Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Say it loud, I'm a nerd and I'm proud

These two posts on the acceptability of scifi really got my goat. They reek of the general snobbery that fears genre fiction. Their loss, right? They are missing the likes of Banks, Elizabeth Moon, James Ellroy and Philip Kerr. What's more, I would argue that today's genre novels scifi and mystery at least are superior to literary fiction at social analysis. Whatever, we on the nerdy side are used to the disparaging glances of the cognoscenti.

No, what really is annoying is the emphasis on the likes of Vonnegut and Phillip K Dick. Yes fine, pick the more literary scifi novelists from 20-30 years ago. I suppose that every few decades a worthwhile item will beach itself on the banks of the fetid swamp that is scifi. There is more decent scifi coming out each year that one can reasonably expect to read. You better recognize.

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