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SF, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and other dirty words.

Started by Zero Gravitas, December 17, 2010, 08:27:06 PM

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Zero Gravitas

Eurgh, not that stuff with elves and space ships in it!

I'm in the middle of 'The Year of the Flood' by Margaret Atwood a book which along with it's precursor 'Oryx and Crake' I'd describe as sci-fi without a hesitation, Atwood on the other hand has different views on what she writes:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood#Atwood_and_science_fiction
Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to The Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." She told the Book of the Month Club: "Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." and on BBC Breakfast explained that science fiction, as opposed to what she wrote, was "talking squids in outer space."



It's a fair argument that they're 'ecological science fantasy' or whatever convoluted genre description you'd care to make up but it's the dim view of Sci-Fi that rankles me most, a genre that spans from Ubik to Frankenstein to 2001 seems to cause shame in publishers and authors alike. I recall in 'Piece' by Iain Banks one of his characters is embarrassed at reading a book with spaceships on the cover (Although that does appear in a Sci-Fi anthology that was published without the M).

When 'SyFy' changed it's name a little while ago it was in a partial attempt to distance itself from Lazer pistols and Hyperspace, interestingly though the tension at being linked to Sci-Fi is reaches back to the birth of the Channel itself:



http://www.hollywood.com/news/SyFy_Say_Its_Not_So/5414665
The writers were not happy — and that's an understatement. They said they wouldn't watch it. They would oppose it unless we called it the SF Channel because calling it "Sci Fi Channel" was a put-down to the SF genre, as "sci-fi" is slang for SF and science fiction — and a huge mistake. And I said if we called it the SF Channel, people would think it's about the city of San Francisco.

I was booed.

Then Isaac started to speak and said that the name had to be Sci Fi Channel and not the SF Channel in order to draw a wide, diverse audience and be successful. To be in a financial position to acquire and produce the best programming. That's really what counts, right? The writers came around and agreed. Heck, it was Isaac Asimov saying "Sci Fi Channel" was OK, and that was that.




A genre dirtier than 'romance' so it seems. Not that I'm without prejudice, if I flick through the first few pages and see elves or orks or kobolds I'll wrinkle my nose up just the same at the expectation of sword fights, rose-tinted social systems and a disturbing racial biases.

Is their anything that you'll automatically put into the oxfam pile without reading a word? Or are you one of those freaks that thinks fiction is pointless?

Humorous reductions of literary genres are also welcome.

Apologies for the weird quoting solution, blame Neil.


--edit--

Oh dear.

Sci-fi's a pretty broad church.

I don't much care for "hard" sci-fi - anything with 30-page descriptions of faster-than-light drives would probably go in the Oxfam pile.

Hmmm. I think sometimes a genre is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to do anything interesting with it. I'd probably put "romance" in that category.

Not sci-fi though - there's loads of different kinds of that.

wasp_f15ting

It bugs me that science fiction gets a bad name so quickly. I am openly stating I am a trekkie to anyone I meet, and immediately get mocked for it at work. However when everyone walks away and its just me and another manager, he'll snuggle up to me on the trendy bar sofa and tell me; how much he loved TNG and Piccard. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) film of 2010 was a sci-fi film.

I love science fiction.  I am going through some Roger Zelanzy stuff at the moment and love the escapism and ideas it imparts on me. I really cannot understand the hesitance people have about picking up sci-fi. I think it is the most important kind of fiction there is. I am hoping massive space operas like Mass Effect can push people to read too. The weird thing is stuff like Fable 3 which is pure fantasy will sell 2 million units but the same people who play fable will mock you for reading fantasy..

So.. most people are dicks. Ignore them and do / read whatever you want. That said; I'll never fucking read any kind of football biography or the biography of Danny Dyer or some cunt like that.. no fucking way.

Borboski

There's a good brand at the moment of quality SF, isn't there, has stuff like "And Adroids Dream" and "The Man In The Castle" in it.

Zero Gravitas

Quote from: Borboski on December 17, 2010, 09:15:39 PM
There's a good brand at the moment of quality SF, isn't there, has stuff like "And Adroids Dream" and "The Man In The Castle" in it.
Do you mean "The androids dream" and the Tor books imprint or is that some kind of PKD trolling?

Quote from: Maybe Im Doing It Wrong on December 17, 2010, 09:06:00 PM
Sci-fi's a pretty broad church.

