Mailvox: the line between F and SF
An SFWA author writes concerning the upcoming SFWA election:
Obviously, if everyone nominates something that is clearly Fantasy and the author prefers it to compete in the Science Fiction category because he believes he is the second coming of Isaac Asimov or because he thinks it will be easier to beat out Star Trek 562: Spock Takes a Nap than the most recent rewrite of a Brontë novel published by Tor Books, there would be no reason to accommodate that.
But if a book could be reasonably considered to be either science fiction or fantasy, to such an extent that it is unclear to the readers, there is no reason not to permit the author to determine which category the book most properly belongs.
I voted for you and my ballot's going out tomorrow in the mail. I thought your opening statements were hilarious! Outlandish, too.... But anyway I liked most of your ideas for SFWA.This was my response: In answer to your question, those nominating a novel for a Nebula Award would be expected to indicate that they considered the nominated work to be either F or SF as part of the nomination process. A novel that received both SF and F nominations would have both types of nominations counted but would be put up for the award in the category that received the most nominations, assuming that it received enough combined nominations to qualify. If the author happened to disagree with the categorization and the difference between the two categories was between one and three nominations, then the category would be switched at the author's request.
The idea of establishing two Nebula awards -- one for SF and one for F is really over the top. They overlap. Just as a good story also overlaps with dark elements. (Which we politely do not refer to as "horror" but it is.) This is the main reason I'm writing you --I'd like to know just how you would possibly chop SF & F in half --when novels and stories contain elements of both. "Hard" sf isn't the only definition of Science Fiction. "Hard SF" implies that there is some explicit element of science explained within the story or novel (which Landis and Haldeman do well) but it's not the only element and anything we imagine becomes fantasy.
Obviously, if everyone nominates something that is clearly Fantasy and the author prefers it to compete in the Science Fiction category because he believes he is the second coming of Isaac Asimov or because he thinks it will be easier to beat out Star Trek 562: Spock Takes a Nap than the most recent rewrite of a Brontë novel published by Tor Books, there would be no reason to accommodate that.
But if a book could be reasonably considered to be either science fiction or fantasy, to such an extent that it is unclear to the readers, there is no reason not to permit the author to determine which category the book most properly belongs.
59 Comments:
Sounds reasonable enough.
Spock Takes a Nap was rad, man!
So what is the point of this part of your platform? What would be the benefit of splitting the award?
To be frank, I think this speaks to a lack of vision on your part as most of the truly groundbreaking genre fiction falls into the "unclassifiable" catagory (or at least cases could be made for both SF and F)
Spock Takes a Nap was rad, man!
To not sleep when tired would be...illogical...
I think this speaks to a lack of vision on your part as most of the truly groundbreaking genre fiction falls into the "unclassifiable" catagory (or at least cases could be made for both SF and F)
That's nice. And which of the 12 most recent Nebula Best Novel winners of do you believe fit into that groundbreaking and unclassifiable category? Do you realize that only one of the nominated novels this year is a science fiction novel?
If this separation isn't made, it is entirely possible we may never see another science fiction novel win Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel from the SFWA.
How many SFWA members are there, and how many vote in these elections?
And what ground-breaking genre fiction would that be BJ? Most supposedly ground-breaking genre fiction is warmed over inferior R.E. Howard or Heinlein but written by a woman or ethnicity. I cannot see that when I am reading any more than I can see surgically enhanced buttocks when I'm listening to music. Worse, SF doesn't have a falsetto voice, unless audio now gives you your choice. I don't know. To me listening to literature is like burning incense in a wind storm.
The current system of throwing fantasy and SF together is foolish. Fantasy is making this inroad because it is where the women and ethnic writers are most conspicuously doing their identity thing. So, let them do their thing and let SF breathe a bit more. Smiles all around. OCD alt-history Jane Austen Harlequin Romance novels where the OCD suddenly disappears when it comes to Wellington considering invisible bubbles at Waterloo have no place next to SF. That's not even fantasy but some weird form of therapy.
No system will be perfect, but virtually any attempt to separate out the two will see most novels put where they belong. It's not like the imagined genre-buster will disappear - it'll simply be where someone doesn't like it. So what? There's enough of that idiotic pedantry in SF. Let it take a spanking.
