I Get that Loving Feeling…
I’m getting that feeling of the two halves of my brain tearing apart at .9 light again. Robert Heinlein’s resurrected first novel, For Us, The Living, picks up interest from the lit crowd but modern day SF and fantasy writers are as welcome as a skunk at those wine and cheese affairs.
But after I recover from my pre-programmed frustration over whether F/SF/H genres are being taken seriously, I was floored.
The impression was that he was writing commercial fiction from Day 1. Like a juggernaut he dominated science fiction. Actually from Day 1 he was writing what society should be about. But then, couldn’t one conceivably make the argument that “writing what society should be about” is what every “Grand Master” of the genre (whether they were formally awarded that title or not) was and is up to, to varying degrees?
And that this sociocritical element was pretty much understood within at least a core portion of the readership? In my mental library, for example, it’s always been interesting to compare Bruce Sterling–and, more recently, Cory Doctorow–to Heinlein, or Frederick Pohl, or [insert name here], with an eye towards how their futuristic settings offer satirical critiques of very contemporary trends.
Someone has given away the secret handshake! We’ve been infiltrated! The ominous “they” have been paying attention and they’ve stolen the secret plans. If we don’t act, they’re going to steal all of the good stuff out of our genre and leave us with empty, planet sized hulks like a sky full of stars, orbiting a planet that killed itself off.
For me, it comes back to the “SF ghetto.” I don’t understand what happened or why. I can say that back in the mid 70’s, when I was a teen, people read SF. (Fantasy in its modern form–despite hundreds if not thousands of years of development–was just being invented so I can’t speak to it.)
They were regular people, not fans. The Mauls, friends of my parents, introduced me to The Lord of the Rings. Hearing that I loved LotR, the Beems introduced me to Heinlein.
I don’t mean to go day tripping down nostalgia lane. What I mean to point out is that these were not SF readers. They were ordinary, if college educated, folk. They were not SF identified. They merely read–and enjoyed and talked about–the stuff. Come to think of it, if they were offered a choice between having to become “SF identified” in order to stay with the field and abandoning the field, they didn’t have much investment. So long, and thanks for the fish.
It leaves me wondering: did the field abandon and alienate these normal folks in the hurry to create a separate identity as a SF culture? We got our space ships over here in our own little corner, we don’t really need to listen to anyone else, and we don’t have to interact with the rest of society. Back in “the day,” when social science fiction represented the core of the literature, at least we could be seen playing well with others. Non-SF identified readers could see that we cared about what their future would be like/ We could show them glorious visions or dark, and maybe how to avoid them.
We developed an attitude of splendid isolation and enjoyed it for almost three decades. I think it’s killing the field.
Have we created a SF culture that is distinct from, while exerting a strong influence on, the marketing category known as SF? Are the walls of our ghetto cultural instead of literary? SF originated as a populist–and popular–field. So where did all of the eye-balls go? Is the field too elitist, not in its product but in its social interaction? With no middle ground between the freak-fest of dedicated fandom and avoidance, there could be a lot of would-be readers out there.
Best regards,
Alan Lattimore
[the reading experience]