Worlds of Paul Jessup

Yes, I shouldn’t have let Harlan Ellison’s blah blah blah rage get to me.  He’s known for being an ass.  Although, I must say his opinions that were expressed are very common with what I was really trying to talk about, and I got off target by attacking what he was saying rather than expressing what I really wanted to say.

The generation gap is caused by a majority of the old guard not wanting to bridge this gap.  This is not all of the old gaurd, mind you.  In fact, most of the writers considered part of the New Wave are actually avioding this trap (as I mentioned in an addendum to my original post), and are actively reading, writing, publishing, and moving past this gap that’s starting to happen. They are out there, promoting new writers, helping new writers break in, as well as being a part of our discussions, and in the end, making this whole field feel like a group of people that, even though they disagree, are made of equals.

The people I was aiming my last post at don’t believe this, don’t do this, don’t follow this.  They sprout off stuff about this generation being lesser in many ways (they’re not edgy enough, they’re aren’t intellectual enough, they’re too confusing, too experimental, they rely on computers too much, etc, etc), with all their arguments simply boiling down to one thing-

This current generation isn’t like us.

That’s all they’re basically saying.  This generation gap, I think, is basically a technology gap at its core, and a cultural gap on top of it.  That’s why I pointed out that Ellison’s ranting about The Emperor’s New Clothes was wrong.  This was not a sign of degradation of intellect in a current generation, but rather a cultural divide.  I feel that this would be the same mistake of expecting someone in Europe to get Scooby Doo jokes.  Sure, they might’ve caught it on TV, but expecting them to have the same cultural experiences as you would be a fallacy.

Him bitching about the internet, about wikipedia, basically smacks of all this technophobia we hear from a lot of members of the old guard- which is surprising coming from science fiction writers.  So, yes, I shouldn’t have focused on what he said per se, but rather the basic meaning behind what he and certain other members of the old guard mean when they say what they say things like that.

And again, this is not every single member of the old guard.  Just the loudest ones.  The ones that like to tell everyone else how wrong they are, and how, if this generation just acted a lot more like they had, then everything would be all right.

And the old guard out there who are helping bridge this gap- you should be applauded, lauded, sent fireworks into the sky with your name on it.  That is what should be going on, and for the most part, is not due to generational differences and cultural differences that are speeding up faster and faster. And my lament, in the original, was that this was at one point in time, different.  That, even though Ellison and others took shots at the old guard at the time, that old guard participated with their revolutions.  This was important.  This helped the genre evolve.

The genre is going to evolve one way or another.  The next generation is going to make it big, make splashes, make changes, get huge audiences.  The old guard will fade away, dissipate, become classics on the shelves.  This is what happens, what always happens.  And while I can respect a raging against the fading of this light, at the same time, it is counter productive.  Because eventually, all things change.  The center does not hold, etc, etc.