Catching up..

[dungrollin]

--- In HPFGU-Catalogue at yahoogroups.com, Barry Arrowsmith 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
> No matter what folk like Attwood say, over the past 20-30 years SF 
has mutated into a legion of sub-classes, some very subtle indeed.  
> Dismissive references to talking squid and rocket-ships merely  
> highlights her personal (and oh, so limiting) snobbery. Mind you,  
> she's got a hell of a cheek, 'cos  she's a repeat offender. Oryx 
and Crake (very mundane, out-dated and unoriginal by SF standards) 
was preceded by The Handmaiden's Tale - a theme well within the 
ambit of the SF dystopian society sub-set.
 
Dot:
Yeah... but they *are* bloody well-written. I loved Oryx and Crake. 
I think the difficulty with SF for many people is that it's so rare 
to get brilliant ideas in a brilliantly-written book. Far too often 
one ends up having to choose between the ideas and the writing, 
which is why I tend to avoid SF unless someone recommends a book 
specifically. I'll never forget the experience of reading The 
Hadmaid's Tale, after the first few chapters thinking: "Oh, surely 
not..." and a few chapters later "Has this not been done to death?" 
and yet being quite unable to stop myself reading, enjoying every 
second and being a complete convert by the time I turned the last 
page. I'll forgive her second-hand ideas for the sheer pleasure of 
reading. 

Barry:
> It's becoming more difficult to draw hard-and-fast dividing lines 
on what is/isn't a particular genre. Exotic backgrounds sometimes 
seem to be invented just to excuse an exploration of ideas or 
attitudes - like Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness - 
attitudes towards sexuality as experienced by a visitor to a society 
where all the inhabitants are of the same sex, or Maria Doria 
Russell's The Sparrow; some find that one very disturbing and 
thought-provoking indeed. A quality rarely found in so-
called 'mainstream' literature these days.
> 

Dot:
Ah, I knew I'd read something you'd recommended. The Sparrow, yes. 
Nice ideas, and an interesting read for an atheist. Didn't go a 
bundle on the prose, and it was too long, but I read it, and enjoyed 
it enough to recommend it to someone else.  Isn't there a sequel? Is 
it more of the same?

Barry
> OK. It'll go on the list for the next time I order a load of 
books. (Getting more frequent; I'm averaging 12 - 15 new books a 
month from Amazon [non-fiction - generally about half the order - is 
too damned expensive anywhere else] plus whatever I happen to come 
across in charity shops, plus regular raids on an SF specialty 
bookshop in Brum, plus weekly library visits. I've run out of 
bookcase space long since; now I'm running out of floor-space as 
well. I blame it on the TV companies for pushing out an incessant 
load of tripe.)

Dot:
You lucky... Oh why won't somebody pay me to read books all day 
every day?  Put 'The Origins of Virtue' (Matt Ridley) on your non-
fiction list then, it's a beautifully constructed argument that 
altruism is a part of human nature.  Everyone should read it.

Thanking Carolyn for the other recommendations - always good to have 
a list to get through...

Dot
(The viva, in case anyone cares, was fine. Rather anticlimactic, in 
the event, considering the blood-chilling terror beforehand. Now 
recovered from over-celebrating, and getting back to work.)