Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Craig Brewer · 15 Dec 2011, 15:17 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:17:19 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
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I convinced a friend of mine to read it, and he's not at all a genre/sf/fantasy guy. But his overall reaction was that many of the sections seemed like they were intentionally recalling and then undercutting his idea of genre "stereotypes": the early part in the Tower seemed like it was undercutting "gothic" fiction, once he leaves, it seemed like adventure stories (he'd read John Carter as a kid and said it reminded him of that). And on and on: ghost stories, haunted houses, American Indian tales, etc. I think there's something to that.

It strikes me as similar to the way Nick Gevers looks at Long Sun (with, admittedly, more sophisticated consequences). Each novel takes a kind of genre and plays with it: the first book plays off of detective stories, the second does spy thrillers, the 3rd does military/war story, and the fourth plays off of utopian fiction. 

But all of the Sun books are incredibly self-conscious about their generic choices. I think it's less convincing to ever say that it simply IS really sf or fantasy or science-fantasy than it is to say that one of the series' main themes is using and breaking generic codes for extra-generic purposes.

After all, the first excitement that most people get is when they realize that it *looks* like fantasy, but it's something else. The tower isn't a medieval-esque castle but a rocket ship, etc. It's not the ultimate classification that's important, but the trick of disrupting expectations.

________________________________
 From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Gerry Quinn wrote (15-12-2011 14:34):
> However, that is by-the-by.? While genre categorisation arguments can get a
> bit silly, especially with a genre-mixing author like Wolfe, I would argue
> that BotNS is not really part of the ?swords and sorcery? genre, even though
> it does indeed contain swords* and sorcery, and indeed certain episodes
> (e.g. the mine with the man-apes) that would fit comfortably into the
> genre.? It?s not _about_ the swords and sorcery.

Again curiously, the scene with the man-apes felt more like early sf or lost race fiction to me.
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