I hadn’t read anything by Jeanette Winterson, although I had of course heard of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, so when I picked up The Stone Gods and saw that it was realio trulio science fiction, with robots and spaceships and everything, I figured what the hell. I mean, if nothing else, it’ll give me another chance to hock about literary novelists and specfic, right?
See, here’s the thing: Most of the time, people who review the new works of literary novelists (in prestigious newspapers and journals) don’t read a lot of science fiction and so their responses to speculative works by literary novelists are unsatisfying. Most of the time, people who review the new works of specfic novelists (in specialty magazines and websites) don’t read a lot of literary novels and so their responses to speculative works by literary novelists are unsatisfying. Publishers presumably have difficulty marketing literary specfic, too, and don’t want to alienate the writer’s fans (or the writer herself) with a marketing campaign aimed at readers of specfic.
So unless (a) the book wins a crapload of awards, or (2) the writer is a fan of specfic and has a specfic following already, new specfic novels by literary novelists don’t get into the genre discussion.
Or I don’t get into the genre discussion. Because it’s not like I really make much of an effort to keep current. But I do look at the nominations for the awards, and I generally read at least one or two blog posts about what got totally robbed, and I form my impression of the genre discussion from that. Which is probably totally wrong, but there it is And it’s not as if I think that The Stone Gods should have won the Hugo or should win the Nebula or that (and the Hugo this year did go to a fellow with a career as a literary novelist). But it is a fascinating novel, and it the specific interests (both the narrative/form play and the speculative elements (environmental degradation, encroaching corporate-capitalist fascism, the surveillance state, artificial intelligence, societal effects and pressures in a world with genetic Fixing, among others) are ones current in other books and are not treated as if nobody had ever addressed them before.
I’ve now read specfic novels by Philip Roth, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Walter Mosley, Michael Chabon and Jeannette Winterson (talking specifically about current writers of literary reputation) (and probably leaving out a few that haven’t come to mind immediately), and of those, only Mr. Chabon’s has entered deeply into the conversation. By which I mean, people talking about current specfic novels would naturally expect other people talking bout current specfic novels to have read, oh, something by China Mieville and something by Cory Doctorow, or if not, to have some reason why they haven’t read them. I don’t think that’s true of any of the names I mentioned up there (except Mr. Chabon and possibly Ms. Atwood), and although some of the books are better than others, it seems like a loss.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.