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varia_lectio (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} varia_lectio) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} fandom_wank,@ 1970-04-07 08:36:00 |
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| Current mood: | Navel-Gazing |
| Current music: | "The Fifth Element" soundtrack |
| Entry tags: | fantasy, sci-fi people like to fight |
Gregory Benford vs. Fantasy genre-- film at eleven!
*Ahem* *steps up to the microphone* This is my first posting of a wank, and though it is now a little old and crusty, I hope it'll still serve to entertain... or whatever.
Anyway, this one really fits under 'psuedo-intellectual definitions'.
Gregory Benford, whether you've heard of him or not, is a hard-science fiction author. In his blog, he has a conversation with Darrell Schweitzer about the rise in popularity of fantasy fiction, as opposed to science fiction. The conversation begins thusly, with Benford's side:
We’ll run current commentary here, and to start, here’s something a bit more substantial, yet in the news.
George Martin’s mammoth fantasy novel sits atop the bestseller lists, so it’s time to ask:
WHAT DOES THE RISE OF FANTASY MEAN?
A conversation between GB and DARRELL SCHWEITZER
Four out of the last five Hugo awards were won by fantasy. Yet it’s the award of the World Science Fiction Convention, named for Hugo Gernsback, who edited the first science fiction magazine.
Fantasy has very, very cleverly managed to capture the apparatus erected by science fiction fandom and pro-dom, and fantasy writers now dominate the Science Fiction Writers of America. They’ve taken over the Hugo awards—which I thus usually don’t attend. A Harry Potter novel won a few years back and I walked out.
That's polite. [/sarcasm]
But wait! There's more! Fantasy = Intellectual Cowardice!
But now, most of the readership is running away from these problems, perhaps terrified by them. So instead, while reading doorstop sagas they can pretend that they’re really wielding swords in defense of the king, or something—a retreat that horrified people like Isaac Asimov. He saw this as just an old intellectual cowardice. But of course, people do it for emotional reasons. They like to pretend that they’re really the princes from another land. But they’re really corporate serfs.
Marvel at the galaxy-spanning leaps of logic! I'm not sure if I should be offended or just amused that he's smeared-- er, profiled an entire group of genre enthusiasts like that. It's sort of like saying that science-fiction fans are all pimple-faced teenage boys with no social lives and, especially, no girlfriends.
Oh, wait-- people already say that!
Not to be deterred, Benford concludes by saying in essence that those in the West should damn well better start reading intellectual hard science-fiction so as to better their societies, because if Americans and Europeans don't, the Chinese and Indians will! After all, who can create a better society when you spend your free time thinking about really big problems like dragons?
WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE BETTER SOCIETY?!
Original wank and the ensuing comments can be found at: http://benford-rose.com/blog/?p=3