I don't much care for "hard" sci-fi - anything with 30-page descriptions of faster-than-light drives would probably go in the Oxfam pile.

Oh very much so, as above in the sci-fi/SF quote but I think sci-fi as a name is starting off from a bad position, for example I tried to convince a friend to try the new BSG to be told "That's such a boy thing, it's SPACE WAR!" which is partially true to be fair.

I think I use hard-sf slightly differently as meaning that it's constrained by our current knowledge of the limitations of science and keeps within what's possible even if not practical, but I suppose that's just a form of elitism it's not as if the things that are important within the narrative aren't possible with a little hand-waving over how the engines work.

I recently encountered a similar thing when buying for my mother, she reads historical fiction and is more than happy to read something where a character happens to have the name of a historical person and claims to be an accurate account but the second the whole thing is admitted to be a complete fiction no matter how accurate it's somehow less worthy.

I suppose both are keeping one foot outside fiction in a way and it's ultimately a disguised 'pure fiction is worthless' position that somehow we're reading about science or reading about history however tenuous the link.

MojoJojo

I think writers disdain for science fiction is partly due to a to the fact it's not really a genre in the way a genre was described to me in GCSE English. There are no standard scenes, like the detective collecting all the possible suspects together at the end of a mystery. There are no standard characters, like the femme fatale or the quiet and neutral barkeeper in the private detective genre.

There is still a bit of a flash gordon stereotype hanging around the genre. It's weird... the stigma seemed to develop some time between H.G.Wells, who is generally considered worthy by people who study English literature (and is the first author I think who I would describe as sci-fi, despite earlier authors employing certain aspects, and me generally being quite ignorant of these sort of things), and the 1950s when Phillip K. Dick suffered under the sci-fi stigma. (he sold his first novel in 1951, 3 years after 1984...)

Hypothesis: sci-fi developed a bad reputation because sex came up a lot in those first 50 years, giving it a smutty image. The inspiration for this hypothesis is the two sci-fi books I've read between Wells and Dick both talk about sex far more than you would expect for books from that period (Brave New World and 1984, for those who are wondering). Actually Wells talks about sex a bit more than I expected.

But then I haven't read much from that period full stop. Someone who knows better, is this something I could wring an English PhD out of?[nb]assuming I learn how to speak proper good so I don't make all these grammar mistakes[/nb]
Supported a bit by the fact sci-fi talks about sex issues far more than most genres do (apart from the porn "genre", obvious).

HappyTree

SyFy cancelled both Caprica and Stargate Universe so they're in my bad books.

Zetetic

Quote from: MojoJojo on December 17, 2010, 11:06:28 PM
The inspiration for this hypothesis is the two sci-fi books I've read between Wells and Dick both talk about sex far more than you would expect for books from that period (Brave New World and 1984, for those who are wondering). Actually Wells talks about sex a bit more than I expected.
It's interesting that you consider 1984 sci-fi. On Wikipedia, it's got the rather unbelievable genre 'social science fiction' attached to it. I'm not entirely sure it's simply distaste that's pushed towards the (perhaps) pretentious 'speculative fiction' label, but that 'science' is a bit limiting. There's very little (if anything) in 1984 that speculates about scientific or technological 'progress' from the 1940s. Conversely, I certainly wouldn't argue that it does fit quite neatly in with lots of science fiction.

small_world

I always find Sci-Fi to be such a mixed bag, the range of quality is massive. I could read a good Sci-Fi books and be content forever, but I'll read one or two then hit upon something so unbelievably crap that I'll give up on the genre for a year or so.

The last thing I read was Gradisil and was the last Sci-Fi I'll read for a while. It was massive and so shit, a three parter-in one taking place over a few generations charting the 'history' of (just)outer-space habitation. It went down the - invention of a new language root, changing some letters and skipping some in the second part, then expanding upon that in the third part, making the thing barely readable. Fucking total waste of time.

Anyway, I don't know if you'll like this, Steam Punk Mongs It seems to fit with the thread, consider it a gift.

Oh, and while were on Sci-Fi, can anyone help figure out what I'm on about...
I remember reading a book when I was in early secondary school, it was about a ship that crashed on an alien planet, there were no inhabitants (not sure about that one) but the trees had brains and were doing things.
Also, on the ship there was a prisoner with some crazy powers or a gift of some kind. When I saw the film with Pitch Black it reminded me a hell of a lot of this book (I think it may have been a series), especially the character Riddick, with his blindness and strength and that...
Cool, cheers.

