In the meantime, my capsule Sin City review:
Best movie with strippers, gunplay, swordfighting, and multiple mutilations starring Bruce Willis that I've ever seen.
Also, this New York Times piece on how, contrary to popular belief, Science Fiction didn't begin and end with Star Wars is pretty good. They've got quote from a number of classic SF authors such as Le Guin and Bradbury (who I swore was dead), but also from my latest favourite new SF author, Richard Morgan:
"It's just such a huge shame," he said. "Anyone who is a practitioner of science fiction is constantly dogged by the ghettoization of the genre. And a lot of that comes from the very simplistic, 2-D Lucasesque view of what science fiction has to offer."Having recently quit my employment in book retail, I can say that the only reliable difference between the "Fiction" and "Science Fiction" sections seems to be sales - apparently, once you sell enough copies, you're considered legitimate fiction, and get to escape the ghetto that Morgan talks about. Why this should be the case, and why an author like Margaret Atwood or Michael Crichton manages to escape the "Scifi" label totally escapes me.
2 comments:
Well, it often seems to me that the first reaction we have if we see something (Margaret Atwood's latest) that seems like something else (SciFi) but not quite, is not to expand the definition of SciFi, but to bend over backwards finding some new definition for the interloper. It honestly doesn't seem to occur to us that her writing about a potential futurescape is SciFi, because Margeret Atwood doesn't write SciFi. So it must be something else.
That and the fact that SciFi, being a genre that is not received with any respect by any who don't actually read it, is not a label we want to apply to someone like Atwood - who we consider to be too literary and respected for that sort of thing.
As for Crichton, who knows? Contemporary setting?
I am a perfect example of the people Adam is describing. I have very little respect for scifi because what little of it I have read tended to have 2D characters, poor dialogue and at best an economically competent writing style. It seems that most of the author's energy is spent crafting an imaginative/fantastic alternate reality and the 'literary' elements (character, dialogue, imagery, metaphor, etc.) get short shrift. So, I'll stick with my Graham Greene.
That being said, I have two alternate (perhaps less pejorative) explanations for what John is complaining about.
#1 SciFi is, to a certain extent, a niche genre. So, if an author develops a broad-based audience that transcends the scifi niche then they escape the ghetto because their publishers will want to market them to the population at large. It's more a matter of marketing than respect (I doubt many people respect Crichton as a literary figure).
#2 It's easier to pidgeonhole particular books/movies into only one genre. Works that have only some scifi elements, but that are primarily character/dialogue driven will get lumped into the drama or comedy category. Eternal Sunshine (to me) was driven by the relationship between Joel and Clementine and big questions about the nature of memory, choices, love, etc. There's fairly little to do with science.
Whereas, one of the things the authors in the NYT piece complain about Star Wars is that there isn't enough science in it. SciFi seems to be driven by scientific development and attendant issues. Fiction with some SciFi elements but primarily character driven gets considered something else.
Finally, SciFi will never get much respect if works like Bladerunner get held up as the pinnacle of the genre. Bladerunner's decent enough , but it doesn't hold a candle to truly great movies.
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