"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

James Wynn · 01 May 2011, 00:15 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:15:47 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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I think Wolfe's problem with it was that there was no reason not to have 
written the story in the Realistic genre. It was a Naturalism story with 
SF scenery. Pointless. It didn't deal at all with all the "other stuff" 
that Wolfe thinks Realistic fiction cannot address.

Of course the same could be said of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" -- 
just War fiction with lasers.
J.

On 4/30/2011 5:51 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> It's disappointing to many readers of science fiction. I wonder if 
> it's disappointing to fans of college professor fiction?
>
> I always thought of it as a response to Heinlein's lunar/stellar 
> imperium stories, which certainly needed one.

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