Posted on 04/10/2015 11:37:27 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
"....The controversy over the Hugo Awards contains elements of a good dystopian science fiction story. Unfortunately, the media brat-fit over the successful effort to rescue escapist fantasy literature from its political pursuers comes not from the pages of Brave New World but from Slate,Salon, and Entertainment Weekly.
Like sports, video games, and cake baking, science fiction strangely finds itself in the crosshairs of ideological killjoys. Perhaps it was only a matter of time and space before the genre obsessed with time and space became a culture-war battlefield.
“To many of the people involved in this industry, politics and message trump entertainment or quality,” Larry Correia, a New York Times-bestselling bard of monster stories, tells The American Spectator. “But most people buy entertainment because they want to be entertained. Many longtime readers fell away because they were tired of being preached at or having their values insulted.”..
[SNIP re skirmishes]
..Ray Bradbury, a storyteller less science than fiction, felt that his appearances in Astounding Science-Fiction,Weird Tales, Dime Detective, Planet Stories, and other pulps sitting at the unfashionable end of the newsstand led gatekeepers to unfairly block his entry into more respected publications. In the same month in which the Enola Gay exploded thousands of science fiction tales, Bradbury dropped stories on Collier’s, Mademoiselle, and Charm under a nom de nerd. They accepted,and he promptly revealed his identity. One senses a similar prejudice revealed by the Puppies from within the science fiction community towards its own not preoccupied with raceclassgendersexuality.
The Sad/Rabid Puppies movement imitates the science-fiction hero’s means of exposing institutional intolerance. One can’t rely on the good graces of snobs—literary,ideological, or otherwise—to gain a fair hearing. For example, those countering the discrimination of the sci-fi guardians now endure insults of “racist,”“sexist,”and “bigot” from the people who have already injured them professionally.
Beam me up, Scotty!
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Nice to see the forces of good fight back for a change. Now if only someone would fight National Geographic’s left wing capture...
Yes.
National Geographic should have changed their bright yellow cover color to GREEN years ago.
Publishing, overall, has been co-opted by the Left.
the hard left is fearful of science fiction and fantasy fiction books from conservatives because of its ability to break through the layers of indoctrination that the left has heaped on society. Most authors put there values in to what they write and love to expose ideas that are not will thought out or are strait out lies portrayed as truths. there has always been a battle of ideas between the CS Lewis’s and the Madlin le’ Engle’s of the world and that of the hard left.
Heilein being a prime axample....Starship troopers (the movie)doesnt even get the whole citizenship thing right at all...
This is a very interesting story, and I’m glad to see someone fighting back. If this could happen to Ray Bradbury...
When you walk through a book store you’ll find rows and rows of self-help and gender/sex study selections.
Next, walk over to the youth section, where you will walk through rows and rows of fantasy books.
Over in the children’s section you will find lots of green/ethnic/be-kind to everyone selections.
I challenge you to find the history and science sections, as they occupy very small shelf space.
Good to see Jim Butcher on someone’s list besides Goodreads :)
Oh I know it’s been horrible, just trying to find something worth reading is a real challenge.
I all but stopped reading any science fiction when I became a scientist. To me, a science fiction story should incorporate real physical principles. A story that depends on pure fantasy disguised in a sciency-looking wrapper is neither science fiction nor fantasy.
I do read fantasy; it is more honest because no one is trying to pass off the physically impossible as being futuristic.
I also can’t stand the political correctness permeating so many stories. Sometimes, the story is good enough that it can transcend the author’s politically correct moralizing, but usually, it becomes unreadable. There are many good authors out there who do not try to moralize, but just tell a story. This isn’t to say that morals are not incorporated in their stories, but that their stories are not vehicles for trying to ram far-leftist ideals down our throats.
Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, Terry Brooks are just a few living authors who tell good stories. Of course, we cannot forget the past masters—Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clark, JRR Tolkein...
With your science background, you’ll find this interesting:
http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/science-publishing-some-skepticism-required-180954871/
Thoughts?
later
I've read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and both are works that massively criticize the political elites and the businesses and religious people that support this very class of people.
I quit reading sci-fi years ago when the genre ran out of spaceships and blasters and was reduced to dragons and magic. It’s been 10-15 years since I bought anything off the sci-fi shelf.
Sad, really.
I love vintage sci fi. Its most of what I have on my kindle that I’ve gotten for free from the Gutenburg Project.
There’s a lot of good science fiction written by people who know at least some science well. Especially short stories.
Robert Forward was a physicist and aerospace engineer. (as well as a strong proponent of free markets)
I once read a story about a journey into a black hole. The ship was tiny, less than an inch long, and the pilot was a scaled down robot/androd who was a mental clone of a human pilot in an orbiting station. As the pea-sized ship approached the event horizon, the pilot’s consciousness was reverse-replicated back to the human... or something like that.
Unfortunately I don’t remember all the details and I don’t remember the title and author but I do remember that in that one short story there was a complete layman’s guide to understanding black holes, event horizons and time dilation as the black hole was approached. It was an excellent job.
I don’t think it was Robert Forward because it was written in the last 5-10 years, but it could have been written by him, I’m sure.
I highly recommend the “Wool Omnibus” by Hugh Howey. It’s available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback. The author started out this series as a self published novel on Amazon and it took off. Sales were big enough that “Wool” is scheduled to be made into a movie directed by Ridley Scott.
Forward’s Saturn Rukh was interesting in its assessments of the feasibility of going to Saturn to test helium 3 collection.
The crew goes to Saturn and discovers an intelligent but primitive life form in the clouds which kills the economic viability. From a pure economic standpoint it was viable but the legal fights of stealing atmosphere from an intelligent species would drive the costs out of reach.
The use of nanofiber carbon tethers figured prominently in the book as a means of climbing in and out of the gravity well was interesting.
Forward co founded tethers unlimited which exists as a company today with increasing use in space and on earth.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.