Gene Wolfe interview in Locus

Viktor Haag · 03 Jun 1991, 16:35 · from rec.arts.sf-lovers.1991.mbox

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From: vehaag at crocus.waterloo.edu (Viktor Haag)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe interview in Locus
Date: 3 Jun 91 16:35:55 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.163555.25853 at watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
References: <1991May30.233326.5041 at tc.fluke.COM> <1991Jun2.015734.14702 at netcom.COM>

>>	Book of the New Sun" he was also writing FREE LIVE FREE.  [Talk
>>	about a contrast; my most and least favorites]
>>
>>	FREE LIVE FREE was an attempt to get away from "Severian, Severian,
>>	Severian" and create "one character that everyone likes, but what I
>>	actually seem to have done is give everybody one character to
>>	dislike."
>
>Yeah. He also said everyone complained it wasn't science fiction, but
>he rebuts that by saying that he planted clues all the way along that
>pointed towards the science fictional element in the end.
>
>That really irked me; as if we dumb readers must not have seen those
>clues, else we wouldn't say it wasn't SF. Wrong...I saw the clues all
>the way along. They were pretty obvious, after all, and furthermore
>about the only thing that kept some of us reading (albeit with a lot
>of yawning and grimacing).
>
>But he should know what every aspiring SF writer is lectured about in
>the "how-to's" and in editorial columns & comments: a touch
>of window dressing does *not* make a story science fiction. Only the
>most extreme definitions of SF include things that just happen to have
>a tiny bit of (completely non-essential!) SF background.

Perhaps your reporting of the situation is misleading, but from you satement
three paragraphs above it seems that Wolfe does not claim that FLF is SF but
rather that it has a SFional element in the ending.

>I don't blame him for wanting a change of pace, but I deplore the lack
>of intellectual honesty that he displays in failing to call a spade
>a spade. Or insisting that his screwdriver should be called a spade.
>It means that I'll have to be on my guard about his books, instead of
>just buying them on sight, as I was happily doing with him (and very
>few other authors) for a while.

Oh yes, you had better be on the lookout.  I mean, Wolfe might try and
expand your horizons a little bit by sneaking a story past you that doesn't
meet your twelve step guidelines for the existance of an SF novel.

Of course, I will have to read the actual aritcle myself before commenting 
further, but I will say that you seem to be one of those people who spend their
time whining that the 'purity of the art form is being besmirched' by horrible
people who are being intellectually dishonest by stretching the medium a bit.
God forbid that we should invite creativity or innovation into the hallowed 
halls of **SF**.

barf

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