Brian Aldiss on Atwood as Sf Denier

[faustus]

Letter to The Times, The harsh realities of science fiction, here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article2664835.ece

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Have wasted more time than I have to spare contemplating how Atwood can be used as a measure of sf density/opaqueness. Or how sf is like a pair of tights.

It would have been easier to read the article.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

You may have something there - the New Wave as ladders, Dangerous Visions as (paradoxically) crotchless, cyberpunk uses a new miracle fibre that falls apart after a couple of years. Then there are silk tights and garters and suspenders and toelessness and panties. But tights, frankly, I know from nothing, so I'll stop.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Aldiss still hates Triffids, I see. I wonder how he feels about I Am Legend.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I wonder how he feels about I Am Legend.
Well, at least the hero doesn't get the girl.

I wonder whether Aldiss would feel the same about Death of Grass (which I agree is brilliant in the simplicity of its central conceit, and the sheer terror it clocks up) were he a modern-day young woman confronting its ante-diluvian sexual politics?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Of course Aldiss has played his own I am Serious Novelist games over the years, and not just in his non-sf novel writing.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I know many sf readers who can get more women than they want!