-years, it's quite easy to keep up with the "best" writers. Because, by definition, there can only be a handful of quality writers.

I'm afraid that good {emphasis added} writing is not just indicated by those texts that win awards.

Ah, but aren't YOU now taking the position of defending merely "good" writing? That's one of the points I made far upstream: "good" writing is reasonably common.

We've been talking about "the best" writing - and the claim has also been put forward that there are objective measures for quality. If a work is really outstanding, it's somewhat tautological that it will be recognized by SOMEBODY: if it's drastically better than the typical book, surely SOMEBODY will have acknowledged this with SOME sort of award?

I can understand the debates about the corrosive influence of this-or-that particular award - "it's just a popularity poll"; "there's too much logrolling" ; "only {juried awards/popular votes} are worth paying attention to", whatever - but in aggregate, there are enough awards given out, both mainstream and in the genre, that I have trouble imagining that too much quality work slips by completely unheralded.

(Yes, occasionally, it must happen. But it's clearly not the case that there is a body of unheralded work that is larger than the bookcases full of award-winning work. Because we've already established that quality writing is relatively rare.)

Or are ALL of the awards wrong, too? If the various awards aren't an "objective" marker for good writing, then what is?

Well, the point I'm working toward is that "best" is an absolute term.

"There can be only ONE 'best'!", as the Highlander media tie-ins would put it.

I mean, if we're going to rank literature, then, logically, there can be only one book at the top of the ranking.

So, the question emerges: WHY would anyone waste their time reading the second-best book? Let alone the hundredth-best book.

Which is what I was saying far upstream: Yes, some writing is better than other writing. But so what? because of what I was pointing out immediately upstream: the "best" writing, by definition, is scarce.

Yes, there is opportunity cost, too: the time I'm spending on second-rank SF would probably be "better" spent on reading first-rank "classics". But so what?
It's called "pleasure" reading, after all.

To drag old Kingsley Amis into this thread for a second time: somewhere he
remarks something to the effect (paraphrasing from memory, here):

"Whatever the pros or cons of reading "escapist" literature, there's something to be said for using one form of literature as an escape from other forms of literature."

(deleted as a double-post. "Talk" is getting a bit wobbly again.)

*sits in the corner and slowly dons the dunce cap*

-225-
Well, not having a mathematics (Epistemology: aren't we all dabblers in that?), physics, or astronomy background i will have to humbly acquiesce to your explanation/clarification on the finity/infinity of the universe, time and space and the books which can be produced therein. I must admit to wanting to complete (and understand) Hawking's A Brief History of Time and perhaps i could have expressed myself earlier with apt meaning if i had done so.... My microscope is not working today, so i will leave the hair splitting (and atoms?) to you for the moment, after my own failed attempt; and my own understanding of the terms 'finite' and 'infinite' relies on the OED.
:)
As for techno-babble and gobbledegook (surely there must be a difference between those two?) i'll leave that in the capable hands of others in the future..(i still reserve the right to occasionally slip off the wagon). BTW why am i suddenly reminded of 'space-time continuum? though admittedly more the way it's presented in STNG?? Engage... (i know, i know, you already pointed out that time has nothing to do with the numeric babble of finite/infinite... but i am constantly willing to learn.)

also i don't reject Big Bang Theory (Creationism: please let's not go there... i smell something awful/offal downwind), but is it proven? and are there other 'theories'; in a thousand years (i know i'm an optimist) will humans have new facts/theories etcetera....

Lastly, I will cop out with a quote:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The big bang is the most widely accepted hypothesis but not the only one. There has been work on a repeating bang-crunch cycle.

I think that using proven is wrong in a scientific sense. Nothing is proven as such and it is a term I wouldn't think many scientists would use. What a scientist may say is that all the current evidential observations support his hypothesis. New models, new hypotheses, may come along which more accurately describe the system under observation. Equally new observations may be made which decreases our confidence in the currently accepted hypothesis.

-227- Asyouknow Bob
um, Phallos is not quite my cup of tea either ... but i didn't want to ignore any of Delaney's work even if it has heavy homosexual overtones...
Dark Reflections looks promising though i haven't read it yet; from the reviews I gather it's fairly autobiographical in light of the themes it covers?

Ok back to splitting hairs. I only used the term "good" in response to your line: The supply of "good writing" is actually quite finite.
and of course you start off (and continue) your comment #222 discussing 'good writing' -- sometimes in quotes, sometimes not.
To be honest, at this point I am finding just arguments on all sides, and truly i don't want to develop a quantifiable system for measuring good/bad/great fiction, but for the sake of nominal aptitude figured we could all agree on some elements for 'good' or 'better' writing? (i think the scene in 'Dead Poets Society' with the teacher/Robin Williams ripping up the graph for rating poetry, has already been mentioned? ...)

My point about Awards, or other accolades is still valid. I try myself not to use Awards as justification for a writer's worth, etc. I mean (to paraphrase someone else, and i will find the right quote), what do a bunch of Swedes know about a certain writer's oeuvre to justifity receiving the Nobel... Yes Awards can be a popularity contest, or simply incestual stroking; they can also justly reward outstanding fiction or authors, etc... i just try not let myself be 'solely' or 'strictly' guided by them....

As for your question regarding an "objective" marker for 'good writing' i shall ponder that further. First, Awards are anything but 'objective' in the decision process, since they usually involve a panel of human beings/judges thus there is no way to escape a subjective element in that regard? unless someone (any takers?) is developing software where you can enter a work of fiction, a set of 'markers', then hit the button to rank from good to worse...
:)

232:I am now officially baffled. Earlier you were arguing that we as science fiction fans should be demanding and only reading material of literary merit now you're saying that literary merit cannot be judged by humans since we are not objective. So I guess we can't read anything.

#232 I just try not let myself be 'solely' or 'strictly' guided by them....

Well, sure. But in my case, I'm so far behind in my reading that I'm rarely the 'first' to discover something.

But that implies that there exists a large population of readers, people whom I can rely upon to spot stuff for me; and further, it implies that collectively, the readership is unlikely to overlook much. There are people reading fanfic so that I don't have to.* If anything good emerges, I'll hear of it eventually.

For me to be the 'first' to discover something, I'd have to move upstream and read slush. And life is too short.

(*Disclaimer: this thread is already too long to start an argument about the virtues of fanfic. Take it as read that I'm not dissing fanfic, I understand the case for it.)

>227 AsYouKnow_Bob:

"Because we've already established that quality writing is relatively rare."

NO we didn't ... that was a completely specious argument as I showed in post #226. Also, while "best" is indeed an ABSOLUTE term, "rare" is a RELATIVE term ... and since you qualified it further with the word "relatively" then "relatively rare" is definitely a RELATIVE term! It is your lack of precision WRT what "relatively rare" actually means that allows you to make your non sequitur argument in post #222 ...

I don't disagree that the "best writing" (whatever that is - I'll address that later) may come from what is only a mere thin sliver of literate output that exists more than two or three SDs to the right of the mean of your hypothetical Gaussian curve Q (post #222). Let's say it represents 0.1% of the total area under that curve (i.e., only 1 book in a 1000 is worth a read). But remember that your hypothetical graph applies to ALL books written since the beginning of time. How many is that?

Assume an average literate person reads 1 book a week every year of his/her adult (>age 20) life, and that he lives the Biblical "three score years and ten". That's roughly 50 years x 50 books/year = 2500 books. Thus an average literate person will read roughly 2500 books during his/her lifetime. Now 1 book a week is a pretty voracious sustained reading rate for someone that also has a life outside of reading, hence I think my number of 2500 books in a lifetime is a pretty aggressive one!

So the question now is which 2500 books should a person set out to choose to read in their lifetime? I would argue that a person should theoretically read from right to left the works listed in your hypothetical Bell curve Q so that they are most likely to read the best ones first - viz. the very best first, then the second best, then the third best, and so on. At the same time that they are reading according to this agenda they should keep an eye on all the new issues that are continually published during their lifetime and sort them on the graph accordingly. Some backtracking may be occasionally required if a really superb book is written and you've already read past that point of the curve when it is.

OK ... so a person only gets to read 2500 books before s/he snuffs it, and only 1 in 1000 of all books published are worth the effort of reading, and we have a strategy (via your hypothetical curve Q and my hypothetical reading agenda above) to ensure any person can read the very best books first during their life!

If there have been ONLY 2.5 million unique works published since the beginning of time and only 0.1% of them are (the best of the best) worth reading, then there are 2500 books that a person needs to read in their lifetime. Thus the average literate person will just manage to read them all (give or take) before s/he croaks.

If the number of unique works published since the beginning of time is 2.5 million then your average literate person will unfortunately fail to complete their hypothetical reading agenda before they shuffle of this mortal coil ... in fact, when they realize they are not going to be able to do it, they will most likely get very depressed about such a failure and kill themselves, thereby missing the mark by even more!

The only number we haven't yet plugged into the hypothetical reading agenda above is an approximation to the actual number of unique works published since the beginning of time. According to the LT Blog page the Library of Congress has over 30 million unique titles catalogued, and for lack of any better (meaning more comprehensive and therefore larger) number, I am quite happy to use that here.

30 million is 12 times larger than the maxinmun 2.5 million books needed before which my hypothetical (pretty voracious) average literate reader fails to read even one thousandth of what's printed in his/her lifetime. You can tweak my numbers and make this average person read even more voraciously, live a little longer (or start the reading agenda a few years earlier in life), or even diminish the area under the graph at the extreme right of your hypothetical Bell curve Q to be an even slimmer sliver, but you are still NOT going to get these numbers to work for you, Bob, because you are an order of magnitude off based on the contents of a single national library (admittedly a large one)!

Thus your whole argument about us having to read cereal packets once we've read all the good stuff ever written is a completely specious one, Bob. Of course, if you restrict the number of books waiting to be read to just the domain of SF, then you might just possibly be on to something with that argument ... :)

So Bob, as rare indeed as good quality writing is, it is still not the paucity of the existing material, nor how quickly it is generated, that is the problem here. The real problem is that our lives are just too damn busy and too short to ever be able to read even a decent fraction of the "best writing" (however you want to set up the necessary value system in order to define that aesthetic) that already exists.

Shall we all slit our own throats now, hmmmm? :(

BTW, if you accept my 2500 books estimate as being anywhere near correct, then a corollary of the foregoing is that your own library is too damn big!

Re: Message #224

"Ghost":

I don't think SF fans are all dunderheads. I'd have to go through two hundred posts to prove it but I can't recall insinuating that. This whole posting started because I wanted a response to my notion that the best SF was not being written by scientists, that their reliance of getting the hard science right created too much boring exposition and marred their work. The majority of you folks seem to think that "info dumps" are a good thing and I guess I'll have to accept that. The majority of you think that SF writing is as good as literary writing, comparable in terms of level of talent and technical ability. Again, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I tried to posit the notion that writing can be assayed for its technical craftsmanship but most people didn't like that either. So be it. Media tie in novels have their place in SF and are actually the creation of talented authors working at the top of their game (not for money!) and who really do care about the worlds they're sharecropping (you'll never get me to agree to that one). Some people prefer Kevin J. Anderson to John Crowley and God bless them (another hard one for me to swallow).

Okay. All right.

But I'll agree with every contention, every proposition put forward by the detractors I've tried to engage during this debate as long as someone tells me...IS RULE 42 ON MY SIDE OR ARGUING AGAINST ME? I have to know. Hopefully before I die. The math on posting 235 was brilliant, impressive...it convinced me I shall never read all the novels in my office, let alone the good ones in the universe. It tells me I have to be more discerning, more critical when choosing books to read. No time for crap, escapist rubbish. Wait, shit, that's what I've been arguing all along. I'm right back where I started. 235 postings...and for what...?

#235. I don't think we're all that far apart. 2500 things worth reading might even be in the right ballpark.

If I can take the liberty of reading your post seriously, you've made some very iffy assumptions about the LoC.

30m items in the LoC is everything: textbooks, Minnosotan train schedules in Norwegian, Peruvian soil reports, heretical Bibles, one-of-kind items, everything.
To pull a number out of the air, I doubt that a tenth of the LoC is "fiction", let alone "fiction that is still available outside the walls of the LoC".

Looking at it from the other direction, Locus now counts roughly a thousand genre-related items per year, and they're reaching pretty far down into media-tie ins and POD books.

In my lifetime, the number of "new works of SF" used to be in the low hundreds. So I would doubt that the entire genre includes much more than 50,000 items since the days of Jules Verne. If 1% of it was still worth reading, that would be 500 items: call it a solid decade of reading. (That's also the same order-of-magnitude as my estimate for the number of "prize-winning works".)

BTW, if you accept my 2500 books estimate as being anywhere near correct, then a corollary of the foregoing is that your own library is too damn big!

Yeah, I know. 6800 sf'nal books (but some of that was collected for semi-scholarly reasons, with actually reading it somewhat less likely to actually happen.) Oh: did I ever mention that I have another 5-6000 SF magazines, not listed on LibraryThing?

One advantage, though, is that I shall never want for something to read.

CliffBurns at #236: I can't speak for anyone else here - but on my part, none of this has been personal - I'm just kicking around ideas. You launched an interesting thread, and, while, yeah, it had some testy moments, but this is still all just chat on the internet.

The thing about Serious Literature is that it's often exhausting: as Amis I quoted at #228 says, I tend use SF as an escape from more demanding reading.

>238 AsYouKnow_Bob:

"The thing about Serious Literature is that it's often exhausting ..."

