We usually just dash off the characterization Cory's talking about without supporting it much, but this is a nice lucid explanation.
My one quibble would be that I don't think most *people* (by which I do *not * mean "most SF readers") who've read it would agree with characterizing *Spook Country* as SF'nal in feel. Gibson's pretty fuzzy on that one himself. (I haven't seen him making any market-driven distancing maneuvers; I have read and heard him sort of trying to rationalize it as a kind of SF, which seems to me also to be what Cory is doing.) Though Cory does cover himself with "uses the tricks of science fiction in a contemporary setting," which I've heard in one form or another in many discussions of that book, I'm no more certain now what that concept means than I was when I first encountered it. From my perspective, *Spook Country* reminds me much more of Frederick Forsyth than of anything SF'nal that I can think of -- though for sure it's intensely Gibsonian. Or one could take the counterposition that, say, *Day of the Jackal* 'uses the tricks of SF.' It might be closer to SF in spirit than it is to much of the genre that it served as a template for. (Aside to anyone who's ever dismissed *Day of the Jackal* or *Dogs of War* as 'mere thrillers,' I recommend taking a look at them: they're cracking good exercises in novel-writing. Very Hammet-esque in feel. And as it happens *Dogs of War* has a particularly satisfying twist that's not unlike the one Gibson uncorks in *Spook Country*.) On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Jason Olshefsky <[email protected]>wrote: > > http://tinhousebooks.com/blog/?p=410 > > Cory Doctorow's take on speculative science fiction as being about the > present much more than an attempt to predict the future. > > ---Jason Olshefsky > > > > -- 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
