zlacker

She looks down her nose at "science fiction" and claims that her work is "speculative fiction" instead. It is a pretentious, pedantic distinction and, as a lifelong scifi fan, it makes me deeply ambivalent to anything she produces. Even if it is good science fiction.

>>klunge+(OP)
It’s a fair enough position but I think you’re also being pedantic here. I try to separate these matters from the creation and judge everything on its own merits.

>>klunge+(OP)
To be fair to Atwood, there was a lot of junk sci fi over the years that she would want to distance her work from.

>>techer+U2
She writes well, but the snobbery towards "genre fiction" irks me enough that I generally refer to her as a science fiction writer who does other stuff.

I get the impression I'm not alone and a whole lot of people who enjoy good writing that may or may not be science fiction just wish she'd accept it and move on.

>>klunge+(OP)
It’s also a marketing strategy. She’d serve a wider audience as speculative fiction than as science fiction.

>>klunge+(OP)
She is beyond doubt pretentious and pedantic. She is also brilliant and can wield words in a way others wield deadly weapons in a theatre of war. You might have trouble listening to her say it, but it's almost always worth listening to what she says and how she says it.

Also, it's been a long time since I've seen science fiction and sci-fi jumbled together as a single genre.

>>techst+U8
Hell, even some of the most popular sci-fi today (cough—Three Body Problem—cough) would fit that bill. If I was an author in complete command of my craft like Atwood is, I wouldn't want to be explicitly associated with the genre, either.

>>klunge+(OP)
For context: When I was growing up and going to school (in Canada in the 80s), all of her work was generally classified as Canadian Literature, aka canlit. She was (and still is) considered one of our biggest home grown literary giants.

I don't think anyone here even thought of her work as science fiction back then.

>>techst+U8
Exactly - look at what kind of work dominated scifi in 1961, the year of her first published work.

The 1961 Hugo Award was given to Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, a work about the discovery of an alien artifact on the moon. The only women in this book are vapid arm candy for the bold, intrepid male explorers.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Moon

>> Claire Pack, Barker's girlfriend, who flirts with both Hawks and Connington but knows she prefers the manliness of Barker. She has some sort of sado-masochistic bond with Barker; even when he hits her face in public, she says without irony, "Isn't he grand? Isn't he a man?"

This kind of treatment is pretty much par for the course in popular science fiction of the time. Bold, violent men riding around in spaceships and shooting rayguns at hostile aliens to save giggling, helpless women.

>>klunge+(OP)
I can't get behind "looking down" at scifi, but the distinction between scifi and speculative fiction isn't necessarily pedantic. Speculative fiction creates a world sufficiently different from our own that we need to situate to it, which makes it similar to science fiction. But in terms of technology, everything matches what we have right now.

As long as you don't disparage a particular genre, it's an entertaining and thought provoking distinction, especially when you get right out on the line. For instance, the episode of Black Mirror "Nosedive" gets right out on that line. There isn't much technology that doesn't already exist, they've just gone a little farther with it in terms of electric cars. Then you could go in the other direction - all fiction is speculative to some extent, so when does it cross the line? I'd say it happens when you need to situate yourself to the rules of a very different world, in a broad sense, but very hard to say...

The Handmaid's Tale feels like science fiction to me, probably because it's in a vague future date. But I'm having trouble thinking of anything technology oriented that would have to exist and doesn't already.

>>slanty+Mn
I think this is a Canadian thing. Friends who emigrated to Nelson BC comment on how in the library, every book by a Canadian author has a maple leaf on the spine. Canada seems to have a bit of an underdog complex about maintaining its cultural identity in the shadow of its neighbor. The museum in Nanaimo has a whole shrine dedicated to famous Canadian entertainers...such as Loverboy and Bryan Adams. They also have a very comprehensive and delightful display covering the gem of Canadian desserts, the Nanaimo Bar.

>>slanty+Mn
Kind of like Slaughterhouse Five in the US. It clearly fits the mold of science fiction except for being "serious".

>>psycho+rl
I'll bite: what's wrong with Three Body Problem?

>>patja+5G
I've grown up and lived in British Columbia, and I think I can understand the attitude given the cultural attitude compared to the US.

When I look at Australia, a commonwealth nation that's similar in some ways, but with a much more developed domestic media industry I very much feel like a vassal state of US culture.

>>psycho+rl
I’d love to hear your opinion on Three Body Problem.