Gene Wolfe interview in Locus

Jim Mann · 03 Jun 1991, 19:15 · from rec.arts.sf-lovers.1991.mbox

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From: jmann at vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe interview in Locus
Date: 3 Jun 91 19:15:05 GMT
Message-ID: <5938 at lectroid.sw.stratus.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
References: <1991Jun2.015734.14702 at netcom.COM>

In article <1991Jun2.015734.14702 at netcom.COM> doug at netcom.COM (Doug Merritt)  
writes:
> 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).

So you would only read it if it were SF?  If the SF material wan't there,
you'd quit reading. (That's what your last sentence DOES say.)  Good 
fiction is good fiction. Gene Wolfe writes good fiction, that happens,
most of the time, to have SF or fantasy elements. But if it didn't,
I'd read it anyway.
> 
> 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.

Sounds to me like the problem isn't Wolfe's fiction but our insistent on
categories. "This is SF, this isn't."  That's not what matters. What matters
is "This is good, this isn't."

> 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.

You'll have to "be on [your] guard about his books"?  Why?  Because he
might sneak in something that isn't "really SF"?  In fact, I agree with
you on one point. I sometimes wish that Wolfe's books wouldn't always be 
labeled as "SF" since there are lots of folks out there who would like
much of what he writes, but don't ever see it. Many mainstream readers are
as silly as many SF readers. SF readers guard against books that "really
aren't SF."  Mainstream readers guard themselves against books that are "really
SF."

Jim Mann                                      jmann at vineland.pubs.stratus.com 
Stratus Computer

   Not since Cromwell's troops, their puritan sensibilities offended by beauty, 
   went around smashing decorative art in churches has there been an act 
   of folly  comparable  to the abandonment and destruction of Forbes Field, 
   the Pirates' home for generations.   
                --  George F. Will, from Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

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