From: roten@cuba.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Roten)
Subject: Re: Who killed SF???
Organization: /cuba_b/dirbe/roten/.organization
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Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:51:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.191415.9908@news.uiowa.edu> 
williams@herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams) writes:

>I go to book stores.  I go to the library, and only rarely do I find 
>anything worth buying and reading.  What is all this crap that clogs the 
>shelves??? 

>Here is my list of suspects:

>All those nitwits who write endless fantasy series.

And write them badly.  I have yet to see a well-written and well thought 
out fantasy series, other than Tolkein, and maybe Stirling's Fifth 
Millenium.  But even Stirling's fantasy is not all that interesting.  

>Star Trek Crap.  Enough already!  They've made a frigging
>cult from a second rate space opera on TV.

Well, it became a cult in the first place because all the other space 
operas were sixth rate.  And because a _few_ of the TOS episodes were 
genuinely well done.  

>Fantasy Body Snatchers.  Roger Zelazny and U K Leguin used
>to write great books before they got into the fantasy dodge.  Wake up!

>Assembly line writers.  Especially the journeymen who they
>hire to produce more product in the style and universe of
>a famous author.

>Publishers who pay the big bucks for this crap.  How do they sleep at 
>night?

>L. Ron Hubbard.  Excuse me, Mr. Fat Boy Cult leader, but who asked you 
>to write Science Fiction again?  And isn't he DEAD??? WHY DO THEY KEEP 
>PRINTING BOOKS???

I am genuinely mystified at the Hubbard phenomenon.  Can someone tell me 
_why_ the bookstre chains push 'Dianetics' in TV ads ???  

>All of the Unicorn and fake medievalist readers who have an insatiable 
>appetite for the STOOPIDIST POSSIBLE Trash.

They jerk my chain too .. bigtime.  

If it weren't stupid, it wouldn't be pretty and romantic, would it ??  
And that is what that crowd is REALLY into.  Knights in shining armour 
and all that.  Not knights who had the habit of riding down their own 
peasant levies in their haste to execute poorly planned frontal assaults, 
usually in detail, against the foe.  Not economies where it took an 
average of 300 hearths (if memory serves) to support a single mounted 
man-at-arms.  Not levels of medical care wretched even in the best of 
times, and _completely_ swamped by the frequent outbreaks of epidemic 
disease.  Not grinding poverty as the norm, compared, say, to China at 
the same period.  Not the high frequency of death in childbed.  Sheesh, I 
could go on and on and on.  

The medievalists you mention romanticize what was, by modern standards, 
a brutal, exploitive, and _hard_ period, for the poor sods who had to 
live in it.  So research and historical accuracy _must_ be 
defenestrated.  It would take a miracle to prevent the resulting work 
from being soft shit.  

>It is sad.  I can actually remember being able to WAIT IN ANTICIPATION 
>FOR THE NEXT Philip K Dick to come out.  Can any claim now to be waiting 
>for anything that momentous?

Well, IMO some of the best SF I have _EVER_ read has been published in the 
last 10 years.  

The problem is, the market expanded when SF 'took off', in the late 50's 
to early 70's.  It used to be small and critical, which tended to weed 
out the worst hacks.  Now it is big and insatiable, which swells demand 
so much that any danmfool who can string words together intelligably can 
make a living at SF writing.  

Stupidity has ceased to be self-correcting in SF publishing.  

Also, the demands of professional writing take their toll on all but the 
most talented.  Drake's fall from grace (in a relative sense) when he 
turned professional was a real eye-opener for me.  Sad.  Very.  

None of the writers who really make me think have outputs of as much as 
one book a year, with the possible exception of S. M. Stirling.  

** WHEN IN FLAMING HELL WILL DONALD KINGSBURY PUBLISH AGAIN ?!?!? **  
Please .. I'm going into withdrawl .. my copy of 'Courtship Rite' is so 
dog-eared the pages are falling out ... :-)  

Seriously, there is good stuff out there, as good or better than anything 
we saw 40 years ago.  There is just so _MUCH_ crap that the well written 
stuff tends to disappear in the sensory overload one experiences when one 
looks at the shelves.  

--
Charles Roten | Hughes-STX, Incorporated | 
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