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That big Communal Dialogue about where the line falls between Science Fiction and Fantasy is still going on. It's been going on for months, all over the blogosphere. All the Cool Kids Are Doing It. (If you haven't seen it for yourself and want to, go visit ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala, who has posted links to what seem to be most of the notable essays and discussions over the past several weeks.) twoeleven even tried to get me to have a Professional Opinion on the subject. And I gave that a try, in my head, because I used to write very pretty criticism. It turns out I'm still allergic to it. I can enjoy the successes of my friends who've stayed in academia, and I'm a fine dissertation coach for other people's dissertations, but the minute my brain starts constructing new paragraphs that footnote Jurgen fucking Habermas, I start to feel nauseated, like with real nausea and stuff. Sometimes also shaking. At one point, as I was driving from DC to Jersey on the Turnpike, I was on the verge of deciding to post at length on the genre boundary issue, and my revulsion at academic discourse was so great, I had to pull over. I Won't Go Back to Jail! Knock yourselves out, guys. Ask me again in five years.
I tell stories. I build sentences. That's the work that makes life sweet. I think about that work, but theorizing is not the only form thinking can take. Theorizing, in the lit crit sense of the term, is, in my experience, the least useful form of thinking for a person who wants to insinuate her images into the dream lives of strangers.
What I find almost heartening about the ongoing debate among the Cool Kids is that my longer book is exactly what the more interesting people in the debate seem to want: a fantasy novel of democratizing revolution; a fantasy novel whose what-ifs challenge, rather than fetishize, the order of things; a fantasy novel whose setting is more like 1789 than like 1066. My longer book does, or with revision is on its way to doing, several of the putatively enlightened things the Hard Science Fiction True Believers claim fantasy can't do.
Wouldn't it be fun to be smug right now? I wish I had more hope that the big book would ever see print.
***
Happy Solstice, to those of you who celebrate it. This year Dan and I decided that, rather than try to find individual Yule gifts for the Pagans in our community who are not actually part of our coven, we'd give a big, chunky donation to the ACLU. We figure the Bill of Rights is one-size-fits-all. And, in the one-size-fits-all spirit, Happy More Light Real Soon Day.
matociquala, who has posted links to what seem to be most of the notable essays and discussions over the past several weeks.) twoeleven even tried to get me to have a Professional Opinion on the subject. And I gave that a try, in my head, because I used to write very pretty criticism. It turns out I'm still allergic to it. I can enjoy the successes of my friends who've stayed in academia, and I'm a fine dissertation coach for other people's dissertations, but the minute my brain starts constructing new paragraphs that footnote Jurgen fucking Habermas, I start to feel nauseated, like with real nausea and stuff. Sometimes also shaking. At one point, as I was driving from DC to Jersey on the Turnpike, I was on the verge of deciding to post at length on the genre boundary issue, and my revulsion at academic discourse was so great, I had to pull over. I Won't Go Back to Jail! Knock yourselves out, guys. Ask me again in five years.I tell stories. I build sentences. That's the work that makes life sweet. I think about that work, but theorizing is not the only form thinking can take. Theorizing, in the lit crit sense of the term, is, in my experience, the least useful form of thinking for a person who wants to insinuate her images into the dream lives of strangers.
What I find almost heartening about the ongoing debate among the Cool Kids is that my longer book is exactly what the more interesting people in the debate seem to want: a fantasy novel of democratizing revolution; a fantasy novel whose what-ifs challenge, rather than fetishize, the order of things; a fantasy novel whose setting is more like 1789 than like 1066. My longer book does, or with revision is on its way to doing, several of the putatively enlightened things the Hard Science Fiction True Believers claim fantasy can't do.
Wouldn't it be fun to be smug right now? I wish I had more hope that the big book would ever see print.
***
Happy Solstice, to those of you who celebrate it. This year Dan and I decided that, rather than try to find individual Yule gifts for the Pagans in our community who are not actually part of our coven, we'd give a big, chunky donation to the ACLU. We figure the Bill of Rights is one-size-fits-all. And, in the one-size-fits-all spirit, Happy More Light Real Soon Day.