I'm not sure I'd describe any of them as groundbreaking AND unclassifiable, I was refering more to the big picture, works like Wolfe's Solar Cycle, Simmons Hyperion (very much a fantasy) or Swanwicks Dragon books.
How specifically would you differentiate SF from F? Lasers or Swords?
Maybe there needs to be an Unclassifiable Writers Association.
Exceptions abound I'm sure, but my first thought is that Science Fiction is influenced by the author's perceptions of a future, while fantasy is based on the past.
Or you know... I can't define it but I know it when I see it. And I expect that I could predict the majority's decision almost every time.
How specifically would you differentiate SF from F?
"Alchemy is science, dammit!" ~ Zosimos of Panopolis
Alexander; not for nothing, but star wars happened a long time ago...
I actually referenced Star Wars and then took it out.
Tell me, when you watch Star Wars, do you think afterwards: Hey, one day we might have flying cars and light sabers and a space empire. It is 'set' long ago but it's forward thinking, even if in many places the logic is absurd. It's *about* a future.
Nobody has those thoughts about LOTR. There, the imagination asks 'what would it be like to live in such a place.' Same with Harry Potter, even though that world is contemporaneous to our own.
That's laughably easy BJ - they're all obviously SF. It's not even a close call. I have no hard, fast rules for a definition. The closer you get to those borders the more you indulge in almost mindless pedantry, which I despise. Show it to me, and I'll tell you what it is.
An exception is not a rule and I see no reason for all to be punished and pushed into disarray for a few books that lie on some imagined border no one agrees with in the first place.
From a strictly literary standpoint, there is no real point to such definitions - most people will not fall off the end of the earth and accidentally read a car manual. Read the book, enjoy it. Awards are different - they represent genre by default. They exist. So, let them represent.
I honestly don't understand why some people feel the need to invade genres. That act destroyed fine art photography in America. It's a photo, not an intellectual treatise or text. Helllllooooooooo!
If women want to write Harlequin Romance Fantasy, run over to Fabio's blog and make your case. The password is "butter." Those novels have a much better case for being thrown over there than in SF. Then Jane Austen can spread her glamour wings and fly. The truth is, those women don't want to be there cuz it's only other women and they, ironically, think that's stupid.
It's just another case of a female barging into a men's locker room because that's where the action is. SF awards given to Harlequin? I don't think so. Women say this is not being inclusive and diverse and blah-blah-blah. I say everything isn't everything and I'm not a jerk because I don't want Tiger Woods given a Nebula for "Best Putt."
That was a good one IM. There should be a Nebula for Best Unclassifiable. Scrawls on a sidewalk, intriguing pigeon droppings that resemble Sumerian script, the Green Bay Packer playbook - anything would be eligible. Plus they could argue far into the night. You know what E.M. Forster said about pedants and the Library of Alexander.
Alexander; actually, your approach here makes sense, but I think when you drill in it falls apart (as most things do). What science is actually present in the Star Wars stories? And again, not for nothing, Star Wars, at least the original trilogy is a retelling of a classic fantasy story, in space, with lasers, but with magic still…
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But more importantly, no one has articulately why this is a necessary action or how it would be beneficial.  Â
Star Trek 562: Spock Takes a Nap
You forgot the McRapey tag.
Oh, wait. I'm thinking of Star Trek 569: Spock Takes a Cat.
1. I did not make actual science a qualification for science fiction. My distinguishing feature is whether it focuses the imagination of the reader into a possible (if unrealistic) future or takes them back into a possible (again, unrealistic) past. Hogwarts is set in today, it nonetheless takes us back in time. Star Wars is a long long time ago, and yet we imagine it in terms of what we might one day be.
You can try and point out the exception here - and yes, Star Wars still follows basic literary archetypes that existed before the idea of 'science fiction' and much of it is fantastical - but at the end of the day have 100 people watch the films and pick a category and they are going to tell you it's science fiction. We know it when we see it.
