[SFRA-L] Atwood bashing

[Rob Latham]

LOL.


On Oct 12, 2011, at 1:05 PM, Peter Halasz wrote:

> Hey,
>
> What's with the picking on Canadians? First Atwood and now van Vogt.
> Who next?
>
> Sheesh.
>
> <grin>
>
> Peter
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Rob Latham" <rob.latham at ucr.edu>
>> To: "Dominick Grace" <dgrace2 at uwo.ca>
>> Cc: "sfra-l List" <SFRA-L at charlemagne.cddc.vt.edu>
>> Sent: Wednesday, 12 October, 2011 11:04:09 AM
>> Subject: Re: [SFRA-L] Atwood bashing
>>
>>
>> Why is it that when a writer squarely within the SF tradition
>> produces hilarious pastiches of pulp enormities (e.g., Barry
>> Malzberg, Robert Silverberg, M. John Harrison, Eleanor Arnason),
>> everyone doesn't go off with quite the fury that Atwood seems to
>> inspire? I agree with Andy Sawyer's comments: the vituperative way
>> SF insiders react to her comments is only likely to reinforce her
>> prejudices. Besides that, I think she is a fine writer whose views
>> about SF are no more ridiculous than, say, A.E. Van Vogt's.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Oct 12, 2011, at 7:11 AM, Dominick Grace wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, first off, this review does not seem that terribly bad to me,
>> but maybe that's because comparing something to a doctoral
>> dissertation does not seem like an insult to me. . . . Anyway, I
>> doubt the review would have been any less dismissive if Atwood had
>> written a book about some other genre.
>>
>> I haven't read the book, though I plan to. I have, however, heard
>> Atwood on more than one occasion give talks on SF and her relation
>> to it, and my impression was that she was not in fact terribly
>> knowledgeable. In one such talk, she said her work (HT etc) wasn't
>> SF because (and this is a fairly close paraphrase) SF was about
>> giant squids from Jupiter. Tongue in cheek slightly perhaps? It
>> didn't seem so to me. Given the truly wretched pulp SF pastiche she
>> included in The Blind Assassin , I don't think she does see what she
>> does in books like HT as qualitatively the same thing at all as what
>> she represents within-genre SF as being in that book. . . . The fact
>> that the "Science Fiction masters" she discusses seem from the list
>> provided actually to be generally writers from outside the genre
>> (Wells is perhaps a bit of an exception, since there was not yet a
>> distinct genre for him to be outside, and in any event, he certainly
>> saw himself as a serious writer and intellectual) does not inspire
>> me with confidence that the book will really engage with SF so much
>> as it will engage with non-SF engagements with SF
>>
>> Dom
>> On 10/12/11, John Pierce < pierceqfpl at ewwpi.com > wrote:
>>
>>
>> The San Francisco Chronicle sure doesn't like her new book:
>>
>> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/10/09/entertainment/e220246D71.DTL
>>
>> But is the book really that bad, or is she just being put down for
>> taking sf seriously?
>>
>> --J.J.P.
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