{"id":2123,"date":"2012-01-26T19:28:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T00:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=2123"},"modified":"2012-01-26T19:55:50","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T00:55:50","slug":"shoes-other-feet-and-a-lesson-the-problem-with-sci-fi-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/26\/shoes-other-feet-and-a-lesson-the-problem-with-sci-fi-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoes, Other Feet and A Lesson: “The Problem With Sci-Fi Novels”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone named Cale McCaskey <\/a>who \"writes a bit\" and says that sci-fi is really his thing, has published an amazingly idiotic critique <\/a>of the best-selling literary genre - ROMANCE.\u00a0 My guess is that I could write any sort of irate, eloquent defense and make no impression a'tall upon Mr. McCaskey.\u00a0 Instead of crawling on a soap-box, I've pulled out a parody pen.\u00a0 LET'S APPLY THE MCCASKEY LOGIC TO HIS FAVORITE GENRE - SCIENCE FICTION.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sci-Fi novels sell inexplicably well. The fact that we have an illiteracy rate of almost 50% might be partly to blame for the popularity of science fiction. Many people don't have the ability to read books written at a level any higher than children's books or science fiction novels. Regardless, sci-fi sells so well that there are more and more articles and interviews with science fiction writers where they are put on pedestals and treated as though they belong in the select company of writers of much higher standing - like romance novelists.<\/p>\n

What readers need to understand is that science fiction novels - by their very nature - are meant to be inferior. Surely, no ivy league colleges will ever teach science fiction novels as part of the curriculum. No science fiction novel will ever be thought of as a classic alongside Spencer, Dickens, Quinn, Lindsey, Garwood or Woodiwiss. If a science fiction tale were that good, it would simply be known as drama or literary fiction or a classic horror tale. No one would ever call Well's \"The Time Machine\" or Bradbury's \"Farenheit 451\" science fiction novels. They would be referred to as classic scientific fiction.<\/p>\n

The very thing that separates classic scientific fiction from sci-fi novels is that sci-fi novels must by default be bad, tacky even or they'll no longer be classified as sci-fi and will get placed in a higher category.<\/p>\n

It's difficult to respect something deliberately meant to be a lessor work. One should always do great work. If a writer classifies his own book as science fiction, that tells me that even he doesn't think much of it. If that's the case, readers shouldn't think much of it either.<\/p>\n

-------------------------------<\/p>\n

The logic makes as much sense when applied to science fiction as it does when applied to romance now, doesn't it?\u00a0 That is\u00a0to say - it makes\u00a0less sense than I do at 6 a.m. before my morning coffee.\u00a0 Truthfully, science fiction is a fine genre with some amazing work and there are writers out there putting out some steller stuff.\u00a0 Yes, some of it may even be taught in colleges one day - right down the hall from courses on romance.<\/p>\n

Wait - courses on romance have been taught in some amazing colleges, haven't they?\u00a0 And Eloisa James<\/a>, a graduate of Harvard, Yale\u00a0and Oxford is a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University.\u00a0 Oh, yes, and she's written many New York Times bestselling ROMANCE NOVELS.\u00a0 (But don't tell Mr. McCaskey.\u00a0 The strain of wrapping his brain around that information\u00a0would probably be too much for him.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone named Cale McCaskey who \"writes a bit\" and says that sci-fi is really his thing, has published an amazingly idiotic critique of the best-selling literary genre - ROMANCE.\u00a0 My guess is that I could write any sort of irate, eloquent defense and make no impression a'tall upon Mr. McCaskey.\u00a0 Instead of crawling on a ...continue reading \"Shoes, Other Feet and A Lesson: “The Problem With Sci-Fi Novels”\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2123"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2128,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions\/2128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}