incendiary statement of the day

[rm]

I think the responses to the question ladyjaida posted here may well demonstrate why people don't take sci-fi/fantasy seriously as a literary genre.

Comments

[ladyjaida.livejournal.com]

I strive to somehow fix that. ONE DAY. One day.

[ludimagist.livejournal.com]

You may want to look into the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts. It's a repectable scholarly organization that does a lot of work on that sort of thing.

[ludimagist.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the link should lead here: http://www.iafa.org/

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Hmm...explain further?
I'm actually insanely curious, since this is, I think, my ultimate literary crit. goal in life - to make people take fantasy seriously (They haven't done it in 6 centuries, so good luck with that, right?)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Read the comments. Not to be snarky, because there is some good stuff in there, but there is also a lot of "I like dragons and love." Ya know?

[ludimagist.livejournal.com]

I responded with this same link to ladyjaida above, but if you're on the lit crit side of things you may want to look into the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts if you aren't already aware of them. I presented a paper on Angels in America at a conference of theirs a few years back, there is some really interesting (and serious) work being done.

There is a certain guilty pleasure in listening to a bunch of professors talk about vampires and hearing PhD candidates give papers on Dune.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Oooh. I'm more of a horror geek myself, but I could still fit in there. Many years ago I had the divine pleasure of acquiring a book called Planks of Reason. It was a collection of scholarly papers about horror movies. Like anything in academia, some of them were pretty ridiculous, but some of them were really worth reading.

Oddly enough, I seem to have an easier time in general finding this kind of writing about horror movies than horror writing.

I Like Telepathic Cats

[keith418.livejournal.com]

For more on the way Science Fiction caters to the needs of the lameos, see author Tom Disch's book The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. I found his critique of the genre and its fans to be simply and effectively devastating.