The SF ghetto, and how it came to be

[wombat_socho]

Science fiction has always been the red-headed stepchild of Anglosphere literature, sneered at for its pulp origins and blatantly ripped off by mainstream authors who would rather die than admit that what they're writing has anything in common with the "tripe" dispensed by such "hacks" as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, etc. etc.

Geitner Simmons, whose excellent blog Regions of Mind is a regular on my blog-reading rounds, offers a link to this Charles Paul Freund article that shows how far back this sort of elitist nonsense goes.

Geitner also has some wonderful essays on the black experience in California, the sad history of the black 3rd North Carolina Regiment, and Theodore Roosevelt considered as a blogger. RTWT.

Comments

[basilpsyche.livejournal.com]

Hey Kevin, Damon here. Those articles are pretty interesting. It relates to what I've been reading lately stating how socialism was attached to science fiction and thus suppressed by the Establishment. I'll be sure to check out more of his stuff.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

I think it would be more accurate to say that Edwardian-era socialists made use of SF to write polemics that would be widely read by the public they were trying to radicalize. H.G. Wells and Jack London were just two examples of this.