Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 12:24:35 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: SF and the Bestseller Lists
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Erica VD Ginter wrote:
>
> Oh, this is going to be fun to watch! Recently, Post columnist Bob Levey did
> a column about Oprah Winfrey's book club, saying he'd been wrong to put it
> down. You see, he had looked over the list of her picks and found only
> worthwhile books, no trash, including no science fiction. I was going to
> write a letter, but what's the point? You know all SF is is that space opera
> shit and people running around in rubber pointed ears!

I always love this.  What is "trash"?  Well, my definition is "art that
tells you what to think and what to feel".  Good art lets you make your
own conclusions.  Note -- no "genre" touchstones.

There's also "popular art", with the purpose of "reinforcing the
conventional morality".  See prime time television for far too many
examples.

I gave up long ago on "mainstream fiction".  It has acquired its own
structure, which to me looks just like bad storytelling with boring
characters.  The structure of "mainstream fiction" seems to be a mixture
of "Marxist art", whose purpose is too "demonstrate the decadence of the
bourgeoisie", existentialism ("All is ugliness, futility, and despair",
"Hell is other people"), and utter contempt for anything resembling
action.

The book version of "The Princess Bride" is, among other things, a
satire on some of the gimmicks of mainstream fiction.  Only in
"mainstream fiction" would you cut away from a major fight scene to have
a thirty page flashback to a character's childhood ...

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."