litfarm

Over at the guardian, Sam Jordison asks if brilliant writing is what separates sf from litritcha.

As soon as someone writes a really good sci-fi book it nearly always seems to get reclassified as something else. It’s a bit like the way members of the Ireland cricket team become English once they reach a certain level.

The Road, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Slaughterhouse Five, Never Let Me Go… and those are just off the top of my head. So yeah. Why is it that when we suck, we’re writing sf, but when we rule, suddenly we’re sitting at the cool kids’ table? And by we I mean you. And occasionally me.

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.