Many thanks for your warm welcome, Alison (and others
who remember me).
The SF discussion (and divide from mainstream fiction)
prompts an appeal from me to see SF as such a generous
genre as to include horror and fantasy. King (and
Peter Straub, another fine writer) rightfully belong
to horror, whereas Peter S. Beagle's _The Last
Unicorn_ I would term fantasy.)
But what do people think of Doris Lessing's SciFi?
It's rumored to have spoiled her chances for the Nobel
Prize.
Finally, on a technical note, are others who use Yahoo
having trouble sending posts? Please back-channel me
to compare notes--and maybe solutions as well
(thanks).
Great to be back!
Candice
--- Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Candice - how wonderful to see you back!
>
> Frederick, a belated response, for which I
> apologise.
>
> > Alison, I have the impression that science fiction
> is more respected, and
> > more integrated into the literary mainstream, in
> Australia than in the US.
> > Certainly Australia has produced some first-rate
> SF writers: George Turner,
> > Jack Dann, John Baxter. There is no American
> equivalent to Peter Carey's
> > The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (one of my
> all-time favorite novels). Nor
> > can there be, because it's about NOT being
> America.
>
> I wonder if that's true? Certainly Harold Bloom has
> conniptions abouty
> Stephen King being admired as a writer. (I've read
> very little King,
> only some of his Dark Tower SFF series, and for my
> part I was
> impressed and think Bloom misses the point by a
> cubic mile). But I am
> immediately thinking of Cormac McCarthy's The Road,
> an extremely
> impressive book which has had a lot of attention.
> It's certainly
> speculative fiction, but maybe they don't _call_ it
> "SFF" for fear of
> literary nose-pulling. Certainly among genre types
> there's a lot of
> discussion of this so-called literary SFF, which
> gets put on the
> literary shelves rather than with Conan the
> Barbarian. I confess, I
> don't have much interest in those kinds of
> categorisations: but things
> like "The Time Traveller's Wife" or "Jonathan
> Strange and Mr Norrell"
> or even Mieville's sprawling urban fantasies are
> marketed as
> absolutely mainstream fiction, in the US as well as
> the UK, although
> they are certainly genre books.
>
> Chris, isn't all that rather related to Kinsella's
> musings on the
> pastoral? He's written at length about all this.
> I've finally finished
> my own essay on this question, including that famous
> "split", which is
> I think a misleading way of mapping Australian
> poetry. I'll probably
> put it in the next Masthead (due midyear at this
> stage, I have this
> novel to finish first). No, I don't think anybody is
> talking about
> rural idylls; it seems to me much more interesting
> and complex than
> that.
>
> all the best
>
> A
>
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
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