Indeed it can be, Bob. Sometimes you have to take almost every word on a page and look it up in a dictionary or thesaurus, or read the same sentence over and over again before you can even start to make any sense of it. That kind of dedicated effort can definitely become very tiresome and exhausting. But at the end of the day, at least you feel that you've achieved something.

But this sentence ...

"Behemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis; once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis, using a 532-amino lysteriolysin analog..."

... is totally impervious to being decrypted, no matter how many dictionary/thesaurus scans and/or sentence re-reads one keeps applying to it. Oh boy, is THAT exhausting !!!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ......

-233- jmnlman
"I am now officially baffled. Earlier you were arguing that we as science fiction fans should be demanding and only reading material of literary merit now you're saying that literary merit cannot be judged by humans since we are not objective. So I guess we can't read anything."

hmm where to begin? can you please point me to where i argued that we should ONLY read material of literary merit. mabye i'm getting old but can't recall where i wrote that (and maybe you are right so pleae refresh my memory). nor did i specifically say that we as SF fans should be more demanding. You must be referring to a comment i posted in the topic "Why literary authors can deny writing SF...", where i believe i generalized and said "I do still feel that those readers that exclusively read genre fiction, 'demand' less from the text in terms of prose style, lofty themes, innovation, etc. but that could go with your point about 'different demands' or expectations than those who prefer 'literature'". I think the word 'exclusively' is important, and I also agreed with the other person's points about people's "different demand" from what they enjoy reading. But if I'm wrong then please correct me and show where I said we should only be "reading material of literary merit". (not that i would necessarily disagree with that comment, except once in a while i enjoy a fun 'beach' book or easy fantasy/sf/whatever read; much like watching a couple hours of mindless television just to be passively entertained. It's just not my primary reading.)

"now you're saying that literary merit cannot be judged by humans since we are not objective. So I guess we can't read anything."

why do you insist on misreading or misquoting me? If you disagree with something please feel free to do so and say why. Of course a panel of human judges can not be 100% objective in their decisions (um, human nature right?), and I went on to clarify that "thus there is no way to escape a subjective element in that regard?" So, even if you agreed wholeheartedly that Awards, etc. are completely useless (which was not my point altogether either) why should that mean you can't read anything? do you need the book to say it won the Nebula or the Pulitzer for you to read it?
(wow the above was a lot of work to respond to your 'pithy' 3 Lines.... You might be less baffled if you could actually read what i'm saying correctly?).

which brings me to:
-234- AsYouKnow_Bob
I do agree with what you say, and I also will use awards, reviews, online sites (even Amazon readers reviews) as a guideline for something i might enjoy or find meritorious, but as you noted my point was that I am not "'solely' or 'strictly guided by them". The busier our lives get, the less time we have to read in general so of course we look for 'forums' or otherwise to help reduce our decision making time. I was fortunate (or not, depending on perspective) to work in publishing for a while. Occasionally I'd have the privilege of 'discovering' a brand new writer, or new work which had potential, or rarer still, could be called 'great'. But before that, I had read piles and piles of trash (or slush)....

but it is nice to take the occasional plunge or risk, and be able to tell your friends (or others online, or write a review that is published -- in print i mean) about some author or novel they might never hear ofnormally, or is not part of mainstream, yet is potentially 'genius' or amazing, or something different... much like discovering a small band at your local pub, that later become superstars (or simply develop a cult following for those with discerning ears).

Lastly:
-231- Andyl
"I think that using proven is wrong in a scientific sense. Nothing is proven as such and it is a term I wouldn't think many scientists would use. What a scientist may say is that all the current evidential observations support his hypothesis. New models, new hypotheses, may come along which more accurately describe the system under observation. Equally new observations may be made which decreases our confidence in the currently accepted hypothesis".

first, thanks for mentioning the "work on a repeating bang-crunch cycle." I've never heard of it and sounds interesting.
I'm no scientist, nor do I pretend to be one, but I do disagree that using the word "proven" is wrong in a scientific sense, unless you mean only in relation to unproven 'theories' which then is irrelevant since i was asking or pointing about whether something had be proven... (like i said i am not a scientist, but i usually know the meaning of words i use, or else will look them up.)
Galileo was able to 'prove' that the Earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around (?) though he was expanding Copernicus' ideas (it may have taken the Catholic church 500 years to formally apologize for about punishing him for heresy, but there you go...). so are you saying that it is impossible to 'prove' a theory like the Big Bang Theory? Surely that is shortsighted?
Maybe my example of Galileo/Copernicus is not the best, but i do seem to recall some high school science and that occasionally we were able to 'prove' certain scientific hypotheses. ok, it's late and i'm tired so i better stop before i stop making any sense (or even less sense?) today just seemed like the day people picked on inane things to 'take issue with'.

Now i dare you to go and disprove/prove Rule42's math or theory... I am not capable myself.

*edited to correct for italics* for some reason it's not letting me do so properly...

240:"(wow the above was a lot of work to respond to your 'pithy' 3 Lines.... You might be less baffled if you could actually read what i'm saying correctly?)."

I was actually going to reply with the various arguments however you felt the need to say this so I'm not going to waste my time.

#239

But this sentence ...

"Behemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis; once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis, using a 532-amino lysteriolysin analog..."

... is totally impervious to being decrypted, no matter how many dictionary/thesaurus scans and/or sentence re-reads one keeps applying to it. Oh boy, is THAT exhausting !!!

Only if you never had any biology--even a smattering of cell biology helps to make sense of it. I grant that it's not crystal clear, but I think the smearing of detail is actually meant to make it more accessible--oh, the irony. (From the reader's POV, the problem with using technical jargon isn't not knowing enough, it's knowing too much.)

Behemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis;

Receptor-mediated endocytosis is one of the mechanisms by which some external material enters the cell. B. linked to a receptor on the cell membrane, triggering configurational and other changes in it, and was ingested by the cell.

once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis

B. has likely been ingested into a kind of vacuole called a "phagosome". Phagosomes usually fuse with lysosomes, which are cellular organelles containing many lytic enzymes. I assume the "lysis" referred to is B's own (a fate to be avoided), but that's not clear. At any rate, "breaking down" the phagosomal membrane would release B. into the cytoplasm and save it from getting digested by the lysosomal proteins.

using a 532-amino lysteriolysin analog..."

It should be "listeriolysin", a protein specific to Listeria, a very nasty virulent microorganism. "Listeriolysin analog" means that the molecule in question is a synthetic or naturally occurring compound with some or all properties in common with the native listeriolysin. (Like a "generic" drug vs. patented one.)

Since Listeria is very toxic (toxicity possibly mediated by listeriolysin--I don't remember all that much of microbiology), it makes sense to use an analog with, say, similar lytic properties but attenuated toxicity. But this rampant speculation isn't necessary. Suffice it to say that B. used a molecular "tin opener" very similar to a protein from Listeria in order to release itself from the phagosome.

a 532-amino

This is sloppy wording, but in the context I take it to mean "a 532-amino acid residue long protein (listeriolysin analog)". I don't see any special reason to mention the length of the protein, probably it is simply meant to give it some specificity--to name it.

Conclusion: Behemoth entered the cell engulfed in a phagosome and released itself into the cytoplasm by breaking open the phagosome using a lytic protein.

Out of curiosity, is it nowadays assumed that SF readers need not know ANY science, or is this simply some old codgers griping because they graduated before 1953? :) If one dares mention DNA as the carrier of genetic inheritance, is one techno-babbling and gobbledegooking? Where exactly is the limit? Rube Goldbergian-type contraptions and notions in, physical laws out?

I just popped in to say I have this sudden indomitable urge to write... science fiction. Long, triple-decker novels chock full of scientific wonders from the times of Euclid to the latest issue of Nature, with knowledge gently, yet insistently imparted from vol. I to vol. LX, by which time constant readers will be ripe for their triple graduate degrees in Astronomy, Biophysics, and Mechanical Engineering. Oh, I wouldn't dream of asking anyone if I should write, I think it's a civic duty. Obviously the state of science education is as appalling as reported, no wonder it creates these science-haters and -phobes. My solution? MORE, not less science. LOTS more. HEAP BIG HEAP MORE. :)

By definition, mainstream fiction can't have themes that are as lofty, or be as innovative, in general. Like anything, you will get examples that are, of course.

But the innovation or loftiness of:

Man has problems with woman.
Man has crappy job.
Family has issues.
Man is not nice.
Young person is misunderstood.
Boy meets girl.
Divorce is stressful.
et. al.

is pretty much zero.

Group-think = multiple people telling people what to do?

e.g. 'You should read this stuff because...' or 'We think this is all bad because...'

Imagine believing and succumbing to something like that, rather than being your own person and making your own decisions.

#242 - an interesting point, how much science is acceptable?

I understood the biology quote, not to quite the level of detail you explained it, but sufficiently to be able to grasp a related plot point, becasue I consider myself broadly scientifically educated.

I presume there would be no cries of technobabble in historical literature where a blacksmith stokes a frncae and pumps the bellows to create a frie hot enough for the shaping of iron.

yet this familiar action is equivalent to our preivous biology quote, as 000s of lab biologists routinely treat cells in this sort of maner every week.

Providing it is kept to digestible chunks, and relevant to the plot/chracters rather than as a learning aid or showing off, I enjoy such infodumps.

A summary of the 'discussion' sofar:

Everyone has different opinions
Not all opinions have equal weight
Everyone applies different weightings to different opinions
Some writing is better than others
Some SF is better than others
Some sf contains infodumps
Some scientists write sf containing infodumps
Some non-scientists write sf containing infodumps
Some people prefer the sf they read not to contain infodumps.

Conclusions:
People are different!

#243 - what a load of rubbish!

Literary fiction deals with live, death, god, politics, etc, the same themes that sf deals with. It doesn't matter if an existential crisis occurs in a spaceship or a kitchen, what matters is the writer's skill in handling it.

As to innovation, name me a truly innovative writer that has emerged from the sf or fantasy genre. I don't mean one who comes up with a new type of elf or inter-galactic drive but one who has used language differently or challenged the classic structure of the novel.

I'll go along with you, Jargoneer, that SF isn't known for its innovative writers. As I've said, it's an idea-based genre, which is why so many of its novels are overlong--a neat idea, which would fit snugly in a short story or novella, is fleshed out to ridiculous lengths with bad, stock characterizations, lengthy (largely useless) subplots and, yes, info dumps. Exposition, exposition, exposition. I think there are (a few) exceptions to the rule--I'm a fan of J.G. Ballard (although, again, I dunno if he'd enjoy being lumped in the SF camp) and we've mentioned Samuel Delaney's DHALGREN.

I think a Ballard-type writer coming along today would find it difficult going in the SF field because of some of the attitudes expressed in this forum--"I read for escapism", "media tie-ins aren't execrable", "hey, Robert Jordan is a pretty good writer", etc. He/she would face the same fate as the New Wave folks. In the end, sadly, it's the "average" SF fan who determines the quality of the field and that leaves it in the hands of gamers, Trekkies, Wookie-freaks, techno nerds and ghetto-dwellers who regard critical reading with suspicion and guard their little treasures with the fierceness of Smaug the dragon. Woe be to the individual who slaughters one of their sacred cows and shows them the rot and disease that was festering within. The mob swiftly materializes baying "elitism", "snobbery" and insisting everyone's views (regardless of their vapidity and incoherence) are equally valid and precious. Until genre fans get smarter and better read, the field stays the same (the way they like it). Not only that, the mainstream acceptance the genre secretly craves will be witheld and will continue to be a source of resentment and bitterness, lovingly cultivated and nurtured, an excuse to be thin-skinned and intolerant.

Note - completely off-topic stuff on science and the Sun-Earth barycentre.

#240

No you are using words in an imprecise fashion. Galileo was able to demonstrate that observed facts fitted the heliocentric hypothesis better than the existing hypothesis.

Some would not even accept the statement "the Earth revolves around the Sun" to be a valid scientific hypothesis - because it is a singular existential statement rather than a universal one. A valid scientific hypothesis would be all planets revolve around the main solar mass in their system - a universal statement.

Also "revolve around the Sun" is fairly imprecise from a scientific point of view. The Earth does not really revolve around the Sun but both bodies revolve about a common centre of mass. This barycentre is fairly close to the Sun's core so for all intents and purposes "revolve around the Sun" is good enough for most things and certainly for casual use.

Scientific theorems are a strange beast the can be disproven (ie. invalidated by finding observable data that doesn't fit the theorem) but can never really be proven, it is always open to falsification (however slight the possibility). Consider Newton's law of gravitation. Worked perfectly well for hundreds of years, describes local observed data very well. But found not to be universal and so falsified although it is still very useful and still taught in schools.

An addendum:

If we accepted that the opinion of every reader is equally valid and that readers have the final say as to what's good and bad, then THE DA VINCI CODE would be the best book of the past twenty years. Now there's a thought. Salman Rushdie recently asked an audience how many had read DA VINCI CODE and when people put up their hands he said "Shame on you, that book makes bad books look good...it's the worst novel ever written". Of course, Salman is a notorious snob, an elitist. Shame on him...

Until genre fans get smarter and better read, the field stays the same (the way they like it). Not only that, the mainstream acceptance the genre secretly craves...

First off: If you don't think that genre fans are smart enough or well-read enough...well, where do you think the smart, well-read audience is hiding?

People are what they are. Deploring their low, common taste accomplishes nothing. Raising their standards is a task beyond any of us: we can only decide on our own tastes.

