Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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Ok, so I used a little artistic licence, but the salient points, as you will see, are entirely true. Whatthe?
Well, right now, I just want to read my book.
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Make that 7,992 thumbs up.
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I just want to read my book.
Ka-ching!
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Of likely interest to SF fans: Andrew Paul Wood's list of books you would probably enjoy if you liked Avatar ...
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aka some of the books that James Cameron ought to have read before writing the script.
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Possibly relevant:
SF Reading Protocol by Jo Walton
Edit: Made the terrible mistake of using SF and Science Fiction interchangeably.
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Kyle, braying dunnies is sooo last decade. I'd pick unironic metal trees as the latest ridiculously well-funded artistic junket. You know, Welli Public Libary, Britomart, Supreme Court - all just long term installations commenting obliquely on the relationship of nature to bustling urbanism (and the surrealism of the underlying metaphor)..
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This is last decade but new to me. I've just read The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Hardt on the recommendation of my 34 year old son. I've just found out that there is a school of thought called Positive Psychology. It was a very good read but I have some reservations about some of the ideas.
H=S+C+V?!
Does anyone know about this?
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Coincidently, I've just had Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided recommended to me, which may share some of your reservations:
"A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism ...
Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness."And what about those art prizes? When did a painting of some kittens ever win an art prize? The Art Establishment is biased against the kitten-painting community.
Poor analogy. A better one would be if an art prize purported to be for the best work of art, but in practice was biased towards painting, and didn’t give fair consideration to sculpture, or photography or whatever. If the best work of art is a photograph, it should win; if the best book of the year happens to be categorisable as science fiction, it should still take the prize.
Re: the ‘Iain M Banks’ v. Iain Banks issue, it seems to be more a way of labelling a particular type of science fiction he happens to like writing a lot of (namely, the more overtly fantastic, far-flung future space opera stuff) rather than cordoning off all his science fiction or fantastical literature.
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Wikipedia on Marg Atwood and Sci Fi. I know you discussed this upthread (a new term for me) but here is her rationale.
I'm with Atwood and her implication that her sort of dystopian/futuristic fiction is more of a comment on the human condition than regular Sci Fi books. Mind you, I enjoyed The Blind Assassin more than her 'speculative' works.
"Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen."
"For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth", and said that science fictional narratives give a writer the ability to explore themes in ways that realistic fiction cannot.[8] -
But any number of novels conventionally considered science fiction are comments on the human condition, so that can't be a distinguishing criteria.
"Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen."
Her distinction between sci-fi and spec fic is flimsy and ultimately pointless.
Anyway, here's the article.
"It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." - Atwood.
Based on that statement, it looks to me like she started with a fairly narrow view of what should be classed as science fiction. She eventually took a perfectly reasonable stance: "Atwood has since said that she does at times write science fiction, and that Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake can be designated as such. She clarified her meaning on the difference between speculative and science fiction, while admitting that others use the terms interchangeably"
In the end, a work should be judged by its own qualities, not whether it could, perhaps arguably, be classified as "science fiction" or "speculative fiction" or "horror" or what have you. I don't quite get Paul's genre politics.
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Based on that statement, it looks to me like she started with a fairly narrow view of what should be classed as science fiction.
That's not the annoying part. The annoying part is that she implicitly put down all the science fiction authors, and most especially feminist writers like Russ, LeGuin, Piercy or Elgin, who had done the very kind of speculation she does in The Handmaid's Tale except, in the case of the first two at least, better. It was a marketing ploy, in other words.
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(Not sure how we managed to have this whole conversation without - unless it escaped my attention - once mentioning JG Ballard, but looking up the covers of successive editions of his books - from those wonderfully pulp and semi-porn beginnings to the stylised respectability of the present day - shows in a very graphical manner the history of the mainstreaming of science-fiction. Now I'm pretty sure nobody, not even her blood relatives, is ever going to suggest that Atwood is a better writer than Ballard, surely?)
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I ignored Ballard because I think that there is actually a much more interesting argument that, basically, organised American Campbellian sf was a mistake, and ended up taking the genre utterly boring places. And Ballard and Gray were interesting non-Campbellians and much better.
And there's large parts of sf fandom don't believe in Ballard (& Gray for that matter) as an sf writer, so it's better to play that one safe.
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Atwood's definition of science fiction has been strongly disputed by Ursula Le Guin* (a writer I esteem more than Atwood.) That *some* scifi (and yeah, I'm happily promiscuous with the labels) has 'monsters and spaceships' is undeniable: to limit it to work only having those components is ludicrous. Most scifi *is* speculative fiction.
*It was in a Guardian book review of Atwood's latest scifi work.
Cecelia, I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but a great deal of scifi - especially over the past 50 years - deals with dystopias, with possible futures, with - in short- possible human futures. I am not at all sure what you mean by 'regular Sci Fi books' but the field is actually a very broad church indeed.
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Be as disagreeable as you like. I'm just stirring - I have a bias against sci fi and fantasy but I have no rational basis for my arguments because since a dose of the Dune books and Asimov about 30 years ago I haven't dabbled in either genre. ( I read the Tolkien books to my children and we all enjoyed them but I dislike that they are limited to a very narrow view of good and evil.)
I'm having a reading feast at the moment and I enjoy hearing people's views.
BTW, I disliked The Handmaid's Tale, loved The Blind Assassin and quite liked Oryx and Crake. When it comes to Canadian writers however, I prefer Alice Munro. I'm raving, ignore me:)
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Often science fiction is the best way to take a step back and examine the human condition.
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Nah, that doesnt sound like raving to me, Cecelia (Alice Munro is best of the Canadian non-fic writers as far as I'm concerned.)
Maybe, if you want to dip a synapse or 2 back into scifi - you could try James Tiptree Jnr? She is right up there with LeGuin & Ballard & the best of Sturgeon & Bradbury...
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Isabel H - my thought & feeling exactly-
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And there's large parts of sf fandom don't believe in Ballard (& Gray for that matter) as an sf writer, so it's better to play that one safe.
He himself did, however, which matters in the present argument.
you could try James Tiptree Jnr
How could I have left her out?
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I thought you all might appreciate this:
http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/the-road-a-comedic-translation.html"An hour later they were on The Road, an Oprah’s Book Club selection."
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Now I'm pretty sure nobody, not even her blood relatives, is ever going to suggest that Atwood is a better writer than Ballard, surely?
Seriously?
Personally, I prefer reading Ballard to Atwood. I think that Ballard was a hugely important 20th century writer and thinker. But to suggest that no one believes that Atwood -- a Booker Prize winner and five times Booker finalist, an Arthur C Clarke Award winner (yes, a SF prize) -- is a better writer than Ballard is just a ludicrous statement.
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I got carried away by the spirit of the polemic - there may be one or two blood relatives who might be prepared to say that when all is said and done.
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"Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen."
Hum... an oddly reductive (and simple minded) statement coming from a feminist critic who, back in the day, could be downright vicious towards those who drew up elaborate critical taxonomies to prove that "women's fiction" (with a handful of freakish exceptions reluctantly granted) is nothing more than domestic trivia and hysterical emoting; men were writing real novels.
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(with a handful of freakish exceptions reluctantly granted) is nothing more than domestic trivia and hysterical emoting; men were writing real novels.
George Sand you mean?
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