Famous Mortimer

I've never really been fussed by the divisions between sub-genres, I tried calling it all fantastic fiction for a bit but realised I was being a bit of a dick. "Genre" fiction, maybe? I don't know.

But anyway, fan of it all from a young young age. A large group of us at school all read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and the Spellsinger books, the Hugh Cook ones...

I love some hard sci-fi. Allen Steele, Alastair Reynolds, it's all good. Any book which spends 30 pages talking about any background thing is going to suck, but there's tons of it which doesn't (although I'd be interested if there were people dismissing "hard westerns" because they had too much horse description in them, or something).

I still dip my toe into the longer series. I was about to mention George R R Martin and how much I love him, but casting my mind back there's not really any magic in those books at all, or anything to really differentiate them from yer average historical fiction (apart from being really good, of course). I tried one called "The Saga of Seven Suns" and while it had an interesting universe I just realised after the first volume I didn't give a bit of a fuck what was going to happen to the characters.

Our genre does seem particularly susceptible to long novel series, though. If we're including all that vampire nonsense, there's volume 20s and so on knocking about the shelves of Waterstones. What do they find to write about after 20 books?

Lee Van Cleef

I'm not sure why these things are the case, but I do find it interesting that examples that are targeted at the younger audience (Doctor Who and Harry Potter, for instance) are acceptable entertainment for everyone including adults, and yet more mature examples are not. Now there's a degree of "it's okay for kids" in that, because we accept and encourage kids using their imagination, but as i said adults willingly engage in these things too, so what makes them different?  Why is an adult engaging their imagination by reading Terry Brooks or whoever stigmatised?

There's a book called Performing The Force which has essays on immersion in Sci-Fi, fantasy and Horror environments that I'm sure has some chapters dedicated to this kind of thing. How far I'd go with what they say I'm not sure as it's all a bit vague in my memory, since I read it around 6 years ago.

HappyTree

Quote from: Lee Van Cleef on December 18, 2010, 09:29:16 AM
Why is an adult engaging their imagination by reading Terry Brooks or whoever stigmatised?
Are they? I've never heard of any stigma against adults reading fantasy. It's my favourite genre. My brother has no patience for books like that, preferring gritty realism, but I thought it was just him slagging me off for reading books with character names like "Xth'aarg" (obligatory apostrophe).

Piers Anthony was good for mixing sci-fi and fantasy. I like both.

Zetetic

Edit: Because I'm a prat, and a slow one at that - I meant that I wouldn't argue with the claim that 1984 fitted quite neatly alongside examples of sci-fi.

Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on December 18, 2010, 07:43:27 AM
I tried one called "The Saga of Seven Suns" and while it had an interesting universe I just realised after the first volume I didn't give a bit of a fuck what was going to happen to the characters.

Kevin J Anderson is a talentless hack, the Prelude to Dune books he wrote with Frank Herbert's son are some of the worst, most cliched science fiction books I've ever read. It's like they went through the Dune series, decided what the best things about it were, and then deliberately left them out.

Famous Mortimer

You've not tried talentless hacks til you've tried the sequels to Blade Runner. KW Jeter (or something like that), just awful and stupid and boring and ignores anything that was any good about the original.

Sci-fi pet hate: those annoyingly apostrophe'd names. It's the thing that's so far stopped me from reading any of Iain M Bank's sci-fi stuff.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

I think that sort of reaction is understandable - once your book becomes widely regarded as 'sci-fi' it's going to get placed in the sci-fi section of most bookshop; an area where most people arent going to  want to go anywhere near. There's also an issue with cover art as well - I would genuinely think twice about picking up a sci-fi book with airbrushed spaceships and off-world spacestations because it probably is something id want to hide from people coming round my house. I still dont really understand why most sci-fi illustrators seem to be stuck in the 80s in that respect. But i do know that if i was looking to get sci-fi or fantasy book published who was doing the cover art and whether or not their bedsit was covered in Athena posters would definitely be a deal-breaker for me.

Barberism

I think part of the stigma is a result of jealousy. On the recommendation of this forum I watched Freaks and Geeks. I think the show made a good point that a lot of people are into sci-fi but don't read/watch it because of the social stigma. I think some people are genuinely afraid of unironically showing passion for something that is seen to be a bit geeky and weird.





rudi

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on December 18, 2010, 01:41:24 PMSci-fi pet hate: those annoyingly apostrophe'd names. It's the thing that's so far stopped me from reading any of Iain M Bank's sci-fi stuff.

