The Sword and Laser discussion
Oh no! Not sci-fi
One that sticks is me was when I was really getting into Tolkien as a kid. I'd read The Lord of the Rings and went to my city library to ask if they had any more book by him, to be rather sniffily be told by the librarian "Oh, that will probably be in the children's library..." This must've been around 1980, I'm pretty sure that's changed.I've had the opposite too, though. At uni when I told my literature professor, Archie Markham, I was doing a project on Iain Banks I expected a similar reaction, only to end up having a rather fun discussion about the duality of Banks' SF and non-SF books.
I've never faced this problem around the books that I read. This may because I've mostly surrounded myself with like-minded people, or perhaps just ignored the odd looks on the train. But when your hobbies include LRP and stalking your friends with water pistols, any reading becomes the socially acceptable side of your life!
Well, there's always the slight disdain I get from my scientific and political non-fiction reading friends about my reading habits. Apart from that the one situation I recall is the woman behind the counter of the bookstore assuming I wanted my Wheel of Time book gift wrapped when I bought it and the funny look she gave me when I said it wasn't needed as the book was for me.
I occasionally have my reading tastes questioned. Then I brandish my degree in French literature in the snob's face and ask if they'd like to discuss the evolution of identity in Enlightenment novels from Diderot to Marivaux.You can adopt this tactic as well, regardless of how much Diderot and Marivaux you've actually read, as absolutely no one ever wants to take me up on it for some reason.
Ruth wrote: "Maybe I'm lucky, because at 32 this is the first time I've come across such prejudice against the genre, and maybe it is more common than I realised. I do live in my own little bubble most of the time. So, have the rest of you got similar stories to share? What's the worst kind of prejudice against sci-fi and fantasy literature that you have come across? Have people ever tried to steer you away from the genre? What are your thoughts on this? "Lots and lots. I graduated from high school 31 years ago, and back in the 70s and 80s it was completely uncool to be an SF/Fantasy fan.
In seventh grade I did a book report on one of my favorite books (we also got to choose the book, which was probably pretty progressive at the time) and I did my report on The Forever War. In another class we had to give a speech on something we were really into, so I did mine on Space: 1999, extolling the virtues of the TV series and the novelizations, which I brought in as props. (I recognize NOW that Space: 1999 is objectively terrible, but hey, I was 11.)
The two teachers compared notes on what the students did and as a result I got a C on both efforts because, to quote what one teacher wrote on my book report, "This is the same thing you did for your speech." When I went to contest the grade she dismissed my argument with the same attitude as your teacher: "They're both just science fiction." When I replied that's like saying Call of the Wild and Little House on the Prairie are both "just historical novels."
She asked me if I wanted a D instead.
To paraphrase George Jones, I was sci-fi before sci-fi was cool.
One of my high school english teachers scoffed at my reading of Stephen King but it didn't really influence me that much.
For the most part, I think my teachers were just happy that I was an avid reader and they left me alone to read what I wanted. I would say that the only truly negative experience was when the pastor of the church my family attended tried to convince me that I would burn in hell for reading fantasy becuase it promoted witchcraft.
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A couple years ago, R. Scott Bakker posted an entry on his blog called "Bakker's Dozen: Qeustions to F*** Up Your English Professor" which is interesting. The original post can be found here: http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/09...
He also posted his exchanges with an individual who took some time to answer his questions. That post can be found here: http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/09...
Another Bakker blog entry I would recommend for those who are serious about "literature" but prejudiced against genre fiction is his essay called "The Future of Literature in the Age of Information." In it Bakker argues that technology has had such a tremendous impact on communication that any writer who is serious about producing literature (something that challenges instead of reinforces our beliefs and assumptions) needs to embrace genre fiction.
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/essay-a...
We are presently witnessing what is already the most profound transformation of human communication in history (short of the written word, maybe). The internet, the smartphone, the tablet, satellite and cable on-demand television, market segmentation, algorithmic marketing: the list of game-changers goes on and on. Make no mistake, we are talking about social and semantic habitat destruction without compare. The old rainforests of culture have been cleared away, and literature, with its prehensile hands and brachiating arms, now reaches for heights it can no longer climb and stares into distances it can no longer see.
...Does this mean the information revolution has rendered genuine literary communication impossible? Not at all. Just as dramatic environmental change begets evolutionary innovations (like us), literary writers actually find themselves in a time of profound opportunity. Even as technology threatens the old literary animal with extinction, it has provided powerful tools for the evolution of something new, and perhaps even better.
