August 16th, 2010 / 5:37 pm
Roundup
Sean Lovelace
Roundup
5 groundings of club
1. “I plan to be another language in the body of a deer”
2. Post-Modern Drunkard is a blog you should maybe read. I guess. OK.
33. NANO Fiction flash contest ends in 15 days so go ahead and write the Lean Thang and mail it in like the time Favre gave Strahan the sack record or the summer you got fired from the poodle groomers and take the $500 bucks prize and buy yourself a spare spare tire. I’m good at three things, flash fiction and math. Etc.
14. The birth of Indie video games…Queens, NY?
5. Why does academia hate Sci Fi?
Tags: Ben Mirov, ghost machine, Icehouse, NANO Fiction, Video Games, vonnegut
#5 – I think, because there is so much BAD SF. Same with fantasy and horror. Academia, from my experience in an MFA program, doesn’t like much genre or commercial writing at all. I grew up reading Heinlein and Bradbury and really enjoyed them. Of course, I read a lot of Stephen King too, so what do I know. China Miéville is a current SF writer I like a lot, and there is a growing steampunk movement. I really wish more MFA programs would embrace work outside of “literature”.
Haven’t seen that many white people together since my MFA program.
my living room window overlooks the silent barn. i get to hear all the shows for free. all this time i never knew there was a basement.
One you go low, always, always go lower.
I’m not sure academia really hates “sci-fi.” Lots of sci-fish works are held in high regard (Frankenstein, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc.) and i think as far as contemporary stuff goes a lot of genre bending authors are lauded.
What academia doesn’t like is hard genrey sci-fi…and frankly most of that stuff is pretty badly written. Like, most of the famous gods of hard sci-fi are pretty mediocre writers and the few that aren’t (say, Philip K. Dick) seem to get respect.
Lincoln,
I agree. It’s a question to spark discussion. Since I teach CW and certainly read apps from people trying to get into grad school in CW, I was wondering about my own anti-genre sensibilities. Are they fair?
Like I read vampire/zombie/robot stories often, and my first response to genre is very much a shudder. Like already biased. And I am wondering why. I read Vonnegut, McCarthy (Cormac), K le Guin, Bradbury…etc.
Yet still, my first thought is often, “Oh gods, a vampire…”
that article on indie games is weird. like is it claiming that these dudes are pioneering indie gaming? I mean that sounds absurd, especially since the Independent Game Festival is mentioned so of course indie games have existed before this hip arcade did (not to criticize the arcade, I’m sure it’s cool or whatever).
also
“It’s the first collaborative effort from New York City’s designers, curators, bloggers and fans to gain major steam, in spite of — or perhaps because of — its handmade quality.”
like what? “perhaps”? when has it ever been hard to get artsy 20-somethings into handmade stuff?
anyway, just confused about the claim that it’s the “birth of indie video games”. am I misreading this?
unrelated to indie games, but: what is happening in that picture? why is that guy so huge? did anyone think that putting him in the middle would make it impossible to concentrate on anything else? is that the point? I have many questions
His head looks fake. Hee hee.
Uh, his head is NOT fake. His name is Trevor. He can drink pitchers of beer without his hands–he clamps the edge with his teeth and lifts his head and finishes the pitcher–and I have known him since early 90s and this is not a fake photo.
He’s won bets with that move. Often. Never bet if a guy at a bar can drink a full pitcher without hands. Smaller guys have won the same bet.
Blow it up or whatever. It’s not photo-shopped. The guy is a big dude. He’s from East Tn.
S
My guess is that your reaction to the app SF stories is negative because a lot of them use SF tropes for the sake of using SF tropes. It seems a lot of amateur genre writing, and badly written professional genre writing, exists solely to engage with genre ideas. It’s salable in bookstores because there are people who want to read those ideas even if they’re expressed poorly.
You liking Vonnegut and pals is probably a product of their using those same genre tools to express a fuller underlying story. I wouldn’t argue that for genre work to be good it needs to serve as social allegory or anything silly like that, but it does need to feel that it’s being used in service to some genre-transcendent soul.
No one should ever forget Harold Bloom’s fan fic.
#5 – I think, because there is so much BAD SF. Same with fantasy and horror. Academia, from my experience in an MFA program, doesn’t like much genre or commercial writing at all. I grew up reading Heinlein and Bradbury and really enjoyed them. Of course, I read a lot of Stephen King too, so what do I know. China Miéville is a current SF writer I like a lot, and there is a growing steampunk movement. I really wish more MFA programs would embrace work outside of “literature”.
