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

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.