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'SF has not been much fun of late. All forms of pop culture go through doldrums; they catch cold when society sneezes. If SF in the late Seventies was confused, self-involved, and stale, it was scarcely a cause for wonder'
And yet, and yet - I've been thinking about seventies sf for a number of years now, and I've written articles on three neglected figures of the period: Coney, Cowper and Compton. I've always felt that there was a book in it somewhere but whether anyone is interested enough to read it remains to be seen.
But I'm being drawn to the decade again, and I'm looking at this large block of marble, prepared to make the first chip. I'm sure there's a statue there somewhere, but where?
I'm thinking that the seventies was the period when sf first truly escaped from being the property of white, bourgeois boys - after civil rights, after women's rights, after gay rights, Something Changed. Sf became a venue for new political visions. The New Wave(s) had refreshed its voice, but now it had something to talk about. After all, it could hardly be about going to the moon.
The last thing I want to write about is the death of sf. ('It may not be the worst thing that ever happened to sf that it died.') But certainly the dinosaurs of First Sf were sorry relics who had been out evolved. And with four or five blockbuster films (Star Wars, Star Trek, Close Encounters, Alien) there was sf around, even if it wasn't the kind we were looking for or (and this is just me thinking aloud here) some of it was all too much like the First SF we told ourselves we'd outgrown. Sf writers weren't competing for our beer money any more, but for the money we spent on lunchboxes.
What would a history of seventies sf look like, if these are indeed the parts of the statue in the marble? I don't want to just write about exceptions. The mainstream stuff needs examining too. ('Obviously the stuff I'm interested in is the radical subversive marginal stuff, because I'm a radical subversive margin.' And so forth. Special cases don't make a history, they make a special pleading.)
Is this sf as a postcolonial literature before the neo cons/roms returned in the 1980s?
And yet, and yet - I've been thinking about seventies sf for a number of years now, and I've written articles on three neglected figures of the period: Coney, Cowper and Compton. I've always felt that there was a book in it somewhere but whether anyone is interested enough to read it remains to be seen.
But I'm being drawn to the decade again, and I'm looking at this large block of marble, prepared to make the first chip. I'm sure there's a statue there somewhere, but where?
I'm thinking that the seventies was the period when sf first truly escaped from being the property of white, bourgeois boys - after civil rights, after women's rights, after gay rights, Something Changed. Sf became a venue for new political visions. The New Wave(s) had refreshed its voice, but now it had something to talk about. After all, it could hardly be about going to the moon.
The last thing I want to write about is the death of sf. ('It may not be the worst thing that ever happened to sf that it died.') But certainly the dinosaurs of First Sf were sorry relics who had been out evolved. And with four or five blockbuster films (Star Wars, Star Trek, Close Encounters, Alien) there was sf around, even if it wasn't the kind we were looking for or (and this is just me thinking aloud here) some of it was all too much like the First SF we told ourselves we'd outgrown. Sf writers weren't competing for our beer money any more, but for the money we spent on lunchboxes.
What would a history of seventies sf look like, if these are indeed the parts of the statue in the marble? I don't want to just write about exceptions. The mainstream stuff needs examining too. ('Obviously the stuff I'm interested in is the radical subversive marginal stuff, because I'm a radical subversive margin.' And so forth. Special cases don't make a history, they make a special pleading.)
Is this sf as a postcolonial literature before the neo cons/roms returned in the 1980s?
.