On to part 2. Because a Science Fiction Association should, presumably, be supporting and advancing Science Fiction. It's like asking what the big deal would be in scrapping the Nobel prize for chemistry because you still have physics and they're both science. You have to stand up for your field. This is further exacerbated by the fact that fantasy is very much overrun by girly works - best to make every effort to distinguish the line between SF and F before the rot spreads (more than it has).
How many SFWA members are there, and how many vote in these elections?
SFWA members can provide more accurate numbers, but I recall seeing, a few years ago, that membership was just shy of 3,000 and that total voters were something like 15% of that. So, one can win the presidency with something like 200+ votes. Don't take that as gospel, but I'm fairly sure that's in the ballpark.
So to win, just get 200 non voting members to vote for you? Presumably, they're not voting because they don't like the organization's establishment.
Even if my numbers are off, what this means is that Vox needs to round up the regular dissenting votes (say 100+ folks) and then inspire 150 disenfranchised members to actually participate, and he wins. Whatever the real numbers are, they are neither massive nor impossible to beat, no matter what the "Tor ringer" system people may believe. I would guess that he already has the vast majority of the surviving true SF guys who have been lost in the Helganess for years.
I don't know if it is going to happen, but the SFWA has become a Shire worthy of a good scourging. It's been a benchwarmer since digital, which is not devoid of irony, if you think about it.
Both the SFWA and Tor are politically correct sh-tholes that ignore obvious racism within their ranks while trumping up nonsensical scenarios that E. Rice Burroughs and R.E. Howard were interested in white supremacy and white male power and other drivel I'd expect only severely retarded people to consider.
They are insulated people who claim to love to challenge people but don't take well to challenge themselves. Do it, and they will censor and blacklist you. They are intolerant and pathological.
The distinction is difficult at times, but your solution seems reasonable. I like the author being able to decide (except in rare circumstances) as it puts the onus on the author and there can be no complaints of unfair categorization.
James May, I know where you are coming from, and you might be right about Tor, but considering that the vast majority of the SFWA does not vote in its own society, I think it is possible that they could change direction and engage their talent into relevance.
I believe it to be a longshot, though. The folks at the helm right now are most certainly Damocles, sitting on the old Feast of St. Dionysus' throne, terrified to look up at the sword of Ezio hanging from a Red Dead Redemption horse's hair.
Moh's Sliding Scale of SF Hardness:
"Gee willikers professor, how does your time machine work?"
Very soft SF: "With science."
Soft SF: "You sit down here in the driver's seat, type in the time and place that you want, and push the button."
Hard SF: "An excellent question. Please allow me to spend the next five pages explaining the latest theories in quantum physics."
Very hard SF: "It doesn't. Time travel into the past is impossible.
It is a long shot Daniel. These are people who are almost fanatics at the same time they are so stupid they literally can't see racism if a black person does it. If I made the remarks people like their bloggers, authors like N.K. Jemisin, as well as their commenters did there, but about blacks or women, they would consider it hate speech.
They feel you're either with them or against them because despite their lies about diversity of thought, they are convinced they are on the right side of history in every bigoted remark they make. They are beyond hypocrites - they suffer from Orwellian delusions.
What can you say about people who brag about their own people challenging remarks at the same time they censor people who do that exact thing? Do you really think it's a coincidence that Scalzi actually brags about censoring people or that he violates his own idea of pretending the person your criticizing is standing in front of you? He'd get his ass kicked in my old neighborhood and I've little doubt that's exactly where his mouth got him when he was a kid. They're control freaks.
One would think they are actually addicted to unfairness, and considering the pathological nuttiness and sense of persecution their profiles suggest, it seems it is indeed payback time for history's bullied. It is a community that is inbred and insulated. It's the Daily Kos - end of story. Yaaaaay Hugo Chavez. Yaaaay Robert Heinlein was a male structural racist. Yaaaay Nepal is the 85th state of the Union.
On top of all this, the idea these people come from an intellectual legacy of "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984" is simply jaw-dropping.
"They are insulated people who claim to love to challenge people but don't take well to challenge themselves. Do it, and they will censor and blacklist you. They are intolerant and pathological."
Funny, seems like you'd fit right in James.
Maybe there needs to be an Unclassifiable Writers Association.
