{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1846",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1846,
    "subject": "genre fiction",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-25T13:45:50+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-25T13:45:50+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0222@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-25T13:45:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) genre fiction",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Daniel Fusch brings up--re the inconsistent or unreliable narrator (Sev)\nthat we've been discussing--the modernist novel. Well, actually, that's not\nquite accurate, as he brings up -Moby-Dick- and -Paradise Lost- too. But I\nthink that M-D can stand as a modernist novel ahead of its time, and Milton\nwas certainly striving to do something different with PL. The point, and the\nFaulkner novel is included here, is the effort toward originality.\n\nWolfe's three series (I'm leaving out the Soldier series, but you can easily\nmake the analogy there too) fall into three tired genre cliches (what\nHollywood calls \"high concept,\" which means that even a studio clone can\n\"get\" them): In order, the sword-and-sorcery quest, the generation starship\nsequence and the planetary adventure. You might not like the simplification,\nbut it's recognizable construction. What he has been doing is to bring real\noriginality to very established (over-established) forms, and in order to do\nthat one of his techniques is to rely on our familiarity with the form and\nthen to pull some surprises. And I am not talking about sensa wundah, though\nthat may be a side-effect.\n\nPeople who read science fiction, like people who read any other of the\naccepted \"genre\" forms, are used to, in fact are looking for (to a large\ndegree), predictability. We (I'm mostly talking about myself) kind of read\nwith one half of our brain listening to the radio, another quarter playing\nwith the cats and the rest lazily attempting to remember which character is\nnamed what. And that's just about all that's required. But Wolfe has taken\nthese very standard forms and demanded attention. In only one book (IMO) has\nhe attempted something entirely new, and that is -Fifth Head-, a truly\noriginal work. But to take a standard form and work magic--magic that\nnecessarily involves effort from the audience, as Alex points out--with it\nis masterful as well.\n\nIt seems to me that very few books of 20th century science fiction are going\nto last, except as children's books. (The 19th c. will last longer as\nhistorical relics.) But Wolfe's may, simply because they soak up, present,\nand then transcend the sub-genres. The huge majority of sci-fi readers today\ndon't read them, wouldn't like them, but they're not who's going to\ndetermine the future. We are. Very likely. Think about that.\n\n-alga (who apologizes for pomposity)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}