Re: Self-selected literati bull*** SF

David Cowie wrote: 
Selections from two posts by John Ringo in the "Sell-through" thread:

 Or any other bull*** "sf" that the self-selected literati love and isn't
 worth using as toilet paper.

 But I don't particularly care for nihilistic crap or "SF" that is
 anti-technological or portays humans as totally without hope or
 purpose.

And thus we get back to "why would anyone pay $25 for a Baen book?"
Because they know that the book isn't going to be literati crapola.
John, if you're reading this, who are the literati crapola authors you are
talking about? Name names.

If John isn't reading this, has he named names anywhere else? Has he said
$BOOK by $AUTHOR is nihilistic literary bull***?


I don't agree with many of Ringo's opinions he's expressed in other
threads.  I don't like Joyce, but I do like many other Literary Writers.
I took a degree in literature, after all.  However, I think I understand
what he's trying to say:  he doesn't like the pessimistic (I don't think
nihilistic was the right word to use, because there is very little SF
that I would consider truly 'nihilistic') branch of speculative fiction.
Like 1984.  Like Brave New World.  Like Fahrenheit 451, or Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep?, or any of the dozens of other pessimistic
"futurist" novels.  Perhaps it could be more appropriately generalized
to say that he doesn't appreciate speculative fiction which takes itself
seriously as an area of inquiry--even that he doesn't appreciate writing
that has any higher artistic ambition than entertainment.  I'm not sure.

The idea of calling something you just don't appreciate "literary
crapola" is... pretty arrogant, though.

(Newsgroups trimmed.)
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