Far be it from me to critique other people's ideosyncratic classification systems

[james_davis_nicoll]

After all, I will argue that Starship Troopers is proto-MilSF.

Brin's system of sorting SF from F will produce counter-intuitive results, like Asimov's Foundation, which is all about restoring the Old Order What Stood for Thousands of Years, is fantasy, whereas any Diskworld novel about clackers and the post and dwarves and trolls learning to coexist is SF.

(it's important to note "Having said that, what is my definition of the separation?". Brin's definition, not THE WORD OF MIGHT DEGLER HIMSELF)

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Despite both of them making huge (or, at least, relatively huge) whacks of cash by writing in the genre...

[kjn]

Or because of it. I agree with lots of the critiques that they do against how most fantasy stories are constructed and told, and their fantasy books also reflect that critique (except possibly in the case of Moorcok's early sword and sorcery novels, but they are still pushing against the usual constraints of genre fantasy).

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Moorcock in particular has gotten up my nose in the past because I perceive him to have a similar attitude to Alan Moore, looking down on all the inferior writers writing the in genre who aren't as smart or talented as him because of course they don't recognize the same flaws in the genre he does and don't write in the same mode as he does to continually demonstrate how much better he knows he is than other artists. I haven't really ever gotten that impression from Mieville. And I have nothing whatever to back up this impression; it's just a gut reaction I've had in the past to several writers (Moore, Moorcock, Ellison are top of mind).

[(Anonymous)]

Rereading this OP and comments, to see what clever insights have been added by people since I last checked in, I notice a turn of phrase you use here, that I didn't in fact twig to the first time around.

You write: "[...] flaws in the genre [...]".

That is a very interesting thing to write. If only because I don't understand what you are getting at. For clarity: I understand (I think, anyway) what you are saying about Moorcock and Alan Moore -- they're smug, etc. -- and it may be that you mean _they_ think there can be "flaws in a genre", but you do not; or it may be that you do also.

But I have no idea what you mean by "[...] flaws in the genre [...]" (or, I suppose, _a_ genre). I'm not being rhetorical here, I am expressing the fact that you seem to be using a meaningful expression of some importance, about which I wallow in Philistine pig-ignorance.

Any clarification, elucidation, exemplification or explanation would be gratefully received. :^)

TSM_in_Toronto

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I think what I meant here was not necessarily that the genre itself has flaws, but that the people practicing in it are doing it in a flawed way. This might mean that the whole barrel of apples is rotten, but I think both these guys have, in the past, basically said more or less "all that you are doing and calling wonderful is actually crap, here let me show you how it is done properly".

A lot of Moorcock's sword and sorcery (after his very early attempts which amount to little more than pastiche, I think) seem to be in this mode of "I will use the trappings of this genre, but I will be subversive and show you that you are all hacks" -- i.e. many of the features of the Elric stories are subversive: the protagonist that would normally be a barbarian hero speaking truth to corrupt civilised power (i.e. Conan and similar) is, in fact, a weak, degenerate, privileged, scion of corrupt civilised power.

Moore's Watchmen, and some of his other books, seem to have in them a deliberate attempt to undermine the tropes of golden and silver age comics to demonstrate that they're baseless, fascist, puerile, and effectively little more than adolescent power fantasies.

I think it's the "here let me show you how it is done properly" part that bothers me. From a positive point of view, one could say that both Moorcock and Moore spent a great deal of effort to attempt to "redeem a genre" by attempting to move it on, raise the bar, treat with its conventions in a mature and more nuanced fashion, and so on. From a negative point of view, there have been times when I've heard them talking critically or read such critique, and felt that they came across quite cynically: sort of eyerolling along with "oh well, someone with talent must, I suppose, show you hacks how it's done".

[(Anonymous)]

Does the idea that Moorcock felt sword and sorcery was full of hacks and so wrote Elric etc actually work with the dates? Elric began circa 1961. Exactly what masses of hack sword and sorcery were flooding the market at that point, especially at novel length? In the 50s-60s Vance, Lieber, Anderson, etc. - all pretty good stuff, all of it mostly trying new directions. (Okay, a few terrible duds as well. Glory Road...)

I suppose it's possible the pages of magazine SF/F were full of deservedly forgotten horrors, but otherwise I'd peg the flood of hack swords and sorcery as mostly starting in the late 1960s as the Tolkien and Conan booms both began to take off, 7-9 years after Moorcock started his series.

Moorcock was not especially impressed by a lot of the competition, but I think he was interested in just making his story different in the way that every other good writer was different: Lieber told urban stories with an ironic edge, Vance used magicians as his protagonists and polished his language, Anderson used historical settings and made religion important, and so on. You got some conan pastiches later on.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

Well, at least Moorcock does admit that some of his S&S was written fast to pay the bills.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

It doesn't strike me that one can fault crafters from making simple chairs to put food on the table. Working crafters work. Good ones don't begrudge the simple chairs or the people who want them, though.