rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

reading the Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of. Tom Disch has some strange opinions.

Please tell.

first chapter is about American propensity for lionizing liars and hucksters and at the end he goes off on a brief tangent about Tawana Brawley (ok, sure) and then African American studies departments for making claims re: the "blackness" of Egyptians (Cleopatra specifically but also Egyptians more generally). He specifically takes issue with claims that "Greek civilization was either borrowed or stolen from Egypt". Disch was probably better read than I am on classical Greek texts but the latter claim in particular seems pretty uncontroversial - Egypt predated Greek civilization considerably and its pretty clear the Greeks did get all kinds of things from Egypt, Plato and Pythagoras cite studying in Egypt, etc. So why is this such a bone of contention? And a white guy arguing over the definition of who is black/who's not black is immediately specious, bringing it with it all kinds of historical baggage about racial classification and eurocentrism that just make me uncomfortable. Disch clearly thought of himself as a no-bullshit sort of dude, but his appeals to established "facts" here seem to elide certain indisputable historical patterns re: how Egypt was viewed and discussed by Europeans (ie "sure it's in Africa, but those are not black people unlike everyone else in Africa, because black people are SAVAGES"). A white guy complaining about black people claiming Egypt as a historical heritage and source of pride is just not a good look.

i blame dragonlance

and then there's his argument that Poe is the source of all SF... I'm just not convinced. He dismisses Shelley's claim to that title pretty much exclusively on the basis that no one actually reads her for pleasure/the book is not popular (read only by those who read as a matter of "academic curiosity"); and that the monster owes more to mythology/folktales than anything exclusively science fictional. Poe, on the other hand, was a hoaxster, magazine writer, and populist and these are the qualities Disch sees as essential to the birth of the genre. I see his point, but it's not entirely convincing to me, since it has so little to do with the substance/content of what Poe actually wrote (which honestly would never have occurred to me to qualify as SF). Disch posits that writing about hypnotism (the "pseudoscience" of its day) and appealing to popular wish fulfillment notions and the like qualify Poe as the progenitor but this reasoning just seems squishy to me.

Reading this right after Malzberg's "Breakfast in the Ruins" - and I never thought I'd say this about him - I feel like Malzberg's grasp of the genre involved less stridency, less moralizing, and a more humanistic, sympathetic approach to the its failures and foibles. Disch seems to literally despise people with a joy and intensity that Malzberg reserved only for himself (and perhaps certain political figures).

xp

Poe written some science articles too and some have said that they were really onto something at that time.

I've read a bunch of old supernatural stories where there is some dated (I mean nonsensical in retrospect) but interesting attempts to mix in plausible sounding science.

I've only read one or two Disch short stories but one really confused me with what he was trying to do.

big fan of Disch's fiction - Fun With Your New Head, Camp Concentration, and 3334 are all great. The Genocides is impossibly bleak, possibly the most nihilistic thing I've ever read, and I kind of can't recommend it. And then there's Echo Round His Bones which is remarkably inscrutable and bizarre but not particularly good and I can't say I cared a bit about it's explicitly Catholic concerns.

this isn't the first time I've encountered his opinions (he's pretty notorious; he's quite good in one of those PKD docs) but it is the first time I've read any critical essays.

Poe written some science articles too and some have said that they were really onto something at that time.

I've read a bunch of old supernatural stories where there is some dated (I mean nonsensical in retrospect) but interesting attempts to mix in plausible sounding science.

yeah these are both otm re: Poe it just bugs me that what Disch thinks makes him deserve the title of genre patriarch have more to do with his role/position in popular culture than, you know, what he actually wrote. Poe is great, don't get me wrong, but his best stuff (Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, the Black Cat, the Raven, etc.) bear no resemblance to the sf genre that emerged in the 20th century. in my opinion. Maybe he's got tons of science-themed stuff I haven't read yet, but I find it hard to believe that his most significant, foundational work would be things I haven't heard of.

lots of Verne-like voyaging with balloons, etc., in Poe, but I agree he's not any more foundational for SF than other writers

plus Poe is usually considered the main source for detective/mystery fiction -- let's not throw it all on Edgar

I don't know how publishers have resisted putting out a book called Edgar Alan Poems.

I was just looking at my complete Poe book today and I'm shocked how little poems there actually is. I had a strong memory of his poems dwarfing his story output. I'm pretty sure he preferred doing poems.

Ugh now Disch is ranting about political correctness and feminism (so 90s). This book is a series of petty, unfortunate disagreements rooted in disch's own insecurities.

Isn't Disch an expert on poetry? I think Moorcock said The Independent asked him for a list of the best new poets and then complained they didn't recognise any of them.

The Disch story that confused me was "The Asian Shore".

He wrote plenty of poetry himself as "Tom Disch." I've read a bunch of it, it's very good. He also -surprise- wrote a takedown of the poetry world and its petty squabbles. Probably another case of trust him if he likes something but take it with a grain of salt if he doesn't.

Disch seems to really hate large chunks of the sf community based on this book. Or at least he chose to focus on the aspects he finds most objectionable (trekkies, scientologists, feminists, militarists/fascists). This book is depressing.

Yup. He seems to think there is some genetic flaw in the genre that predisposes it to go wrong. Think I used to agree with him but not so much anymore.

some genetic flaw in the genre that predisposes it to go wrong

our fantasies unleashed. what could possibly go wrong?

Oh yeah.