In other contexts, I've estimated that there are probably about 10,000 hard-core genre fans in the English-speaking world. (I'll spare you "showing my work".)
(As an aside: What percentage of "hard-core genre fans" are right here, represented by the membership of the LT "Science Fiction Fans" group?)

My point above about the 'normal' distribution of writing quality Q applies to the readership, as well. Most people never read a book for pleasure. Those who do, the average is in the low 10s of books per year. Those of us who are complusive readers are rare. Those who devote themselves to the rarified pleasures of the deathless classics are vanishingly rare - are we talking about 1% of the mass audience? 0.1%? (Is 1% of the mass audience a viable market to be aiming for?)

I guess my point is that there IS no "better-read, smarter" audience - and, further - I doubt that "the genre" (by which you mean "people IN the genre"?) secretly "craves" mainstream acceptance, whatever that means.

A publisher needs to move about 5,000 copies of a new release to break even. Obviously, not every fan buys every release - but if you can bring a book to the attention of fandom, you have a good chance of getting into the black. Case in point: Blindsight - which, after being nominated for the Hugo by organized fandom, has now been reprinted.

I have trouble seeing how being read by undiscerning fans is a bad thing, for anyone involved on any side of the transaction.

Second of all: Yes, some readers have shockingly low standards: they're usually called "teenagers", and they are the people who have the leisure to devote to pleasure reading. And the more they read, the more they learn to tell good from bad.

I could easily make the case that the field of SF is TOO highbrow.

The standards - both for the "writing" (whatever we mean by that) and for the "content" - are now so high that there's no way in for a young person (a young person who also has a million other activities competing for their attention) - and thus, we observe the graying of the genre.

Yes, there are 40 million Harry Potter books in print, 10m copies of The Da Vinci Code. Yes, the most recent collection of Howard Waldrop was issued in an edition of 450.

But the trick is to move the audience from A to B, not just to insult them for liking A.

Elitism is fine. Populism is fine, too: we are talking about popular entertainment, after all. If some of the works put out in the genre should cross over into the status of "deathless classic", then, sure, that would be great. But let me put in a word in the defense of 'mere entertainment': Simply 'entertaining' people - even great numbers of undiscerning, 'unworthy' people -is a not entirely trivial undertaking, either.

>244 reading_fox:

"Providing it is kept to digestible chunks, and relevant to the plot/chracters rather than as a learning aid or showing off, I enjoy such infodumps."

"Showing off"? Did you mean "showing off" like this? ...

"I understood the biology quote, not to quite the level of detail you explained it, but sufficiently to be able to grasp a related plot point, because I consider myself broadly scientifically educated."

Thus implying that anyone who thought that that piece of densely-packed do-do by Peter Watts, brought to us courtesy of Bob and painstakingly deconstructed by Lola, was anything but a lucid piece of lyrical literary prose, or, even worse, didn't understand it because they don't have a masters degree in microbiology or a personal life misspent reading awful pulp sci-fi written in a similar vein? I guess that makes you much smarter than the rest of those here that thought it was a perfect example of what the OP was complaining about, eh?

Or did you mean "showing off" in the same way as someone that smugly posts irrelevant little platitudes in the middle of a lively MB discussion to add to the debate, what exactly? To implicitly inform everyone else posting there that they are all wankers wasting their time because only s/he, with all his/her life and reading experience, has discovered the one profound truth in life that that all the other posters are obviously too dumb to see? "People are different!" ... WOW ... no shit, Sherlock! * smacks forehead *

Given that we are indeed all different, what could possibly be the point of our exploring some of those differences, such as our various choices in reading tastes, via a message board discussion? Sheesh, what a waste of time, eh? You know, you're absolutely right ... it's a beautiful Sunday morning, I think I'll go and bake myself some Yorkshire pudding and bust open a fresh bag of milk, instead!

"A learning aid"? The ONLY possible justification for that quoted text (and I have no idea how representative it is of Peter's output; it's irrelevant to this discussion anyway, the quote is on the table now and grist for our mill, and this debate should NOT be personal to him) or sentences like it is that it IS a learning aid, inserted so that the reader can better follow the plot. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for a sentence such as that in a work of fiction other than to be "a learning aid".

Are you telling me that the stories that, say, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson or Arthur Conan Doyle crafted would have been better enhanced by adding in comparable grueling and torturous text? The other side of the coin to putting too much "scientific infodumps" into "science fiction" is to have too much "descriptive detail" of any kind in there such that time ages it and makes it irrelevant or totally uninteresting to readers in the future.

The Melville pitchpoling text pasted by bluetyson in post #20 might also be a good candidate for such expurgation from fictional prose - whatever was Melville's editor thinking? However, Moby Dick is considered classic literature DESPITE such digressional infodumps by Melville not BECAUSE OF them. I'm not a big fan of Melville, BTW. I consider reading him a chore, so I can only read him in small chunks ... but, at least, I do expose myself to him, and if I finally finish Moby Dick some day then, in the process of coming to grips with him, I might also "get him" and fall in love with him like so many others have before me. If not, NBD.

The fact is, in good literature it is almost always the case that "less is more" when it comes to description and even plot. Make the story line way too convoluted and intricate and many readers, that don't have the time to read the novel in a few sittings close in time to each other, will more than likely get lost and give up on the book. Not because those readers are "dumb as post holes" but because each time they pick the book up they discover they have forgotten what they had previously read. So the chore of repeatedly going back and re-reading almost everything they read last sitting in order to remind themselves of, say, who a particular background character is, or why he is doing what he's doing, becomes far too exhausting and daunting to them. Thus they abandon the book. Particularly if they are a veracious reader with a library full of rows and rows of other books also beckoning "READ ME" to them!

Make the descriptive text (of any kind and in any genre) way too densely detailed and once again you start to lose even the most intelligent reader, not just dolts, who start to question why they are ploughing through 14 pages of intricate detail. Eventually they start to think: where's this all going, and how is it, as you yourself say, "relevant to the plot/chracters"?

One of the many skills an author must possess in order to craft "good fiction" (whether it eventually becomes "literary fiction" is entirely another matter) is to be able to transfer his/her innermost subconscious thoughts and emotions to the reader via his words; NOT just the basic facts and details of the action or the scene where that action takes place. The best writers, at some point if not with every single sentence they pen, must be able to get inside the reader's head and subconsciously trigger an empathetic response that gets them thinking and feeling "in resonance" with the author when he was crafting those words.

Too much turgid or dense detail is antithetical to that objective. If the writer burdens his/her words with too much detail, of ANY kind, that writer will simply fail to penetrate the reader's subconscious to achieve such "resonance"; rather, the only response he's likely to trigger in the reader is a glazing over of the eyes, followed by a quick scan of his/her bookshelves to see if they have anything better sitting there that perhaps they should be reading instead.

A writer cannot presume too much expertise in his audience (and talk above them), nor can he assume they are all idiots either (and talk down to them). It's a fine line to tread and only the best authors can do it. Probably no author can do it consistently, but even if s/he could, it is still not guaranteed that s/he will be perceived to be doing it consistently by his/her audience ... because, you know, it's just occurred to me that "people are different!" * smacks forehead *

So if the author errs significantly in either of those two ways it is almost certain that he will alienate some large portion of his audience. At the most basic level, in the former case (when readers perceive the author as "talking above" them) then they respond by feeling somewhat ignorant and not good about themselves; while in the latter case (when readers perceive the author as "talking down" to them) then they will similarly feel the author is somewhat arrogant and pompous. It's the same difference, really, except in the first case the negative emotion is directed internally at themselves, and in the second case the negative emotion is directed externally at the author.

You can see both of those dynamics at work in the microcosm of this thread. Cliff is continually perceived as "talking down" to his audience with his posts and readers such as bluetyson are responding accordingly. I feel that you are being equally smugly arrogant with the post to which I'm responding, and hence I'm responding accordingly. The partial sentence quoted from Peter Watts that has driven this last round of responses is, IMO, a perfect case of an author "talking above" his audience and assuming far too much knowledge of microbiology in his readers. Lola may appreciate it (and there is nothing wrong in that; that was an observation not a value judgement) but this reader found his eyes glazing over when he read it. Hence my post #239.

Any fiction (within a genre or not) that contains large amounts of prose similar to that - and which alienates even its contemporaneous readers such as both Cliff and I (and even its own author Peter Watts) - CANNOT possibly become, in time, to be considered as "literary fiction" or "classic fiction". It is, at best, currently only appealing to, for want of a better word (and this isn't intended to be insulting), "biomed-geeks"; over time, when whatever work that quote was taken from is as old as the H. G. Wells I discussed in post #195, that work will almost definitely look much more dated (and have even less appeal than the narrow appeal it presently enjoys) than any of Wells' or Verne's works currently appear to us today. Because those latter works contain much more than just the science detail, whether that science content was dumped into them as great chunks of prolix "techno-babble" or whether it just runs as a background setting for the books.

I fully understand that the quoted text from Peter Watts is only a partial sentence (*gives a nervous shudder*) and even if it came from a much longer stream of similar prose then that, in of itself, would not destine that book to the scrap heap of bad fiction, any more than the abysmal pitchpoling text has scuttled Melville's work over time. But that kind of text isn't helping either of those books. Moby Dick has other grander themes and literary imagery that allows it to carry the day. I just hope that the sci-fi work from which Bob quoted that particular partial sentence does too ... because it will never survive on its scientific content ALONE - even if the science is currently accurate; but especially so if it's just plot-enabling pseudo-science. There must be bigger human themes present ... because readers are all human, and we all want to read something that we can ultimately relate to at a much higher level than just the syntax or the semantics of the words on the page.

Now consider, for a moment, the act of human copulation; we can associate it with our most earth-shattering and blissful ecstasies based on the passionate romances and love affairs that we've experienced (or even just jealously witnessed); or alternately, the same act can be associated only with sordid strip-bars, bordellos and brothels (and many other things we generally relegate to the designation of pornography). If you associate something with the passion and bliss in your life, then to you it will very likely be called poetry; if you associate something with what you consider extremely sordid in your life, then you will most likely designate it pornography.

As fiction readers, we are all seeking some kind of poetry in our lives. Some readers even find their poetry in the stuff that is actually published as "poetry". (Just as an aside here, while I'm thinking about poets, in response to post #78 above, I believe Keats was also a medically trained doctor like W. Somerset Maugham - if I remember correctly, they both even studied at the same medical school.) For the rest of us, we find much of the poetry that we seek in the "prose" fiction that we read.

For instance, Cliff and El Condor - as well as myself - clearly find their poetry in writing that contains "the right word in the right place, a sense of rhythm, an unerring ear for pitch, getting the tone note perfect" and so on. Those features are universal qualities, but they are perceived differently by each individual person (because, you know, "people are different!" * smacks forehead *) and what normally constitutes those qualities often changes with culture and fashion over time. However and wherever a person finds the poetry that they seek from the written word, then that must be considered to be "good reading" for them.

However, I don't think the really big philosophical issue that is lurking beneath the surface of this thread is just the old aesthetics chestnut of: "what constitutes "good taste" versus "bad taste"? I think the question that Cliff really posed in his OP is: "Do you read poetry or pornography? And, yes, yes, I fully realize ... one person's poetry is another person's pornography and vice versa. Because, you know, "people are different!" * smacks forehead *

There will be never be an agreement on this thread about which works different people consider to be poetry for them. Because the same "act of human coitus" could, under one set of circumstances, be sheer blissful ecstasy, while under another completely different set of circumstances, it could be disgustingly sordid pornography. This discussion will get nowhere if everyone focuses only on the actual books. The question should not be "WHICH sci-fi books do you read" but "WHY do you read them"?

If you are NOT reading books in a personal quest for your particular poetry (whatever that might be, because, after all, "people are different!" * smacks forehead *) but because you get off on the fetish of science "gobbledygook", "techno-babble", "infodumps" or just because you like your books to be set in the future or to contain lots of unicorns, then I would suggest you are reading pornographically!

Message #250 deserves multiple readings, methinks, because it covers so much ground. But I agree with the basic gist. WHY we read what we read is relevant, no, ESSENTIAL to this discussion. Is it for pleasure? Enlightenment? Escapism? To get our rocks off? I think it's important to discriminate and realize how our conceptions are informed by the answer we come up with. And what that says about our critical faculties. I simply refuse to take the opinions of those who read media tie-ins and novelizations of games/movies/TV series seriously. Snobbery? Elitism? Or is that I don't wish to pollute my intellect with the literary equivalent of smut? The writing is shit AND it's largely undertaken for monetary gain. Writers must sometimes sell themselves, their talents to make a living. So. Do. Whores. There's no difference. If you take on a writing assignment to upgrade your vehicle or fix your garage, etc. you are beneath contempt. There's a whole lotta difference between writing for commerce and writing for the sheer joy of creating, communicating a unique vision to the world. Thus I revere the Ballards, DeLillos, McCarthys and, yes, Bradburys and regard the Kevin Andersons and Robert Jordans and Dean Koontzs with absolute disdain. Let their books rot in remainder bins--I'm off to the Literature section.

(edited to point out that this is in reply to #250)

(further edited to remove a reference to a quote from Rule42's #250 that I took personal exception to, but which he has since removed after I protested....)

(Rule42: please, leave me out of it. You are misrepresenting my position again.)

When I quoted the line from Peter Watts, it was to point out to CliffBurns that the very authority he was citing (at the very original post) does it, too. (Peter Watts chimed in to point out in the strongest possible terms that he DOES SO condemn "infodumps", even when he does it himself. Point taken.)

