Bonfire of the Genres: Critical Looks Sci-Fi and Fantasy

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Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

They've said good things about Peake. But I'd like to know what the 'from the last 50 years' qualified answer to that is, and, whether that's a null set or not, for takes on authors that at least seem to be aiming in a literary direction: Wolfe, Mieville, Atwood, Murakami, Chiang, say.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 18:10

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:55

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Not even Jorge Luis loving Borges could make Lovecraft good.

Matt Ruff pulled it off though.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2018 16:54

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

On the one hand, he's one of the few people who can look at Lovecraft and say to themselves "You know what this needs? More rape."

On the other, I'd really enjoy a long-form BotL-take on Jerusalem someday...

# ¿ Jul 1, 2018 19:37

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Or, for that matter, Eco's Baudolino?

(Eco may not be fair since BotL is literally the villain in Name of the Rose come to life.)

# ¿ Jul 15, 2018 21:32

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

How does Joyce, particularly Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, fit into this evaluation of literary puzzle-boxing?

# ¿ Jul 20, 2018 01:06

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

porfiria posted:

To be honest it would be cool if bad writers would write first person stories from the perspectives of extremely good writers.

This is how we lost an entire generation of American literary fiction in a flood of novels by and about Ivy League MFA teachers and students.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2018 04:12

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Nah, it's going to either be Faulkner or late Joyce.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2018 23:09

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

This is an old problem for the genre. City-wrecking geomancy is a very post-9/11 version; in the seventies Kurtz and Stasheff (et al) gave their oppressed superior races telepathy (either including mind control or allowing sufficiently advanced mind reading blackmail combos) instead...

# ¿ Jul 29, 2018 00:14

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

I bet someone will pipe up to recommend some genre trash.

Closest I can think of is Robert Charles Wilson's The Chronoliths. Which isn't all that close to the previous post, but he does have the kind of regard among sf readers that would make for an interesting subject here.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2018 17:25

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

So let's be clear: in secondary world fantasy, using terms directly tied to Earth's history (like sodomite, quisling, byzantine) is forbidden, unless it's a measurement or part of the calendar (like Friday, July, kilogram), in which case it's mandatory.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 18:01

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

hackbunny posted:

It all comes back to whether the writing is good or bad

Next thing you'll try to tell me that attacking the puzzlebox and interrogating the metanarrative behind the unreliable narrators is a legitimate form of criticism when applied to Faulkner instead of Wolfe.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2018 03:37

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

I was mostly being redundant with the other part, the project of constructing the 'full story' from overlapping unreliable narrators in As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury.

If it makes you feel better, switch out Ulysses scholarship and Joyce for the better-written literary puzzlebox exemplar and the exact thing the would be Wolfe scholars are aiming at.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2018 23:58

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Honestly, I can only really think of two clever uses of prose in Genre fiction (and I'm using 'clever' in the somewhat backhanded sense here): Lev Grossman's use of metaphor in the Magician series and Neil Gaiman's descriptions bit in Anansi Boys.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2018 20:34

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Prose is the alpha and omega of prose literature. Understanding of prose literature begins and ends with understanding of prose.

Literature is a subset of storytelling, and all of its specific mechanics are only of interest insofar as they advance that aim. An approach to fiction that ignores story and its elements (character, setting, plot, and sometimes message) is stupidly reductionist, like film critique that ignores acting and screenwriting in favor of focusing entirely on cinematography.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2018 22:33

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

No one is denying that plotting contributes to literature. But it is subordinate to prose, just like how acting and screenwriting are subordinate to direction. The medium is the message.

No, screenwriting and direction are co-equal and only individuals filling both roles can be called auteurs. This is probably also relevant to the matter of written fiction as well.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2018 22:58

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

This is the exact opposite of the auteur theory.

Not quite the exact opposite, which would be claiming another role had that primacy or that filmmaking is inextricably collaborative, but yes, I am rejecting that theory.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2018 23:26

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

A human heart posted:

biographical criticism is stupid. why's everyone in this forum obsessed with ideas from the 19th century like plot and author's personalities being important

The 20th century was a mistake.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2018 23:42

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

There is an explicit answer to the question but it is just never an answer genre fans like

What part of the bookstore does the publisher ask for it to be shelved in?

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 23:55

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I stand by my position that there can be no fantasy before WW1 and no Sci-Fi before the Atom Bomb

The idea that Verne and Wells aren't science fiction may yet be the dumbest idea expressed in this thread.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2018 22:27

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Amethyst posted:

Can someone post some excellent descriptive prose to compare it to?

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents � except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

In all seriousness, opening a work with a weather report is never the best option. It smacks of someone who'd rather be writing a screenplay than a novel, (although, obviously, examples predate film) If you can't start with a character doing something or at least wanting something, at least describe something more important than the sky: (real example)

"Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow."

# ¿ Jan 9, 2019 02:18

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

A lot of contemporary fantasy novelists have at least read Borges (in translation, one assumes in most cases.)