Well, to circle back around, Lem thinks the problem is that in principle the genre has a lot of potential but then writers can't deal with it or live up to it so end up resorting to some debased copy of another genre-either the detective story or the fairy tale.

both detective stories and fairy tales are some archetypal shit and therefore very hard to get away from, but genre fiction is churned out by the boatload and most of it is bound to be debased or mediocre. no surprise there.

Xp:
Just came across this which was kind of interesting, about Disch's blog at the end: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/sep/5/thomas-m-dischs-endzone/

Which led me to this, Delany's book about a Disch story which was just republished, http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-american-shore-by-samuel-r-delany.html?m=1

And then this, which is a review of that Delany book as well as The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, with a lot of stuff about Delany's thought on Le Guin.

Right, Aimless. The problem is really Sturgeon's law. Well, not only that, but that accounts for a lot.

Both Disch and Delany use Frankenstein as a kind of strawman. Although maybe there is more credence to the Delany argument that being the author of a book on Frankenstein is not enough to qualify as an expert on sf.

Forgot the last link before:
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/review_essays/parrind19.htm

Here is a reasonable review of the book Shakey is reading: http://www.emcit.com/emcit129.php?a=19

Here is Clute's review in which he comments upon his original blurb: ftp://asavage.dyndns.org/Literature/scifi.com/www.scifi.com/sfw/issue79/excess.html. Slow server though.

Lavie Tidhar loves that book btw

Wait that is a different book I think

Reviewed in the first link that is...?

Ah, you are right. That is a later book. I didn't have time to check, figured it was just a different title for the same thing.

Never mind.

Clute is p spot on. The Turner diaries detour is v wtf. Disch is not v good on racial politics in general imo.

And he sure loves him some orson scott card lol o the irony

Not every day do you get to read a gay man rhapsodizing about the narrative skills and moral clarity of a homophobic mormon

Man didnt know about that Endzone blog. That is grim.

interestingly, re: my question above about when/why things changed for the sf market (moving away from magazines etc.) Disch cites the unauthorized reprinting of LOTR by Ace in the mid-60s as the turning point/when fantasy series took over

Never knew about that but: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/unauthorized-lord-rings/

yeah I hadn't heard about it before either

"When he called up Professor Tolkien in 1964 and asked if he could publish Lord of the Rings as Ace paperbacks, Tolkien said he would never allow his great works to appear in so ‘degenerate a form’ as the paperback book."

lol

Wonder if any of that guy's other posts worth looking at.

Yeah I knew abt those versions being unauthorized. Thing is I p much love the insane Boschy covers they put on those. I grew up with the slipcase paperback set that had tolkein's water colors on the covers. Hate the ones from after that with the gd photorealistic eagles and shit.

Surprised about Disch being a douche over the years. I did read that he posted some anti-Muslim etc. comments toward the end, before killing himself (his partner died, and other crushing stress). But way before that, he seemed pretty decent in his Nation columns. Don't know that you can say who invented science fiction: the ancient Greeks and who knows who earlier wrote about going to the moon etc. Of course it may depend on what you want to consider/allow as "science."

Clute tweet Sept 10:
Problem with Affect Horror is it thinks its subject matter is abberantional. Wheras Terror is recognition. “Evil” vs. Where We Are Now.

sorry, "abberational" is the term he (correctly) used. Also, I finally saw Her, and his take seems wicked plausible: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/her

Surprised about Disch being a douche over the years.

I don't really know if he was a jerk on personal/professional level, but who knows. The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of was published in 1998 so maybe that was at the beginning of his end-of-life bitchiness? I don't know. His prejudices are not attractive, and his pointless digressions (Caesar's Column? nobody even knows what that is or has been influenced by it) seem to exist merely for him to vent his spleen. Of the major figures attacked he seems to reserve his most bilious opinions for Ursula K. LeGuin, at one point ridiculing her for making simplistic claims (and I'm quoting verbatim here) like "War is bad, and men are to blame for it. Capitalism is bad, and men are to blame for it." etc. The problem is, those claims are not at all ridiculous or ahistorical - war and capitalism ARE bad and they have historically been developed, fomented, and implemented by men. It is not sexist or overly dogmatic to point this out, it is a simple fact. But Disch feels like these positions are somehow patently, obviously false because they are presented by a strident, didactic writer who he does not credit with understanding nuance or ambiguity. He may be write about LeGuin's limitations as a writer (she IS didactic) but he just goes too far.

I get the impression from his criticisms of fascists like Heinlein that Disch does not think war or capitalism are actually good, just that they aren't exclusively the fault of men...? I have no idea.

aaanyway moving on to Carol Emshwiller's "Joy in Our Cause". so far this is a bunch of stuff that is p good, but bears only the most tangential relationship to SF.

Tangential's cool. This thread def has some of that, re the "speculative fiction" part of its title. The Carol E. stories I've found here and there are good, and her hubby Ed's SF illustrations are fondly remembered by lifers (blanking on specific images, but I'm sure his covers lured me and my school lunch money).

Look at any of those Galaxy Project reissue covers.

I like her writing in general and I can see why Moorcock would feel it fit in New Worlds (text intercut with images, non-linear narratives, prose broken up into short chunks). But yeah it isn't really "speculative" either, its mostly her ruminations on being a middle aged woman/mother and po-mo stuff about the nature and mechanics of art and writing.

Find her Carmen Dog short novel, totally amazing US magic realism

Thanks, will check. Ruminations, speculations, magic realism, like life, coolio.

i blame the sword of shannara. or star trek books.

I blame the Thomas Covenant books.

^^^