But when I quoted that sentence, I never raised any objection to it, myself.
It's Peter Watts and Cliffburns who are deploring it: I'm fine with it. I'm able to parse it - not at LolaWalser's level - but jeez, what IS science fiction without some handwaving?

Anyway.

then I would suggest you are reading poronographically!

You say that as if it was a bad thing.

And you seem to be dismissing the possibility that "techno-babble" might be the very "poetry" that some readers are actively seeking. What makes your "poetry" not just a different variety of "fetish"?

#251

OK, I'm fully in sympathy.

By this point in the thread, I think we all understand that people read for different reasons. What I'm still not getting is why this is a problem.

Because it's also true that people write for different reasons:

1) Because they need to express themselves.
2) In hope of entertaining others.
3) In hope of making a living.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive reasons.

But I can only speak for myself. I read, I write. I long ago decided not to ever try to make a living from my pen.

I also do a bit of carpentry. I do it entirely for my own purposes, I derive satisfaction from the activity, and the end products are useful. People who come by admire my bookshelves. People often see my bookcases, and then ask if they can commission me to build some for them.

But I work wood for myself, for my own purposes. A few extra bucks might be nice, but I have no need to make custom bookshelves for others. I especially don't want to try to make a living as a cabinet-maker. For one thing, taking such a step would place me too much at the mercy of the taste of others. The craftsmen who DO meet this market - and I've talked to a couple - I rather tend to admire. Are they prostituting their art? I doubt they see it that way.

I also have no need to resent Ikea for selling the ignorant masses cheap, wobbly, factory-built bookcases. I especially have no need to yell at the customers of Ikea for not appreciating fine custom carpentry. People buy what suits their own needs. MY need is for several hundred feet of built-in custom bookshelves; other people can be perfectly happy with a DIY Ikea "BILLY" unit.

250>

The well-turned phrase, "the right word ..." is only one form of poetry in a piece of fiction, SF more so. There is more beauty in science and maths than in any painting or poem or well-turned phrase. Mathematicians and scientists often use the word beauty in relation to their field.

Geoffrey A. Landis mentions somewhere ". Who would have expected that the mysterious invisible forces of electricity and magnetism would be related by such a simple yet elegant formulation as the four Maxwell's equations, as intricately intertwined as a sonnet?".

Graham Farmelo argues that equations can be as exquisite as the finest poetry in Granta (that bastion of the scientist/SF hack).

Now it may be that in some cases the writer is ham-fisted in his attempt to portray that beauty (and I wouldn't argue there - but probably would on where to draw the line) but I feel that to dismiss all attempts to portray that beauty is to make a mistake. What you may call "getting of on the fetish of science" I would call "appreciating the beauty of science" - it is all down to the eye of the beholder.

I think to over-analyse a couple of lines taken out of context is maybe too hard on Watts. I understood his sentence (despite biology being the weakest of the sciences for me) but would agree that it is probably too dense - and stuff like mentioning the length of the amino-acid chain is hardly likely to be key for that bit of the book (or most likely elsewhere). However I would agree that we shouldn't judge the book just on one small extract.

As you talked about Keats, I will weigh in and feel he is more to the Cliff side of things as he reported said "Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to a prism". Which caused Simon Singh to label him a prat in a national newspaper. I always considered Shelley to be the most science-minded of the romantic poets he seemed to capture that unknown something, that beauty that underlies the world, far more than the others. It is that same beauty that the scientists are also striving to describe in their models and equations.

>251 CliffBurns:

"Snobbery? Elitism?"

Cliff, WRT those self-accusations, perhaps it would be appropriate at this juncture for me to post here a slightly modified version of the message I posted privately to Bob after he complained that my first post on this thread was "borderline offensive" so that you know why I understand that you can only be "elitist" given th other options. Normally, I would have simply posted a link to it ... but, heck, I don't want to be accused of "profile pimping"! :(

Hi Bob,

I really have no idea why you found my post "borderline offensive" but hopefully I addressed your concerns somewhat with my response.

The problem with aesthetics is that it's such a thorny discipline. If you insist that there is an aesthetic in whichever field of endeavor you're addressing - art, music, literature, or even just the sci-fi genre thereof - then someone is bound to call you an elitist and a snob. If you acknowledge that all tastes are somewhat valid then you've just destroyed the concept of their being an aesthetic hierarchy (i.e., good all the way through bad, by whatever value system you choose to use in order to determine that progression). Finally, if you try and take the middle ground between these two extremes (as I think you were doing), in the end all your arguments will end up sounding like something that is straight out of Orwell ... all tastes are equally valid but some are more tasteful than others!

So you can choose to be an elitist snob (in the eyes of others), or you can adopt the skeptical viewpoint that you cannot discern between different values (what I was calling intellectual nihilism), or you can try and walk the middle ground and end up sounding like a hypocrite! Elitism, nihilism, hypocrisy ... not a pretty choice! I never enjoyed aesthetics. :( Of the three, I prefer to be an elitist simply because I don't want to be a nihilist or a hypocrite.

I think that Warhol and Duchamp pretty well destroyed the elitist position in art (if Brillo pads and urinals are art, what isn't art?) which might be one of the reasons why nihilism is now so prominent in post-modernist thinking. Anyway, I'm sorry you thought I was trying to put words in your mouth ... I really wasn't ... it's just the nature of the beast. To my mind, aesthetics is just one big slippery slope. Personally, I prefer not to think about it too much and read Plum instead! :(

Take care.

I posted privately to Bob after he whined that my first post on this thread was "borderline offensive".

You're doing it again. For the third time: please stop it.

(edited to close your tag for you, too.)

>256 AsYouKnow_Bob:

Bob, I'm genuinely confused ... STOP WHAT?
What exactly are you upset about?

Please stop accusing others (who are NOT putting words into other people's mouths) of using your own tactics. If you have an issue with the truth of my posts contact me privately and we'll work it out. It is NOT my intent to put words into your (or anyone else's) mouth that you never said.

But it is particularly galling to be accused of that tactic by the one person that has actually done that on this thread (post #152) and has admitted that he did it (post #252). Please do not sidetrack this thread by responding here - let's take it offline, please.

>254 andyl:

"There is more beauty in science and maths than in any painting or poem or well-turned phrase. Mathematicians and scientists often use the word beauty in relation to their field."

andyl, you are not going to find me disagreeing with that statement, in particular, nor even the rest of your post. Go read my profile (sheesh, is it OK if I pimp a little and NOT copy and paste it here?) and my reviews (there are only two of them and they're short). My shelves also include 3 volumes of Knuth.

I did not say that there is no poetry in science, nor even that there is no poetry in sci-fi (or any other genre). In fact, I made a point of NOT stating where that poetry lies ...

However and wherever a person finds the poetry that they seek from the written word, then that must be considered to be "good reading" for them.

AND ...

There will never be an agreement on this thread about which works different people consider to be poetry for them. (snip) This discussion will get nowhere if everyone focuses only on the actual books. The question should not be "WHICH sci-fi books do you read" but "WHY do you read them"?

This is where, if I was Bob, I would post a whine about you putting words in my mouth! :)

My point would be that it's a long, long way from grasping the sheer beauty and elegance of, say, "Cantor's Diagonal Proof", "Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem" (a personal favorite of mine), "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle" or "Einstein's Theories of Relativity" - to name just a few - to writing text like the snippet that Bob quoted from Peter. I don't have to hand any examples of bad, dense, turgid prose because I avoid the books where I think it's going to occur, otherwise I would post some so that we didn't have to keep going back to Bob's quote from Peter (which, by all accounts, is unrepresentative).

Cliff should really have included some of his own choice examples to better fuel the discussion (or, at least references to same) when he posted his OP. And it probably still isn't too late for him to do so now.

You've made an argument, and - completely in passing - you've inserted a small insult directed at me. You have done this before. I don't think it's unintentional, you now have a pattern of doing this. Clearly, it entertains you. I find it less entertaining. In fact, I've repeatedly asked you to stop doing it to me.

#167 However, AsYouKnow_Bob's post #152 clearly wins the day ... I know it won me over. So I'm now off to Wal-Mart to buy some velvet paintings of Elvis to replace the artwork I currently have hanging on my walls, and tomorrow I'll be selling all the books I currently have in my library so that I can raise enough cash and make some shelf space for all the media tie-in Star Wars novels and Marvel comics that I should have been reading all along. Silly me, whatever was I thinking?

Thanks Bob. You're da man! :)

#250 ...than the rest of the dolts here, such as Bob and I...

#255 to Bob after he whined
#258 if I was Bob, I would post a whine

So...
at #167 you've taken my argument as a launching pad for a sarcastic defense the low-brow, and mocked me by name;

I expressed irritation.

At #250 you've included me in your set of dolts;
and at #255 and again at #258 you've called me a whiner.

After each instance, I complained. OK, play innocent. But you're too skilled a writer for me to think that these digs are unintended. And that you're being careful to be only borderline offensive.

>259 AsYouKnow_Bob:

"Look, I never asked you to remove anything: all I've been asking is that you leave me out of it as we go forward.

OK, you've apologized, and removed some of the remarks that I objected to.
For which I thank you.I hope we can proceed from here as friends, or at least conversably.
We do have much in common."

No problem. How are you doing with the items I requested you to remove, Bob?

Examples of info dumping and technobable? Didn't I cover this already? Anything by Robert Forward, gobs of Greg Egan. To quote Peter Watts again (sorry, Peter:)

"Wang's Carpets" (by Egan) was, in my opinion, little more than an essay about a nifty-cool reinvention of The Matrix inside mats of alien carbohydrates, with the bare bones of a plot tacked on for form's sake. And the idea *was* cool, and it *was* a feature not a bug-- but it's a classic example of a HAITE story. ("Here's An Idea, The End")."

Monsieur Watts also cites Mikey Crichton--I haven't read enough of the man's work to give an opinion. I think I've also mentioned Vinge, Benford, etc.

Bob, I don't want you getting mad at our friend Rule42. This individual takes irony and satire to the max. I don't think he's trying to be overtly malevolent or disrespectful...God knows, I've ended up on his wrong side, as well. Address the substance of his message and let the invective go (except in private exchanges where you're quite right to seek redress or clarification).

I respect everyone's right to tell me I'm completely fucked in the head. I just would rather you did so in a manner that tackled the points I'm making rather than the spirited manner I make my points. I'm not averse to a little hyperbole either. But nothing I say should ever be construed as a personal attack on a particular person. If you think that, you've missed my point completely...and have misinterpreted my motivations and character.

#260 Take it offline, please. That is my second request.

And you've been ignoring MY multiple requests to knock it off. We're still not even. And I think this discussion needs to be public.

Communication is "source/channel/message/AND recipient". All of those elements come into play. Regardless of the sender's intent, the recipient's understanding is an essential part of the communication.

Rule42, I've repeatedly expressed my irritation with your posts.

Now, the polite thing to do - if you were more interested in the ongoing conversation than in entertaining yourself - would be to take that into account, and proceed on the basis of whether you want to continue irritating me or not.

Clearly, you've made that decision: you again accuse me of whining about this. We are both now in full agreement that I find it annoying.

Now, I've been on the internets a long time. I've been insulted by trolls, I've been screamed at by lunatics. I can walk away from a conversation, or from a participant. The fact that we're still talking means that communication is still possible.

But again, I ask you politely to use that style elsewhere, on someone who doesn't find it personally irritating. But given your behavior to date, I now fully expect to be further insulted.

Prove me wrong.

Edited to add a public announcement:

Rule42 has since taken the step of editing out several of the references to me that I had found personally offensive; for which I thank him. He has in fact gone a good ways toward 'proving me wrong', by which I am pleasantly surprised.

I remain reluctant to either edit out the entire history of this diagreement, or to take a public dispute entirely "offline".

>261 CliffBurns:

"I respect everyone's right to tell me I'm completely fucked in the head."

OK, I'm game. Cliff, you're completely fucked in the head! OMG ... that felt soooo good! :) Just kiddin'.

>236 CliffBurns:

"But I'll agree with every contention, every proposition put forward by the detractors I've tried to engage during this debate as long as someone tells me...IS RULE 42 ON MY SIDE OR ARGUING AGAINST ME? I have to know. Hopefully before I die."

Since I am making this post directly against you let me now also address that question and finally put you out of your misery. See what a nice guy I really am, Cliff? :)

I am my own person. IMO, your choice of delivery method for what you wanted to say in post #185 undermined your own message, Cliff - and I wasn't the only person that subsequently responded to it that thought it was kind of bizarre and, yes, pretty funny. I always thought radio ventriloquists such as Peter Brough (Archie Andrews) and Edgar Bergen (Charlie McCarthy) were pretty damn stupid, too.

Just because I went for the joke doesn't mean I'm out to get you nor that I even disagree with anything you say, any more than because I've used Bob's post to launch my humor does it mean that I'm out to get him nor that I even disagree with anything he says either. Finally, just because I don't necessarily disagree with ANYTHING you (or anyone else) says, that also doesn't mean that I agree with EVERYTHING that you (or anyone else) says, either. As I said, I am my own person and I post 'em the way I see 'em, if I have the time.

Namaste.

Phew! 69 messages later and the conversation hasn't changed much; positions are exactly the same. I can only guess that you are all, in some perverse way, enjoying this head-butting. Admittedly, it been rather interesting to stand back and watch.

