thistleingrey's explained it already. Sorry for that.
They strike me as being self-consciously intellectual, perhaps a little bit like the New York Times. I might agree with about a fair number of things, but when they start talking about sf/f I prepare myself for... well, stuff like the above. ;-)
I don't have that kind of tribal loyalty: if you worry too much over "literary" versus "speculative," you may feel compelled to throw out Bulgakov or Nabokov or Sylvia Townsend Warner, and then I may feel compelled to hit you repeatedly with Charles Dickens.
No worries, I'd not put them out--I don't want you to hit me with Dickens. ;-)
I try not to be too tribal, but it's very deep in my wiring.
Besides, as I said, the fact that some of the writers--and definitely a substantial part of their fans*--would be disconcerted by their inclusion on an sf/f list makes it all good. I want to see the whole lot of them reprinted with Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo covers, me. ;-)
(Seriously, where was A Christmas Carol on this list? Where do they think children learn about possible futures and causality, anyway?)
A very good point.
Because it's fantasy (or science fiction: although mostly what it is is bitterly black satire) and not much else of Twain's work is?
I suppose so. Me, I'd rather see Tom Sawyer and the Airship here, even though it was mediocre even from the perspective of a ten-year-old who was obsessed with dirigibles and read paperbacks of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to pieces.
The sheer cultural arrogance of CT Yankee and the massive case of Did Not Do the Research is hard for me to forgive. I suppose what Twain was really targeting was mediaeval-setting fiction, of the Sir Walter Scott variety, but still...
As a series, Harry Potter is wildly inconsistent in quality;
This is all too true. The last couple of books, in particular... well, I think Rowling's a casualty of too much fame, too quickly. Or at least that's the charitable explanation.
and if impact on the wider world is a factor, the first book is what really kicked off the phenomenon.
True. I thought Prisoner of Azkaban was the best of the lot, myself, but Philosopher's Stone is probably the most necessary one, if they're being read as examples.
They probably should have picked a couple of Discworlds, but at least the Earthsea books can be read all as a cycle (before some of us go off into corners and fight about Tehanu).
This is true.
*I once got into a borderline-argument over whether or not The Road was science fiction, with a friend whose criterion for not calling it science fiction seemed to boil down to the fact that he thought it was worth reading and therefore it couldn't be science fiction. ;-)
no subject
They strike me as being self-consciously intellectual, perhaps a little bit like the New York Times. I might agree with about a fair number of things, but when they start talking about sf/f I prepare myself for... well, stuff like the above. ;-)
I don't have that kind of tribal loyalty: if you worry too much over "literary" versus "speculative," you may feel compelled to throw out Bulgakov or Nabokov or Sylvia Townsend Warner, and then I may feel compelled to hit you repeatedly with Charles Dickens.
No worries, I'd not put them out--I don't want you to hit me with Dickens. ;-)
I try not to be too tribal, but it's very deep in my wiring.
Besides, as I said, the fact that some of the writers--and definitely a substantial part of their fans*--would be disconcerted by their inclusion on an sf/f list makes it all good. I want to see the whole lot of them reprinted with Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo covers, me. ;-)
(Seriously, where was A Christmas Carol on this list? Where do they think children learn about possible futures and causality, anyway?)
A very good point.
Because it's fantasy (or science fiction: although mostly what it is is bitterly black satire) and not much else of Twain's work is?
I suppose so. Me, I'd rather see Tom Sawyer and the Airship here, even though it was mediocre even from the perspective of a ten-year-old who was obsessed with dirigibles and read paperbacks of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to pieces.
The sheer cultural arrogance of CT Yankee and the massive case of Did Not Do the Research is hard for me to forgive. I suppose what Twain was really targeting was mediaeval-setting fiction, of the Sir Walter Scott variety, but still...
As a series, Harry Potter is wildly inconsistent in quality;
This is all too true. The last couple of books, in particular... well, I think Rowling's a casualty of too much fame, too quickly. Or at least that's the charitable explanation.
and if impact on the wider world is a factor, the first book is what really kicked off the phenomenon.
True. I thought Prisoner of Azkaban was the best of the lot, myself, but Philosopher's Stone is probably the most necessary one, if they're being read as examples.
They probably should have picked a couple of Discworlds, but at least the Earthsea books can be read all as a cycle (before some of us go off into corners and fight about Tehanu).
This is true.
*I once got into a borderline-argument over whether or not The Road was science fiction, with a friend whose criterion for not calling it science fiction seemed to boil down to the fact that he thought it was worth reading and therefore it couldn't be science fiction. ;-)