So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[Smiley]

"Exhaustively detailed" is a point in its favor. There have not been a lot of new Trek productions that have been covered in much depth in the last decade, so I am definitely fine with learning more about the minutiae of how TMP was made.

I just finished The Secret Book Society. It is a great book, and I easily grew attached to the main characters.

For the Agatha Christie challenge, I will soon be 1/8 done with the mysteries on the list (52 Book Club, if anyone else wants to join). My current book is a reread of The Seven Dials Mystery. It has several characters first introduced in The Secret of Chimneys, who I did not have any exposure to on my first read of Seven Dials.

 

[Christopher]

I think those are all fundamentally different things. I think sf and fantasy ask their readers to do very different things to other sorts of fiction.

You're taking my rhetorical point too literally. I wasn't saying they were exactly the same thing, I was saying they both involve outright physical impossibilities for the sake of the narrative. All fiction uses dramatic license and departures from reality, just in different ways and to different extents. Fiction that pretends to be set in reality is no exception.

If you define science fiction as the literature of "What if?," then it must encompass mainstream fiction too, because a mainstream story is a "What if?" question too. What if there were a kid named Huckleberry Finn who rafted down the river with an escaped slave? What if there were a murder on the Orient Express? It's all speculative fiction, even if it's speculating about something more mundane than aliens or future technologies or parallel worlds.

Yes, mainstream fiction is different from SF, just as SF is different from fantasy, just as cyberpunk is different from space opera or climate fiction, just as urban fantasy is different from high fantasy, just as magical realism is different from portal fantasy. The difference is the point, that they're all just different parts of the same creative spectrum.

 

[bdub76]

Still making my way through Wuthering Heights and enjoying it. I'm going to hold off on reading Thomas Hardy until Victober. He's referenced in 11/22/1963, so he made my TBR for this year.

Also, read Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber at lunch today. It was a fun read. I'm surprised it won awards. It's good, but I didn't think it was that good.

Definitely will buy Again, Dangerous Visions when it goes on sale.

 

[bdub76]

For the Agatha Christie challenge, I will soon be 1/8 done with the mysteries on the list (52 Book Club, if anyone else wants to join). My current book is a reread of The Seven Dials Mystery. It has several characters first introduced in The Secret of Chimneys, who I did not have any exposure to on my first read of Seven Dials.

What Agatha Christie challenge?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I don't think the phrase "mainstream fiction" ever came up in my good-natured verbal sparring with the instructor in my Short Story Workshop class.

"Popular Fiction" (as opposed to "Literary Fiction") may have come up. Or it may have come up elsewhere. But that, too, is an absurdity. By analogy, with the exception of certain 20th century avant garde composers who catered specifically to a jaded, elitist audience who wanted music that the general public wouldn't even recognize as music, no composers ever deliberately set out to create intentionally unpopular music. Likewise, I doubt that there are a lot of writers -- particularly writers whose works have stood the test of time -- who wrote intentionally unpopular fiction. Plenty of writers have written fiction to deliberately shock readers (Shirley Jackson comes to mind, and I still wonder if she was, ahem, "stoned" while writing "The Lottery"), but I don't think very many have deliberately sought out unpopularity, and certainly very few of those have had their works dubbed "literary."

 

[Smiley]

What Agatha Christie challenge?

Agatha Christie Mystery Challenge – The 52 Book Club

www.the52book.club

Being filled with so many titles, it is not meant to be done in a single year. The challenge tracker on Goodreads has it going through something like 2041, which is a reasonable target date.

Quality started at a decent level, but she took it up a notch for me with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The Seven Dials Mystery is currently back in three-star territory.

 

[Stevil2001]

You're taking my rhetorical point too literally. I wasn't saying they were exactly the same thing, I was saying they both involve outright physical impossibilities for the sake of the narrative. All fiction uses dramatic license and departures from reality, just in different ways and to different extents. Fiction that pretends to be set in reality is no exception.

If you define science fiction as the literature of "What if?," then it must encompass mainstream fiction too, because a mainstream story is a "What if?" question too. What if there were a kid named Huckleberry Finn who rafted down the river with an escaped slave? What if there were a murder on the Orient Express? It's all speculative fiction, even if it's speculating about something more mundane than aliens or future technologies or parallel worlds.

Yes, mainstream fiction is different from SF, just as SF is different from fantasy, just as cyberpunk is different from space opera or climate fiction, just as urban fantasy is different from high fantasy, just as magical realism is different from portal fantasy. The difference is the point, that they're all just different parts of the same creative spectrum.

I mean, I think then your point is, "fiction is things that didn't actually happen" and I'm not sure why that needs stating. "Speculative" fiction has a particular meaning; you may as well say Pride and Prejudice is science fiction because everything that happens in it is scientifically possible. This is such a bad definition of science fiction as to be useless.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It's all "what if", just in our past, present, future, or that of a world which doesn't exist at all.

 

[bdub76]

Agatha Christie Mystery Challenge – The 52 Book Club

www.the52book.club

Being filled with so many titles, it is not meant to be done in a single year. The challenge tracker on Goodreads has it going through something like 2041, which is a reasonable target date.

Quality started at a decent level, but she took it up a notch for me with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The Seven Dials Mystery is currently back in three-star territory.

Interesting. I might read some that are already in public domain. I try to read about a book a week, and I try to avoid rereading books as there are so many books I haven't read.

 

[Christopher]

I mean, I think then your point is, "fiction is things that didn't actually happen" and I'm not sure why that needs stating. "Speculative" fiction has a particular meaning; you may as well say Pride and Prejudice is science fiction because everything that happens in it is scientifically possible. This is such a bad definition of science fiction as to be useless.

Look, I was just trying to make an observation that I thought would be interesting if one were receptive to considering it. It can be fun to look at something in a new light. I have zero interest in getting into an argument over it.