Haven’t seen that many white people together since my MFA program.
my living room window overlooks the silent barn. i get to hear all the shows for free. all this time i never knew there was a basement.
One you go low, always, always go lower.
I’m not sure academia really hates “sci-fi.” Lots of sci-fish works are held in high regard (Frankenstein, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc.) and i think as far as contemporary stuff goes a lot of genre bending authors are lauded.
What academia doesn’t like is hard genrey sci-fi…and frankly most of that stuff is pretty badly written. Like, most of the famous gods of hard sci-fi are pretty mediocre writers and the few that aren’t (say, Philip K. Dick) seem to get respect.
Lincoln,
I agree. It’s a question to spark discussion. Since I teach CW and certainly read apps from people trying to get into grad school in CW, I was wondering about my own anti-genre sensibilities. Are they fair?
Like I read vampire/zombie/robot stories often, and my first response to genre is very much a shudder. Like already biased. And I am wondering why. I read Vonnegut, McCarthy (Cormac), K le Guin, Bradbury…etc.
Yet still, my first thought is often, “Oh gods, a vampire…”
that article on indie games is weird. like is it claiming that these dudes are pioneering indie gaming? I mean that sounds absurd, especially since the Independent Game Festival is mentioned so of course indie games have existed before this hip arcade did (not to criticize the arcade, I’m sure it’s cool or whatever).
also
“It’s the first collaborative effort from New York City’s designers, curators, bloggers and fans to gain major steam, in spite of — or perhaps because of — its handmade quality.”
like what? “perhaps”? when has it ever been hard to get artsy 20-somethings into handmade stuff?
anyway, just confused about the claim that it’s the “birth of indie video games”. am I misreading this?
unrelated to indie games, but: what is happening in that picture? why is that guy so huge? did anyone think that putting him in the middle would make it impossible to concentrate on anything else? is that the point? I have many questions
His head looks fake. Hee hee.
My apologies. Is he a poet? Trevor the poet?
Uh, his head is NOT fake. His name is Trevor. He can drink pitchers of beer without his hands–he clamps the edge with his teeth and lifts his head and finishes the pitcher–and I have known him since early 90s and this is not a fake photo.
He’s won bets with that move. Often. Never bet if a guy at a bar can drink a full pitcher without hands. Smaller guys have won the same bet.
Blow it up or whatever. It’s not photo-shopped. The guy is a big dude. He’s from East Tn.
S
Doesn’t academia just hate most writing in general?
Isn’t everything wrong to someone in academia?
It’s probably just easiest for people at universities to agree that writing about trolls and aliens is probably a waste of time.
It’s also a lot less offensive to say “stories about trolls are stupid” than it is to say anything else, right, because it’s not like the troll who just scored tenure is gonna be all up in arms in support of his troll-ass cause.
My guess is that your reaction to the app SF stories is negative because a lot of them use SF tropes for the sake of using SF tropes. It seems a lot of amateur genre writing, and badly written professional genre writing, exists solely to engage with genre ideas. It’s salable in bookstores because there are people who want to read those ideas even if they’re expressed poorly.
You liking Vonnegut and pals is probably a product of their using those same genre tools to express a fuller underlying story. I wouldn’t argue that for genre work to be good it needs to serve as social allegory or anything silly like that, but it does need to feel that it’s being used in service to some genre-transcendent soul.
the ability to interpret sci-fi doesn’t flatter your intellect
No one should ever forget Harold Bloom’s fan fic.
I don’t think the question is really whether academia is unfair, then–it seems to be whether or not you personally are being unfair. Which is a good question for any of us in the position of evaluating someone’s work in a way that will impact their future (publishing, MFA acceptance, etc.) to ask. I make the distinction because I think the real question of importance you’re raising here is whether or not it’s unfair to turn a cold shoulder to genre based on various tip-offs, which I think it clearly is–if you’re honestly evaluating a work based solely on the presence or absence of vampires (which I doubt). That genre writing has its tropes is true, but so does any kind of writing. It all gives tip-offs; writing that isn’t genre-influenced raises all kinds of flags too. I can spot the “I studied abroad for a semester, talked to some people who lived more simply than me, and came away from the experience a more worldly and enlightened person” story a mile off. It doesn’t mean that if I see “Alcala, Spain” in a piece, I reject it. If I read forward and received no indication through unique form or compelling plot or great characters or cool language that I was reading a good specimen of that kind of story, though, I probably would reject it.
