A Generation Gap in SF? Gee whiz, what could cause that?
You know, I like reading some of the older books on SF, like Dangerous Visions, cause it talks about how the old guard back in the day welcomed the younger writers and their revolution, and even though they disagreed with them, still read them. It’s got an interesting preface by Asimov that goes into this whole thing. Ah, back in the day, before those “rebellious”* kids got old and cranky and still thought they were part of some sort of rebellion.
Mostly, I’m looking at Harlan Ellison here. Who, with his grumpy gus-ness, takes potshots at our generation constantly, and ends up sounding like someone whining about the fall of the gramophone and the rise of these here Horseless Carriages.
http://torontosun.com/Entertainment/Movies/2008/08/11/6415806.html
So, I want to know-who are we talking about here? What, you’re mad that a classroom full of college graduates haven’t read a book of fairy tales? Oh gosh! Oh noes! Yet, I bet every one of them could tell you what a Foucault’s Pendulum is. Can you tell me what one is? And no, not the book, the philosophical concept. I’d much rather have a generation that can actually understand Derrida than one who bitches and moans about The Emperor’s New Clothes.
And why does this all of a sudden make us into a cultural wasteland that uses Wikipedia as if it were reality? Yawn. And this somehow leads him to criticize the current SF/F market, saying we’re afraid of using DEM BIG WORDS? It’s about as impressive as the time he told us that the younger generation doesn’t take enough risks. You can tell he hasn’t read any of the newer writers.
I mean, come on- this coming from the guy who used such big words in his works, like Harlequin, and um, what? Jelly Beans? Or Scream? Or Mouth? His works are not really literary treasures, and his sentences (when compared to contemporaries who know how to sling some good prose) are weak kneed and barely cobbled together.
The reason there is a generation gap is because they want one. They need one. They need something to rebel against, and since they’re the old guard, they can’t rebel against the old guard anymore. So they set their eyes on the youngin’s, say that they’re not revolutionary enough or whatever, when in truth they’re own work barely holds up against the test of time.
I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream is a great title, but creaks with age. The prose is lackadaisical, the ending trite and twilight zone ish (OH NOES! CANNED FOODS, BUT NO CAN OPENER! AHHHHH). Repent Harlequin is basically hippy dippy to the core. Mephisto in Onyx does nothing new, nothing interesting, and barely speaks to our generation, except as a white man talking about his own white guilt and projecting it into a black character and then dresses it up in one of the most cliched plots I’ve ever read.
We keep hearing from the old guard, saying no one reads SF anymore, bleah, bleah, bleah. But that’s a lie. Just because they stopped reading it doesn’t mean there isn’t an audience. There is a huge audience, all reading SF/F and Horror, all loving it, writing it, discussing it, debating it. There are different schools of thought and sub genres (whose life and death have sped up to match the internet age), there are writers writing complex sentences, with insane levels of nuanced thought and vocabulary, and just because meester Ellison is to busy writing and advising television shows to realize it, that’s not our fault.
He should just go write back and suck on his glass teat. After all, that’s how he gets his money- it flows right from those cathode ray nipples and down into his pocket book. I say CRT, because you know the man wouldn’t know an LCD screen if it bit him on the ass and sang hallelujah.
*I use scare quotes here on purpose. At that point in time, an intertextual revolution against Golden Age SF was the least important, least culturally valuable, least intellectual challenging and least rewarding for future generations. I appreciate the New Wave, Dangerous Visions, and etc, for paving the way for what I write, but then again, at the same time, they like to toot their horn a little too much. How can the New Wave compare to the changes in society that the Million Man March brought? Etc, etc, etc.
ADDENDUM-
There are some writers of the old guard that not only read new/newer writers, but also support them, help them out and basically are a great example of people interested in lessening (if not obliterating) the generation gap. I am, by no means, talking about them, and am saddened that some of the comments above might reflect negatively on them. But writers like Moorcock, M. John Harrison, Rick Bowes and many others are truly interested in lessening the gap, in removing it all together.