...If there’s one thing the internet shows you as a writer, it’s that there is no such thing as ‘the Reader.’ As a writer you are communicating to populations of readers. And as a genre writer, you’re communicating to populations of readers with a far more eclectic set of background beliefs than you could ever hope to find in the ‘literary mainstream.’ Genre, in fact, is where you find most all the people who disagree.
There’s a reason why only Harry Potter gets burned anymore.
My argument is simple: To thrive in the fluid, multifarious information habitat of today, the literary animal must become a chameleon. Authors who want to be part of the cultural solution can no longer trust in posterity or the ‘power of their art’; they have to game the new social, economic, and technological conditions of their practice. Either you stick with literary resemblance, gratify your tastes and sense of superiority, and simply entertain (which is quite alright, so long as your rhetoric reflects as much), or you get serious about literary effects and begin creating the new, many-coloured literature of the information age.
Just say "Foucault" and English professors will let you do pretty much whatever you want.
I achieved a certain amount of derision for picking SF and fantasy books for school essays like many others but i think in the context of a creative writing class it is a slightly different issue.Genre fiction (SF/ fantasy/ slipstream, horror etc) requires a different way of reading and analyzing than literary or mainstream fiction and not every reader, teacher or critic will be able to apply themselves effectively to the SF field. In a way they are saying - my skills and experience doesnt work for that type of story. They are just not being honest with themselves. Yes there might be an element of disdain there but it is really about you bringing them something outwith their comfort zone and competence.
Back in high school we had to write sentences to prove we understood our weekly vocab words.I went above and beyond (in my eyes) writing short 2-3 paragraph fan-fictionish short stories that included all the words.
The teacher disliked my reading material so much that she called a parent/teacher conference to discuss my reading "trash" and banned me from bringing those books to class or using them in any future vocab assignments and when I tried, she gave me a 0 on every assignment until I gave up.
The end result wasn't that I stopped reading sci-fi, though I know that's what she intended. It's that I stopped reading the American lit authors she taught - permanently.
Looking back, I can see that my reading material really was rather horrid but it was pretty typical reading for a teenage sci-fi/fantasy fan. I grew up eventually. I'd like to think that I have relatively decent taste these days! Still can't read Faulkner or Hawthorne or Steinbeck, or Fitzgerald, or any of those guys though. Just a couple of pages worth of any of them is enough to give me flash-backs to how much I hated her.
Disinterest is mostly what I come across when I say I read science fiction.My mom tried to get me to stop reading fantasy at one point by giving me a romance novel. She hadn’t read it herself and in the first couple of pages there was a sex scene. She always did seem more okay with me reading VA than Eddings.
I just read two books at once. Something my teacher thought was great, say Henry James, Homer or Poe, while in my bag lurked a Harrison, Leiber or Zelazny. As and Bs.An interesting article here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
Melanti wrote: "Back in high school we had to write sentences to prove we understood our weekly vocab words.I went above and beyond (in my eyes) writing short 2-3 paragraph fan-fictionish short stories that incl..."
It blows me away when I hear stuff like that. My high school English teacher(s) for the most part were just stoked that anyone would read anything by choice.
Ben wrote: "It blows me away when I hear stuff like that. My high school English teacher(s) for the most part were just stoked that anyone would read anything by choice. s..."My later English teachers were like that (one even assigned several sci-fi books over the course of the year) but this one particular teacher was a piece of work. She never had a thought or opinion of her own and everything any critic wrote was absolutely true and could not be questioned. Whenever someone in the class tried to question whatever far-fetched piece of symbolism she was spouting, she'd wave around some collection of lit-crit essays and say "According to XXXX, that's what it means" and if we tried to argue more she'd even open the book to whatever page it was on, point and say "it says so right here."
I've gotten my share of prejudice, but most of my problems have been in areas you wouldn't expect. As I've mentioned in another thread, we studied several sf and fantasy short stories in school. Most of my professors in college also recognized that many of the great works of literature have elements of the speculative in them.In my Creative Writing class, of all places, there were students who refused to critique my science fiction stories because they didn't think it was worth their time to comment on something so silly. My professor didn't pressure them to participate, even though I worked very hard to critique their work, despite my distaste for their subject matter. When I questioned her about it, near the end of the semester, her response was that I'd won first and second place in our literary competition, and that I should be happy with that. I didn't sign up for another semester.
