Bonfire of the Genres: Critical Looks Sci-Fi and Fantasy

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Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

half the fun of botl is watching self conscious nerds get defensive about criticism

# ¿ Sep 9, 2017 17:49

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:26

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

half the fun of botl is watching self conscious nerds get defensive about criticism

Barbe Rouge posted:

this is actually great, a thread where you can take your dumps instead of stinking up the SFF thread(s)
looking forward to skimming through more of your reviews

See

# ¿ Sep 9, 2017 19:03

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Barbe Rouge posted:

I see the childfucking brigade is checking in early

I am sorry you have the emotional maturity of a toddler and are unable to simultaneously enjoy something and understand that the thing might still be meaningfully critiqued

# ¿ Sep 9, 2017 21:20

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

the great vanity of world building has always been the assumption that you are creating something new and not merely recycling tropes with new names.

"world building" very rarely falls out of psuedo-arthurian medieval fuedalism, and when it does it just uses a different already widely understood foundational mythology

# ¿ Sep 11, 2017 22:13

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I see what you mean but if good world building is creating a world that is consistent to the writer why are all these celebrated fantasy writers praised for having long complex lore that is basically recycled tropes from Nordic myth.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2017 23:22

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Bandiet posted:

The only reason you should waste your time critiquing a genre is if you actually want to see it get better. You do that by picking out the best and explaining why that succeeds over everything else.

Come on man

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 00:21

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

there is no such thing as objectively good and objectively bad because the concepts are inherently subjective

However, that doesn't mean all opinions are valid. There exist agreed upon standards of discourse that we can use to assess quality

god bless

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 13:33

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

well to be fair ideally in criticism the author shouldn't even be considered

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:00

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Atlas Hugged posted:

This is literally the argument I've had ad nauseam in Trad Games

I've found the problem

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:11

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Harrow posted:

My own little not-yet-developed idea is that genre fiction is defined more by its subject matter than literature is. Supernatural elements or certain story beats (especially for mystery novels) might be included in a genre novel specifically because of the genre the author sees the novel existing in, not necessarily because they serve some strong thematic purpose. I should point out that I also don't think this is a bad thing by any means. People should read what they enjoy, and hell, I also don't think reading is an inherently more noble way to consume entertainment than anything else.

My developed idea is that genre is a marketing concept and not actually reflective of the book's content but on the publisher's imagined ideal audience

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:20

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Harrow posted:

I suppose so. But authors use the idea, too, and I think that necessarily affects the content of their books. If Author A writes a book intending to write A Science Fiction Book, and Author B writes a book about some sort of Idea and thinks that <insert science fiction concept here> would be an interesting or effective way to explore that idea, they're going to write different books. e.

The author does not determine the significance of the book. The reader does. Ultimately at best an author can only be a reader of their own work, finding what they consider personally significant in the text but not mandating that significance on others.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:34

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

CestMoi posted:

The Author on the other hand (i.e. the presumption that this piece of writing was constructed by a human and isn't just incredibly fortuitous collections of ink) absolutely should have motives ascribed to them cos otherwise lit crit is just a list of things that happen in the book with no attempt to create any kind of theory of what was meant.

Why is a capital A Author needed for meaning? Text creates meaning.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:36

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

CestMoi posted:

Are you or are you not aware of the process we call "writing"

Yes, but literary criticism is about the process we call "reading"

Do we assume Beowulf has no meaning because we have no "Author" who created it

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:49

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

you keep tossing insults without exactly explaining what a reading that assumes the author provides in terms of critical value that a reading that does not assume the author lacks

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 14:52

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Harrow posted:

A book like The Golem and the Jinni treats its fantastical elements very differently than Proven Guilty (a Dresden Files book), even though they both feature jinni and at least one wizard. They use them for different purposes and tell very different kinds of stories with them. Their styles are nothing alike, nor are their goals as stories. Maybe we can discard "genre" as the term we use here, but how else should we describe those differences? If we want to recommend a book to someone, what criteria do we use to figure out if we should recommend something like The Golem and the Jinni or something like Proven Guilty? We may chafe at categorization but I don't think it's an entirely useless or arbitrary exercise.

Genre is the literal definition of an arbitrary exercise because it is literally arbitrating meaning to a text.

Now, the problem is that you seem to be correlating literary criticism with taste. Genre and other artificial constructs have value as a tool of communicability and marketing because they create an agreed upon language to which taste can be explored.

However, Literary Criticism is not concerned with whether or not a reader will like something. It's concerned with the signifance of the text to a reader.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 15:07

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Liquid Communism posted:

Honestly, that's pretty much the norm in lit crit where the SF/Fantasy ghetto is concerned.

People hate to speak to the work in any kind of detail, as opposed to their opinions of the genre they perceive it to be in.

Nah, you just need to read real Lit Crit.

I cannot imagine Derrida or Barthes or Fish giving much concern to whether or not a text was sci fi or fantasy or not.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 15:08

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Liquid Communism posted:

I think you have somehow missed out on the entire concept that you cannot dictate taste.

https://www.amazon.com/Distinction-Critique-Judgement-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415567882

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 16:25

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

this is a good thread for separating those who actually understand criticism with dilettantes

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 17:58

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

Do one of those genre books that the 'literary establishment' fawned over while denying it was a genre book, like Station Eleven

Lol who denied it was a genre book?

Was there some group meeting I missed where Station Eleven was baptized in the waters of pretension and the stink of genre fiction washed clean

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 18:51

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

OscarDiggs posted:

Maybe we should have a "What is literary criticism" thread and/or post. I know I for one have very little idea of what it is, or how it differs from regular criticism.

