On a related note

[james_davis_nicoll]

What should go on a Top Ten "In retrospect, what the hell were we thinking" list of once-popular SF?

Comments

[jwgh]

Slan?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on that. There's nothing more hilarious than coming across a "sf readers are just naturally more open-minded and curious than regular folk" essay in the middle of Race Fail '09.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I think at this point, most people who have the slan thing in their heads where it can't be removed without jail time or at least community service have never read van Vogt. It's just a stupid self-serving cultural tradition passed down through the decades.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about Slan, so I just checked Wikipedia. I still don't get the reference you're making (not important, though), but I discovered this:

"Lydia van Vogt, A. E. van Vogt's widow, and Kevin J. Anderson wrote a sequel to Slan, titled Slan Hunter, based on an unfinished draft by van Vogt. It was published July 10, 2007."

Please, someone stop him before he kills again!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Fans are Slan = the Science Fiction Fandom Superiority Complex.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Which is like the Albino Amazing Suntan Complex.

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

I've got to say, Van Vogt is a guilty pleasure. Or maybe not so guilty, I don't mind at all saying I like him a great deal. There's just something about his style that really grabs me. Everything from 'Ptath' to 'Rogue Ship' to 'War Against the Rull'. Sure, most of his characters are self-absorbed selfish egomaniacs, and often murderous psychopaths as well . . . but so what? They're _entertaining_ psychopathic self-absorbed egomaniacs.

Maybe it helps that I don't take his stories so seriously, that I'm not looking to take away any sort of lessons from the stuff.

I sometimes get the impression that this attitude towards sf is just a little rarer than it should be.

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the related Persecution Complex. Novels in which Scientists and Sci Fi Fans become a desginated persecuted minority group surely belong on this list, don't they also?

I'm thinking Fallen Angels and Emprise just off-hand; I'm sure there are others.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

The tradition is that "Fans are Slans"--inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population. Some find this implausible.

inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

As demonstrated by the fact that there are people still bitching about New Wave SF decades after it went away.

Re: inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[rosefox]

Not only that, but some guy I know started an LJ post just to bitch about old books that people used to really like!

Re: inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

"Not only that, but some guy I know started an LJ post just to bitch about old books that people used to really like!"

SLANdering them, as it were.

(Is joke!)

"As demonstrated by the fact that there are people still bitching about New Wave SF decades after it went away."

I think it's because that represented a real turning point in the field. Also the (self-perceived) losers in some conflicts are the ones who can never let the conflict go, e.g. the pro-Confederate types who aren't aware the US Civil War is over.

Re: inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[wintermuted.livejournal.com]

I think you once linked to a fellow who thought (in a post in the last two years) that Neuromancer was the only "new" sf he liked.

The impression I get from RASFW and the related newsgroups is of a group of people who are mostly very set in their ways. Many don't seem to have changed their reading tastes since puberty, or their political views since university. If they don't like a sequel or a movie adaptation, their response is to proclaim that it never happened. People who make a fetish of their ignorance of popular culture. Is everyone there like that? No. But are they more open-minded than most? No. Believing in stuff the public generally does not accept doesn't of itself make you open-minded.

I don't see why liking escapist literature should be taken as a sign of superior intelligence, either.

Re: inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

RASFW is in itself kind of an odd sample that probably selects for people who are set in their ways: I clicked through to the racefail thread there, and I swear there was one poster to that thread who I didn't recognize from the last time I read that newsgroup regularly. Which was in 1999.

Re: inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I changed my political views significantly after my university career. Indeed I dragged my parents further to the left in my wake. But then I stopped posting to RASFW some time ago.

Re: inherently more intelligent and open-minded than the general population

[daev.livejournal.com]

Continuing to post to Usenet is a definite sign of being set in one's ways ... says the guy who still posts to Usenet.

What bothers me about RASFW is that it seems to have taken a serious nose-dive into Small Stubborn Clique-dom sometime in the middle of last year.[*] Before that, there was a passing parade of interesting new people as well as the same old folks who trot out their prejudices for us all to admire again.

But I still go there, because I haven't found anywhere else I can talk and read about SF in general.

[*] Actually many of the still-vibrant Usenet groups ossified in the last year. Perhaps I just outgrew them, but I would bet money that the wave of ISPs & universities dropping Usenet around then was a silent death knell.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

The frightening thing is that sf fans really are more intelligent and open-minded than the general population.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

Be not afraid. They're not.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

You don't know much about the general population, do you?

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

Social groups don't select for superior qualities; they just tend to think they do. For every idiocy in the general population, I can find you a correspondence in every human microcosm, including slandom.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

That's funny. not laughter funny, but funny like seeing a Log Cabin Republican defend Don't Ask Don't Tell funny.