God bless irony and hyperbole and I'm all for it. But if the other party feels insulted, I got a problem. I've taken some hits in the course of this discussion, including unwarranted personal attacks that would have earned the other party a shit-kicking if they'd uttered such remarks to my face. I come from Northern Irish stock, thugs of the first order and when hit with a low blow, I hit back...hard. It's my nature, part of my genealogy, like blue eyes and an anti-Catholic bias. Look, disagree with me if you like, but put forward an intelligent, well-reasoned rebuttal, that's all I ask. All this personal shit--blog-pimping and Peter Watts' hand puppet --distracts from the main thread and sends me through the fucking roof. There have been some good, frank exchanges and then some arseholes muck it up with a Glaswegian handshake or knee to the groin. I'll fight any fucker alive but it's got to be fair and square or it means NOTHING. Am I clear on this? Is there any ambiguity?

245

Literary authors write about the same themes as SF authors? Life, death, religion, politics. Universal themes, how about that (none of which were on the list I mentioned, either)? They aren't 'lofty' or anything. That is part of the point, they aren't the province of a small subset of writers.

Writing skill has not much to do with theme or innovation in ideas though, just about how it is done. A 6 year old can write a story with death as a theme.

Challenge the structure of the novel? What do you mean, no chapters, no paragraphs, mystery narrators, non-complete sentences, new semi-colon placements? Other than that sort of style thing, people still seem to be writing stuff that gets printed linearly on paper between cardboard in large numbers.

There's a recent interlinked novel that comes to mind, the writer's name escapes me though, as an example of something 'different', if you are talking about that style sort of thing.

Every writer uses language differently, so what does that mean?

As far as an actual 'difference' seeing you mention elves, Tolkien had a whole new language there, that is pretty different. :)

Also clearly words/terms/phrases in the English language have come from SF works, as they have from other genres of fiction.

245>

As to innovation, name me a truly innovative writer that has emerged from the sf or fantasy genre. I don't mean one who comes up with a new type of elf or inter-galactic drive but one who has used language differently or challenged the classic structure of the novel.

How many authors from the mainstream can you name who have done that? All novel writers build upon what has gone before.

#267 - I agree that there have been very few innovative writers in the mainstream but I can't think of any in the sf genre. That's not necessary a bad thing, innovation is not the same as quality. I was just responding to the suggestion that sf writers are more innovative. If anyone can nominate one I would be interested. (For example, innovative writers are James Joyce, William Burroughs, etc).

#266 - what you listed in your previous post was plot possibilities, not thematic concepts. It seems you are confusing plot/ideas and theme. SF may allow you to approach a theme differently but is very unlikely that it is exploring a new theme, whereas it may explore a new idea.

Right, given the untold millions of things written by humans, pretty much impossible to have an innovative broad theme, the latter was what I was getting at.

So you mean innovative in the bizarre Finnegan's Wake type sense? Or the odd random origami act that Burroughs might have done I think the spousal unit told me about one time.

Not sure anyone could think of many people who have deliberately set out to make something lacking in sense and spelling and readability, etc. and get away with publishing it?

269 - Jeffery Archer?

#268

Ballard was doing experimental works featuring a cut-up technique (in a fore-runner to his condensed novels) in the late 50s which is at about the same time as Burroughs. Of course neither of these innovated this technique - it was already present in the work of some of the Dadaists (although to be fair that wasn't in novels).

249

Bob,

What percentage of hard-core SF fans are here in this group? Depends what you mean by hard-core?

If you just mean readers, somewhere >0 and 1% would be my guess. If you mean the convention types, the upper bound is less.

How did you work out your estimate, something per X thousand people, or some sort of experience thing?

#271 - I thought about Ballard myself. It gets harder and harder to think of Ballard ever being an sf writer - it is now so often portrayed as an elder statesmen of English literature. The recent South Bank Show about him had leading academics and writers like Martin Amis and Will Self singing his praises as a radical novelist.

As an aside - the mid-60's to late-70's seem a golden age for "literary" sf. From the UK there was Moorcock, Ballard, Aldiss, Roberts, etc; from the US Le Guin, Disch, Dick, Ellison....(I know most of these writers started before these date but this was when they did their best work. It strikes me that what changed all this was 'Star Wars' - suddenly sf became big money and the dynamics of the market was radically altered.

Looking at the writers I listed it is interesting how they all virtually left the market (or produced their best work outside the genre). Even now it seems that there is a steady trickle of the best sf writers slowly leaving the field. This leads to an interesting question - are they leaving genre work behind because of commercial or artistic reasons?

#273

I'm not sure that they did leave the field - well Ballard did mainly (he still wrote the odd short story for Interzone). Moorcock split his talents between mainstream and genre. Aldiss wrote some of his best stuff in the 80s (Helliconia trilogy). Dick died. Keith Roberts continued working in genre and produced some good work in the 80s. Disch didn't leave for the mainstream - after his On Wings of Song (1979) he worked on horror and and on non-fiction and on poetry. Le Guin still works in genre (as well as doing children's books) and Ellison just slowed down.

Of those writers I am wondering who you think has produced their best work outside genre (and what that work is)?

Of course both Amis and Self have flirted with SF. Self mentions being an avid reader of SF in his youth and is a big fan of Ballard (although I am sure he would say admirer rather than fan as he is supposed to be a proper grown-up journalist).

I would say as Ridley Walker manages to be innovative with the writing, and was claimed as sf.
There is also the concept of time travel, which is tricky for mainstream literature to handle.

Having mentioned Tom Disch, his new collection of poetry is wonderful. Terribly 'mainstream' though:-)

I would love to enter this conversation but my brain is completely occupied with the Scramble for Africa, King Leopold II, Fibonacci and Phyllotaxis.

So, why didn't Jonathan Lethem become a SF writer?

bluetyson at #272: How did you work out your estimate, something per X thousand people, or some sort of experience thing?


Well, part of my day job involves demography, so my brain automatically estimates populations from limited information. (Pardon me if this leads to a long, boring post on the topic.)

I think there are something over 10^4 (10,000) serious SF readers in the English-speaking world, and probably not over 10^5 (100,000).

I come at this estimate in a number of ways, I'll spare you all "showing my work" in this forum. (Maybe I'll blog about it sometime, or post it at my profile page... /irony off ) But I'd be surprised if there were 25,000 of us.

But here's where it gets interesting again:

Already, there are 1,232 members of the LT "SF Fans" group. And some of us are certainly pretty serious about it.

So I was just wondering - in an age when 2500 people can put a book into the black - whether the 1232 of us here in the LT SF Group represented a significant market all by ourselves.

And whether we constituted a noticeable portion of the ENTIRE market for written SF. Bluetyson is probably correct, that we're probably under 1%. But look at a title like Rainbows End - it's up for the Hugo, it's probably sold 10,000 copies already - but there are already 323 copies here on LT. At a guess, it looks like LT might really be one percent (or more) of the SF-buying public.

These musings were sparked of course, by people who burst in here to accuse "SF fans" of all sorts of aesthetic (and hygienic) shortcomings: We read the wrong stuff, we have juvenile tastes, &c.

Which has led me to scratch my head and wonder: Well, if not the SF fans, then just who WILL buy the stuff?

I'm a words guy so these here high-falutin' numbers leave me colder than a conservative's heart.

By the way, what's worse than a blog pimp? Could it be people who sneak off to side chatrooms (hello "Green Dragon" posse) and snipe and whinge, drawing comfort from being out of range? I don't mind being called a troll but I'd rather it be a face-to-face exchange. However heated this discussion has been I haven't limped off, my coward's tail snugged under me to protect my privates, spitting from a reassuring distance. That's low, folks.

Thanks Bob.

I guess to look closer at it you'd have to browse some catalogues to see what they have. But I was thinking more along the lines of lots of people will join the group because they like watching Star Wars, or buy Doctor Who books etc, as opposed to those who know where Isaac Asimov went to school.

The other thing with the number of Rainbow's End books catalogued, some will be want to get, and some will be borrowed, or second hand, etc., so you'd have to have a weighting for that. Certainly be an interesting study. Then there would be the people that bought it and heretically didn't add it to their catalogue, or no longer use LT etc.

You don't have to spare me the numbers, certainly, given I have some interest in mathematics and statistics.

What is your serious reader definition? Has read hundreds of books? Thousands? Buys magazines of whatever variety? Or just a consumer of the new?

You'd probably get an interesting usenet thread out of that if you post the details, perhaps?

#277 and #279

As another datum point at Interaction there were nearly 700 voters for the Hugo for Best Novel (strangely this is a higher number of voters than LA Con IV which had more members).

Now obviously not all serious readers will attend the Worldcon by a long way. Various things work against that location, time off work, expense, lack of contact with or interest in organised fandom. There maybe serious readers at Worldcon who do not vote - didn't get organised in time, bought membership at the last minute. As a complete guess I would say that maybe only 1 to 3% of the serious SF readers vote in the Hugos in any one year. Which would give something like a 21,000 to 70,000 range for the total of serious SF readers.

As to what a serious SF reader is. Well that is a difficult question. A serious |x| is often used in many fields. I think it is one of those terms that defies definition (well we would have to define SF first and that could take us forever and a day). It is probably part self identification, part knowledge of SF's past - the influential writers, the award winners etc, part reading the new. I wouldn't imagine that a serious SF reader would have read a very small number of books.

#276

On Tom Disch - yeah I meant left for mainstream prose fiction. It is quite obvious that people don't go in to poetry for the money.

Lethem is an interesting case. I think the correct question is why did he stop writing SF. His earlier works were undoubtedly SF and were published as such. Even as early as '96 he wanted to do other things in addition to more SFnal works. Could he have gone the the Iain Banks route of alternating mainstream and SF? Or would that not work in the US.

hi all,
here is a passage from the book I'm reading which may, or may not, have any relevance to the overall discussion (though since we have jumped around a bit maybe it does):
(note: this takes place during a surreal visit to some type of crazy hospital, once a general breakdown of sorts seems to take place. I'm still trying to figure things out).

"A coprophage calls for a plate, shits on it and eats the shit, exclaiming, 'Mmmm, that's my rich substance.'
A battalion of rampant bores prowls the streets and hotel lobbies in search of victims. An intellectual avant-gardist -- 'Of course the only writing worth considering now is to be found in scientific reports and periodicals' -- has given someone a bulbocapnine injection and is preparing to read him the bulletin on 'the use of neo-hemoglobin in the control of multiple degenerative granuloma.' (Of course, the reports are all gibberish he has concocted and printed up.)
His opening words: 'You look to me like a man of intelligence.' (Always ominous words, my boy ... When you hear them stay not on the order of your going but go at once.)"

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text by William S. Burroughs

Come to think of it, this passage might be more suited to one of the discussions in The Green Dragon group? i took a look around there today and was highly impressed by the intelligent conversations, advice, comments being posted overall. I highly recommend you go and take a look and add your own observations.

edited for italics

question
btw can anyone tell me how to post a picture a in a message?

don't worry, i was not going to post anything crude/rude or otherwise. just a general question as i notice others can do this

i figured it out already.. more of that fun html stuff.... thanks anyway

andyl at #280: Which would give something like a 21,000 to 70,000 range for the total of serious SF readers.

Yep: every way I set up the problem, I get an answer in that ballpark.

But I find it intriguing that there are 1200 LTs right in this group, including some pretty serious SF readers.

Bob:

21,000-70,000. That's a pretty wide range. I hope the actual number is higher than lower. And I'd like to see more proselytizing from "serious" fans, pushing the agenda of "good" science fiction. It's encouraging that there was a push to get Peter Watts' novel BLINDSIGHT on the ballots (much of it from on-line readers and fans, to give credit where credit is due). That IS a sign of hope.

Perhaps the answer is developing a new generation of SF critics who have more demanding tastes and harsher words for those writers who use their "talents" for those execrable media tie-ins, novelizations and lucrative series, sharecropping with the collusion of greedy agents and stupid editors. Raising critical standards might draw more attention to more gifted writers, while dumping, big-time, on the hacks. Any thoughts?

I don't think that any particular novel getting on the Hugo shortlist says much about the SF readership in general. For Interaction in 2005 the book in 5th place only had 33 nominations (well 37 but Terry Pratchett declined the nomination and had the third most nominated book). For LA Con IV it was 45 nominations (well 46 but Anansi Boys was withdrawn). So it takes very few nominations to get a book on the shortlist.

I don't think the problem is with the critics. In fact for the vast majority of people I would guess the quality of criticism makes very little impact on their reading.

I agree with Andyl on this, critics aren't the way to go.

"execrable media tie-ins, novelizations and lucrative series, sharecropping with the collusion of greedy agents and stupid editors" can in many cases all be traced back to publishing houses many authors write continuations of series / media tie-in etc etc because the publishing house comissions them. Its the publishing house that accepts a story for print, and they who pay for the dimishing number of editors.

Why do I think this? Conversations with authors who've stated, if you want more x write to the publishers, I write what they ask me to. Not in every case, but sufficient that contacting the publishing houses and asking for an increase in x over a decrease in y would be mro likely to lead to sucess than a few scathing reviews.

Bob, how do you define a "serious SF fan"?

Well, pretty much what andyl said at #280:

As to what a serious SF reader is. Well that is a difficult question. A serious |x| is often used in many fields. I think it is one of those terms that defies definition (well we would have to define SF first and that could take us forever and a day). It is probably part self identification, part knowledge of SF's past - the influential writers, the award winners etc, part reading the new. I wouldn't imagine that a serious SF reader would have read a very small number of books.

