Comments on: Lit-Fic : the genre that dare not speak its name

By: marly youmans

marly youmans — Tue, 24 May 2011 20:29:36 +0000

Nicely-thrown bomb, Damien. As somebody with feet in more genres than I can stand in, I enjoy watching the explosion.

By: Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:16:24 +0000

Here, here!
I actually wish the two categories would stop steering at each other (Well, the literary folk seem to sneer more at the speculative folk than vice versa).
As a writer, I tend to take from both sides. I greatly enjoy reading and writing both types. I think there’s room for speculative and literary fiction. And I think BOTH kinds should be canonized, for it’s all significant.

By: I Owe Seven Links, I Owe Eight Links, I Owe Nine Links… | The Crotchety Old Fan

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:52:13 +0000

[...] week, a lot of us were talking about it, prompted by Damien G. Walter’s entry in his blog. The one that brought it to our [...]

By: Catching Up | The Crotchety Old Fan

Catching Up | The Crotchety Old Fan — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:20:47 +0000

[...] Damien Walter comments on an article that appeared in The Guardian that discusses the dissing the Science Fiction genre receives at the hands of mundane publishers and (some) mainstream authors. Damien makes the point that from what he’s seeing, Science Fiction IS the mainstream today. Good point, but god forbid! [...]

By: Dano

Dano — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:31:02 +0000

I tend to think that, tech-savviness notwithstanding, it’s the subject matter of litfic that tends to make it a rarefied and not widely read (or saleable) genre at this point. The lack of tech savvy actually kind of goes hand in hand with that, on a philosophical or thematic level (or something)…scifi has been marginalized for quite some time, but the world that we live in continues to grow more science-fictional, in its way. I mean, we still don’t have the flying cars yet (which I’m still deeply pissed off about…c’mon Detroit, use some of that stimulus money on really future-tech stuff [wow, I think there's a blog post in that idea for me...hee]), but we have wearable computers and RF chips and cellphones and Emily-the-talking-GPS. All kinds of crazy stuff that does actually mediate and affect our existence and our relationships and interactions with the world and each other in important and meaningful ways. And given that a lot of social change is foundationally tech-based these days, scifi writers are actually getting better and better equipped, vis a vis the litfic folk, to write about the human condition in the here and now. Thus and so. I’m not sure that literary fiction will have a whole lot of pipelines on the internetz, not so much because there won’t be any space–the internetz are, it appears, infinitely scaleable–but because the space that they occupy, and what they build there, will not be anymore appealing in digital form than it is in dead-tree form.

Which actually winds up being something of an inadvertant jeremiad against litfic, for which I beg your pardon…I do tend to think that those folks tend to be better with some of the rudiments of good fiction writing (character-based story, etc.) as well as formal experimentation (say what you will, but postmodernist experiments in fiction did a lot to blow the doors open for raising the literary bar and the acceptability of formal innovation across the board, and that stuff was pretty much pioneered by literary/academic eggheads).

And it appears that I may have just written a comment that was longer than your actual post, Damien. Cheers.

By: damiengwalter

damiengwalter — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:38:24 +0000

Good point Emily. but once the lit-fic crowd get oline, is there going to be any space left for them?

By: Emily Jiang

Emily Jiang — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:30:13 +0000

Great article, Damien. It is also possible that the popularity of specfic authors on the internet can be due to the fact that their readers are on average more tech-savvy than the majority of litfic-only readers. For now, at least.

By: Dano

Dano — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:39:28 +0000

Very well put. I think you’re absolutely right.

By: Links for 28th January 2009 | Velcro City Tourist Board

Links for 28th January 2009 | Velcro City Tourist Board — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:03:29 +0000

[...] Lit-Fic : the genre that dare not speak its name [...]

By: Posts about Ebooks as of January 28, 2009 | Sixways - Ebooks

Posts about Ebooks as of January 28, 2009 | Sixways - Ebooks — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:58:26 +0000

[...] industry. source: Wiley Download Free Ebook Sample … Books, Optical Communications, Ebook About – damiengwalter.wordpress.com 01/28/2009 David Barnett has posted and excellent piece at the [...]