So says Clive Thompson in Wired this month. What’s his problem with contemporary literary fiction?
“After I’d read my 189th novel about someone living in a city, working in a basically realistic job and having a realistic relationship and a realistically fraught family, I was like, ‘OK. Cool. I see how today’s world works.’ I also started to feel like I’d been reading the same book over and over again.”
So why doesn’t sf (he uses the deprecated term “sci-fi”) get any respect? Because so many of the authors are terrible writers. And it’s hard not to agree with him. Thinking of writing some sf? You’re in good company lately: Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Susanna Clarke, and Margaret Atwood, to name a few.
Tags: fiction, science fiction, sf