China Miéville, the British author of Perdido Street Station and The City & the City, took a swipe at one of publishing’s favorite euphemisms in a new interview.
Mieville is one of the greatest living novelists. He's up there with Neal Stephenson and John C. Wright. I might even put him at the top these days.
Although I will say that I was astounded when I read Juza Unno's THE MIDNIGHT MAYOR and realized he anticipated UN LUN DUN and THE CITY AND THE CITY by about 80 years.
"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"
I have a friend who discusses his SFF novels as "speculative fiction" to literary realism readers and writers, and I sincerely doubt that any such reader or writer has been warmed up to genre writing through such language. At most you can goad them into appreciating a high concept technothriller or a magical realist novel about some pet social issue, but many of these people simply hate fun and want to wallow in the tedium of their lives, untroubled by anyone with notions about dragons or spaceships, to say nothing of millennia of prior writing, in which dragons were taken more seriously than they are by fantasists today.
Yeah, spec fic was always a dodge, and a "we're ashamed of our stories." with a "not like THOSE laser boy stories."
Weird fic? Sure. Anything but speculative fiction. Weird turns back to pulp, and lumps in all the strange, fantastic, amazing stories. I might go with fantastic fiction myself, but that may pull too close to "fantasy" -- and calling them amazing seems very arrogant.
A reviewer once said my material is 40% family drama. I was grateful. At least I knew what to say about the work.
Snerk. GRRM's ASOIAF is all soap opera -- good, well done soap, but Soap Opera!
And Stephen King's one of the best fairy tale writers on the planet.
Mieville is one of the greatest living novelists. He's up there with Neal Stephenson and John C. Wright. I might even put him at the top these days.
Although I will say that I was astounded when I read Juza Unno's THE MIDNIGHT MAYOR and realized he anticipated UN LUN DUN and THE CITY AND THE CITY by about 80 years.
Look at that, a commie actually made a good point about something.
"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"
I have a friend who discusses his SFF novels as "speculative fiction" to literary realism readers and writers, and I sincerely doubt that any such reader or writer has been warmed up to genre writing through such language. At most you can goad them into appreciating a high concept technothriller or a magical realist novel about some pet social issue, but many of these people simply hate fun and want to wallow in the tedium of their lives, untroubled by anyone with notions about dragons or spaceships, to say nothing of millennia of prior writing, in which dragons were taken more seriously than they are by fantasists today.
Yeah, spec fic was always a dodge, and a "we're ashamed of our stories." with a "not like THOSE laser boy stories."
Weird fic? Sure. Anything but speculative fiction. Weird turns back to pulp, and lumps in all the strange, fantastic, amazing stories. I might go with fantastic fiction myself, but that may pull too close to "fantasy" -- and calling them amazing seems very arrogant.
I always thought it was because so much of sci-fi merged into other genres: a guy in a spaceship crashlanding on a planet where magic works, etc.