In fact, I noticed a correalation between writers who are still publishing, still writing and still reading and their belief in the “generation gap” versus those who don’t still publish, still write or still read.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Ellison, the man or his fiction. He thinks he’s Norman Mailer but has neither the talent nor the personality. Too often we’ve allowed his inexcusable behaviour to pass, but it’s probably past time we told him to crawl back into his hole.
I agree. Highly.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about this sort of thing, too. The generation gap is, almost, just a kind of marketing strategy to inhibit lovers of SF/F and related genres from breaking in, reading new writers. “Oh, don’t read those, they’re weird–read this classic.” I dunno, just a thought. The words of established writers always seem to ring a little louder than the ones trying to get a hold in the market. Although, considering your post, Paul, I wouldn’t be surprised if your din is just as cacophonous. (See what I did there?)
Harlan Ellison has never suffered from lack of mouth. I’ve always found his complaints about Star Trek amusing. He was so bitter about them changing his ending, and refuses to acknowledge it that they improved it and turned it into something that wasn’t grossly inappropriate for the character.
I was with you on the whole. The Million Man March example threw me off, though, since I always considered it to be a non-event. An under-attended, late-to-the-game reenactment of more effective civil rights struggles of the past, with its message undermined by the beliefs of the man who created it, and his nerdy bow tie.
lol
Yes, I do have a loud and angry din. But the difference is, I’m bellowing on my blog while they’re bellowing on television, newspaper articles and in classrooms. So they’re voices are louder, and shameful.
Yes on the classics comment- one of the main complaints when they say “no one reads F/SF anymore” is really no one reads their SF/F anymore. They really are just complaining that people don’t like the classics- but in the end, most of it just creaks with age. And they are showing their irrelevance with every word they speak. Orson Scott Card, Harlan Ellison and many others are proving that they are apart of a sexist, racist, old white male way of looking at SF and F.
Three Oranges-
But you can’t disagree that it, the civil right movement and the anti war movement were more important culturally and intellectually than the New Wave movement.
I recently reread Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’ in A Science Fiction Omnibus, edited by Brian Aldiss. I only vaguely remember reading ‘Nightfall’ the first time when I was around 12 or 13, but it’s often called a “classic”. Except, as I discovered during my recent reread, it’s actually a bloody terrible story. The ending is given away in the first paragraph, the world-building is lacklustre and slipshod, the prose has all the grace of a galumphing hippopotamus… and the whole thing is an uninspired exploration of a single ramification of a single not very interesting idea - hey, there’s this place where it NEVER gets dark! And then… it GETS DARK! Wow.
Well, that’s the problem with SF/F classics compared to classics in other forms of literature. SF/F, most of the time, doesn’t hold up. They use the excuse that it’s a literature of ideas, but I consider Keirkigaard and Kafka (and Borges, and Calvino, and etc) to be more a literature of ideas than the classics.
That’s not to say their aren’t any good F/SF classics. Their are. But it requires digging. And more digging. And searching. And knowing who to look for and what to look for.
And that’s not to mention that part of what makes SF/F (and moreso, SF) important is its ability to be relevant to present culture. If you can’t be relevant any longer, write nonfiction or crime novels or something. I mean, SF has to continually push the buttons of society in order to make any impact whatsoever.
Problem is, the ideas themselves are not science fiction, they exist merely to enable the plot. And while people focus on the ideas, they lose sight of what the genre is and what constitutes a good contribution to it.
Well that’s part of it, but the other part is that the ideas aren’t very good, 99% of the time.
Hmm… I’m sick so I’m probably missing some part of this argument due to fever, but it seems to me that the type of fiction Ian is talking about — “I’ve got a cool idea, but nothing else” — is still alive and well today.
A lot of what dates the “classics” is that society has changed. Beyond just technology (cellphones, internet), the rythms and accepted vocabularies of speech have changed. Prose that might’ve felt passable 20 years ago now feels stiff and affected, and when you go back further the effect gets worse and worse. (As with any rule, there are exceptions — usually very well written ones).
