Many of us are coming back to science fiction after a long hiatus. Perhaps we became snobs about great literature at some point. I know that after my sophomore year in college at University of North Texas I picked up a Frank Herbert novel after reading Light In August and couldn't get through the first two pages.
The sentences. It was like a child was writing them. Awkward doesn't begin to describe it. Also existentially jarring since the first thing that comes to one's mind is that you have been mistaken about something's excellence and have told other's of this excellence and more sophisticated minds must have kept their eyes from rolling completely back in their heads and laughing derisively.
Something must have happened in the interim. SF writers got better. Tim Powers and Ian M. Banks are the first two I began reading again, primarily through the fact that Ian Banks wrote a novel that Melody Townsel told me was crap and I always read everything she doesn't like. She doesn't like Cormac McCarthy either.
Update! Melody and my discussion of the worth of Cormac McCarthy and his comparison to Ian Banks has taken an ironic turn! Her contention was that Banks and McCarthy were writing the "same novel" i.e. that she saw an identity between "Child of God" and "The Wasp Factory". Witty sarcastic banter ensued. Which is always fun and Melody is good at it. She'll give you ideas, that one.
ReplyDeleteIn the mean time, several years later, she's gotten a job as a teacher. And what is she teaching? Stories about Serial Killers! and Kafka. I pointed out the irony gently to her.
I don't want to fight. I just point things out.