Shakespeare ( which is a different medium), proto-genre Authors like Cervantes or Malory, and Borges is about the whole of the influence pool. Add Gibbons if you want to consider nonfiction.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 08:30

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Stop loving co-opting authors who marginally overlap with your stupid bullshit and claiming they were somehow forefathers of trash

Cervantes was the forefather of everything.

And what's the alternative theory here, exactly? That genre came out of some new special creation, that Tolkein and Peake and Shelley and Wells and Verne were rooms full of monkeys hammering at anachronistic typewriters?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 15:19

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The forefather of everything is ultimately the forefather of nothing

No, they had forefathers and inspiration, but you don't get to claim prestigious authors as the originators just to add prestige to your genre

Dude had to write a prologue to the second volume denouncing and decanonizing the creepy fanfic of his first. The chain is shorter than you think.

Anyhow, I'm not claiming them as originators or members of the genre, just pointing out that, due to their subject matter, they are in the subset of the Canon that most genre novelists are familiar with.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 15:47

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Fantasy and Sci-Fi are both children of the World Wars and in particular the Atom Bomb and its why they are explicitly 20th century creations

Claiming Wells and Verne aren't science fiction is no less dumb now than the last time it came up here.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 18:33

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Sampatrick posted:

Wheel of Time doesn't have elements and doesn't really have a right magic system either.

Wheel of Time explicitly talks about elements every time magic is used, he said, taking the offered bait.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 19:09

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

A human heart posted:

the classic wrong idea coined by a sci fi writer

Do you have the under or the over?

# ¿ Feb 2, 2019 04:41

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

It is, at core, a statement about gatekeeping and its sorry state at the time in media with mass audiences, something that has gotten even worse since.

Applying it to small, well-curated sets is no less stupidly reductive than the wags who noted that 'everything' could refer to the other 10%, so it's really 99, or 99.9 etc. And even in sets like that a high percentage of recent works aren't going to pass the ultimate gatekeeper, Time.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2019 18:30

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Just going to link Moorcock's 'Epic Pooh' essay, which made a lot of these arguments decades ago.

Sad emo mass murderer albino guy is a topic this thread hasn't covered yet, speaking of Moorcock.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2019 18:53

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Eugene V. Dubstep posted:

Why not toss in Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels while you're at it? "Genre fic" does not mean "any fiction written in a genre."

I feel a no true Scotsman fallacy hiding there, I do.

Does Atwood, covered here negatively, write genre? Does Chabon?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 02:00

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

The fallacy though is that the literature of the past we consider "great" only represents a small portion of everything that has been published. You can check, for example, a list of American bestsellers from the end of the 19th Century, and only two or three books might be remembered by people outside of specialist scholars (Prisoner of Zenda, Red Badge of Courage, and Quo Vadis).

A little digging around finds quite a few well-remembered books from that half decade, mostly published originally outside the US. (Perhaps rampant book piracy is to blame for their absence, or some other factor is at work)

The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Turn of the Screw, The War of the Worlds, Zola's Rome and Paris, and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (that last likely off the list because it was a kids book)

And lesser/more obscure works by still-remembered authors like Conrad,Twain, Hardy, and Stevenson.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 19:39

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Yes, this is a fraction of the total popular literature publishind in the 19th Century.

And for the six-year slice you picked it certainly looks like popular books with fantastic or speculative elements have done a better job still being remembered a century later than the realistic ones.

Sort of bad luck there, though. Ten years later, 1905-1910 and we're in a desert of remembered books, The Jungle and a little Chesterton and Wodehouse and that's it.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 20:10

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

famous science fiction works Prisoner of Zenda, Red Badge of Courage, Quo Vadis

Those three (plus the Zola pair) are outweighed by the eight genre/genre-founding books of the same six years, is what I was clearly saying.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 20:21

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

You're trying to argue that popular fiction automatically becomes canonical literature... by bringing up six books out of hundreds and thousands?

Certainly not automatically, for every Stoker or Wells there are dozens or hundreds of Wilkie Collins' or Bulwer-Lyttons or names even more obscure now.

But it happens, and like will again, and the choice of 1895-1900 was likely uniquely bad to make the opposite point.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 20:39

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

chernobyl kinsman posted:

like youre not even arguing with a strawman here, you just mapped "realistic" -> "unrealistic" onto the axis "good" -> "bad" and assigned that assumption to BotL

I used realistic rather than non-genre because most of the books were genre-founders and could not have been in one when they were written and didn't want to go down that rabbit hole again.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 20:47

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Ras Het posted:

What are you even saying here? He was pointing out that most of the US bestsellers of the decade are totally forgotten, so this list of books that weren't US bestsellers and aren't forgotten (although does anyone read the Zola city books) explains... what?

That the list of US bestsellers was unrepresentative of the state of popular fiction at the time, likely due to the state of international copyright, in a way that made him under-state the survival rate by a factor of three, with most of the books missed being early science fiction or horror.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2019 21:06

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

No man (or woman ) but a blockhead ever wrote but for money.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2019 01:53

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:55

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

The DPRK posted:

What is BOTL?

A miserable pile of shitposts.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2019 15:25

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