NP : Was " genres are literature too" thread

[Tom Beshear]

Going further back, The Lord of the Rings is a genre epic (unless I'm 
misunderstanding what that means) -- it practically invented its genre and 
was certainly epic.
James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet and American Tabloid trilogy are epics that 
don't so much transcend the noir genre as complete it. In science fiction, 
besides the Cantos, there's Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, which 
follows the terraforming of Mars and the settlement of the solar system. 
It's remarkable in that its characters are not the standard folk of 
SF--they're all too human; some of them ARE heroic, but that's not all they 
are. I used to say that if no more SF were written after the Mars trilogy 
nothing important to the genre would have been lost. It's been about 15 
years since the final volume of the trilogy was published, and I still say 
that's true.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jochen stremmel" <jstremmel at gmail.com>
To: "Prashant Kumar" <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
Cc: "Markekohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>; "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 2:57 AM
Subject: Re: NP : Was " genres are literature too" thread


>I would call the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos - a serious genre epic.
> For me great fun to read as well.
>
> 2012/10/14 Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>:
>> Maybe it's just no one has written a serious genre epic? Problem with 
>> genre
>> (fiction) seems to me to be that it can stray too easily into camp. Can't
>> imagine a true genre epic because the ground's been trodden barren.
>>
>> P.
>>
>> On 14 October 2012 09:51, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I cannot find the lat post on this, from Paul M., I think, but posting 
>>> one
>>> differing opinion
>>> Still seems necessary to me.
>>>
>>> On theme: which is in my use not just a topic or subject but a vision of 
>>> a
>>> topic or subject.
>>> War:     Topic of The Iliad and All quiet on the Western Front, for
>>> example. Themes quite different.
>>>
>>> And perhaps themes even the best mysteries cannot have?
>>>
>>> But I' m now threadbare on this thread
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>