The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction

[rich]

i'm cranky this holiday season but what is so earth-shattering about
becoming mainstream--so we can enjoy more lame-ass fiction from the
likes of Lethem whose work just annoys the shit out of me

I think I'd rather read the Great Space Fuck than arhtur clarke anyway

rich

On 12/22/08, Henry <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tachyon's Moving Forward (Go Ahead, Physicists, Laugh)
> http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/publishing/tachyons_moving_forward_go_a
> head_physicists_laugh_103984.asp
> "And then there's an anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly, and John
> Kessel, which we can't wait to read-it takes its organizing principle from a
> Jonathan Lethem essay called "The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction,"
> which basically postulates that the genre could've gained mainstream
> respectability if Thomas Pynchon had won the Hugo for Gravity's Rainbow 35
> years ago. Weisman explained that Kelly and Kessel will be compiling science
> fiction stories by "literary" authors, along with stories of a literary bent
> by authors generally regarded as strictly genre, from that 1973 date up to
> 2008, when Michael Chabon was embraced by sci-fan fans and writers."
>
> The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction
> by
> Jonathan Lethem
> http://www.verysilly.org/lethem/lethems_vision.html
> "In 1973 Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was awarded the Nebula, the
> highest honor available in the field once known as "science fiction" - a
> term now mostly forgotten.
>
> Sorry, just dreaming. In our world Bruce is dead, while Bob Hope lurches on.
> And though Gravity's Rainbow really was nominated for the 1973 Nebula, it
> was passed over for Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama, which
> commentator Carter Scholz rightly deemed "less a novel than a schematic
> diagram in prose." Pynchon's nomination now stands as a hidden tombstone
> marking the death of the hope that science fiction was about to merge with
> the mainstream."
>
> Henry Mu
> It's never too late to give Amazon Gift Cards:
> http://tinyurl.com/amazin-giftcards
>
>
>