Should Science Fiction Be Taught in Schools?
I don’t think the question should be whether it should be taught in schools, but whether there should be a larger variety of science fiction titles presented to students. Science fiction is already taught in most schools (at least in America). Some of the most popular science fiction stories taught in public high schools include 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and a select few other titles (Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card has become rather popular); some school curriculum already offer a varied diet of science fiction titles–kudos to them. In my personal opinion, however, in directing my answer to this particular question: Yes, of course science fiction should be taught in public schools, but I believe that the same criteria for quality should be applied to science fiction as to any other genre of fiction. We teach Charles Dickens for a very specific reason, and similar reasons should be applied to science fiction novels (which are why the novels I mentioned above tend to be common). I simply think that there needs to be more variety. I don’t think all science fiction texts should be taught, nor do I suggest that only the “classics” deserve a space. There are plenty of incredibly important science fiction novels that have sprung up in the last thirty years (such as William Gibson’s work or Joe Haldeman, Arthur C. Clarke. et al). As such, there is a wealth of material available to the public and to schools that could beneficial for the teaching of modern forms of literature. I personally feel that many of our schools place too much focus on “classic” forms of literature–particularly older work–and I see that as failing to prepare our students for the changes that have occurred in modern literature today. True, one’s reading ability does not necessarily have to be advanced to read the vast majority of literature written today, but critical thinking is absolutely necessary to grasping the sometimes abstract or deeply-rooted concepts found within many great science fiction novels. As to why I think science fiction should be taught: Science fiction is the literature of the future. It speculates upon the world we live in now to see where we might end up one day, whether that be 10 years ahead or 100 years ahead (or 1,000). As a genre it is important because many of the greatest science fiction novels do contain the depth and themes that make literature important to us. It is a genre that constantly questions and examines the human condition, which is precisely what literature is meant to do. That makes it an enormously important genre in preparing students for critically thinking upon the human condition. It also has a powerful influence on world perspectives and I find that the more I read science fiction the more I find that my own personal feelings about the world I live in now are put into question. While public schools aren’t necessarily there to get students to challenge themselves, good literature will do this from time to time and it is important to expose the next generation of readers to such conditions. That’s the case I’m making for teaching science fiction in schools. What do you think? Do you have different opinions on the matter?
Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part three)
Here is the final installment of this series. This brings us to a total of fifteen irritating things about other writers (including Part One and Part Two)! So, feel free to leave a comment and enjoy: Thirteen-year-old kids who self-publish a book and think they are worthy of the same adoration as J. K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, or any number of legitimately published individuals who have sold millions of copies of books. While I’m okay with people self-publishing, one should understand that you are not entitled to fair treatment. You chose to subvert the publishing process by doing it yourself. By doing so you’ve taken upon yourself the stigma that is involved with self-publishing. If you don’t like it, then don’t self-publish. You have to earn the respect of your prospective readers; readers are not entitled to respect you (which works for legitimately published writers too, but you get what I mean). Thirteen-year-old kids who did the same as above and then get really uppity with you when you point out the obvious and irritating flaws in their writing. This is part of the business. If you don’t like people throwing slams at your work, don’t write (talking fiction, of course, because I can do whatever the hell I want with my blog). This goes for all writers. If I review your book and I don’t like it, don’t argue with me about it. Being classy like some writers have been and just take the criticism. If you act like a petulant child it doesn’t look good on your part. Literary writers who rip on genre writers for writing drivel. This is almost exclusively in the realm of jealousy on their part. Get over it. People don’t want to read literary novels as much as they did in 1810. That’s just the way it is. Writers who talk more about themselves than the person they’re supposed to be interviewing. I’m not listening to your audio interview to listen to you babble out yourself in response to your own questions. I want to hear what this other person has to say. I know about you already; that’s why I’m listening to your podcast. I don’t know about the other person. So let them talk! That is all!
Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part two)
Irritation, it seems, is not limited to five things. Here is another list of irritating things about other writers (plus Part One and Part Three). Enjoy: People who think that free publication is the same as being published in a professional magazine. It’s not. Stop pretending that your free podcast fiction piece that nobody paid you for and is being put out on the net to about thirty people is the same as someone like Jason Sanford selling a piece to Interzone. It’s not remotely the same. It’s nice that you’re building yourself up and trying to get publication credits, but editors care about as much as I do about non-paying markets: none. It’s worth very little, especially when placed next to someone of equal skill who has sold to better markets. (For the record, I am editor of a small magazine, but we’re a paying market. We don’t pay much, hardly anything, but it’s better than free. Writers with talent deserve to be paid for their work. You wouldn’t work for Taco Bell for free would you?) Writers who say stupid things like “science fiction is dead” or “I write to the market.” Science fiction isn’t dead and you can’t technically write to the market unless you happen to be incredibly good at predicting the future. Trends change so damn rapidly these days that most people just get lucky when they hit on a big thing. Maybe a few writers are capable of writing fast enough to write to the market, but that’s still stupid. At least to me it is… Infodumps in short stories. It’s a short story; there isn’t time for that sort of thing. People who think they are better than you because they wrote a book. Nothing wrong with being humble. Seriously. Try it. People who think that science fiction is exactly the same as fantasy, based upon the terms’ standard definitions and common understandings. The categories are held to be generally distinct for a lot of reasons, but mostly for marketing purposes. Generally speaking science fiction is spaceships, technology, and science, while fantasy is dragons, wizards, and magic. That’s speaking generally. There’s certainly something to be said about the blending of genres, as discussed in the comment to one of my recent posts, but the two are still distinct genres for the most part. Any thoughts?
Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part one)
Sometimes in this thing called the “writing life” you can’t help but be annoyed by the things going on in the profession you wish to be a part of. Call it jealousy in some cases or just being a jerk, but as a budding writer I find the following things to be discouraging, frustrating, and downright irksome (plus Part Two and Part Three): People with less talent/skill getting published and recognized for mediocre work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for people who have success, but it really puts a dampener on things when you’re trying your butt off just to get your foot in the door and the people whose work you’ve actually read and wondered “how the hell did this get published” are simply doing better than you. People with more talent/skill not succeeding. I know several people who are actually better writers than me. I’m enormously jealous of them because they have a grasp of the craft that I don’t. Most of them are much younger than me, haven’t been doing it very long, and generally have little self-esteem about it, which is tremendously unfortunate. So when I see these talented writers who have a gift, who are better than me, and they aren’t doing well or don’t know what to do, I’m put in a position where I want to help, but I’m also disheartened that they aren’t doing well when they’re trying. Vampires without fangs. Sorry, that should be illegal. Yes, we should pass a law that bans this practice. It’s literary rape and the poor vampires can’t defend themselves. I’m setting up a charity next week… People who try to explain away cliches by calling them something else. There’s a reason why it’s called a cliche. The Creationism people didn’t get away with changing their name to Intelligent Design. What makes you think you can get away with something similar? People who write science fiction, but refuse to acknowledge it (Margaret Atwood, I’m looking at you). If you wrote a science fiction novel, then that’s all there is to it. You wrote it. Accept it. Hell, even embrace it! Trying to pretend that your novel isn’t science fiction because it’s literary is about as intelligent as Bush trying to explain why OBGYNs aren’t allowed to share their love with women. There you have it! What about you? Any irksome things you can think of regarding other writers?
Guidelines: An Editorial Nightmare
Being a writer who wants to be published in a legit publication, I have always spent a considerable amount of time mulling over the guidelines of a magazine I want to submit to. There are a lot of obvious reasons for doing this, but the most important reason, for me, is to make sure that my submission is properly formatted, is submitted correctly, and fits into the magazine or anthology’s theme or editorial direction–maybe those are the only real reasons for reading guidelines.But now that I’m editing a magazine–well, it’s turning out to be more of a journal than a magazine, to be honest–I’ve discovered that I must be a minority among writers. I don’t know what it is, but since opening up submissions to the general public we’ve been hit with a series of submissions that simply weren’t correct. One submission was from a 45-year-old woman from Argentina who wanted payment through Western Union. The problem? SBS Magazine only accepts submissions from writers under the age of 25 (and we’re a tad lenient on that age, but not lenient enough to add a year to it). To top it off, we specifically stated in our very organized guidelines that payment is made through Paypal. Another fellow submitted to the wrong email address while responding to an ad that I had put up. I emailed him back and told him to read the guidelines to figure out where to submit to.And this has made me want to give a little advice to folks out there wanting to submit to a magazine or journal somewhere: Read the guidelines. They’re not put there to be pretty. Editors want you to read them and submit properly for a lot of reasons. Don’t assume that your submission that doesn’t follow the guidelines will be so good that the editors will ignore that you’ve not followed guidelines and publish it anyway. In fact, of the submissions that have been sent to us that didn’t follow guidelines, we rejected them without reading them, and other editors do this too–and we’re pretty lenient. True, SBS Magazine isn’t Analog or F&SF, and we don’t have thousands of submissions a month, but the guidelines aren’t that hard to read and there are certain things we’re not willing to be lenient on–like age. But editors at bigger magazines won’t read your submission at all if it’s off target–say submitting a poem to a magazine that only publishes fiction. They don’t have the time or patience for you if you can’t even read the guidelines. Editors aren’t trying to be mean an anal when they reject your manuscript because it doesn’t follow guidelines. Most, if not all, magazine editors have a certain direction they want the magazine to go. Analog only publishes hard SF and nonfiction essays on certain aspects of science that might be of interest to readers of the magazine. Other magazines have a wider audience, or at least have no genre specifications, but look for certain types of writing as opposed to any type. So, if your submission doesn’t fit what they’re trying to publish, you’re actually wasting the editor’s time, and they don’t like that one bit. It’s not a matter of being the cranky old editor. Some of the more popular magazines get hundreds, if not thousands of submissions every month. They have to reply to each of them–usually with a form rejection. Can you imagine going through a few hundred manuscripts every month? Don’t be an ass. If the editor rejects your manuscript, don’t do any of the following: Write back explaining why your manuscript wasn’t up to par. Write back arguing with the editor over their choice to reject you. Write back with some sort of snarky remark, such as “I guess your magazine doesn’t publish highly metaphorical literary fiction.” Flame the editor for rejecting you on your blog. If you want to be taken seriously, act professional. Unless an editor has done something morally objectionable, leave it be. Send the editor a mean letter. Hopefully that all makes sense. The biggest thing is to read the guidelines. Seriously.