SFWA is on it's way to being an Unreadable Writers Association if they don't change course. I'd rather read Spock Takes a Nap than Angsty Girl Comes of Age, with Doubts and Longing
***AHEM***
My response is up.
Funny, seems like you'd fit right in James.
Would somebody, please, wield their loving mallet of self-righteous indignation on this anonymous coward? Oh, that's right...nobody around here is that stupendously ridiculous.
"'Do it, and they will censor and blacklist you. They are intolerant and pathological.'
Funny, seems like you'd fit right in James. " - Anonymous
Your hypothesis does not match with experimental evidence. Sorry, try again. Perhaps you have a problem with projection?
Would somebody, please, wield their loving mallet of self-righteous indignation on this anonymous coward? Oh, that's right...nobody around here is that stupendously ridiculous.
We need a pledge drive and t shirts!
Come everyone gather in a circle and stat wetting yourselves!
It is a long shot Daniel.
Yup. Completely agree. I'm thinking of the entire membership of SFWA, which still includes cats like:
Brin, Bear, Bethke, Bujold (geez there are a lot of Bs in sci-fi) Longyear, hell, even Stross!
Who, regardless of their politics, are good writers who get the business, and would have to be blind not to see that pink triangle politics are counterproductive and fatal for their org. Now maybe they are all just poised to let the SFWA die by its own hand, because it has worn out its usefulness to them as professionals, and they just like the networking aspects - don't really care that it makes them look like Avon ladies.
Or maybe a lot of the above think that squees like Scalzi are the future of sci-fi, and maybe none of those cats are just never going to cotton to Vox. I'm just saying that there's a shot that folks like that can switch gears for the benefit of their membership...if they want to. I hope they do.
I'm just saying that if there's any juice left in that cluster of grapes, don't crush it. It could do some good yet. There are (yes, possibly a minority, but a sizeable one) of members who either are or, in their day, were good to sci-fi and/or fantasy.
But if they don't make a change this go round, the org is doomed to obscurity (for all purposes other than romance and more pics of McRapey insulting women by acting like one) and good riddance.
If that SFWA ship does go down, I hope they at least get a decent cult out of it. I'd love to see a public duel for converts between the Church of Scientology and Our Sisters of Squee, with Writers of the Future in one corner and the Nebulas in the other. I'd be pulling for the Scientologists, though. At least they remain committed to science fiction as a tenet of faith. The SFWA seems more interested in putting on a petticoat and calling it a space suit.
Actually anonymous, that's not true. If I ran a blog, there'd be no censorship other than obvious goofs there just to light up the place. Seeing that is not a act of nuance. I am not afraid of challenge or ideas because that's how I get my own. I learn; my ideas are not pre-formed or canned in some stereotype factory but forged in places and in ways you'll never experience in your life time.
I am against racism, but not by just one race, I am against injustice, but not only towards women or gays.
I am anything but insulated, unless you think speaking Indonesian atop Rinjani Caldera, trading jokes with the Muslim Brotherhood in Tahrir Square during the revolution, screwing my Brazilian girlfriend while we see Corcovado out her window and sitting atop the 70 meter tall La Danta at El Mirador at dawn listening to Howler monkeys while looking down at a sea of roadless jungle defines provincialism.
Not even a "nice try," pal.
Your hypothesis does not match with experimental evidence.
Perhaps not experimental evidence, but certainly it matches with experience and evidence both observational and documentary. I was warned by six or seven different SFWA members back in 2005 that I had to be careful about the ideological views I expressed or I'd never be published by Tor. Two of them were even Tor authors.
Furthermore, several SFWA members have attempted to prevent my writings from appearing in certain venues and several have asked if it would be possible to a) remove me from the Nebula Jury, b) prevent me from running for office, and c) kick me out of the organization.
VD -
This "long-time listener, first-time caller" wishes you success in your run for SFWA President. Your platform position on awards sounds both fair and reasonable. There has been accelerating growth of the desert in SF/F since the early 1980s and any effort to turn back the incursion of the wasteland is welcomed by me. Thanks for taking on this challenge!
This "long-time listener, first-time caller" wishes you success in your run for SFWA President.
Grazie, molto gentile.
