The International Lord of Hate recently waded into a FaceBook thread started by author Mark Wandrey that had been darkened by a Campbellian Kool-Aid swiller who showed up to lecture the best-selling authors’ fans about how hard science fiction is the only science fiction.
Glenn: “Lowbrow readers want to be told the same, schlocky stories ad infinitum instead of new tales set in original worlds.”
Also Glenn: “I want the same subgenre of hard sci-fi stories set in this world with minimal speculative elements that I liked back in the day!”
Note that he also wasted no time declaring science fiction dead. Where have we heard that before?
Food for thought: which takes more originality and creativity–dreaming up and populating an expansive, if perhaps somewhat derivative–galactic empire with space marines and spaceships; or setting a story in a Silicon Valley lab full of screwdriver-toting nerds two years from now with the currently projected advancement of Moore’s Law as the central plot conceit?
But enough from me. The Mountain that Writes answers the hard SF snob better than I could:
A slight correction for Larry, if I may be so bold: the ILoH is absolutely a real science fiction author. What we today call science fiction, fantasy, and horror were all recognized under the broad banner of science fiction back before John W. Campbell imposed his arbitrary reduction of sci-fi to hard sci-fi and chain bookstores adopted arbitrary shelving systems.
With the advent of Amazon, indie publishing, and the Pulp Revolution, genre fiction is returning to its natural state of anything goes fun.
Speaking of which…