Well, first, his argument is that since they are classics, they should be held to a higher standard and shouldn’t be just ideas.
Second, even though writing dates itself through time, non-genre classics do not. Chekhov is still damn good, same with Beckett and Eliot and Ginsberg and etc. In fact, if you compare SF classics from a certain time period (50’s and 60’s) and compare it to other non-genre classics from that same time period (For example, Camus or Tenessee Williams) the non genre carries more weight than the genre. This isn’t completely 100% true- some SF/F classics still work with today. Just not enough.
[...] A Generation Gap in SF/F? Gee whiz, what could cause that? [...]
The Sun article is typical Ellison, from both the ranting to the generosity in explaining to the class what the heck he was talking about. His rage, at least when it comes to “The Emperor’s New Clothes” may well have been justified. Cultural illiterates need to be kicked into gear if they want to participate in the culture, and if this was, say, a group of MFA creative writing students without a clue, then they should have been beaten with bamboo switches all the way to the library.
If one wants to write self-contained, throwaway crap literature, of course, then one doesn’t need to know anything. And hey, you can make the argument that they were aware of all sorts of different strands of culture of which Ellison was unaware that influenced their writing… but I think the broader point is important. As a rule cultural literacy is a good thing, and it is unfortunately not as valued right now as it once was.
Agreed on questions of style. Many things that are good fade away through accident or change in attitudes, but there’s a qualitative difference between Shakespeare and the dozens of other people who were churning out revenge tragedies. True then, true now. Most everyone’s books eventually lose their luster. Breaks my heart as a writer to think I’ll probably pass into the ages like most other writers, but sic transit gloria.
We keep hearing from the old guard, saying no one reads SF anymore, bleah, bleah, bleah.
People go overboard about it, but there has been a marked decline in reading for pleasure in the United States in the last few decades. The kid who might have read little, but still a couple David Eddings books in 1985 is now playing World of Warcraft. The NEA has done a variety of studies on this, including this 2004 one. I think some folks do seem to confuse “you don’t read Asimov” with “you don’t read,” but there is a problem.
“Cultural illiterates need to be kicked into gear if they want to participate in the culture, and if this was, say, a group of MFA creative writing students without a clue, then they should have been beaten with bamboo switches all the way to the library. ”
I’d have to disagree with this, vehemntly. Where does it start? Should they have read the original story, seen a remake, etc, or just know the reference? Why is this reference so important, in the long run, in everything? Who cares?
“If one wants to write self-contained, throwaway crap literature, of course, then one doesn’t need to know anything.”
There is a vast difference between “not knowing anything” and “not knowing a reference to a fairy tale that has become common parlance”. I get frustrated when other writers I know of haven’t read the classics, but this is not a case of not having read the classics, it’s about a class without the cultural reference that he’s expecting them to have. That has nothing to do with throwaway crap literature, and everything to do with him expecting everyone to have the exact same world experiences he has had. I know the reference, but you know what? I’m not sure early 20-something will. I’m not sure if it’s a phrase that’s common enough anymore for them to get it.
“Agreed on questions of style. Many things that are good fade away through accident or change in attitudes, but there’s a qualitative difference between Shakespeare and the dozens of other people who were churning out revenge tragedies. True then, true now. Most everyone’s books eventually lose their luster. Breaks my heart as a writer to think I’ll probably pass into the ages like most other writers, but sic transit gloria.”
Actually, it’s not style per se. Visit some classics that came out around the same time as Harlan’s “classics”. Camus stands the test of time more then he does, as well as many other classics. It’s not just style, not just ability, it’s the plain old fact that before a certain period, a lot of SF was crap. There has been, is, and will be a lot of cultural inbredding in SF. And this leads to a lot of writing that is far less than sub par.
“People go overboard about it, but there has been a marked decline in reading for pleasure in the United States in the last few decades. The kid who might have read little, but still a couple David Eddings books in 1985 is now playing World of Warcraft. The NEA has done a variety of studies on this, including this 2004 one. I think some folks do seem to confuse “you don’t read Asimov” with “you don’t read,” but there is a problem.”