I guess the challenge posited is this: for example, if I shared an SF community of any kind, social or commercial, would I attempt to silence someone like say, N.K. Jemisin, who I believe is a racist. The answer is no. Though I despise her naked racial advocacy and obvious disdain for white people, there is nothing illegal about it. She has as much of a right to speak about what she wishes as I. If she left such views on my personal blog, which I don't have, I would not censor them but debate. Her and Scalzi would shut me down immediately. They are Bradbury's Firemen - intolerant and self-righteous.
If an idea or culture is strong it can survive such morons. If not, it deserves what it gets. I would not silence dissent or seek to blacklist anyone.
I would speak my mind as is my ethical and moral and legal right as one half of a dialogue. I hope Vox does get elected. The SFWA is a looney bin of politically correct misandry and racism, which defends itself by pretending it is only righting a ship. Problem is, it's 2013 and there's not stopping anyone in this country from entering a library and reading everything in it and making a success of one's self.
The good stuff has always been drowned in crap. Laser books? Ace doubles? The Golden Age of Isaac Asimov's prose style? Rivets and Sorcery out of Regency Romance by Barbara Hambly is good, by that locksmith chick is crap. Science Fiction crossed with Fantasy by Roger Zelazny is good, by Charles Stross (Laundry Files anyway) is good, by everyone else is crap. Even leftoid SF is good in the Laundry Files.
Wouldn't it be great if Vox won? Scalzi and the rest of the rabbit warren would be popping pellets the size of Gibraltar.
This is a very simple question. What is a nebula? Astronomy! Space! Science!
Any nebulas in LOTR? Prydain? Conan?
No. QED.
Yeah, well, now it's being crowned by crap. John Scalzi, the Benny Hill of SF, is the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Imagine if Benny Hill was the President of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Othello would fart as he picked up Desdemona and she'd be wearing a garter belt and push up bra in cutting edge acts of satire.
Then imagine Hill voted for a guy in Parliament who spent 20 years in a racist cult that doesn't think much of Jews. Suddenly Oliver Twist is part of Shakespeare's repertory and dirty Jew Fagin gets star billing because of his "privilege," because Hill "knows" Jews are privileged and says so in the material he distributes to promote himself and the plays, "Jews: the Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is." Does that make Scalzi's racist limerick any clearer?
The rest of the repertory Hill gives to his cronies to direct such as "MacZombie," "Spamlet," "Much Doo Doo About Nothing," "Romeo and Lesbian Vampire Queen," "Gamma and Cleopatra," Jane Austen's Vagina Soliloquy," "The Taming of the Black Girls," "The Gay Cisgendered White Beta Males of Windsor," and "Two Gentlewomen of Nutsack."
Now you see laid out before you the stupidity of projecting faddist, trendy, flavor of the week obsessions about race and gender onto R.E. Howard and E. Rice Burroughs. I feel sorry for them. It reminds me of the robot who tries to shoot Bug Bunny, misses, and hits a horse. The horse says, "What did I do, what did I do?"
See any problems here, mac? End of Shakespeare.
Calling Scalzi the Benny Hill of anything is like calling John Tesh the Andrew Dice Clay of something.
BJ Sandoval March 06, 2013 9:28 AM
How specifically would you differentiate SF from F? Lasers or Swords?
someone doesn't understand the responsibility of juries.
Except that Scalzi thinks his humor is like Monty Python. Python humor was directed against men like Scalzi. Maybe Twit of the Year. The bottom line is that it's humorous to see completely humorless people devote themselves to comedy.
The fixation on gamma anal humor is eerie. Perhaps he's the B.J. and the Bear of SF. I wish he'd do more where he pretends to be a rapist.
Or he could do an Aly Jolson and do "Gay Black Female: The Highest Setting Difficulty Setting There Is," and show video of him in an afro trying to use a doorknob or reverse engineer a safety pin and putting post-it notes on the commode about remembering to breathe.
That would've been better. Telling touching stories of being passed up by taxis and having to run the 40 yard dash with 15,000 people to get the 37 available Section 8 rental vouchers after waiting for 18 hours in a line shaped like a riot mob.
James, I'd buy tickets to your show. This stuff is hilarious.