MEL'S LITERARY CRITICISM READING LIST

Ferdinand de Saussure - Course in General Linguistics
Roland Barthes - Mythology
Roland Barthes - S/Z
Michel Foucault - The Order of Things
Jacques Derrida - Of Grammatology
Jean-Francois Lyotard - The Post-Modern Condition
Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex
Judith Butler - Gender Trouble
Edward Said - Orientalism

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 18:58

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

heres my fav

like, its a sci fi book, and its OK to like that without having to qualify it as 'literary fiction'

Oh man not the literary powerhouse that is the Globe and Mail

Also, Station Eleven is clearly not a sci-fi book because it wasn't marketed as sci-fi. The content of the plot is irrelevant in genre, only audience.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 19:00

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I am pretty sure there are no bookstores that make that distinction actually

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 19:05

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

there is one in Oregon I went to not but a few weeks ago and this I swear on my forums platinum

Was it Portland

Sounds like Portland

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 19:07

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Is this a worthwhile distinction? Surely you have to accept some definition of what the novel is trying to achieve, no matter how nebulous, so you have some framework to engage with? Otherwise you'll end up complaining that the Chuckle Brothers lacks gravitas, or that Kazuo Ishigoro's visual comedy doesn't work.

That's a strawman example, and there'll always be edge cases. But what's the problem in assigning broad categories to different types of novels?

Text is text

# ¿ Sep 12, 2017 22:01

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Atlas Hugged posted:

This thread is fine so far. I was just explaining how in another thread, a similar argument about criticism through objective criteria was frequently rejected and how frustrating that was.

objective has no place in literary criticism however

everything is just signs, signifiers, and signification endlessly looping on itself

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 16:41

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

That is in itself an objective claim.

Exactly, which means it is flawed pillar of assumptions like all thought

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 18:10

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

the old ceremony posted:

magic realism is fantasy, fantasy is magic realism, they are the same thing

lol look at this dumb poo poo

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 18:07

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

the old ceremony posted:

my idiot friend. a post is coming on the topic, but not right now, because i'm halfway through a cup of coffee and desperate to piss

Oh I am pulling up a chair for this

# ¿ Sep 16, 2017 23:52

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

You could have saved a lot of time and just looked up the definition to magical realism before writing all that wrong stuff

Fantasy and magical realism are polar stylistic opposites.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2017 02:48

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Let me give you a hint

With all the amazing things Col Aureliano Buendias saw in his life, why was his last thought before facing the firing squad about ice?

# ¿ Sep 17, 2017 02:56

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

I'm finishing up the next entry, and here's a little quote from the books I'm reviewing next. It's very early on from the first novel in a series:

This dialogue comes from the pen of an award-winning writer. This is considered top tier sci-fi.

I am reading this guy as Tim Curry and I recommend that you do too

# ¿ Sep 24, 2017 20:05

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Peel posted:

I dunno, can't cynicism or pessimism be valid artistic stances?

I question the value of being pessimistic about a political system and reality you yourself invented

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 13:45

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

All fiction is invented and any literary work thay pretends its systems and realities is otherwise is lying

This might be the most superficial and dishonest attempt yet to appeal to a total disregard of significance

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 14:34

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

Tell me I'm wrong tho

you're wrong

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 14:41

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

gaahhhh

What's the line, when is it ok for fiction to be pessimistic, what's the rule

For a political or moral fable to be significant it must have an authentic connection to current experience.

1984 exists as an effective fable because while the universe is imagined, the political system in place is an authentic continuation of political principles already in place. There must be a fundamental and plausible connecting thread to current reality in order for the critique or satire within the text to have relevance to the reader.

If the author creates a reality or political existence that fails to effectively bridge the hypothetical system with the current reality, then any critique of that system is lifeless. If you are being pessimistic about a system you cannot justify actually coming into existence, than the critique is little more than an onanistic exercise in imagination.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 14:51

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I think it would be valid to read the Culture as analogous to the extension of hegemonic western liberal democracy to the nth extreme.

It could be, sure, but in order for that to happen the reader has to be convinced that this magnification is itself plausible

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:02

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

If the Culture is meant to be a leftist critique of the hypocrisy of the Soviet Union I do not see much of the Soviet Union in the Culture

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Why? We don't necessarily need for the Houyhnhnms or the Laputans to be plausible in order to engage with the story, do we? Or maybe we do, the latter parts of Gulliver do always seem less persuasive that the lilliputians.

The Laputans work because they are a satire of a mentality more than a system.

We are not expected to buy the Laputans as a society because the whole point is that mentalities like Laputanism are painfully ineffective.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:13

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

Yes that's the part of the interest, it's not a 1:1 comparison but rather a chance to imagine familiar problems in a novel context. Fiction is very important for giving us that chance.

Well yeah fiction can give us that chance. No one is trying to say Banks cannot do what he is trying to do. We are saying that, if his goal is what you claim, he is not doing it particularly well.

A cynical critique of political idealism is hollow if the metaphor used is invalid.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:16

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:26

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

Perhaps not in the spaceship books

But that does not make the spaceship books void of meaning. They are especially meaningful in the context of science fiction, which I gather does not factor much into this grounded discussion.

Saying sci-fi shouldn't strive for significance because its sci-fi does more damage to the genre than any of us could ever do.

If the response to a weakness in the text is calling it "a spaceship book" you are basically conceding that Scifi is "lesser" than "real" literature. You cannot simultaneously declare genre to be a prison for your favorite texts while also using it as a shield from criticism against them.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 16:00

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