But, the interesting thing here is that the rise in population has conincided with the marked decline. I wonder if this is a percentage of population that is calculated, or a numbers game? I’m not sure this “decline” means anything at all in the longer view. We have big chain bookstores that are like the Walmarts of literature. How can reading be on decline, and yet these places continue to thrive?
That has nothing to do with throwaway crap literature, and everything to do with him expecting everyone to have the exact same world experiences he has had.
This is a good point, and I do agree that there are many ways to be culturally literate that don’t involve knowing about “the emperor’s new clothes.” We weren’t in the audience, didn’t see what happened, etc. Ellison can be also, from what I hear, a little on the daunting side to converse with. At the same time, that out of 27 people, nobody knew it or (apparently) volunteered even a question about what the heck he was talking about isn’t good either.
it’s the plain old fact that before a certain period, a lot of SF was crap.
OK, strike “style” and replace it with “quality of writing,” if you like.
How can reading be on decline, and yet these places continue to thrive?
That’s a very good question to which I don’t have an answer. Could be all sorts of confounding factors, from survey response rate to definitions of “literacy.” Certainly there are battles about whether one is actually reading if one is (a) reading the backs of baseball cards, (b) studying technical manuals, or (c) reading Proust. It is, however, a percentage. E.g. — there were 96 million literary readers in 1982 and in 2002. 56.9% in ‘82, 46.7% in ‘02. Clearly people are still reading, but that it has decreased in percentage has various impacts the report details, from participation in community to overall tendencies toward or away from education.
I’m not sure if I’m worried about the decline of reading or not. I enjoy it, I make a living off of it, but still 46.7% of the US population is a huge ass number of people, and that means I can still make a living off of it for a long time. OTOH, it is frustrating that this current generation of 20-30 somethings have a lack of literary interest, while just 30-40 years ago the generation was listing a large number of authors as their personal heroes.
What importance does reading (I’m assuming they mean offline, in book form- everybody reads online. Other than YouTube it’s all text) print make a difference? Can they prove that it correlates? Are we in danger of fetishizing literature, making it harder to pierce the veil? Or is the literature being published today just not speaking to the current generation?
Also- does this count reading online, reading non-fiction, reading magazines? I read somewhere that a majority of people read, at most, one book a year.
Should fiction/literature be as important as we make it out to be? How is one form of entertainment any better/different than any other form? Some people say that literature is more interactive and less passive (one has to imagine, rather than having images barked at them), but your mind is still being dictated the story. How is this form entertainment then less passive than a video game that requires creativity like Spore or the Sims?
Why should we enshrine literature?
I share your feeling about the numbers of people available to afford me a career writing. Yeah, more people writing these days, but it’s not impossible. Cries of doom and gloom to the contrary, well, as you say, look at Barnes & Noble.
Should fiction/literature be as important as we make it out to be? … Why should we enshrine literature?
Well, I’m personally biased in favor of literature and think it should be enshrined, but there are a variety of merits of reading of sustained texts. Librarians & other proponents of literacy can go overboard about why this is important, but certain things go hand in hand with high levels of literacy — political participation, community involvement, lifelong learning, maintenance of high levels of reading comprehension, etc., etc. These are things we’ve collectively, historically said are good.
Video games, e.g., haven’t been around long enough to be measured over time as regards how playing them affects these same things. Certainly its too early to tell reliably how MMORPGS affect these things. On the other hand, does playing games like these maybe encourage people to question authority more actively than they might if they were only (semi-)passive receptors of texts? There’s cultural studies research out there on video gaming, but most of the sociological or psychological stuff is focused on a pretty narrow subset of problems (violence, mental health, etc.).
Well, since I have both a literature degree and a minor in film (and I love video games), my answer is that they all are good
I prefer literature, obviously, but I am still more likely to watch a movie than read a book if I have a few hours spare. Highly more likely. Reading, strangely, is work to me.