...and John Tesh is the Andrew Dice Clay of the pan flute.
The only thing Scalzi is the Dice Clay of is the collective nutsac of this blog.
There needs to be a 3rd category. Deconstructionism. You know, the grammatically and spelling correct sets of paragraphs that sound out as perfectly correct English but mean absolutely nothing. Like Sokal. (The open question is whether the article or deconstruction itself was the hoax).
The only thing Scalzi is the Dice Clay of is the collective nutsac of this blog.
Rolled, fired, glazed. Like his avatar.
Monty Python v.s Gamma Rabbit (5:00 and later for the better part)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HOCbhae5OQ
Bob; that's fine, but as a plank from the platform of someone running for president, I would expect a little direction. Or maybe not, which goes back to my comment about lack of vision.
But more importantly, no one has articulately why this is a necessary action or how it would be beneficial.
What part of "science fiction novels will no longer win the science fiction award" did you find hard to understand? It would be beneficial because it would help prevent science fiction from becoming completely ignored by the organization once set up to foster it.
In case you hadn't noticed, science fiction book sales are rapidly declining; the sales of one, possibly two of my own books would have qualified as a top ten PW science fiction bestseller in 2012. If SF/F are not separated, they will increasingly become F.
That might happen anyhow, but the SFWA should not be contributing to it.
What part of "science fiction novels will no longer win the science fiction award" did you find hard to understand?
This seemed like the literary equivilant of affirmative action, so I didn't see it as a necessary action or a benefit, more just a throw away comment.
In case you hadn't noticed, science fiction book sales are rapidly declining
Probably has more to do with quality than amount of awards given, no?
Anyway, to me, I've read enough of both to recognize that they are the same genre more properly labeled "fantasy", with your Asimovs on one end of the continuum and your Tolkiens on the other.
Among the remaining people who do read people don't much read SF for three reasons
#1 This is a time in which we feel that progress will probably be bad not good, a condition that even the Dirty 30's didn't have.
#2 A lot of it isn't especially interesting or approachable, transhumanism for example is just too weird for some readers.
#3 We live in a cyberpunk society already. I mean we carry a global computer network in our pockets with us every day, live in early years of the world William Gibson was writing about more or less and deal with amazing tech every moment. Why would any SF be of interest to a lot of people?
@abprosper:
The problem is that sci-fi got away from its action/adventure roots, first turning into psychodramatic navel-gazing, or overly byzantine contortions of logic, and then finally degenerating into the present world of feminist and nerd wish-fulfillment.
"Tell me, when you watch Star Wars, do you think afterwards: Hey, one day we might have flying cars and light sabers and a space empire."
Actually, when I watch Star Wars, I think afterwards: Hmm, that was cute, I wonder what's for dinner.
>'The problem is that SF got away from its action-adventure roots'
David Drake. Best fight scenes ever. Yes, better fight scenes than Robert E Howard, incredibly vivid description, highly literate and numerate narrative voice.
Also, Baen books in general. Say what you like about them, they haven't moved from their action-adventure roots.
Larry Correira does great guns and ghouls, great sales and earning them. David Friedman's 'Salamander' was too smart to be written off as fantasy. And the last Game Park book, 'The Moon Maze Game', Niven and Barnes, was still pretty good. Slim pickings compared to the 1980s, with Heinlein, Zelazny, Poul Anderson, Niven and Pournelle and Barnes, heck, even Alexis Gilliland or the John Maddox Roberts who did 'King of the Wood'... Slim pickings but still kicking.
That said, the loss of manufacturing jobs as the Democrat JFK broke US Steel, the Democrat Pat Moynihan and Nader's Raiders broke Detroit's Big Three, the Democrats destruction of aerospace, a couple of Democratic trial lawyers breaking the light plane industry, etc- the loss of manufacturing jobs meant a loss of numerate Americans. SF requires numerate readers.
"Furthermore, several SFWA members have attempted to prevent my writings from appearing in certain venues and several have asked if it would be possible to a) remove me from the Nebula Jury, b) prevent me from running for office, and c) kick me out of the organization."
You mean when you go out of your way to mock people and piss them off, they don't want you around any more?
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