“(W)hile science fiction as a genre does very well with the general public in the film and television media, there’s still resistance to getting a mainstream fiction reader to allow themselves to be seen with a science fiction book that’s explicitly presented as science fiction (as opposed to the camouflaged science fiction of The Road or Never Let Me Go).”
Over at TOR, John Scalzi uses Heinlein’s publication in The Saturday Evening Post in the 40’s to kick up quite a discussion about whether science fiction writers should meet non-science fiction readers half-way.
5 responses
I guess I’m painfully out of touch (or that I’ve never given a crap about what others think of my reading choices) but I’m having a tough time understanding why anyone would be embarrassed to be seen reading sci-fi.
That’s what I thought too, and then I remembered what genre sci-fi covers look like, and I flashed back to getting beat up in middle school for reading dorky fantasy. I think it’s conditioning from bullies when I was young. If the cover looks like this (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/08/the-wheel-of-time-re-read-winters-heart-part-9), I’m gonna hide it under my pillow.
I’ve been seen in public with a number of items most people would be embarrassed by. I wouldn’t mind being seen with a science fiction novel, unless it was by Harlan Ellison.
*blink, blink* Why would I be embarrassed to be seen with a SF book?
I’ve always been under the impression that mainstream readers shy away from SF because of the technical language and (literally) alien concepts, not because the genre is somehow less worthy. And to be fair, there’s at least a little truth to that– I recently guest-hosted a reading of William Gibson’s NEUROMANCER with a mainstream book club, and much of the discussion wound up being me explaining concepts like avatars, virtual space, artificial intelligence, and a whole lot of Japanese cultural references. I’m not calling them ignorant– they just didn’t share the frame of reference that many SF enthusiasts start out with from an early age.
Just as I wouldn’t race to pick up a book of “mathematical fiction,” (er… IS there any, aside from FLATLAND?) and someone who failed European History probably wouldn’t be too keen on historical fiction, the “science” part of “science fiction” probably turns some people off. “Oh, I wasn’t good at science,” they might think, “I won’t understand that.” (And that’s when I give them Connie Willis.)
The only covers that embarrass me are romances, and that’s just because I don’t like feeling stereotyped as a frilly female. (I know… next time, I’ll pair my romance reading with some Richard Kadrey. HA. Take that, stereotypers!)
Sigh … fair enough, everyone. This was a dumb title for this blog post. My fault. The discussion over there is still interesting, though.
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