On the other hand, it does definitely expand or explore our understanding of gender. :)
Now that I can definitely agree with!
Going back to the Ruff, you could say that it's a Gibson case ... he's being claimed by the genre even when he's moved out of it. But I don't think that's the case.
Yes, I think that's basically how I see it. I haven't read any of the other books, but I read that synopsis in the back of SYHIO and thought it sounded interesting! For me, a fantasy novel has to take us outside the universe as it really is in some way, be that another world, magic in this one, whatever. SYHIO just doesn't do that as far as I'm concerned. Its a book about real people and what they do inside their heads to deal with their mental illness.
And yet, the fact that neither Priest's book nor Mitchell's has both its feet firmly within the genre doesn't stop them being sf in my opinion.
There is a border line there. I haven't read the Mitchell, but I felt with the Priest that whether it was a genre book or not was kind of down to how you interpreted bits of it, which is fine. In that case though, I could see where the genre reading was coming from although I don't necessarily agree with it (it's a while since I've read it so I'm speaking partially from hearsay here). In the case of the Ruff, I just don't see it (see above). I think that even accepting a genre reading of the Priest, the genre elements are very much in the background of what he's trying to do in the book, and perhaps that's what encourages the ambiguity of it's placement. I agree though that it's often both useful and interesting to take a broad view of the genre and include books which fall in the borderlands.
The genre is a community of people writing sf, but what people outside that community write can be sf too.
That's interesting. I don't see the genre primarily or indeed at all really in terms of people. It's a collection of books with similar devices, exploring areas and themes and telling stories using similar methodologies. I don't tend to think of writers as having genre per se - it's books that have genre and authors can write in one or many genres during their career. Take Atwood for example - she's written excellent books on both sides. So whether a book is SF or not, to me, is completely independant of who the writer is and their other works (assume here that part-works are considered together).
It's just a shame that for some reason (I blame bookshops and fans equally), when a writer has written genre books the only way he can get his non-genre books acknowledged as non-genre is to change his name (c.f. MM/MMS, IB/IMB).
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Date: March 24th, 2005 11:11 am (UTC)From:Now that I can definitely agree with!
Going back to the Ruff, you could say that it's a Gibson case ... he's being claimed by the genre even when he's moved out of it. But I don't think that's the case.
Yes, I think that's basically how I see it. I haven't read any of the other books, but I read that synopsis in the back of SYHIO and thought it sounded interesting! For me, a fantasy novel has to take us outside the universe as it really is in some way, be that another world, magic in this one, whatever. SYHIO just doesn't do that as far as I'm concerned. Its a book about real people and what they do inside their heads to deal with their mental illness.
And yet, the fact that neither Priest's book nor Mitchell's has both its feet firmly within the genre doesn't stop them being sf in my opinion.
There is a border line there. I haven't read the Mitchell, but I felt with the Priest that whether it was a genre book or not was kind of down to how you interpreted bits of it, which is fine. In that case though, I could see where the genre reading was coming from although I don't necessarily agree with it (it's a while since I've read it so I'm speaking partially from hearsay here). In the case of the Ruff, I just don't see it (see above). I think that even accepting a genre reading of the Priest, the genre elements are very much in the background of what he's trying to do in the book, and perhaps that's what encourages the ambiguity of it's placement. I agree though that it's often both useful and interesting to take a broad view of the genre and include books which fall in the borderlands.
The genre is a community of people writing sf, but what people outside that community write can be sf too.
That's interesting. I don't see the genre primarily or indeed at all really in terms of people. It's a collection of books with similar devices, exploring areas and themes and telling stories using similar methodologies. I don't tend to think of writers as having genre per se - it's books that have genre and authors can write in one or many genres during their career. Take Atwood for example - she's written excellent books on both sides. So whether a book is SF or not, to me, is completely independant of who the writer is and their other works (assume here that part-works are considered together).
It's just a shame that for some reason (I blame bookshops and fans equally), when a writer has written genre books the only way he can get his non-genre books acknowledged as non-genre is to change his name (c.f. MM/MMS, IB/IMB).