What Science Fiction Is Anymore?

[Ya Sam]

By Bookslut

"What makes this year’s Clarke Award controversy worthy of note is that it 
was exactly the opposite of the usual fuss. This year’s threat to Western 
Civilization was the fact that the judges failed to shortlist two books, The 
Road by Cormac McCarthy and Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. So dastardly 
was this deed that one person, who had previously shown no interest in the 
award whatsoever, suddenly declared that the Clarke Award must be boycotted 
-- whatever that might mean." ...

"
These aren’t the usual suspects when it comes to making the genre 
respectable by roping in any passing mainstream novel you can make a case 
for. To be honest, they are more likely to exclude books that are not the 
true quill. Is it some unusual science fictional quality in the two books? 
The Road is superbly written, but in purely science fictional terms it 
covers familiar ground and doesn’t bring that much that is fresh to it other 
than a certain authorial sensitivity. Against the Day does make wholesale 
use of a variety of SF devices, just as it makes free with a variety of 
other devices also, and the reviews were frankly mixed. Is it (belated) 
acknowledgement of the way writers from outside the genre are now making 
serious use of science fiction without giving the distinct impression that 
they are slumming? But no one was clamouring last year for Philip Roth’s The 
Plot Against America to be shortlisted even though it did contain the single 
best chapter (and, next to it, the single worst chapter) you are likely to 
find in any contemporary alternate history novel. Though, to be fair, no one 
complained about David Mitchell making the shortlist with Cloud Atlas, and 
the grumblings this year about Hav by Jan Morris have been more along the 
lines of whether it is new or a novel rather than whether it is science 
fiction."

http://www.bookslut.com/science_fiction_skeptic/2007_07_011367.php

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/