pantryslut: (astro girl)
pantryslut ([personal profile] pantryslut) wrote2011-06-27 02:00 pm

Really Snarky Observations on SF/F at the Present Moment

These questions are semi-rhetorical. :P

1. Do you think the reason certain people can't tell the difference between fanfiction and parody is that so much of SF/F is already brand-name knockoff material, so that nobody can figure out that for some purposes you might want to specifically *not* file off names and serial numbers?

2. Is it just me or are we seriously in an era in love with the Golden Age Retread -- complete with all of the icky, icky, icky politics thereof? (ObComplaint: "Politics? You're the one concerned with politics! I just want me some good old escapist reading!") Should I blame the end of the space shuttle program? The election of Obama? The economic morass in general? Something else? All of the above?

3. Do you think there might be a link between all of the above and my recent disinclination to read fiction in general? (Fiction I am reading or have read recently: a couple stories in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me; Baba Yaga Laid an Egg; Sensation; Fire on the Mountain.) I am seriously wondering about my ability to read genre fiction at all these days after a couple of bounce-off experiences with books I expected to dig. (I have some suspicions that my tastes may have changed -- and in what directions -- but I'm still sorting it all out.)

[identity profile] trinker.livejournal.com 2011-06-28 12:57 am (UTC)(link)
Retread is the newest round of backlash, to go along with "oh, but it's cis straight white Christian men who are the most oppressed!" trope.

My tastes have changed. I'm no longer willing to put on the blinders I need to be happy reading fiction that Others and erases me.