“Librarians & other proponents of literacy can go overboard about why this is important, but certain things go hand in hand with high levels of literacy — political participation, community involvement, lifelong learning, maintenance of high levels of reading comprehension, etc., etc. These are things we’ve collectively, historically said are good.”
I’m not sure about this though- statistics are tricky things. And they can be cut into many nice and neat little shapes.
[...] August 13, 2008 by crotchetyoldfan Which probably explains why he wrote this. [...]
I really liked this post. I agree with nearly everything you said. I don’t think you went overboard. Yes you were passionate, but also articulate and fun to read which is most important.
Leeroy-
Well, thank you. That is very nice to hear.
Asimov’s and Ellison’s writings have lost relevancy because their popular culture references have disappeared. No one enjoys reading them now, except for academicians and a few geezers. Their writings didn’t mean anything to non western cultures then and now they have no meaning to most of us. Ellison recognizes if we don’t remember fairy tales we won’t remember him. He’s always been about self promotion. Todays blogs, websites and web fiction will be formatted tomorrow, no one will remember Paul Jessup except for his family and a few of his readers. I’m sure you don’t care, you’re trying to make a living now and this blog is meant to promote sales.
Asimov’s and Ellison’s impact on the sff market in their time was enormous. I believe todays writers stand on their shoulders, just as they stood on the shoulders of Burroughs, Wells, Verne and Hans Christian Anderson. After all nothing comes from nothing.
Hey Bob-
Actually, this blog is not meant to promote sales. If it where, it’s not working at all. This blog is basically a place for me to talk and communicate with my growing audience, people who enjoy my writing, and who I enjoy talking to. My fans are really cool people, and I love keeping in communication with them.
And I have gotten quite a lot of stuff in physical print, so really, even if a giant magnet fell from the sky and wiped the world’s hard drives all at once, I would still have made a mark, still be read, still can pass words on from text to eye and mouth to ear.
“Asimov’s and Ellison’s writings have lost relevancy because their popular culture references have disappeared. ”
Yes and no. There are a lot of writers who have written in the past, whose work is still relevant long after their cultural reference have dried up and blown away. Jane Austen, Kafka, Shakespear, etc. Some thing work on a level that speaks across generations. Ellison is not one of them.
“Asimov’s and Ellison’s impact on the sff market in their time was enormous. I believe todays writers stand on their shoulders, just as they stood on the shoulders of Burroughs, Wells, Verne and Hans Christian Anderson. After all nothing comes from nothing.”
And that means nothing. Absolutely nothing. History stands on the shoulders of history, etc. You have no idea what influences me, what I’ve read, and what my personal classics are. Asimov and Ellison may made an impact back then, but that does not affect me, nor my writing, other than as a historical curiosity.
BTW, my readers are growing exponentially each year. Will these lead to my writing being immortal in the annals of literary history of genre history? I’m not sure. But I do know that most genre fans have no idea who Harlan Ellison is, and most that do know him from Stephen King’s mentioning him in interviews and his non fiction book, rather than his writing.
Sorry I didn’t mean to antagonize, I believe blogs are mean to promote the blogger or the bloggers interest. You know here I am, hear me roar. The bloggers name stays in the reader’s mind. That’s how I heard your name sff signal blog. Actually I never heard of you before. What a writer intends is irrelevant. The reader is all - once you put something out there it’s no longer yours. I believe that.
Books are ephemeral too. My copies of P.K. Dick crumble each time I pick them up. Miss Ravenal’s Conversion was one of the more popular books in late 1800’s. Now nobody reads it except for someone taking a literature course in college. Shakespeare will be irrelevant except to academics, who’s reads the Illiad for fun. Who’s Kafka, that paranoid guy that other paranoid guy wrote a comic about (R. Crumb). Jane Austen - maybe someday I finish one of her books. Dune was more interesting to me when I was in college now he’s become a cottage industry for his son and other writers.
I’m not saying Ellison speaks across generations. I said he and Asimov maintained and evolved a market for themselves that you and others are now claiming. They were entertaining for awhile, now not so much.
