What's "Literature"? Does it include military SF? Space opera? Who gets to decide what's "literature" and what's crap? And are you restricting the discussion to print? We can do that, but I don't think it's useful -- I really don't believe that defining a clean boundary between modes of narrative expression is a good idea if you want to figure out what's going on. When you do that you lose sight of things like the intertesting fact that the theatre is full of speculative elements, and that there's lots of interesting original SF being written for film.
The "seriousness" issue is a non-trivial question in at least two ways: First, speaking from a cultural standpoint, each class or type of literature has something to teach us about the society that conceives it; second, I'm not aware of any method of distinguishing literature from junk that doesn't either rely on highly subjective expert opinion or on market-driven determinations, which almost always end up lauding stuff that most of us would agree is crap. E.g., romantic vampire tales. My first paragraph meant what it said: There's been a demand for speculative literature in "the mainstream" for at least 20 years. We may not see what they want as "science fiction" -- but Speculative Literature is not Science Fiction and by any definition of 'Speculative Literature' that I find interesting, there's a good deal of it in the mainstream. (If we're going to say Spec Lit *is* SF, then there was no point in coining the term -- using it actually muddies the waters rather than clarifying them.) I don't think that's changed all that much in that time. The superficial character of the speculative literature the mainstream demands might have changed (as the type of literature readers want always does), but the demand has been there ever since I was a kid. *We* think what the mainstream reads is crap, because we have a different standard. I think the very first thing you have to decide before we can get very far figuring out whether there's a problem with "speculative literature" is what speculative literature *is*. I contend that by any definition that's not empirically market-driven, there's no lack of demand. I see the SF magazines as presenting only one subset of speculative literature; that's the subset people don't want. On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Jonathan Sherwood < [email protected]> wrote: > I'm not sure I understand your first paragraph. > And to make sure I am being clear: Is demand for speculative literature - > and I am emphasizing "literature" - decreasing? Or is the perceived decrease > an illusion? > > Yes, there are a lot of SF/F/Romance books out there, but how many might be > considered serious works of literature? Has the demand for those changed? > > -- > Jonathan Sherwood > Sr. Science & Technology Press Officer > University of Rochester > 585-273-4726 > > > On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Eric Scoles <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> But the demand was always there in other markets. (Or at least has been >> for 20 years or so.) We only think it was in one market because we were >> looking at some very particular sub-forms that are associated with the pulp >> SF magazines and SFWA. >> What's suffering is those sub-forms, and their associated markets. >> >> And I think we need to be careful when talking which parts are failing. >> It's obvious that the magazines are failing (I don't think that can be >> seriously disputed), but there are lots of *book* titles published still. >> It's just that right now, most of them are military SF and dramedic vampire >> titles. They're sucking up the oxygen, just like LOTR knockoffs sucked up >> the oxygen in fantasy in the '70s-'80s. >> >> >> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Jonathan Sherwood < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Certainly the appetite for science fiction and fantasy is strong - movies >>> and video games make that point solidly. >>> I think the real question is: Does the decline of traditional markets >>> indicate that the demand for spec literature is decreasing? Or is the same >>> demand shifting to other markets? >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Jonathan Sherwood >>> Sr. Science & Technology Press Officer >>> University of Rochester >>> 585-273-4726 >>> >>> >>> -- >> eric scoles ([email protected]) >> >> >> > > > > -- eric scoles ([email protected]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
