SF/F in this week's Publishers Weekly

[ksmith]

Thanks to barbarienne for pointing these out:

Too Geeky For Its Own Good (my editor, Diana Gill, is quoted in this one).

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6321003.html?pubdate=4%2F3%2F2006&display=current

And an article about fantasy for good measure:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6321002.html?pubdate=4%2F3%2F2006&display=current

Comments

"Too Geeky"

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

This paragraph alone told me that Itzkoff is not a regular reader of SF:

Despite the criticism, Itzkoff sees himself as an advocate of SF. "Imagining what the world's going to be like in 50 to 100 years is not the only goal that science fiction should be trying to achieve," he insists. "There are so many other things that it's capable of. It can be pressing in ways that other genres can't." As he explores those possibilities in the months to come, will he continue to generate such debates? "I can't predict what the reaction of the science-fiction community will be," he says, "but it's not weighing heavily on my mind."

Anyone who's read any decent amount of SF in the past five decades knows that "imagining what the world's going to be like in 50 to 100 years" isn't the only thing SF is trying to do. Without thinking I could name a dozen things the genre is in fact trying to do--which I can do so easily because I actually read it.

Re: "Too Geeky"

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

That, and not caring what the SF community thinks--two things that may doom this venture, or at least provide for high chop and some taking on of water.

On the other hand, the key is to publicize written SF and persuade readers who haven't yet tried it to give it a shot. That being the case, should we care that this guy is apparently a civilian who may not be as well-versed as he thinks he is? He may not know all the nuances of the genre, but if he knows enough to edge a few folks into the nether aisles of the bookstore, and they tell a friend, and they tell a friend...

The thing is, I write the stuff and I find myself put off at times by what I see as the expectation in some quarters, if not the demand, that I should have cut great swaths through the canon and need to be firmly grounded in many aspects of the genre. That there are these hurdles that I need to have cleared in order to prove I'm serious. And that attitude, I think, would put off someone who just wants to try a book or two. The way to grow everyone's numbers is to reach beyond congoers and LOCUS readers and rasfw folk and the other well-versed to the people who buy one or two SF books a years. I was told years ago that this was the audience I needed to reach in order to hit bestseller lists. I may never hit a list, but I know I need to draw in some of those folks to grow my numbers. We all do.

This could all end badly, but maybe this NYT guy just needs to be given some time. And maybe he doesn't need to be the expert that we're used to dealing with. Maybe he just needs to be an interested civilian.