I didn’t say Asimov or Ellison influenced you, I don’t care what influences you as long as you entertain me, create a dream, a movie in my mind, make me forget the real world for a short while. If you can’t I’ll find someone who can.
Believe when I say I not trying to antagonize you, I’m sure you don’t give a crap, but I will now read you.
I never read Ellison again after I saw him live, too full of himself for my taste, but he sure packed a lecture hall
I’m not antagonized at all. I guess tone is hard to get across in an blog post.
“I’m not saying Ellison speaks across generations. I said he and Asimov maintained and evolved a market for themselves that you and others are now claiming.”
Actually, I’ve never been published anywhere either of those artists were published. If you’re talking about the SF market, well, they didn’t create that, either
“The bloggers name stays in the reader’s mind. That’s how I heard your name sff signal blog. Actually I never heard of you before. What a writer intends is irrelevant. The reader is all - once you put something out there it’s no longer yours. I believe that.”
You are one reader on this blog, out of the 500 or so I get daily. I see a spike on blog hits (as well as new readers- I can track them with these nifty internet tracking tools) each time a short story of mine gets published somewhere. In the long run, I get more hits from my short stories than anything else.
So, realistically speaking, if anything the short stories are advertisement to my blog
But really, its here for me to talk to my readers. That’s about it.
Sorry my source for the dream and movie stuff is from John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers,
What are you doing sitting there watching your blog. I gotta get back to work. (Smiley face).
I would never say Asimov and Ellison are artists, I’m a person who believes science fiction and fantasy are in the gutter and belong there (forgot the source) , I love the gutter, I hated Michael Chabon winning the Hugo, but hated JK Rowling getting one even more. Let them win Pulitzers or Newburys.
Now I really gotta get back to work.
You’re a very strange person. You can keep the gutter. I want the stars.
wow, you got a big little thing everyone talking, so i take it that means i can shoot my two pennies two.
essentially Ellison is just running wild with the grumpy old man act, whatever he may think about current sci-fi is not the point, whatever he might say, again is not the point.
i think a bunch of you heard this before two.
there’s no such thing as bad press.
notice his website is titled “harlan’s webderland” i’m sure meant to be a clever twist on wonderland, but strikes me more as web der land, like der, duh, doh, uh huh? the more crotchety and yelling he can be, the better, he’s just trying to stir up publicity among writer-types and reader-types.
someone else said this in here and it bears repetition. there’s no clear voice for our (who) generation, or generations. no clear voice everyone agrees on, we’ve become so divided and sorted and categorized that we don’t know anyone now, the neighbors are wierdos, people across the street? i think they’re in with the gangs or the drugs. these damn kids write these stories they don’t know the first thing about my intestinal tract, damnit lookit the hair these kids have! and the clothes and the…. he can go off for quite a bit, i say let him, in fifty years me and you’ll be complaining about the damn kids nowadays and how they don’t know shit. but hey, this is what everyone’s hear for si?
Well, I dunno, I hope to be one of those “These kids are fucking cool, let’s help them out” types then a grumpy gus.
Oh, and Ben, help me prove my point- before my blog, did you know who Harlan Ellison was? Be honest.
honestly i’ve never read anything by him, i spent a good deal of my life wandering the library and old bookstores, so i know he’s one of those old sci-fi writers, i would think of him along the lines of frank herbert, asimov or heinlein. i only read a couple of the dune books, a couple foundatation books & short stories by asimov and heinlein just makes me want to find a book i’d rather be reading. tho i do know the story of the emporers new clothes.
and as to crotchety vs. kindly, i think they’re two different sides of the same coin or cliche cliche. i don’t know percentages, obviously, but what percent of the people would reject the kindly old helper, be put off by him (or her), they don’t need nurtured or coddled or whatever, but will react as if challenged by the crotchety fellas? you know what i’m sayin?
Heh, ben it’s not like that at all. This is one of those “you need to be in the know” things when it comes to helper or not, at least in this business.
My point was, Harlan is famous among other SF/F writers, but not really all that well known anymore.