Post by @fatsam@mstdn.social

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/117268631445988643

I still enjoy TMIAHM, but Stross is right about this. The New Wave (heh, 60 years ago)... offended right wing American SF writers more for their ideological content than any linguistic or novelistic advances.

Charlie Stross

@cstross@wandering.shop 4 hr. ago

#WritersCoffeeClub 14 Sept. Have you ever read a work of fiction you felt was advertising something?

In my own field, a lot of American SF (in particular) is advertising for one strain of crank politics/economics or another—especially libertarianism: from Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" to "The Unincorporated Man" it's a rich seam of bullshit running through the entire genre.

The product most widely advertised in fiction is the author's own ideological blinkers.

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Charlie Stross

@cstross@wandering.shop 3 hr. ago

@fatsam I blame the pernicious influence of John W. Campbell. While there were other editors in his day, he promoted his proteges and I believe he discouraged and/or suppressed other authors he disapproved of—women, people of colour, anyone to the left of Genghis Khan. Now there's no way of knowing who we missed out on because of him.

Daniel Keys Moran

@fatsam@mstdn.social 2 hr. ago

@cstross I don't think you can lay it all on him -- Isaac Asimov, a good liberal despite Moorcock's apparent opinion to the contrary -- got published there. (There were unexamined ideas in Asimov? Sure, it was the 1940s. The wildest-left men on the planet, and that doesn't include Asimov, weren't really sure about this whole women's lib thing.)

But I might go half on that one.What if Judith Merrill had taken over Analog the post-War period? We'd have seen a different field.