A pity; Player of Games is t'riffic. The others, less so.

micanio

Quote from: rudi on December 18, 2010, 08:18:12 PM
A pity; Player of Games is t'riffic. The others, less so.

Definitely - the best Culture novel by a country mile.

I tried to read the first 'Saga of the Seven Suns" book. What a pile of steaming gash. Every bad SF cliche and terrible writing.

Now if you want to read a good SF series then read Hyperion and Endymion by Dan Simmons. Superb. Also any Alistair Reynolds. Brilliant realised hard SF.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: micanio on December 19, 2010, 01:03:55 AM
Dan Simmons
Not really SF, but his "The Terror" is one of the best books I've read in years. A tale of a real expedition to find the Northwest Passage to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific via northern Canada in 1845, but with a fictional monster in it. Fucking brilliant, it'll make you want to be a scholar of ill-fated expeditions as soon as you've finished reading it.

MojoJojo

Quote from: rudi on December 18, 2010, 08:18:12 PM
A pity; Player of Games is t'riffic. The others, less so.

Good god yes, I'm almost tempted to read it again just because someone has mentioned it.

Been vaguely thinking back to this threa during today... but I think the basic problem is that sci-fi is ridiculously broad in genre terms. You get the space operas. You get the medieval romances - IN SPACE! But then a lot of "sci-fi" is basically some other genre "IN SPACE!" (e.g. Neil Asher writes James Bond in space).

I think most people who are fans of sci-fi are probably fans of that modern euphemism "speculative fiction"... but then that's a ridiculously broad term too. So, uh, stigma that is attached to the "genre" is probably probably due to the fact sci-fi can't really be defined as a genre in English-Lit terms, beyond "not in the current day or the past, and normally involves technology somewhere". I'm imagining aged english professor in the 1920s demanding essays on sci-fi from their students, as they have no idea and it's easier to ask students to do the research. The smartass students get pissed off when they discover that sci-fi basically means "... IN SPACE", write scathing essays which come down to "SHIT IN SPACE", and this becomes the received opinion for the next 2000 years, until Tharg takes over the planet.

Famous Mortimer

China Mieville, as well as being a brilliant writer, also does meetings about politics and sci-fi. If you're of a leftie bent you might well enjoy his talk from a few years back on "Marxism and Monsters" at http://www.radio-rouge.org/Users/resistancemp3/marxism-and-monsters-china-mieville.mp3. Talking of him, I really ought to read his new one, sat on my shelf.

Re: stuff...in space!, they're usually the worst ones. Apart from ones like "The Stars My Destination" (Count of Monte Cristo...in space!).

Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: rudi on December 18, 2010, 08:18:12 PM
A pity; Player of Games is t'riffic. The others, less so.

I read that last week and though I liked it, I didn't enjoy it as much as Look to Windward or perhaps Excession. Central character pissed me off a bit, and
Spoiler alert
it was obvious the narrator, the drone that blackmails him and the "library drone" were the same person. Also, I thought he overdid the Azad - he makes them so evil they stop being scary and become cartoonish.
[close]
Still a good read though.

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on December 20, 2010, 07:35:13 AM
China Mieville, as well as being a brilliant writer, also does meetings about politics and sci-fi.

I've been getting into Mieville recently since some of his stuff's appeared in the local library - only read a couple so far though. The City and The City is brilliant, and The Scar, while taking a while to get going, does reward you if you stick with it. He's got a great, multi-level writing style, looking forward to reading more of his work.

Mister Six

Quote from: Barberism on December 18, 2010, 08:00:22 PM
I think part of the stigma is a result of jealousy. On the recommendation of this forum I watched Freaks and Geeks. I think the show made a good point that a lot of people are into sci-fi but don't read/watch it because of the social stigma. I think some people are genuinely afraid of unironically showing passion for something that is seen to be a bit geeky and weird.

Yep. While I don't know the origins of the 'sci-fi is for nerds' classification (though I rather like the suggestion above that it's because the books were too cool by modern standards - too much violence, too much sex - to push into the mainstream of the 50s) I'm pretty sure that it's helped develop a homeostatic cultural environment that forces people to choose between sci-fi/fantasy and social acceptability.

