Comments on: What is ‘literary’ anyway?

By: Simon Haynes

Simon Haynes — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:34:00 +0000

TV faced the same scorn for decades - it was seen as cheap and cheerful entertainment, whereas only movies were true art. (But not SF movies, of course.)

Now we have big budget TV shows packed with big name movie actors, and the medium is finally being taken seriously.

You'll never convince the literati to read common-or-garden SF, but if you dress up worthy works in arty-farty covers they might get into it by accident.

My stuff? Not a chance, thank goodness.

By the way, I read Ansible every month and the 'how others see us' segment always throws up breathtaking examples of arrogance towards the SF genre.

PS - Glenda, I see you're on the Swancon 2008 website as a GOH. Excellent news, and well deserved!

By: hrugaar

hrugaar — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:23:00 +0000

Um, Karen, you spelt Darren’s name wrong the last time. ;oP

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:58:00 +0000

Someone who perhaps prefers to remain anonymous just made a lovely comment in her email to me, which I can't resist placing here. It's too good to waste:

"critics who complain about SF&F being unrealistic remind me of art critics who want Picasso and Dali to be more like Constable."

Lol!
She also sent two links of relevance which I have put up on the main blog. Definitely worth reading.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:19:00 +0000

Oh, never. Not ever. Every time we have a conversation with you, Darran, we're going to preface it with: Hey, remember that time you put an apostrophe in a plural on Glenda's blog?

*ggg*

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 03:48:00 +0000

Yep, makes us feel much better, Darren. We will never let you forget it, of course…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 02:56:00 +0000

Darren, it’s just a relief to learn that even our esteemed editors can have a little whoopsie from time to time.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 02:52:00 +0000

I have another puzzle for you, Glenda: why would a professional editor insert an apostrophe in a plural?
Answer: well, it was. . . you know. . . kinda late. And stuff.

How embarrassing. . .

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 01:19:00 +0000

Karen, you could be right. Especially as fantasy, I feel, often doesn't translate to the screen very well. Sometimes it's better to imagine those dragons...lol. SF does better on the screen.

What I do think is this: that it's a pity people don't give fantasy - or SF for that matter - a fair go, because they have been brought up to believe it is poorly written stuff on a subject that has no merit.

Thanks Patty and Barbara - I appreciate your support!

Hrugaar - I shall store up that comment on literature for re-use at a future date. Lol...

Inkpaws - I kinda feel that it is mostly the part of the author to persuade the reader to suspend belief. Write well, and you can drag your reader along with you.

Darren, thanks for dropping by and wonderfully well put! (As an environmentalist in my other hat, I shall keep my fingers crossed that all that hot air blowing away will indeed lessen the impact of global warming...)

Long live sff. You have cheered me no end.

The puzzle remains why these biased opinions on sff ever spring into being. We all start with fantastical tales as children, no matter what our culture. We continue reading those kind of stories into primary/elementary school - even up to adulthoiod, but somewhere along the line so many of us forget how much we enjoyed the fantastic - or the wonder of science in fiction - and these folk start to buy into the idea that sff is badly written trash.

Never mind, as you have all pointed out, we are the ones who have the fun, who have our minds stimulated, our imaginations stretched and our spirits uplifted.

They lose. We win.

Love you all!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:47:00 +0000

Go Darren! I couldn’t agree more.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:19:00 +0000

I agree with patty, and have to say that when I was in my local bookstore (a franchise of a big chain) last Sunday and chatting with the manager (and dropping your name like you would not believe, Glenda) he made me cheer when he said he's expanding the spec fic shelves because so many people are buying it.

Yay for spec fic and boo to litwanks!