(urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
Jerry Friedman
jerry_friedman at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 30 20:53:17 PDT 2011
Both /The Dispossessed/ and /Starship Troopers/ had to be SF because they're
about societies that have never existed. Otherwise, it's true they don't
provide
much in the way of stfnal thrills beyond the suits in ST and the description of
Shevek making his discovery in TD. There's nothing in either that you could
call religious or spiritual (I think), either. As some of the Kesh say in
/Always
Coming Home/, the problem with novels is they never go beyond the Five
Houses (the material world, sort of).
Is Heinlein's "lunar imperium" story /The Moon is a Harsh Mistress/? I can
certainly
see thinking of /The Dispossessed/ as a response to that--a different kind of
anarchy. (I don't know about "imperium", though.) And what's his "stellar
imperium", /Starship Troopers/?
Jerry Friedman
----- Original Message ----
> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>
> Precisely!
>
> On 4/30/2011 8:15 PM, James Wynn wrote:
> > I think Wolfe's problem with it was that there was no reason not to have
>written the story in the Realistic genre. It was a Naturalism story with SF
>scenery. Pointless. It didn't deal at all with all the "other stuff" that Wolfe
>thinks Realistic fiction cannot address.
> >
> > Of course the same could be said of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" -- just
>War fiction with lasers.
> > J.
> >
> > On 4/30/2011 5:51 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> >> It's disappointing to many readers of science fiction. I wonder if it's
>disappointing to fans of college professor fiction?
> >>
> >> I always thought of it as a response to Heinlein's lunar/stellar imperium
>stories, which certainly needed one.
More information about the Urth
mailing list