In other words, I think it’s silly to make the discussion about whether or not writing that contains genre flags is good or bad when the answer is clearly that some is good (Vonnegut, Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, etc., not to mention current writers whose work is so categorized, like this year’s short list for the sadly discontinued Best American Fantasy series) and the majority is not good. The same holds for traditional, realist, and experimental forms, as anyone who’s in a position to read and make consequential judgments about writing can attest to. It’s okay to not like work based on your own interests and experiences with other good and bad work. It’s less okay to not like work based strictly on the presence or absence of certain very specific winks and nods that happen to belong to a particular genre (to use the term literally, and more broadly).
And if the conversation is supposed to be about what makes genre writing in particular good or bad, I’d want to see a discussion first about what makes any writing good or bad. Personally, I think that’d be a really dull conversation to have.
My apologies. Is he a poet? Trevor the poet?
Doesn’t academia just hate most writing in general?
Isn’t everything wrong to someone in academia?
It’s probably just easiest for people at universities to agree that writing about trolls and aliens is probably a waste of time.
It’s also a lot less offensive to say “stories about trolls are stupid” than it is to say anything else, right, because it’s not like the troll who just scored tenure is gonna be all up in arms in support of his troll-ass cause.
the ability to interpret sci-fi doesn’t flatter your intellect
I don’t think the question is really whether academia is unfair, then–it seems to be whether or not you personally are being unfair. Which is a good question for any of us in the position of evaluating someone’s work in a way that will impact their future (publishing, MFA acceptance, etc.) to ask. I make the distinction because I think the real question of importance you’re raising here is whether or not it’s unfair to turn a cold shoulder to genre based on various tip-offs, which I think it clearly is–if you’re honestly evaluating a work based solely on the presence or absence of vampires (which I doubt). That genre writing has its tropes is true, but so does any kind of writing. It all gives tip-offs; writing that isn’t genre-influenced raises all kinds of flags too. I can spot the “I studied abroad for a semester, talked to some people who lived more simply than me, and came away from the experience a more worldly and enlightened person” story a mile off. It doesn’t mean that if I see “Alcala, Spain” in a piece, I reject it. If I read forward and received no indication through unique form or compelling plot or great characters or cool language that I was reading a good specimen of that kind of story, though, I probably would reject it.
In other words, I think it’s silly to make the discussion about whether or not writing that contains genre flags is good or bad when the answer is clearly that some is good (Vonnegut, Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, etc., not to mention current writers whose work is so categorized, like this year’s short list for the sadly discontinued Best American Fantasy series) and the majority is not good. The same holds for traditional, realist, and experimental forms, as anyone who’s in a position to read and make consequential judgments about writing can attest to. It’s okay to not like work based on your own interests and experiences with other good and bad work. It’s less okay to not like work based strictly on the presence or absence of certain very specific winks and nods that happen to belong to a particular genre (to use the term literally, and more broadly).
And if the conversation is supposed to be about what makes genre writing in particular good or bad, I’d want to see a discussion first about what makes any writing good or bad. Personally, I think that’d be a really dull conversation to have.
Trevor the poet
Trevor the poet
Tracy, you’re right about the flags specific to non-genre, literary work (I can’t remember which journal, but I saw in sub guidelines somewhere recently a request that people send stories in bars, break-up stories, etc. elsewhere). I’d guess these types of archetypal “literary” ideas appear less frequently in stories because a smaller chunk of the writing population is aware of them, or trying to use them, or is even interested in writing them. But I might be wrong.
I’m probably always going to be a harder sell on genre work than I am on non-genre work, but I do love love a well-told genre story. My favorite writer is probably Neal Stephenson, and I ate up the Chabon-edited McSweeney’s genre collections a few years ago. But it seems harder to find strong work in that style.
Tracy, you’re right about the flags specific to non-genre, literary work (I can’t remember which journal, but I saw in sub guidelines somewhere recently a request that people send stories in bars, break-up stories, etc. elsewhere). I’d guess these types of archetypal “literary” ideas appear less frequently in stories because a smaller chunk of the writing population is aware of them, or trying to use them, or is even interested in writing them. But I might be wrong.
I’m probably always going to be a harder sell on genre work than I am on non-genre work, but I do love love a well-told genre story. My favorite writer is probably Neal Stephenson, and I ate up the Chabon-edited McSweeney’s genre collections a few years ago. But it seems harder to find strong work in that style.
Alright, everyone! Cool girls to one side, uncool girls to the other! Take your places!
Alright, everyone! Cool girls to one side, uncool girls to the other! Take your places!