My other major experience was when a doctor wanted me to get psychological help because I read horror. I'm by no means a huge fan of the genre, but he took one look at the book I'd brought with me to read while sitting in his waiting room, didn't like what he saw, and decided there was something wrong with me to the extent that he felt psychiatric professionals needed to be involved. I politely told him that wouldn't be necessary and that I doubted Stephen King was the reason why a suspect mole had appeared on my left shoulder.
I used to get a lot of crap just for reading in general. I have always read constantly, since I was a kid, and people were always telling me to go do something. And I always said, "I AM doing something - I'm reading."People who don't read much or at all seem to consider it either a waste of time, or at least not a legitimate hobby or interest. These are people I want to smack upside the head.
And then there's always the person who interrupts you at a coffeehouse or something to ask what you are reading and then stares at you blankly before changing the subject or leaving.
Luckily I've never had a very bad experience. I even won a high school writing contest with a fantasy story, which gave me delusions of future bestseller-dom (delusions because I churned it out in a couple hours the night before it was due and then thought hey, writing is easy). I always wrote SFF in my creative writing class in college and it was never shot down merely for genre.
So, I've been very lucky in this regard.
Just say "Foucault" and English professors will let you do pretty much whatever you want.Which is strange, because Foucault was mostly a historian.
I didn't respond very well to a lot of English classes during my BA. I still have a minor in it because I hadn't known any better going into uni and started with English as my major. By the time I realized I wasn't enjoying a lot of the class discussions I had enough credits to complete the minor and never have to take an English class again. Then my second major, history, became my *only* major. Which was fine, because I ended up doing my Master's in that.
I took comparative literature classes in science fiction and fairy tales as options in my final year. Those were super-awesome.
/end digression
I usually considered it a defensive reaction on the part of English majors who by nature avoid anything that involves science or math. After all these were the same students who ran crying from Chem 101.It's easier to say its worthless or trash than to admit its too deep in some ways for you to understand.
(only Umberto Eco can be admitted to be too deep to understand)
It sucks that they can turn personal preference into established hierarchy though
L. wrote: "I doubted Stephen King was the reason why a suspect mole had appeared on my left shoulder. "Depends... did it have an eye?
Ben wrote: "It blows me away when I hear stuff like that. My high school English teacher(s) for the most part were just stoked that anyone would read anything by choice. "Same here. They even turned a blind eye to my giggling away at Discworld books during class 'quiet reading' time. Which in retrospect was not the most pro-social thing I ever did.
Melanti wrote: "Back in high school we had to write sentences to prove we understood our weekly vocab words..."I think Jeff Foxworthy has made a successful career doing that :)
I had a really good teacher in middle school. My Mom was alarmed that I was reading "trash" and took this up with my teacher. She told her to chill and be happy that I was reading anything at all - I would grow up with a reading habit and then maybe move on to other things. Which happened. Kind of.
Chad wrote: "I usually considered it a defensive reaction on the part of English majors who by nature avoid anything that involves science or math. After all these were the same students who ran crying from Che..."I am a Creative Writing Major myself which I consider equal to an English Major and I might just be one of the few who you won't see fitting this. Not chastising just trying to give you a little hope for the future.
My mom was always encouraging of anything I read. The only problem I ever had in school with teachers and what I was reading was the fact that I was reading something other than what I was supposed to be reading or doing at that particular time. Eventually as I got further in school I got better at balancing the two. I even went more towards writing for a bit and got widely read in one school I was at. I still have to work on balancing the writing and the reading though.
Generally it seems that Creative Writing is way behind ordinary English departments when it comes to genre, even the more conservative English departments. They won't admit George RR Martin, but everyone from Ray Bradbury to Raymond Chandler is accepted in the canon. And even the super conservative departments have to admit that everyone from Mary Shelley to David Foster Wallace was writing scifi at some point. Genre in a lot of universities no longer means "stuff with science fictional or fantastical bits," it means "light, fluffy scifi/fantasy." And even then, that doesn't necessarily mean bad literature to them; a ton of English profs adore PG Wodehouse and consider the man brilliant, but would never consider him worthy of study in the classroom. At my undergrad our major culminated with a massive project on a novel of each student's choice. We were told "absolutely NO genre!" and then given a shortlist of acceptable works that included two ghost stories, a spy novel, a series of adventure stories, and I think maybe even something dystopian. I pointed this out and was scowled at.
Michele wrote: "I used to get a lot of crap just for reading in general. I have always read constantly, since I was a kid, and people were always telling me to go do something."Yeah, I used to get shit from my classmates for always having my nose in a book. I was embarrassed enough to consciously cut back on my reading time for a couple years in junior high, but in the end I couldn't stay away. Reading is my happy place.
