Just when I think Leftists can\u2019t get any more un-American they say, \u201cHold my soy latte\u201d and show us just how miserably wretched they truly are.\u00a0 Up here in New England one of the states (it doesn\u2019t matter which one) is debating a bill to mandate 100% voting turnout for all elections.<\/p>\n
Now I don\u2019t know the details.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how they\u2019ll guarantee that the dying and the late-stage dementia patients are forced to vote.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing if you don\u2019t show up the ballot gets filled out for you by the Secretary of State.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re calling it the 100% Democracy Bill or something brilliant like that.<\/p>\n
This sounds like a joke from our side; just a way to make fun of the leftist tendency to dictate behavior for \u201cpeople\u2019s own good\u201d but this is actual legislation that\u2019s currently under debate.\u00a0 Actual politicians in this part of the country think this is consistent with the American constitution.\u00a0 Well, all I can say is these people are insane.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re also running the show up here.\u00a0 The insanity is baked deep into everything they think and do.\u00a0 They don\u2019t realize how this looks to people on the outside.\u00a0 This is so close to North Korea and Sadaam\u2019s Iraq where \u201cfree elections\u201d end up with the dear leaders garnishing >99% of the vote every single time.<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s enough about that.<\/p>\n
I was thinking today about the definition of literary science fiction.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s any science fiction that has enough character development and enough verisimilitude to the way real people act and talk and feel to convince \u201cserious\u201d literary critics that your story is literature and not entertainment.\u00a0 I guess it has to be in some sense \u201creal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I understand that what it\u2019s mostly become is racial and sexual grievance screeds very unconvincingly disguised as science fiction.\u00a0 So outside of a specific population of people primarily dedicated to reading such stuff it\u2019s not going to very interesting to most of the human race.<\/p>\n
But putting this political sub-genre aside what is the difference between genre fiction like science fiction and fantasy and actual literary fiction?<\/p>\n
Well, I think that\u2019s still quite subjective but I get the point of some of the criticism of some genre fiction.\u00a0 The story can be so stereotyped that the action feels cartoonish, the characters are one dimensional and the dialog is completely predictable.\u00a0 I can think of some pulp stuff that seems that way now.\u00a0 But by the same token, there are literary \u201cmasterpieces\u201d that have long stretches of boring plot where nothing much happens.\u00a0 And even the most widely hailed protagonists can have whole chapters where the story drags and the dialog is meh.<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s the calculation?\u00a0 Can a pulp story have 95% of the story composed of space opera and still be \u201cliterature\u201d if the author gives the hero a scene full of heartbreaking humanity and emotional conflict?\u00a0 Sure, we\u2019re not expecting Conan the Barbarian to break into a Shakespearian soliloquy when one of his comrades is skewered by a neolithic monster.\u00a0 But if you write a story that has an interesting plot surely there is no shame in trying to make, some of the characters at least, recognizably and honestly human.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019m not thinking about Hamlet showing up in any of my stories.\u00a0 But Macbeth might as well be a medieval urban fantasy story.\u00a0 It has witches and magic and ghosts.\u00a0 Just because it\u2019s in iambic pentameter and has \u201cthou\u201d and \u201cthee\u201d scattered around in it doesn\u2019t make it any less a crime drama.\u00a0 So, who\u2019s to say that a genre novel can\u2019t be legitimate literature?<\/p>\n
Just something I was thinking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just when I think Leftists can\u2019t get any more un-American they say, \u201cHold my soy latte\u201d and show us just how miserably wretched they truly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,2510,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[96,38,1355,265],"class_list":["post-32629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-literature","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n