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

David Stockhoff · 01 May 2011, 12:28 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 08:28:58 -0400
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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Yes, those two especially, I think. (It's been a long, long time!) There 
were also some novels about star colonization....

It's funny to see what the genre has grown into outside SF fiction 
proper. There are dozens of star conquest games worshiping 
energy-wasting military technology and exterminatory policies of human 
expansion. Not Heinlein's fault, but the seeds are there somewhere 
nevertheless. Le Guin dislikes and opposes  all such ideas, real or 
fictional.

On 4/30/2011 11:53 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> Both /The Dispossessed/ and /Starship Troopers/ had to be SF because they're
> about societies that have never existed.  Otherwise, it's true they don't
> provide
> much in the way of stfnal thrills beyond the suits in ST and the description of
> Shevek making his discovery in TD.  There's nothing in either that you could
> call religious or spiritual (I think), either.  As some of the Kesh say in
> /Always
> Coming Home/, the problem with novels is they never go beyond the Five
> Houses (the material world, sort of).
>
> Is Heinlein's "lunar imperium" story /The Moon is a Harsh Mistress/?  I can
> certainly
> see thinking of /The Dispossessed/ as a response to that--a different kind of
> anarchy.  (I don't know about "imperium", though.)  And what's his "stellar
> imperium", /Starship Troopers/?
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: David Stockhoff<dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>>
>> Precisely!
>>
>> On 4/30/2011 8:15 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>>> 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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