If you're in school and you have any degree of credibility then you'll avoid aligning yourself with anything deemed uncool lest it tarnish your status. On the other hand if you've got nothing left to lose then you might as well go with it. And, of course, the more that athletic, edgy and otherwise cool people publicly spurn sci-fi (and the more that fat, spotty, bespectacled spods associate with it) the more those definitions and cultural groups become solidified.

So you end up with a sci-fi subculture that has an unusually (though not necessarily overwhelmingly) large proportion of people with chips on their shoulders about their status in society. Rejected by - or perceiving rejection from - the wider social grouping, they embrace their fandom with psychotic verve. These are the ones that turn into 'super-fans' - the ones for whom everything is secondary to their hobby. They're the ones that shout loudest on the message boards, create cults of personality around themselves and wind up being, unfortunately, the most visible faces of the fandom. Sometimes the worst happens and they get recognised by (or become part of) the establishment: then you end up with your Lawrence Mileses and John Byrnes.

The popular equation of sci-fi = geek = oucast carries on into adulthood, of course, and while some people let their minds broaden as they grow older, many more - including those that inform wider culture, like TV presenters, newspaper writers, comedians and the like - remain shackled by, and help to promulgate, this status quo. And where popular opinion conflicts with the accepted knowledge, excuses are made (Red Dwarf's not sci-fi, it's a sitcom; Avatar wasn't sci-fi, it was a populist spectacle and 3D extravaganza; Doctor Who's not sci-fi, it's just good British family entertainment). The same thing's happened with comic books.[nb]Of course, there's been a bit of progress here thanks to a series of rather good superhero movies and David Tennant's cheekbones. But in these cases it was usually more about popular culture appropriating facets of perceived 'geek' culture than a wholesale acceptance of sf/fantasy/comics/whatever. Hence all the 'geek chic' headlines from a while back. And that acceptance only penetrates a little way into genre fiction. Watching Doctor Who is fine. Watching Primer is not. Reading Harry Potter is fine. Reading... I dunno, pick a harder fantasy series... is not. [/nb]

But what's worse is that all the self-appointed superiority that created this division then continues thanks to the super-fans. So within the subgenre of sci-fi/fantasy you end up with people putting up more barriers, declaring that science fiction, SF and sci-fi should all mean different things; that genres should, rather than helping the reader find something to their tastes, instead be factions that have to be fought for; that personal opinion and rock-solid fact are interchangeable.

And because the differences between sci-fi fandom and academia are limited to chosen subject and a propensity to wear tweed (and even the latter's changing in some circles thanks to Doctor Who), lecturers, professors and the like are quick to erect similar barriers - though there the excuse of choice is literary worth rather than coolness - so you end up with Tom Paulin wannabes refusing to accept that 1984 and Brave New World are science fiction or that The Tempest and Animal Farm are as much a part of the fantasy genre as Harry Potter. There's an astonishing number of self-described intellectuals like Tom Paulin who, in these cases, actually forego using their intellect in favour of gut instinct ('Well I don't like it so it can't be worthy...').

So everyone's got these rigid, intractable positions that are defined by pack mentality and insecurity and it's very bloody annoying. Maybe there's some hope - that the millions of kids and adults of all walks of life that read Harry Potter or watch Doctor Who or True Blood will have broader minds than the previous generation. But I can't see any big changes happening within the next 60-odd years because such changes are so incremental (and subject to recession in the face of changing fashions and tastes).

Video games, of course, have pushed through the same barriers just fine in the past 20 years. But that's more about people catching up with the technology than anything else. Junior schools these days have a computer for every child rather than a shitty BBC Micro stuck in a corner. The war between cool/academic elitism and videogame acceptability has already been won - the professors and cool kids just don't know it yet.

Mister Six


samadriel

Quote from: Mister Six on December 20, 2010, 02:43:17 PM
And that acceptance only penetrates a little way into genre fiction. Watching Doctor Who is fine. Watching Primer is not. Reading Harry Potter is fine. Reading... I dunno, pick a harder fantasy series... is not.

