Scifi Incestblogging

In which Vicki links to me, and I link back to her. She furthers the discussion of anti-SF snobbishness, with a good list of some classics of SF/Fantasy, like A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or The Bible. Suck it up, christians.

In comments, Max says "I was pretty sure that the average SF text actually sold more copies than the average fiction text. And, that by adding the label SF to a fiction book often boosted its sales by as many as 5,000 copies. I think that applies to unknown and recognized authors." That would surprise me, but I certainly can't claim to disprove it. In any case, individual titles may sell more in SF than general fiction, but that probably has more to do with the market - I'd be willing to bet that SF readers are more dedicated fans. I suppose what I meant by sales being the divider between SF and regular fiction is simply that despite the fact that someone like Atwood will write Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake, somehow her books just can't be SF, because they're Atwood. Atwood herself has objected to the label of SF for her books. Now, there are other reasons to not shelve Atwood in SF - bookstores would probably prefer to keep her SF and non-SF stuff together, for example. But overall, "serious" readers and writers seem to regard the label of SF as anathema.

Andre makes a good point, though I would narrow his definition somewhat - some (maybe most) SF is very much a niche genre, and many SF authors are quite aware of that, and successful in that niche. However, there is a squishy grey area, books like 1984 or A Clockwork Orange which are unquestionably SF in their conventions, but are driven more by the concepts and characters. How many of us will have to read 1984 for school? And how many of us will ever think of it as SF? My point is that "SF" isn't an objective label, but seems to act as a socially constructed division - and a quite arbitrary one - within a literary spectrum.

I think the disagreement over whether or not Eternal Sunshine is SF or not is a great example of the squishiness of the SF label. Here's a movie about a man getting his memory erased through a technological/medical process - classic SF, right? Well, not really, because the movie is really about the romance and drama between him and his girlfriend. So which is it? Would you put money on either classification?

Finally, the entire concept of SF may be obsolete. Look at the world around you, and tell me that a lot of what you see isn't pretty SFish. Then tell me how much of that stuff was there five years ago. Then tell me how much of that stuff will still be there five years from now. No literary genre based on "the future" can stay relevant in this kind of society.

Maybe everyone else doesn't find this debate as fascinating as I do, so I'll drop this for now. But I will put together a reading list for people with the spare time.