What’s This About Indie Bookstores?
Indie bookstores suck. There. I’ve said it. But before you kill me or send me hate mail or flame the comments section with angry retorts about why indie bookstores are so much better than Borders, let me explain why I say that such stores suck. First, let’s look at why it is that people go to Borders or B&N or one of the other big book chains out there. Contrary to what is being said about Borders (it being the evil bookstore because it doesn’t stock every book and some authors aren’t being carried anymore), each Borders store (with exception, perhaps, to the mall stores) carries quite a huge selection of titles. Every Borders I have been to, and I have been to many, has had a rather large SF/F section, with mass markets taking up about 3/4ths of the overall SF/F stock, and trade/hardcovers taking the last 1/4th. I haven’t counted how many different SF/F books are in the Borders in downtown Santa Cruz, but if I were to guess I’d have to say somewhere between 500 and 1,000. That’s “different” books, not repeats or extra copies or reprints. I know, that’s just a fraction of the SF/F books that are printed every year, and obviously some of the books Borders carries, or at least still has, are either popular titles or leftovers from the last year that they decided to hang on to until they sold. Borders also lets you order books that they don’t have, both new and used, and doesn’t charge you for shipping (indie stores generally don’t charge shipping either). What makes Borders one of the best places to shop for new books is the fact that it has such a huge selection. Of course there are authors who don’t end up on their shelves, but what’s to stop you from going up to the counter and saying “I would like to order such and such book” if you’re so upset about your favorite author not being on the shelf? In fact, I’d place some of the blame on you, the buyer, for not taking an active stance of support for your favorite authors; you could easily make Borders think twice about what it carries if you, the fan, were to buy those books there, even by ordering, and get other people to do the same. But, that’s really not what this post is about. What this post is about is why indie bookstores are not the greatest stores ever. In fact, I would argue that the vast majority of indie bookstores actually suck. For this argument I’m going to intentionally avoid all such stores that are primarily used bookstores, because they really occupy a different category from everything else due to the fact that they don’t, as a rule, carry newer books and thus take profit from reselling older titles or collectible books, which have absolutely no direct influence on sales for the author (one could probably argue that the used bookstore shopper might randomly decide to buy an author’s older work, like it, and thus move on to the author’s newer work, but that would be hard to prove, now wouldn’t it?). So, I’m focusing on indie stores that have a significant portion of their sales, or at least a significant portion of their stock, be from newer titles. Maybe things are different on the east coast. Maybe over there every town has a brilliant, perfect indie bookstore with all the books you could ever want, with excellent service, etc. But here on the west coast, indie bookstores are generally rather pathetic. There are a handful of exceptional stores that I know of (Powell’s City of Books in Portland–one of the best bookstores I have ever been to, by the way, with rather knowledgeable staff members–Borderlands in San Francisco–also one of the best, and focused on SF/F–and Mysterious Galaxies in LA–which I have never been to, but am told is quite good and is well known for author talks; I might also add Bookshop Santa Cruz, which is downtown and has a reasonable stock and is actually rather decent). The thing is, those large (or SF/F specialized) stores are rather rare out here. Every town you go to will not have a Powell’s or a Borderlands. Some towns with some history may have a Book Shop Santa Cruz. But almost every town that has indie bookstores will have those stores that nobody shops at, and depending on the size of the town they may have many of these kinds of stores. What makes these stores suck? First, selection. I know I talked about Borders not having every book, but when you go into an indie store, most of them will likely carry all the bestsellers, past and present, and a minuscule medley of other titles. They barely succeed in outdoing the grocery store and are far less convenient since you have to specifically go to these stores to buy books rather than going to the grocery store to do two things at once. Second, those stores that try to be a little more “fun” also tend to be “niche” stores. While it’s perfectly fine to be a niche store–such as the bookstore in Placerville, California that carries an assortment of things like screenplays and humorous Buddy Jesus action figures (it’s not a religious store, they’re meant to be funny in the Kevin Smith vein)–such stores lack the ability to appeal to a wider audience. Borders has huge sections of books on all sorts of subjects, offering shoppers of various interests to browse for a good amount of time. So, while you might think that the cool Buddy Jesus bookstore downtown is the greatest thing ever, someone else might not and likely won’t shop there because of that. This is an argument against Borderlands and Mysterious Galaxies too, although both those stores happen to be niche only because they focus on specific genres and not because they aim for a certain type of