I'm not so sure it's that way 'round.  I find that describing something like Primer or, say, Pi, will attract a fair amount of enthusiasm from those who don't consider themselves 'nerds', and, when watching it, they won't be prejudiced against it for being sci-fi.  Fantasy-book-wise, I'm re-reading Towing Jehovah by James Morrow at the moment, and my descriptions of it in conversation have also gotten enthusiasm and requests to borrow it, genre be damned.  In contrast, I find when people profess enjoyment of Harry Potter or Doctor Who, the room temperature suddenly lowers as the non-fans mentally scramble for a way to steer the conversation 180 before Quidditch or David Tennant turn up.  It's only within self-professed-nerd-majority enclaves that I see HP/DW accepted.  I think the perception[nb]a correct one in the case of those two[/nb] that something is for children does a lot more to make it socially unacceptable than its genre status per se.

Mind you, I'm talking about adults here, possibly ones unusually receptive of genre fiction; if we're talking about teenage geek anxieties, I have no idea how adolescents generally respond to HP/DW.  I would've thought they'd have a stronger antipathy, as they attempt to divorce themselves from kids' stuff, but hey.

Mister Six

Quote from: samadriel on December 20, 2010, 05:14:53 PMIn contrast, I find when people profess enjoyment of Harry Potter or Doctor Who, the room temperature suddenly lowers as the non-fans mentally scramble for a way to steer the conversation 180 before Quidditch or David Tennant turn up.  It's only within self-professed-nerd-majority enclaves that I see HP/DW accepted.  I think the perception[nb]a correct one in the case of those two[/nb] that something is for children does a lot more to make it socially unacceptable than its genre status per se

I guess it depends who you hang around with. Certainly your friends sound like mine. But I'm talking about the great unwashed - the people who wouldn't pick up Primer if you left it on their car seat and whose friends are pretty much the same way. Which is most people, really. And yet Harry Potter is sold to them in sexy black-and-white adult covers, or in blockbuster movies. These are the people who'll still happily watch the Doctor Who Xmas Special in five days' time even though you'd never get them to pick up a City of Dead DVD.

People like, say, The Radio Times' Alison Graham, who once wrote in all seriousness that Harry Potter was tremendous fun but that she didn't have time for other fantasy and sci-fi books because they're not about the real world (the concept of metaphor apparently being alien to her). I've met and worked with (and have become friends with, too) people like this for years.

Your friends are outliers from the wider human flock. More's the pity.

HappyTree

I find this talk of anti sci-fi stigma interesting, but I've truly never experienced it. I've always been very open about my liking for sci-fi and fantasy and nobody has ever pulled me up on it in any way. In fact I've felt quite proud of my taste and liking for fantastic metaphor, and not at all embarrassed to say that I don't like "real life" novels because they seem to me too mundane and direct. I suppose it depends why one reads. I don't see the point of living my life in the real world and then spending my leisure and recreational time reading about more of it. When I did Eng Lit at uni I mostly engaged with the texts from a philosophical point of view, experiencing the novels as fascinating comments on the human condition but not as anything particularly fun or enjoyable just as a good story.

I suppose one could say I'm an escapist, then. But I've yet to feel in any way looked down upon for that. There are some who express a distaste for this kind of fantasy escapism but as for that being the prevailing attitude of society, well maybe I don't mix in the right circles to notice it.

sirhenry

I started reading sci-fi/SF in the early 70's and it appeared that it was around then that the split between the two developed. Hard science fiction[nb]like Larry Niven (who has all but disappeared now) who wrote stories that were effectively whodunnits, but instead of working out who the killer was the reader had to work out the solution from the science given. His series of short stories about the social changes caused by the invention of teleportation are classics of the 'What if...' subgenre[/nb] and speculative fiction[nb]like Michael Moorcock and the rest of the New Worlds writers. Jerry Cornelius, the drug-dependent nihilist alternative to James Bond, was an extended allegory of the self-destructive late 60's/early 70's mindset that most Star Wars fans would be horrified by.[/nb] readers wanted some way to distance themselves from what were then called 'space operas' (stuff like Star Trek) and the vast swathes of pulp stuff, much of which was just horror dressed up in shiny spacesuits[nb]See Theodore Sturgeon/Kilgore Trout - great stories, but pulp to the core.[/nb].

So 'proper Science' Fiction and Speculative Fiction (which is where I'd place Margaret Attwood) tried to promote SF as a genre that readers wouldn't be embarrassed to admit liking, distancing it from Sci-Fi.

Doesn't look like it worked.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

These days most people I know appreciate someone who reads anything beyond appalling shit-lit like celebrity penned slush fiction and sci-fi fan fiction. I'm not sure it's a dirty word outside of people in academia who like to mainly discuss classics, and as such are sneery of most contemporary fiction anyway.