Of course, there's a bit of solipsism at work, as I'm also thinking of myself as the type specimen: someone who's read a lot of the stuff, someone for whom the genre forms (some undefined) large fraction of their reading; someone who may or may not be aware of organized fandom, but who might enjoy it if they stumbled upon it.

As andyl says, we can't even define "SF"; so the definition of "serious SF fan" is going to be pretty soft.

(Thus, the elastic answer I keep getting to the question: "Probably on-the-order-of 10 to the 4th power".)

But it only takes something like 2500 individual buyers to put a book into the black... however many of us there are, the hard core might very well be a surprisingly small cohort. And many of us are already here on LT.

I'll keep this one brief because I've posted elsewhere and written personal comments, all since the messages here.

A number of the posts on this thread violate the terms of service, which prohibit personal attacks, including baiting, name-calling, and so forth. This sort of activity is not acceptable on LibraryThing, and will not be tolerated. Thank you for your time.

#291

But... in terms of, say, WHOLE US? The number seems so low (10K "serious" fans). I thought SF books were published in 100 000s... minimum. Not sure why, of course. Just an assumption that anything with embossed titles, awful cover art and screaming colours is a bestseller. :)

From an interview with Mary Doria Russell
In hindsight, the publisher seems to have played this game right. The Sparrow's readership is in 6 figures, and that's rare for an SF novel, which typically gets a print run of 4000 copies in the US

Actually I think that she is too pessimistic.

From Charlie Stross's blog

A British paperback that shifts over 8000 copies is doing well, ... In contrast, an equivalent US sales figure is around 35,000 copies

Of course those figures are only for the writers who sell really well - and will probably be multiple print runs.

Wow, I was completely off. Feeling a bit as if I'd stepped out of a time-capsule... :)

>35 bluetyson:,000 copies

This still compares favourably to most literature, I imagine... not to mention poetry...

Howard Waldrop, in his latest collection, mentions that the Doubleday hardcover SF line - a mainstay of the genre back in the '80s - were typically printed in runs of 5,000.

Further, he says that half of the 5,000 copies were sold directly to the library market. (This is where I'm getting the '2500 individual buyers' figure.)

(You know, we should probably move this topic to its own thread....)

Bob/Andy:

Careful how you define a "serious SF fan/reader". You might be dubbed (gasp) an elitist.

Do "serious" SF fans read media tie-ins/novelizations?

Can "serious" SF fans name all of the cast members of "Deep Space 9"?

I hope serious fans aren't averse to some critical comments directed at their genre and can see room for improvement. We need to hear more from people who take the possibilities of the field seriously and are prepared to stand up for ground-breaking work...and denigrate shlock.

Doncha think?

>297 CliffBurns:

Hey Cliff,

Quit trying to hijack this thread away from the cozy discussion of sci-fi genre demographics.

Oh, wait a minute. You're the OP, aren't you? :(

I don't want to use the fan word because people will get mixed up with organised fandom.

Do "serious" SF fans read media tie-ins/novelizations?

Sometimes. I consider myself a serious SF reader and I have Doctor Who novels (tie-ins rather than novelisations) in my library. Of course most of them aren't terribly good, but a few are, All that proves is that Sturgeon's Law (and I can't believe I'm the first to mention that in this monster thread) is alive and kicking.

Can "serious" SF fans name all of the cast members of "Deep Space 9"?

Only those who really, really, like DS9.

#299 >All that proves is that Sturgeon's Law (and I can't believe I'm the first to mention that in this monster thread) is alive and kicking.
*******************

I thought about putting it upthread somewhere along the way but decided to see how long it took to come up. Only 299 posts. That's a lot more than I woulda thought at the start of this thread. I'd have guessed somewhere in the first fifty.

Actually, I've always preferred Harlan Ellison's version of Sturgeon's axion which is more extreme. With Sturgeon, it was "90% of anything is crap", whereas Ellison felt the number was more like "99% of anything is crap". Sturgeon was too much of an optimist as far as I'm concerned whereas Ellison cut it closer to the bone.

In terms of genre writing, I think the 99% figure is probably more accurate.
But, then, I've always been a fan of Ellison's and his razor sharp wit.

#301

Sure but you do know that Sturgeon coined the phrase (and he used crud) in direct response to ill-conceived attacks against science fiction that used "the worst examples of the field for ammunition" don't you? Now which of us has been doing that?

When you say "ill-conceived attacks" are you referring to my posts and opinions? If so, how are my views ill-conceived? Sadly, the worst examples in the SF field are more prevalent than the truly great stuff, which is very much in the minority. If 90%--or 99%--of the writing is crud that's still a pretty damning indictment of the overall quality of the work, don't you think? Shouldn't we be aiming a BIT higher than that? If 90% of my writing was godawful, I'd fling my pens and keyboard out the window and flip burgers for a living.

No it was Sturgeon who was responding to ill-conceived attacks.

The which of us part was referring to the "using the worst examples" bit, which I think you have been at times.

As for crud well Silverberg churned out plenty of it in his time - but he still produced some superb novels. Same for Brunner. At various times these writers have had to produce lots of work, fast, and for less picky audiences so as to pay the bills. To keep them going as professional writers, or to get themselves started in the industry. Considering the opportunities are less these days for mid-list novels and magazine publication where else should writers go to earn an honest bob except the media tie-ins?

>299 andyl: ... >303 CliffBurns:

Just for the record here ...

There are many alternative phrasings of Sturgeon's Revelation, but IMHO one of the better ones (and it appears to be the same one that posts #301 - #304 are citing) is:

90% of science fiction is crud, but that's because 90% of everything is crud.

You can substitute the terms anything or most things for everything, and you can argue endlessly about the percentages (i.e., substitute 94%, or 99%, or any other amount you desire for the above 90%) but whatever the final variation, that particular iteration of Sturgeon's Revelation is still saying pretty much the same thing as any of the other possible variations. The terms may differ slightly, but the concept is clearly the same in every case.

Cliff, the whole point behind Sturgeon's Law is that it states that the vast majority of output of ANY human enterprise will fall in the sub-mediocre range, which we will call "crud". You can attack the RC church simply because some of its priests were gay and sodomized little boys, but that fact still does NOT make Mother Teresa bad, nor The Confessions of St. Augustine NOT worth a read.

What you are doing is the moral equivalent of my going through your trash can (read dustbin) outside your home and finding pieces of your own work that you have shredded because they failed whatever quality standard that you set for your own writing, and to then hold these up as being typical examples of your own written canon and thereby victoriously claim how bad a writer they prove you to be. To attack the merits of science fiction by citing only the very worst cases of it is no less of an "ill-conceived" duplicitous trick than attacking the merits of your own writing efforts by citing only the very worst cases of that.

What andyl is telling you in post #302 is that Theodore Sturgeon coined his initial "Revelation" back in the early fifties precisely because critics repeatedly launched the same kind of "ill-conceived" attacks on sci-fi writing (including his own) as you have implied in a number of your posts here, and it was Sturgeon's standard riposte to such attacks. Just because 9x% of the rest of the sci-fi genre sucks doesn't mean that Sturgeon's writing does, nor that, say, Kurt Vonnegut's canon does, nor Ursula K. LeGuin's canon either.

In post #301 and #303 you have just admiringly cited Sturgeon's and Ellison's defense against the type of arguments that go to the very core of many of your posts on this thread. Just because 9x% of the sci-fi generated, such as media tie-ins, is extremely bad still doesn't detract in any way from how excellent the work of the remaining (100% - 9x%) of the sci-fi genre is - viz. authors such as Sturgeon, Ellison, LeGuin or Vonnegut. In fact there is a corollary to Sturgeon's Law that goes:

"... but the remaining x% is worth dying for."

where x = whatever digit you want to plug into your own personal formulation of the law above.

And yes, in response to #299 and #300, I too am surprised Sturgeon's Law was not referenced within the first 20 or so posts on the thread. But since we are now on the topic of Sturgeon's Law (rather than the sci-fi writing scientists of the OP) I would like to indulge my own curiosity here. I have yet to see anyone explain here why they knowingly read "crud" (in ANY genre, not just sci-fi ... it just so happens that that concept got raised in this particular discussion).

I'm NOT asking why someone might buy and collect something that is "crud", but instead why that person would read something that s/he believes is "crud". The motivation for collecting certain books might well be that they may go up significantly in value, and those books are really an investment, not potential future reads. That is a logical argument and cannot be faulted.

The real question that makes me curious here is: why do certain discriminating genre "fans" READ and passionately DEFEND stuff that they also know is "crud" just because it is sci-fi or ____ (insert your own other genre here - this question is really not sci-fi genre specific) ?

Andy:

Forgive a personal anecdote. I've been a professional author for a couple of decades and I have never written quickly or for a marketplace for money or to advance my career. That, to me, is the definition of "hack". I know many writers do but that doesn't make it defensible. I could have very easily come up with an outline for a STAR TREK or STAR WARS novelization and pounded out a reasonable facsimile of a readable book. I won't. Philosophically it goes against everything I stand for. Guys I really admire, Philip K. Dick for one, wrote books quickly, for money (in his case to support 5 wives and various children) and that is a shame. His hackwork is atrocious and detracts from truly superior efforts. It diminishes his body of work and artistic standing.

I realize that this posting might draw criticism for being self-righteous but I do have some real perspective on this because of my experiences and the fact that I do work full-time as a writer. Selling out, writing beneath my capabilities, would have made my life a lot easier and eased the constant financial burden but I WON'T DO IT and, yes, I hold those who do in more than a little contempt. At the end of a long day of writing I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not flinch. That's important to me and for the state of my soul...

Rule42

Yes, I agree that the vast majority of human endeavors fall into the crap/mediocre category but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to improve and critique that which falls short. I won't accept that 90% of my writing is crap...or I would have quit years ago for utterly failing to meet my admittedly high standards. Nor will I let anyone else off the hook. Too many people shrug their shoulders: "Oh, well, 90% of anything is crap" and let it go at that. It's letting off the mediocre too easy, allowing low standards to persist. Won't do that. CAN'T do that. There's enormous promise in the human potential as long as we consistently demand that our artists and leaders reach for, strive and achieve a higher standard of work, behavior and morality. If we don't seek to improve as a species, why the hell did we crawl out of our caves in the first place?

#306

Well I knew you have been writing for a while (I do have a couple of anthologies in which you have a story).

Personally I don't agree with you. I don't think that hack work, or erotica, or media tie-ins detract at all from any greater work one might do. If you look at Brunner, Dick or Silverberg their greatest works speak for themselves. They from part of the top tier of SF. Maybe without the hack-work they could never have written such great works. It is probably something we will never know. Yes, I know some writers are insanely great from the get-go but most aren't.

Hey, 42:

I didn't think you were inferring that 90% of MY writing was crap so no worries there. I think you're the type of person that if you're going to diss somebody, you're going to do it straight up, not from wayy off in the bleachers, where you're safe from ripostes.

I don't think I'm trying to insinuate the entire field should be condemned by using the media tie-ins and novelizations as representative of the genre. I think my original posting was, in its way, confirming Sturgeon's Law...90% of anything is crud...including SF. Actually, I'll stick with Ellison's (higher) figure. The problem is that too many people took my OP as a dig at their favorite author and saw me as the ruthless bastard out to slaughter their sacred cows:

"He must mean Heinlein/Asimov/Silverberg/etc and I love them so, by implication, he's insulting me and my tastes..."

But if we can agree that 90 or 99% (we can quibble over the actual figure, I suppose) of anything is crud INCLUDING SF, maybe that original post wasn't so far off the mark. But what to put in that small percentage that's left over? The good stuff. Aye, there's the rub. I argued that little of the good stuff is being written by scientists, that their technical writing/gobbledegook disqualifies them for consideration as top-notch writers. Being guilty of exposition is a big no-no in literature, it's one of the first things a writing instructor (or editor) would take a developing scribe to task over. Eliminate unnecessary detail. So why should we let the eggheads get away with it? Getting your sentence structure and characterization right is more important than nailing down the science (to my mind). Thus, in that small percentage of good stuff, I do not put much, if anything, by scientist/authors.

Thoughts?

>308 andyl:

andyl, I don't disagree with anything you said in that post. Unless it's this bit:

"I don't think that hack work, or erotica, or media tie-ins detract at all from any greater work one might do."

Here's the problem. You're a writer (genre or otherwise) with a body of work behind you - say 20 novels. Some (probably the earliest ones, but not necessarily so) are hack works, while some of the other more mature works may have won esteemed awards such as Hugos, Edgars, Bookers or maybe even a Pulitzer. I'm a reader whose aware of your esteemed literary prowess but I've never read anything by you. So I'm browsing around in a used bookstore and I find two or three of your earlier titles and purchase them ... I've always heard you were good, now I get to see for myself. Unfortunately, I've bought only your worst stuff from your "hack period" and I find them abysmal.

With me it's "three strikes and you're out" ... I'll be lucky if I get to read my estimated life goal of 2500 titles (post #235) before I snuff it, and I've just wasted 3 of those slots on your worst output. No matter how good your other stuff - Pulitzer and Booker award-winning though it is - I'm also human, and "three times bitten, pretty damn shy" would apply here. Thus I'll most likely end up avoiding the rest of your canon no matter how well others sing the praises of it, because life is too damn short to spend it reading bad literature, and you've just made me do it three times in a row.

Which is usually why many established authors will release something that is very different than what their usual audience expects and demands (for instance, dabbling in dubious subject matter such as the occult or erotica) under a different pen name - e.g., Anne Rice / Anne Rampling / A.N. Roquelaure.

