From: charless@sco.COM (charles stross)
Subject: Re: Life's too short. Was: 1930s Science Fiction
Organization: The Somewhat Contagious Operation, Inc.
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1992 11:04:09 GMT
Keywords: LIFE IS TOO SHORT


In article <1992Aug24.151850.4157@ms.uky.edu> fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:
>Tom Maddox writes:
>>Jeff Davis writes:
>>>My interest in science fiction is minimal because as a genre its target --
>>>the relation of man to science -- seems to me to be too narrow for fiction
>>>and to have been summed up neatly by _Frankenstein_: its province is the
>>>consequences of knowing for the sake of knowing. Has science changed
>>>since Bacon? The content has advanced but its human aspect (that there 
>>>are consequenceless facts) doesn't change quite so readily.
>>
>>	Deeper and deeper, Mr. Davis.  You now have progressed from dismissing
>>all its works but one to summing up sf's "target," which also cannot be done 
>>from a position of ignorance.
>>
>>	The truth on this matter is simple, I believe:  if you have not read a
>>great deal of science fiction, you cannot reasonably make summary claims about
>>it.  (You may regard it as a corollary of Mike Godwin's "Satanic Principle," 
>>which has been the subject of appallingly long threads over the past few years.)
>I've tried for almost 12 seconds to come up with a broader umbrella for
>science fiction than man's relationship to science and can't. Please
>enlighten me. 

Here's a serious attempt:

``Science fiction is an artificial marketing category invented by the
publishing trade as a label for works of fiction which aspire to
an internally consistent world-view which is nevertheless disjoint
from observed reality and not mythopoeitic.''

The term `marketing category' is important. Some of the best-known
works of fiction which would otherwise be classified as SF on the 
basis of their world-view and content are rejected from that category
because they're part of the literary canon -- 1984, Brave New World, 
more recently The Handmaid's Tale -- while there are a large number 
of genre works which reward reading but which are excluded from the
mainstream because of their publishing origins.

The thing is, marketing is now the prime determinant of what gets
published and what doesn't. This applies as much in the literary
field as in genre publishing; if your book doesn't fit in a neat
slot on the shelves of the local bookshop, nobody will buy it. Indeed,
it could be said that literary fiction is itself a genre product
today, in much the same way as sf, fantasy, westerns, crime,
romance, and cookery books. Only the structures are more complex;
and even then,  some of the other categories contain work that
operates at the same level. The marketing system is the end-result
of the commoditization of literature in the face of declining
attention and increasing competition from other media. And if you
try to sell an art form like soap, you shouldn't be surprised if 
most of the stuff you're handling turns to soap in your hands ...

>BTW, is there some rule to r.a.b which requires us to jockey around
>like grad students in a seminar? If we must maintain that academic
>ambience, why not substitute for the seminar room, the local
>bar on Friday afternoon. Insults sound better there and are usually
>wittier. I know. I've been insulted there too. 

Yep. Which is why this is a serious attempt at an answer, not a flame.

>-- 
>Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> Write when you get the chance. 

PS: I suggest that you've probably been reading the wrong sf if you think
it's about `man's relationship with science'. How about trying some of 
the right stuff, then reporting back?

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