Samuel R Delany, Philip K Dick, Ursula K Le Guin, and (maybe) William Gibson.

[pmb]

What scifi/fantasy authors would you be willing to defend as writers of high quality literature and not just genre fiction? What authors both have something to say, and say it well?

NB: I'm primarily looking for people who are by default filed in the SciFi ghetto, not "real" authors who have occasionally been filed in SF/fantasy. Because Kurt Vonnegut is widely acknowledged to be a virtuoso writer and has written a bunch of SF, but I'm not sure that most people think of him as a science fiction writer.

Comments

[roninspoon.livejournal.com]

Asimov?

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Asimov was the first science fiction I ever read and holds a special place in my heart. I'm pretty sure that I've read every single work of his fiction that I could get from any library to which I was a member.

All that said, his novels are starting to age poorly. Even the robot stories which were always my favorites. I still reread and like them, but I'm no longer sure that a person like me when who is 12 right now would like them.

[roninspoon.livejournal.com]

Are they aging poorly? Or maybe it's you how are aging poorly!?

Herbert and Heinlein were an enormous part of my life and were hugely influential on me, and so I may go easy on them. I don't think it's incorrect to suggest that simply because a genre writer is approachable and maybe even a little predictable, that this means it isn't good.

I think it's important to keep in mind that much of what we consider to be classical literature, started out as genre romantic fiction.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

There's something to what you are saying, but as long as I still derive enjoyment from them it's not a problem - I just no longer think of them as qualifying as great literature. It's sort of like the crappy food I liked as a kid - I still like a lot of it, but I no longer think it's the best food ever and I recognize that it may be gross if you didn't grow up on it.

I've outgrown a lot of books that I thought were awesome as a kid - the Redwall series, Hardy Boys, David Eddings books, etc. And those books are now pretty much unreadable. Asimov and Heinlein are merely losing some of their luster with age - Heinlein more than Asimov. Asimov is dated and deeply conformant to genre norms (in part because he created them). While Heinlein's lesser works are proceeding into unreadability - Number of the Beast, Farnham's Freehold, Lazarus Long books, Friday, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls ... they are not aging well at all. Herbert's books at some point stopped being about the story and started being about Frank Herbert musing about power and social control, and I think they suffered for it. God Emperor of Dune had long sections that were just the emperor musing about how messed up it was that he had all this power and how he needed to have all this power to hold things together. Perhaps it's interesting philosophy, but it makes for ponderous reading.

And now after dissing Heinlein, I'm kind of worried bagoffarts is going to hunt me down and destroy me...