Many readers, in assessing a writer's merits, look at their body of work and kind of subconsciously award points and average the score out. As part of that subconscious assessment every abysmal hack work in there effectively nullifies each award-winning masterpiece, thereby reducing the overall rating in their minds to just average. So, an author's "hack work" can indeed "detract from any greater work one might do"!

I've personally avoided Philip K. Dick's work for exactly the reasons I just cited, despite the fact that I regard the film Blade Runner as one of my all-time favorite movies.

I think Rule 42's point is a valid one.

I would say, based on my readings of Dick over the years, that he has six or seven terrific titles, five or six good ones...and then the quality drops off to the mediocre and, in the case of VULCAN'S HAMMER and UNTELEPORTED MAN just plain awful. Phil worked fast, too fast and he released too many novels that were half-formed, poorly conceived, little more than hack work. It did detract from his better efforts. His body of work, taken in its entirety, is adversely affected by his lesser novels and short stories. Heinlein fans would have to concede that the offerings in the latter part of his career were bloody awful--yes, he wrote STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND but he also wrote NUMBER OF THE BEAST. To be fair, one of my favorite (non-genre) authors, Anthony Burgess was overly prolific--he was capable of true genius like EARTHLY POWERS and drek like ANY OLD IRON. An author worth their salt is careful not to release anything that doesn't measure up to the high bar of excellence he/she has set for themselves. If Phil had written books that continually measured up to the high quality of his best work he would be regarded as a writer of stature regardless of the field he worked in. That he didn't was his failing...and that is regrettable.

Incidentally, I detest authors who use pseudonyms. I think they hide substandard work behind pen names, it's an excuse to write poorly. If something is good enough to release, it should be good enough to put your real name to.

#312: Well, you're being too kind: it's not that VH and UM were "little more than hack work" - they are nothing but hack work.

The quantity and variability of Dick's and Heinlein's output just points out the importance of being willing to listen to the recommendations of others in separating wheat from chaff. Whether that recommendation be in the form of a popular award, a juried award, or just the opinion of Some Guy On The Internet, it's useful to weigh and assess other opinions.

(Yes, I've done that, too: settle in with Some Author, and read ALL of it. I don't do much of that anymore.)

This thread has been all about "Well, we should only be reading the Best Stuff." One can certainly make a case for that - - but how are you to know what's "the best" until you've read it?

>313 CliffBurns:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Cliff. Writers such as Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, C.S. Forester, Zane Grey, George Eliot, George Sand, Lemony Snicket and Flann O'Brien (just to name a few off the top of my head, here) were quite clearly using their noms de plume as "an excuse to write poorly" and almost definitely their prime motivation for doing so was to hide their "substandard work behind" those various pen names.

Damn, did I use irony again? Sheesh, I've gotta remember to stop doing that on this thread! :(

Edited to encourage(?) the touchstones to appear.

It's true, some excellent writers (Flann O'Brien was a bloody genius) used pseudonyms...I just, for the life of me, can't fathom WHY. I think George Eliot did it to hide the fact that "he" was really a woman (and therefore her works wouldn't receive serious consideration). Forester, Grey and Snicket I don't really take seriously as writers. Never been a Conrad fan either (though I'm not denying his place in the pantheon of 20th Century writers). Can't imagine why Carroll or Clemens/Twain chose pen names, don't know enough about their respective lives. Pseudonyms are a source of annoyance to me (my posting above explains why). Put something out in your own name (whether a story, essay, novel...or an internet posting) and don't hide behind an invented identity, avatar, etc. If you're in the right, claim credit; if wrong; take the heat.

Well, Conrad's is the trivial case for "Why write under a pseudonym?"

Not only would "Teodor Józef Konrad Nałęcz-Korzeniowski" be daunting for his readers to request at the bookshop; it wouldn't even fit on the spine.

Good point on Conrad. But why Clemens/Carroll? Have to do some reading up on their bios...but I've got a book review to finish today or else I really will become the troll I'm often accused of being.

Hey, Happy Canada Day, folks...

>316 CliffBurns:

The author Daniel Handler writes under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket because in real life Daniel plays the accordion. Need I say more? :(

Edited to add: Actually, I had only included Lemony Snicket in my short list because I had him mentally pigeon-holed as being Canadian. Of course, I was confusing him with Jiminy Glick a.k.a. Martin Short who is indeed Canadian. In fact, I'll go out on a limb here, and state that I believe he's the only Roman Catholic Jew in Canada! :)

I believe Martin's father is actually Northern Irish ... now who does that remind me of ????

>314 AsYouKnow_Bob:

"... but how are you to know what's "the best" until you've read it?

I could just as easily ask, "How can you possibly find any gold until you've sunk shafts or panned rivers all over the entire surface of the earth?" Or, "How can you possibly know that you are in love with your sweetheart until you've first shagged every other woman in the world?"

Why am I NOT surprised that you have so many damn books in your own library (whether catalogued or uncatalogued) when you take such a literal and unsubtle approach to life, Bob?

Let's just say that there are sometimes more intelligent and nuanced ways to get at your goals in life than you are advocating on this thread WRT what someone should read, and leave it at that, shall we? Buying something simply because it's labeled "sci-fi" on the cover might be your own technique for book accumulation, but you also have to allow the possibility that for other LT members, something being labeled "sci-fi" might actually be a "turn-off" and NOT a "turn-on" WRT whether it has merit as a read.

Edited to fix missing italics tag.

(You're doing it again. You've misrepresented me, and now perhaps I bristle when you suggest that my approach to life is "unintelligent and insufficiently nuanced".)

I take offense because once again you've completely missed my point and are misrepresenting me.

My question "how are you to know?..." was asked rhetorically, in support of my actual point that one needs to avail oneself of the judgement and experience of others; because otherwise, the only way to know is to read everything.

Bob:

I dunno if it's possible to judge if something's good until I've read it. I guess if it's blurbed by Terry Brooks or Steve Jackson or Robert Jordan I'd pitch that sucker out the window of a moving vehicle without a second thought. Beyond that...

I certainly can't think of any critics, offhand, whose views I consider sacrosanct. As I've indicated, I think SF, horror and fantasy lack credible reviewers who aren't afraid to take a harshly critical stance (one prominent critic has even confessed to me privately that he only reviews novels he knows he's going to like because he's taken so much heat from fans and colleagues for negative notices). I think Paul Difillipo and LOCUS' Ed Bryant have informed opinions and John Clute, Tom Disch and Samuel Delaney write well but, in my view, reviewers are too insular, their contexts remain within the genre they're writing about rather than incorporating references and criteria drawn from literature as a whole.

Awards are meaningless (we've addressed that previously, so I won't bore).

Blurbs are sometimes the result of circle jerks.

I like that feature of Amazon that allows a sneak peak at a book that interests you by letting you read the first few pages. At least that way you can get a feel for whether or not a particular author writes with skill and precision. So you don't have to shell out ten or fifteen (or more) bucks and end up getting stiffed.

>316 CliffBurns: and >318 CliffBurns:

OK, Cliff, in post #317 Bob answered your question WRT Joseph Conrad. Let me see if I can address some of the rest.

Lewis Carroll: His first published piece of work in 1856, a romantic poem called Solitude, was done so under that name, and very simply, Carroll stuck with it for everything else that he subsequently published. His chosen pseudonym was a play on words on his real name Charles Ludwidge Dodgson. Lewis was the anglicized form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll was an anglicized version of Carolus, which was the Latin for Charles.

Lemony Snicket: (cut and pasted from Wikipedia) The name Lemony Snicket ostensibly came from research for Handler's first book, The Basic Eight. Handler wanted to receive material from organizations he found "offensive or funny", but did not want to use his real name, and invented "Lemony Snicket" as a pseudonym. He would also use the name to write prank letters to newspapers, pretending to be outraged at a trivial news item. When writing A Series of Unfortunate Events, he and his editor decided the books should be published under the narrator's name, rather than his.

Mark Twain: (cut and pasted from Wikipedia) Clemens claimed that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Chapter 50 of Life on the Mississippi he wrote: Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN," and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; ... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

Notice that Twain uses the term nom de guerre ... which as you well know is French for "name of war"! This is the correct French term for a pen name. The term nom de plume did not originate in France at all, but instead it "evolved" in Britain, where people wanting a "literary" phrase failed to understand nom de guerre (which already existed in the French). Like many of the folks reading this thread that flag things they don't understand, those Brits completely failed to understand the "metaphor" inherent in the original French term, so they invented their own duplicate one instead!

Edited to encourage(?) the touchstones to appear.

How in the world can so much be written in reply to the original post, when the obvious answer is:

"If they are inclined to and have capability to produce a good result, then yes; if not, no."

As to "Why does it seem that scientists produce so much bad SF?" it seems obvious as well.

For a set of reasons:

1) We tend to remember if a scientist writes science fiction for the obvious reasons. We tend not to track travel agents who write SF, or garden supply store clerks who write SF, etc. But scientists ,we remember. And given the famous "90% of everything is crap" - we remember the bad works from the scientists. So the bad SF from scientists is MEMORABLE.

2) As mentioned above, 90% of everything is crap. So there's LOTS of it that we REMEMBER.

3) People in a profession often love talking about some detail of their profession, at a depth greater than the casual observer may be interested in. So, a scientist thinks of something fascinating to speculate about (for them) in their field, and wants to write about it, and YAY! there's a genre just for them: SCIENCE FICTION. So, motivated by the scientific curiosity instead of by a compelling plot, they write up a yawner. If there was a genre of literature with 10,000s of titles in the past century about the travails of zookeeping, we would see a lot of garbage stories writen by ZOOKEEPERS.

Hi. A number of messages on this thread cross over into the zone of personal attacks, name-calling or baiting, all of which are strictly prohibited on the Terms of Service (http://www.librarything.com/privacy#terms). That the conversation got heated is no excuse. On LibraryThing we discuss ideas; we do not discuss people, and we certainly don't attack them.

We have also discussed the idea that reposting flagged content was a TOS violation. This has not previously been an official policy. It is now. People who want to see a flagged comment can click the "read" link to get it. Reposting is unnecessary.

Admitting that 90% of everything is crap doesn't excuse it. I won't allow 90% of any aspect of my writing to be crap, why should I allow my colleagues an easy out? I work hard to write well and weed out the chaff, not releasing it, not submitting it for publication, not insulting my readers' intelligence with it. Why should I sit by and let ANYONE--scientist/authors, fantasy hacks or mainstream twits--abuse and denigrate an art form?

"I write for money."
"I write for entertainment."
"I write for the marketplace."
"I write for escapism."
"SF is about ideas, not good writing."

Not acceptable standards for any type of writing, not genre, not mainstream, nothin'. "Literary men are a perpetual priesthood," Thomas Carlyle wrote and I couldn't agree more. Anyone who brings dishonor to the craft deserves to be raked over the coals. You can rationalize poor writing umpteen different ways ("I don't write for critics" is another one of my favorites) but it comes down to a choice between art and commerce and for too many writers the dollar sign is where their creative conscience stops to take a leak...

"Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something." ... Aldous Huxley

>326 JPB:

"How in the world can so much be written in reply to the original post, when the obvious answer is:"

Well, not everything that has been posted here is a direct response to just the OP ... there are quite a few major themes (twisters) that were intertwined with (spawned by) the subject raised by the OP (hurricane). I do think you are correct; we remember the sci-fi written by the scientists more than by anyone else. Particularly if it is "bad sci-fi" (by whatever criterion) - there does seem to be a tendency to hold scientists more accountable for that (or if you prefer, there seems to be a tendency to hold them accountable to a much higher standard). Why do we do that? That might the topic of a completely separate thread.

I'm still waiting for someone to post a chunk of actual text here that proves the OP's point that only, or the vast majority of, scientists write all the bad sci-fi in the same fashion that bluetyson did in post #20.

In the mean time, I'll try furthering one of the other many underlying themes of this thread (viz. the argument that "less is more" when it comes to hard facts and descriptions in any fiction, and not just "infodumps" in sci-fi genre fiction) by quoting the following ...

"The trouble with fiction ... is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense. (snip) Fiction has unity, fiction has style. Facts possess neither. In the raw, existence is always one damned thing after another, and each of the damned things is simultaneously Thurber and Michelangelo, simultaneously Mickey Spillane and Maxwell and Thomas à Kempis. The criterion of reality is its intrinsic irrelevance." And when I asked, "To what?" he waved a square brown hand in the direction of the bookshelves. "To the Best that has been Thought and Said," he declaimed with mock portentousness. And then, "Oddly enough, the closest to reality are always the fictions that are supposed to be the least true." He leaned over and touched the back of a battered copy of The Brothers Karamazov. "It makes so little sense that it's almost real. Which is more than can be said for any of the academic kinds of fiction. History fiction. Philosophy fiction ..." His accusing finger moved from Dirac to Toynbee, from Sorokin to Carnap. "More than can be said even for biography fiction."

I could possibly add to that list - God forbid, given the animosity of the audience on this thread! - Science fiction!

Rule42: you seem to be under some misapprehension here: our posts have not been symmetric.

You've repeatedly insulted me, most recently at #320; I have protested. I have not insulted you in turn. Heck, I have not even flagged your posts - I have only protested your insults, both publicly and privately.
You meet my objections with further personal insults.

I have removed one instance of my objections, after you you withdrew the insult; but I have no need to revise my posts, because, unlike you, I have not yet stooped to personal insults.

