The Great Divide Between Lit Fic and SFF

[pameladlloyd]

I'm posting this here, rather than in the comments to sartorias' recent post, Literary vs. Mainstream, in genre and out, because I didn't feel it was right to rant in her journal.

RANT--> The great divide between literary fiction and science fiction seems to me to be the tail end (I hope it's the tail end, anyway) between the distinction many people make (and here I'm referring not just to those who think of themselves as literary, but readers, high school English teachers, and others who influence the reading habits of young people) of an insistence that science fiction is somehow lacking in all the things that define good writing. Yet, many of the people who make such claims, at least in my experience, have either never read a work of science fiction or fantasy, or have read only a few of the lowest-common-denominator works. The argument that sff has poor characterization, an overabundance of adjectives, and is entirely plot-based, seems to me to be a repetition of claims hurled against it on the basis of writers from the "Golden Age of Science Fiction," and doesn't take into account anything that's been published since 1950. Or, maybe, since 1930.

Even within Anders' rant, and in her comments, she made statements that science fiction could benefit from being better written. By whose standards? Which books does she mean? (She can't mean all of them.) None of the comments to her post seemed to consider that maybe 90% of everything written and published is dreck? Is science fiction being held to a higher standard than other genres, including the genre of literary fiction?

I get really annoyed by attempts to dismiss a genre, any genre, as somehow beneath one's notice. Genres are defined, by and large, as much by their subject material as by their style. So, why is it that if a writer chooses to set their story on another planet, or in the future, or to posit a world in which magic is possible, that suddenly everything they write lacks the qualities that define good fiction? And when a book with the exact same subject material is acknowledged as "good," suddenly it's not science fiction any more? Even though it is?

And I think it matters. It matters to people who read science fiction and other genre works, because when you're put down for your reading tastes, it can cut you to the bone when what you most love reading is part of who you are. It matters to writers, because if what you write is marginalized, then you're not going to be paid as much as you might otherwise be, but also you won't reach every reader who might otherwise have loved your work. It matters to publishers and bookstores, because if an entire subset of what they sell is disparaged, it affects the bottom line, so maybe you don't want to publish those books. Which brings us full circle back to readers and writers.

There are plenty of good writers writing science fiction and fantasy today. I'll take a book by Lois McMaster Bujold over just about anything written in the "literary" scene, or elsewhere, for that matter. Which is not to say that there aren't good works of literary fiction out there, just that I suspect that nine times out of ten I'm going to think that LMB's book was better. Not just a fun read, but also one that makes me think and feel, and which has many, many layers of complexity that someone who's snobbish about science fiction will never even see. She doesn't need to be recursive or obscure about the story, or people's motivations, or anything. Yet, every time I read one of her books, I discover there was a little bit more under the surface than I saw the last time.

But, really, I think this comment by a young friend of mine who attended New School in NYC, chupacabrito, condemns the whole issue of literary snobbery far better than anything I can say: .

Comments

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Thank you for doing your best. Besides, you listed two of my favorite books. *g*

I'll try to remember to check for Genreflecting on my next library trip.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Mine, too [g].

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

:)