{"id":3849,"date":"2007-03-17T01:31:20","date_gmt":"2007-03-17T08:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2007\/03\/17\/3849.html"},"modified":"2007-03-17T01:31:20","modified_gmt":"2007-03-17T08:31:20","slug":"arguments-about-science-fictio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2007\/03\/17\/arguments-about-science-fictio\/","title":{"rendered":"Arguments about science fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Among my father's books, I just found a copy of a printed fanzine. It contains, among other things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A complaint that the sf world has too many awards.<\/li>\n<li>An article about trying to raise the profile of sf in literary circles, specifically in hopes of getting <cite>Best American Short Stories<\/cite> to publish some.<\/li>\n<li>Various arguments about whether science fiction is or should or can be literary and\/or intellectual. \"While appreciating that many readers read only for escape, we want to know: Dare we be serious?\" (--Brian Aldiss)<\/li>\n<li>Complaints about the state of sf, particularly the low quality of most of what's published.  \"On the whole, modern American science fiction has melted down into a kind of corrosive sludge.\"  (--Andrew Weiner)<\/li>\n<li>A complaint from a famous fantasy author that a famous science fiction author had insulted fantasy in a previous issue.<\/li>\n<li>A complaint from a fairly well-known author about the fact that authors and editors campaign for the Nebulas.<\/li>\n<li>A complaint from a reader about \"the amazing growth of functional illiteracy in our country [and] the utter failure of the educational system.\" (--Joseph A. Ezzo)<\/p>\n<li>Discussion of the idea that book editors don't get enough recognition in the Best Pro Editor Hugo.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The fanzine? A 1982 issue of Charles Platt's <cite>The Patchin Review<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<p>Verily, it is said: all the arguments we have about sf these days are rehashes of arguments people were having twenty-five years ago. And I suspect several of those arguments were already rehashes, in 1982, of arguments that people had had at least ten years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, <cite>Patchin Review<\/cite> doesn't seem to have yet made it into the electronic archives at <a href=\"http:\/\/efanzines.com\/\">eFanzines.com<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/fanac.org\/fanzines\/\">fanac.org<\/a>. But you can <a href=\"http:\/\/biblion.co.uk\/books\/115111.html\">buy a copy of this issue<\/a> from biblion.co.uk if you want to see what they were talking about back then. It also contains some stuff I didn't mention above, like excerpts from an interview with Philip K. Dick, and assorted convention gossip.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among my father&#8217;s books, I just found a copy of a printed fanzine. It contains, among other things: A complaint&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speculative-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}