The good news and the bad (old) news

[scarlettina]

The good news is that Arthur C. Clarke, in collaboration with Frederik Pohl, left us one last hard science fiction novel called "The Last Theorem," which I'm looking forward to reading. Yay--new book!

The bad news is that in the article about said book, Pohl perpetuates the crappy ole stereotype that unlike science fiction, writing fantasy is easy and doesn't require thought. You can read the whole article here at CNN.com.

Money shot:
Pohl said the type of work he and Clarke did was different from much of what is written today. He said that rather than delving into difficult subjects like astronomy, math and physics, young writers sometimes turn to an easier route by writing fantasy.

"Science fiction is sometimes a little hard," Pohl said. "Fantasy is like eating an ice cream cone. You don't have to think a bit."

I shouldn't be surprised by this attitude; it's nothing new but it still irks me, knowing well how much research goes into the fantasy novels published today and how thought-provoking so much of it is in one way or another. Sure, some fantasy is written for the thrill of the ride (like some science fiction), but that's not all of it. There's meticulous world-building going on, and attention to issues and subjects that never got addressed by writers like Pohl and Clarke.

Pohl's comments put me in mind of something matociquala noted in her journal recently (though she was talking about short fiction, not novel length work). She said, in part, "We don't read them. And they don't read us.... There's a generation gap in SFF; we're having different conversations, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X..." I don't want to misquote or misinterpret her, so go have a look at the discussion yourself. I'm not saying there's a direct relation here, but the one put me in mind of the other, and I think Pohl's comments bear out some of what matociquala is saying if that's what he really believes. It also spins her observation and basically confirms a known truth about the genre--a lot of SF readers don't read fantasy and vice versa, which makes me a little crazy when they make blanket statements about genres they obviously don't read.

That's today's rant, FWIW. I'm going to back to preparing for my trip now....

(ETA: suricattus speaks her mind about the subject here.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Knowing how much reporters love to stir up controversy, I wonder just how much Pohl said around the money quote that was left out.

At this point, I kind of shrug these things off. I enjoy reading SF and fantasy, and that's the way it is.

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

All that time researching the science and so little time spent creating good characters and a cohesive work of art? Yep, I'll pick fantasy over hard SF any day.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that you haven't read a single piece of hard SF with good characters? I think scarlettina's point is that both SF and fantasy have good stories within them, and that no one should make these sorts of blanket statements, like Pohl did. (Of course, I could be misreading what she said.)

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

You're not misreading my intention, but I do see webcowgirl's point. There's plenty of hard SF (though not all, certainly) that stresses ideas and lets character fall to the wayside. Much as I admire his work, Asimov wasn't known for his super-deep characterizations, for example, using them often as speakers for particular viewpoints. Other authors did this as well. But I also think this approach is much less common than it used to be.

[lagilman]

There's also a new 'class' of SF writers out now who are, er... better socialized, as a whole, than the old skool skiffy writers. Or at least more aware of the fact that their socialization is not that of All People, and therefore make efforts to develop characters as well as ideas.

Just as the "spend too much time developing your races and not enough with your plot-logic" skool of D&D-influenced fantasy writers has (thankfully) died down considerable, she said, skewing both her beloveds equally.... (next up, I'll take on mystery and romance, and then we're off to the races on LitFic! Or maybe not. it's hot, I'm tired, and there's an August 1st deadline in my OMFG near future....)

Hardly

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

It's actually me very specifically dissing Pohl, who's writing style I don't like, although my experience has been that the people who work the hardest to make their novels full of scientific stuff neglect their characters. It's like only one thing or another really interests them, but invariably "hard" SF just doesn't attract me. Maybe there are some books that would meet Pohl's standards that worked for me, but I'm not sure because what I remember about them afterwards isn't "OMG so technically accurate." (I'm wondering about Charles Stross here.)

A "fantasy" book I really loved that was fantastically well researched was Connie Willis's Lincoln's Dreams, which was all about the Civil War (I think in particular the Battle of Gettysburg). It just made Pohl's comment even snarkier because it was just so untrue.

[lagilman]

I just did a similar rant in my LJ, off Frank Wu's claim that fantasy, unlike SF, doesn't explain the "how" of worldbuilding, but just invents "rules" out of thin air.

Whole lot of Assumin' and Dissin' going on from the skiffy side. I begin to wonder how much of it's market-driven....

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I saw that rant, and it was a good one. Being a scientist, Frank's biased, of course, and has a different perspective. The only reason I didn't comment on his or your posts was that I was short on time, though I continue to think about them both. (I'm going to add a post-script to my post with a link to your rant because it's relevant to the discussion.)

Interesting thought, that the debate is market-driven. Do you think there's genre envy happening, given the success of fantasy over the last ten years? I don't see how dissing fantasy makes SF writers' work look more desirable. From this seat, it looks like elitism and only serves to be more distancing to readers. The argument that you need to be smarter to write SF sounds a lot like smart guys getting defensive about their brains. I know it's silly to hope that sort of thing stops after high school but I've been known to be naive that way.

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

Both sets of discussion referenced above were fascinating. Me, I just want to read books (she whines). Do I really care if it's SF or Fantasy or Romance or Mystery or Gothic or whatever as long as it's interesting?

But because I don't believe worms should not be allowed to suffer in cans...

These are artificial boundaries. Is Frankenstein SF or Fantasy? Personally, I never bought the whole electricity thing, it looked like magic to me.

Why isn't The Time Traveller's Wife sold in Fantasy? or Romance at least? How about The Road? Why isn't that post apocalyptic boy's own adventure story in SF or Fantasy? It's a dark little end of the world tale that belongs right next to A Canticle for Leibowitz. How about Cloud Atlas? Does anyone really believe Chabon joined SFWA for any reason other than a Nebula and making sure even more people saw his name and bought his book?

These are arbitrary divisions, and a division never made anything stronger. Why writers go along with them is beyond me. The arguments over whether it's fantasy or SF and their relative values become stronger and more bitter as there is less and less of a reading audience to sell to.

I don't see the value in it. A good book is a good book, and whether it's fantasy or SF is immaterial. The real conversation should be how to build readership, in general, not over whether a hard SF novel is capable of having good characters or whether it's easier to write fantasy.

Look at the overall sales numbers, and the age of readers. We're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And you know, I don't think the Kindle is going to make the difference. I wish I knew what would.

Hate me if you must.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

No hate here. You espouse my philosophy precisely.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

I once read a quote by John W. Campbell about the differences between SF and Fantasy. (And in the alternate universe category, I often wonder how the Fantasy field would have gone if Unknown hadn't been shot out from under Campbell by wartime paper shortages, or what the American graphics novel field might have become if Hefner hadn't been told by his backers that he could publish Playboy or publish Kurtzman's Trump but not both.) I've never found the Campbell quote again, but it boiled down to a SF story needing three specific elements to work, and a Fantasy needing two of the three elements to work--and Campbell phrased it so that there was no hint of a slam on Fantasy because it didn't need all three elements that SF needed.

Remind me sometime and I'll go into why the film versions of a popular Japanese series of horror novels beat hell out of the books they're based on because the director understood that using the semi-hard science explanation the writer came up with would absolutely kill the interest of the audience if used on the screen.