As far as SFF goes, my mom teases me quite a bit for my choice in reading material, but she's pretty much just happy I like reading at all. Luckily, my uncle is a fellow sci-fi nut, so we're perfectly happy to nerd out with each other while the rest of the family gives us the side eye.
Kurt Vonnegut was complaining about this in 1965.https://sites.google.com/site/zscslau...
I learned to start ignoring teachers in grade school. I had to put up with nuns.
One of my favorite science fiction lines is:
"You live in a space ship dear." - Zoe, Firefly: Objects in Space
The technology we are using to communicate right now was science fiction 30 years ago. The Internet of things has barely begun. The mundanes are not smart enough to appreciate good science fiction. My complaint is that it has been invaded by too much fantasy since 1980.
Yeah yeah, and we're all so tolerant of Twilight fans. I love books where aliens fight over planets with lasers that go pew pew pew, and curse each other out in English. Wish there were more of them. Expecting everyone to deeply respect that or to consider it intellectual is just entitlement.
I feel like calling people who don't like scifi "mundanes" is almost exactly the same problematic attitude that this thread is about, as is treating fantasy (or softer scifi) as a lesser genre?
My 6th grade teacher was impressed that I'd read Dune, but other teachers were less interested. I had a snobby teacher of British Lit who looked down his nose at me, until I got the highest grade in the class on the PSAT. I dunno what it is, you'd think teachers would be glad to see kids reading whatever the form is.
Darren wrote: "Yeah yeah, and we're all so tolerant of Twilight fans. I love books where aliens fight over planets with lasers that go pew pew pew, and curse each other out in English. Wish there were more of them. Expecting everyone to deeply respect that or to consider it intellectual is just entitlement"I think if someone in an adaptation class were to say they were planning on adapting Twilight, the tutor should listen to the idea and not interrupt to immediately slate the source material. That's just general respect for an individual, nothing more and nothing less. I'll slag off Twilight frequently, but I know an extremely intelligent and impressive person who adores the series, and if she wanted to talk about how they inspire her, that is not the time for me to go on an anti-twilight rant.
I also think hearing 'sci-fi' as 'aliens and pew pew pew' is exactly the kind of prejudice I'm talking about. All genre have examples of good and bad, intellectual and brainless fun, so I don't think anyone should dismiss something based on genre alone.
Rob wrote: "I feel like calling people who don't like scifi "mundanes" is almost exactly the same problematic attitude that this thread is about, as is treating fantasy (or softer scifi) as a lesser genre?"
I agree, Rob. No reason for everyone to love sci-fi, or for those that do to build it up above other things.
Interesting comments on this thread, and it's been fun reading. Glad to hear that a lot of people HAVE found folks in English literature to be fairy positive towards genre fiction. That has been my experience until now, so hopefully this one tutor I'm having problems with is more an aberration than the norm.
I think in this day and age science fiction (sci-fi) and fantasy have become more widely accepted as credible forms of fiction than when they first started out. Or even in the later 20th Century. People are starting to see how it inspires people and has a good psychological effect on people. Not to mention the grand literary discussions and clubs though not titled that that it inspires. Though as with any genre you will have your snobs about it. I have my genres I don't much care for, but I don't insult those who like it so I don't expect to be insulted for what I like to read. I also am open to suggestions of good reading from those genres as well. What can I say I just like good reading in general.
Ruth wrote: "I also think hearing 'sci-fi' as 'aliens and pew pew pew' is exactly the kind of prejudice I'm talking about."Your prejudice, there. I love space opera. Doesn't meet your high standards for the genre?
It's interesting to see when scholars, writers and readers battle back against this snobbery in a positive, creative way. I've recently started listening to the Tolkien Professor podcast, in which an English professor provides a series of lectures and discussions on Tolkien's books. He started doing it because he wasn't being given the opportunity to teach fantasy, and he wanted to do something about it. It's such a great way of tackling it, and a fascinating podcast if you like intelligent discussion of fantasy literature.
I was lucky. My mother read Tolkien,Assimov, Frank Herbert etc as a teenager. They were all just sitting on the shelves waiting for me to pick them up to read.Which I did, and still do. As a matter of fact, my mother bought me whatever books I wanted to read, regardless of subject matter. ( even those trashy romance novels, the one with women being ravished on the covers, phase I was in for a period of time) To this day we share books. She has been getting that magazine of sci-fi fanatsy short stories probably since it was first published back in the 60's. I get that from her as well. We love many of the same authors. So...I haven't had those issues. I don;t remember doing book reports on them...But I am sure if I had she would have had my back. I have even got her to read zombie novels...:)I took cultural anthropology in college. We had to read Stranger in a Strange Land, our whole grade for that class was based on an essay and test based on the book. I had to read it twice...I finished it too early..needless to say people were very unhappy (not me) and I got and A .