42 Dude:

I wish I had time between writing and raising kids and reading and reviewing and blog upkeep to go through all my SF titles and laboriously tap in examples of "info dumping" or unnecessary science-slash- exposition. Fact is, I don't. Have time, that is. I have directed you toward some authors and examples that show my point (you can go through the 300+ postings and see for yourself--I'd rather have my toenails pulled off with vice grips than submit to that task).

You're right--there IS animosity on this thread and I sometimes regret posting this topic because of some of the personal invective unleashed. I've been guilty of it myself--I think there's a posting up there where I use the term "braindead fan-boy"...but, in my defense, I didn't direct it at one particular person. This thread seems to have exposed some raw nerves and, as Peter Watts says, that may have something to do with the fact that SF has existed "in the ghetto" for some time, getting ridiculed for its bad writing and dopey ideas. It's made people extra sensitive to criticism. But I'm a writer and a critic and I thought I had a valid point of view. I expected healthy debate but not getting nailed with terms like "blog pimp" and "sock puppet", etc. It's all right to disagree--and do so vociferously--but any forum of discussion should limit itself to the subject at hand and avoid personal attacks directed at one individual. It invalidates the argument and reflects badly on the points you're making...and the intelligence behind them.

>331 AsYouKnow_Bob:

Bob, I am NOT under ANY "misapprehension" of what you are doing or saying. Please don't INSULT my reading capability nor INSULT me by talking down to me condescendingly, nor PUBLICLY INSULT me by GRANDSTANDING your position over a personal nit. For the SIXTH time, please TAKE IT OFFLINE. I will listen to you, but I expect you to reciprocate.

What Tim doesn't want on the MB is exactly what you are doing. I have suggested a number of times (>3 ZachBlagg:) to you that we should delete all of the contentious posts. But NO, instead you insist on a public train wreck. Please CEASE AND DESIST and work the issue privately. Thank you.

Now go and have all your acolytes flag this into oblivion. :)

I've attempted to talk to you privately; you've insulted me there, as well.

You've posted a list of "demands" on my profile page, and then deleted it before I could even weigh my response. As I said, I see little need to revise the history of this thread, because, unlike others, I have said nothing that I need apologize for. And besides, it's an insult both to Clio and to the other participants to rewrite the conversation: the conversation is an ongoing thing, and re-writing what has transpired is not just unfair to the other participants, it's literally Orwellian.

There's also the fact that Rule42 has taken private communications from me and reposted them in public, without my knowledge, consent, or approval. (See the quoted text at Rule42's #260 - that comes from a private message from me to him, which he then saw fit to re-post publically.)

I cannot conduct a private conversation with someone who behaves like that, as it remains private only as he sees fit.

The short version of #335, for anyone still interested:
Rule42 contacted me 'backchannel', and tried to persuade me to go back and help him edit out references in this thread to his abusive behavior. When I didn't immediately show enthusiasm, he turned abusive again.

Rule42: I have no idea who Clio is or what you are talking about here.

Clio is the Muse of History. Your desire to rewrite the thread would be an insult to her, as well as to the participants here. I apologize for misjudging your erudition.

I tried my best to resolve things in an amicable manner and to minimize the discord on this thread...

No. Actually, the portions of the thread that you have not yet re-written show that you have repeatedly insulted me. I have remained entirely amicable throughout your repeated insults. I have neither insulted you nor deceived you.

The truth is out for all to see.

I'm glad you keep timestamped backups. Even had I wanted to, I was not able to comply with your request to remove the record of your insults because you erased your list of posts that you wanted me to join you in altering. I thank you for publicly admitting that you now want the record altered to remove both your insults AND my objections to your insults.

"The truth is out for all to see", indeed.

All along, my request of you has been only that you stop insulting me as we go forward. You have repeatedly demonstrated your inability to do so.

You've added yet more insults in #335. And in your tirade, you accuse me of "grandstanding". That, sir, is entirely projection on your part. I am only asking you to stop insulting me.

You are the one re-writing posts. I still stand by everything I've said in this thread, as most of the conversation between us has been only my repeated request that you stop insulting me. It appears that you cannot stop yourself.

Instead, you ask me - first, privately, and now you reprint your request publicly - to remove my complaints about your behavior, so that the public record of your insults will be erased - - as you clearly now desire that others see an inaccurate, incomplete and re-written record of your behavior to date.

That, sir, is called duplicity.

...because I am now done with you and this issue.

Promise? Because that's all that I have been asking of you all along.

Shall we consider this threat closed then? I think I've said all I have to say and it certainly has been going on longer than a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Good discussion and I appreciated the views expressed here, the thought streams that opened up.

Thanks to one and all.

Wait.

What's this? Someone is seriously talking Modesitt's writing? Oh, dear...

There might still be some life in the topic...

Peter Watts is involved in this panel at ReaderCon later this week:

"I Have a Truly Marvelous Proof of This Proposition Which This Story is Too Commercial To Contain."
Michael A. Burstein, Jeff Hecht, Donald Kingsbury, Louise Marley, Peter Watts.

"Actual calculations are generally excluded from sf—they're not what the reader is looking for. But hard sf often requires that the writer do the math and / or the physics and chemistry, and many stories are backed up by thick sheaves of notes that the reader never sees. Our panelists discuss examples from their personal experience. Should the "technical appendices" be published more often? Isn't the Web the natural place for them?"

So I'll report back, and we can start over, right from the top!

Won't that be fun?

Ohhhhhhhh noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

I'm gonna get that bastard Watts, I truly am. Yes, Bob, I want a complete account. I thought we could wrap this up, shake hands, walk away with our heads held high...not to be.

Well, you'll see that Peter is a far nicer fellow than me, far more diplomatic in tone and demeanor. Not an arsehole Ulsterman.

If you do get a chance for a word in his shell-like, tell him I said "hello". He's a bloody good writer and a smart git. Hope ReaderCon is fun--I don't go to Cons (or most anyplace else) but that one has always interested me.

So as not to offend the Goddess Clio nor to appear in any way "Orwellian" I feel I need to make one more post here even after saying I wouldn't. Once you have read it, you will see why. You will also see why such dialogue is best kept off of a MB. But I have been accused ad nauseum of doing something very sinister in requesting that OT material be kept off of a very long thread. What is the correct way to respond to such false public accusations? If I post a riposte I violate my own beliefs (and contradict my closing remark of post #335 that that was my last post here); if I don’t post anything and try and handle this privately, then I’m being duplicitous. Such a Catch-22 dilemma.

In all fairness, I think Bob would prefer that I post what I want to say publicly rather than privately. So I will throw my own principles to the wind and do that, fully acknowledging that I am contradicting my own pledge above not to post again … but then again, it takes a contradiction to break a Catch-22 argument. It may also take me more than one post to deliver the truth in this matter, since otherwise people will call me a troll if I make anything longer than a 2 paragraph post. I think we can make that threshold somewhat higher (otherwise we are all trolls here), but nevertheless, folk don’t like long posts, so on the principle of ”in for a penny, in for a pound”, I will make a number of shorter ones rather than one bigger one.

Edited because the editor ate half the post - another good reason to keep 'em small. :(

From post #336: "Even had I wanted to, I was not able to comply with your request to remove the record of your insults because you erased your list of posts that you wanted me to join you in altering."

For me to take that lame excuse seriously, I really would have to "insult" Bob's intelligence. He is much smarter than that. After I had sent my "duplicitous 'backchannel' correspondence" *smiling ironically to myself as I write that* on 6/25, Bob had modified post #262 in devious Orwellian fashion to say that there was a "private conversation to resolve our differences currently in progress" (that, I'm afraid, is a paraphrase). I accepted that statement at face value and looked forward to receiving a reply PM from him addressing exactly how he wished to proceed.

Instead I got a PM suggesting I had made racist comments on this thread which completely stymied me, and on 6/27 Bob insulted the Muse of History once again to re-edit his public announcement on post #262 to remove the reference to the ongoing conversation (which is why I had to paraphrase just now). From 6/25 to 6/28 Bob made 4 further posts on this thread WRT sci-fi demographics while I was still left sitting there, scratching my head, waiting for a reasonable response (such as receiving another PM or seeing posts being modified in some way) to my "duplicitous 'backchannel' correspondence"! I rejoined the thread on the evening of 6/28.

From post #336 yesterday at 10:57pm.: "... and tried to persuade me to go back and help him edit out references in this thread to his abusive behavior."
From the original post #336: "Instead, you ask me - first, privately, and now you reprint your request publicly - to remove my complaints about your behavior, so that the public record of your insults will be erased - - as you clearly now desire that others see an inaccurate, incomplete and re-written record of your behavior to date."

That's one possible interpretation ... or it could also be interpreted as a request to clean up this thread for the sake of others, in a similar vein to the plea of post #327. Hopefully, these last few posts will convince Bob why things are sometimes better handled in private.

From post #336: "You are the one re-writing posts. I still stand by everything I've said in this thread, as most of the conversation between us has been only my repeated request that you stop insulting me. It appears that you cannot stop yourself." (clip) "That, sir, is called duplicity."

So now it's ONLY me rewriting posts! Yet that statement came from a post rewritten by Bob. And the posts that I've rewritten were ALL to remove the text that Bob found insulting, or to tone down my frustration in a couple that directly responded to those taunts. So if I leave the text in situ I'm insulting him, but if I remove it for the sake of politeness and harmony, I'm insulting the Goddess Clio and being duplicitous instead. Sounds like Bob has set himself up a very nice infinite regress here.

There are many more ways of abusing someone than just with words. In fact, many would argue that words don't really qualify as abuse anyway ... "Sticks and stones may break my bones ..." etc. Another way of abusing someone is to task them with doing the impossible, such as completing an infinite task in a finite amount of time. For example, I will refer the reader to the myth of Sisyphus.

Albert Camus sees Sisyphus as personifying the absurdity of human life, but concludes "one must imagine Sisyphus happy." Personally, I view Sisyphus as personifying the absurdity of debating Bob on a MB. Oh wait, was that an insult? Well, even if it was, what is just one more in what looks like being a never-ending cycle of infinite regress here. I am quite willing to let this disagreement all stay public if that's what Bob really wants. I would have preferred to have amicably cleared up the initial misunderstanding with him, but failing that, to have the discord at least removed from the boards and made private, so that this thread, which has many different themes going on simultaneously, wouldn't be burdened with yet another one; one that is completely OT and, in places, somewhat unsavory. That was my only reason for my "duplicitous public" (is that an oxymoron?) request in post #335.

Of course, if you are of such a mind, you can read bad intent, insult and intrigue into anything. I argued that view back in post #207 and pointed out that the essential philosophy of the TOS - "BE NICE" - applies as much to reading and comprehension as it does to writing and composition. And on that note I will also attempt to break this silly chain of exchanges with Bob right here. This really is my last post on this thread. I wonder if the chain will stop here too?

uh, Rule42: Have you ever considered just saying, "I'm sorry you felt insulted. I won't do it again"?

Because this current outburst isn't really winning over your audience here. Not me, anyway. You're coming off as a bully who can't believe somebody stood up to him.

I've been reading this thread and seen several people get flagged, get flagged into oblivion, even. Two of them were new here, and they seem to have been able to adjust their posts to stay in with the terms of service. One of them - you - hasn't. 7 posts to complain about how AsYouKnowBob has mistreated YOU? That's not what it looks like to me.

Whatever AsYouKnowBob took offense to is so far past that everyone but the two of you has forgotten. But you keep after him; I can't see as I blame him for finally giving you a little of your own, back.

Ursala Le Guin rises - eloquently - to the defense of genre fiction:

http://news.ansible.co.uk/a240.html#leguin

btw, AYK_Bob, Dukedom (the scientist) wrote the panel above (although he says he didn't write the title). I'll make sure he isn't tempted to write science fiction though:-)

Hi. This post has mostly become a fight—and this after I stepped in to stop the fight, and urged calm. I am unhappy with this, and extremely uninterested in hearing an argument on right and wrongs involved. I urge all involved to simply drop the matter, and fobear from fighting elsewhere.

If this strand does continue--after Peter Watts has his say at ReaderCon--I pledge to stay on subject and not make personal comments about other people posting.

Tim, I'd honestly say about 80-90% of the posts have been relevant and only a few (relatively) have crossed the line. This has been a good discussion...but it has gotten too heated (at times). Anyone who has something to say to an individual member should take it off-line, make it a private conversation and that's that. Any feelings of harassment or infringement of LT conduct should be taken up with you (Tim), rather than back and forth he said-she-said. Both sides should accept you as independent arbitrator and accept your guidance. No side forums, shooting from a safe distance. Again, you've got my vow to maintain that stance. As to everyone else...

Although at times I have been on the other side of the debate to Cliff I would agree. I can safely say that although I think his idealism is misplaced and a tad wrong-headed he hasn't attracted a flag AFAIK. I think that at times we have tried to self-correct as a group however there did seem to be a particular impasse that needed help to be cleared.

However I would recommend starting a new topic to specifically discuss the ReaderCon panel for two reasons - 1) this topic is way too long 2) easier to keep a clear head with a fresh topic - heated arguments are rarely carried over unless one poster is deliberately trying to be offensive.

I heartily agree with andyl. Please start another topic to discuss Readercon! Aside from the risk of continuing acrimony here, this particular thread is increasingly slow to load even on my high-speed cable connection.

There's already a "ReaderCon Conversations" group in existence, and at least two of the participants from this thread are going and may be able to report back. So, sure.