Andrew wrote: "It's interesting to see when scholars, writers and readers battle back against this snobbery in a positive, creative way. I've recently started listening to the Tolkien Professor podcast, in which ..."Ooh, Tolkien Professor podcast sounds interesting, I will check it out.
Darren wrote: "I love space opera."Yeah, me too. Well, among other sub-genres. I remember reading an article about Honor Harrington one day and it referred to the series as "resurrecting a discredited genre." Discredited by who? Seems to have been doing just fine during the period it was "discredited."
http://stephenhunt.net/how-to-burn-a-...This is old but talks about how certian genres are being shunned.
Andrew wrote: "It's interesting to see when scholars, writers and readers battle back against this snobbery in a positive, creative way. I've recently started listening to the Tolkien Professor podcast, in which ..."Thank you for telling us about this podcast I just subscribed to it. I am looking forward to it.
Christopher wrote: "Thank you for telling us about this podcast I just subscribed to it. I am looking forward to it. "It's worth going back to the beginning, which is what I've done. Unlike some podcasts his initial goes don't sound rough and ready - I guess that comes from his lecturing experience - and he seems to build on his previous insights with each later episode.
Darren wrote: "Ruth wrote: "I also think hearing 'sci-fi' as 'aliens and pew pew pew' is exactly the kind of prejudice I'm talking about."Your prejudice, there. I love space opera. Doesn't meet your high standards for the genre?"
You misunderstand me. As I said, all genres have examples of works that can be considered intellectual, and works that are brainless fun. I love me some brainless fun. Say 'aliens, pew, pew, pew' and I'm pretty much sold. Of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. What bothers me is that some people assume that is ALL there is to sci-fi, and dismiss an entire genre on this basis.
I has similar issues at University. I did a fine art degree (you know, the weird installation type stuff) and drew a lot of my inspiration from fantasy novels.On the whole this wasn't a problem, other than it just not being some people's cup of tea. But I had one crit where a fellow student just blankly said "I don't like it. As soon as someone say's fantasy I turn off. It just has no importance to the real world." No one provided a counter argument for his view, just nodded in agreement, and I couldn't say anything because we weren't allowed to speak while our work was being spoken about.
I'd heard it all before and it didn't dampen my spirits, but it was incredibly irritation. They just weren't the correct audience for what I was doing
When I was in school (in the 1970s) I got some flack from my schoolmates but the teachers were supportive of anyone that read something more complex than comic books. People have expressed disdain for my chosen reading and writing genres but I don't much care.
Eleanor wrote: "I has similar issues at University. I did a fine art degree (you know, the weird installation type stuff) and drew a lot of my inspiration from fantasy novels.On the whole this wasn't a problem, ..."
Your Professor should have lectured him to being so closed minded in my opinion. In a place of higher learning we need to be teaching more open mindedness and how all genres have a place in the real world.
Encouraging news! Even though I worried that it would result in a lower grade, I stuck to my idea and did a short story based on an event in Ancillary Justice for my adaptation class. And I got a first for it. :D
Ruth wrote: "Encouraging news! Even though I worried that it would result in a lower grade, I stuck to my idea and did a short story based on an event in Ancillary Justice for my adaptation class. And I got a f..."That's great - well done, both for sticking to your guns and for the first!
Gary wrote: "Just say "Foucault" and English professors will let you do pretty much whatever you want."Dharmakirti wrote: "For the most part, I think my teachers were just happy that I was an avid reader and they left me alone to read what I wanted.
I would say that the only truly negative experience was when the pas..."
That's my plan—how power works in utopian and dystopian novels.
The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
Stranger in a Strange Land (other topics)Authors mentioned in this topic
R. Scott Bakker (other topics)E.A. Markham (other topics)
Maybe I'm lucky, because at 32 this is the first time I've come across such prejudice against the genre, and maybe it is more common than I realised. I do live in my own little bubble most of the time. So, have the rest of you got similar stories to share? What's the worst kind of prejudice against sci-fi and fantasy literature that you have come across? Have people ever tried to steer you away from the genre? What are your thoughts on this?