Sci-Fi authors unite against genre snobbery

UK science fiction author Stephen Hunt is proud to call himself a ‘genre’ author. Since the launch of World Book Night last month, he has spearheaded a campaign heavily criticising WBN and the BBC for the lack of inclusion of more commercial fiction in the event. In a recent blog post, he labelled the tone of the programming as sneering, and lamented ‘its narrow focus on a single genre’ — of the 25 books featured in WBN, Philip Pullman’s The Northern Lights was the only fantasy title, and the majority of the remainder were so-called ‘literary’ fiction titles.

Hunt’s wrath was particularly stirred up by a recent BBC program entitled, ‘The Books We Really Read’, hosted by comedienne and former Booker Prize judge Sue Perkins. As he perceived it:

‘she never normally reads any of our lowbrow genre tripe (although she might, you know, give it a whirl now, just for the sake of World Book Night)… Fantasy was not mentioned once during the Perkins farce, fantasy, the very mother root of literature, JRR Tolkien and Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and JK Rowling and Joe Abercrombie and China Miéville and Michael Moorcock all stuffed inside CS Lewis‘s wardrobe, the better not to be seen.’

Hunt has written a letter of protest signed by 85 other ‘genre’ authors so far, including Iain M. Banks, Steven Erikson and Neal Asher (the full list can be found here). The labels ‘genre’ and ‘literary’ are pretty slippery and elusive, and the lines between them are definitely not always clearly defined, however there does seem to have been an oversight in the choice of books. Hunt asserts that sci-fi, fantasy and horror in fact make up 20-30% of book sales.

The shunning of genre fiction isn’t exactly a new revelation, and having worked as a Bookseller for a sci-fi and graphic novels specialist, it’s been on my radar for several years. As a student, I even used to feel a little sheepish admitting to my more discerning peers that, yes, one of my favorite authors is Stephen King. Of course, literary and genre fiction both have value, and it’s also worth mentioning that as with all fiction, some of it is good, and some of it is terrible.

David Barnett in a commentary at Guardian Books has offered a counterpoint to Hunt’s campaign by pointing out that the BBC has a long history of producing wonderful science fiction programming, including Misfits, Life on Mars and of course, Doctor Who. Hopefully next year’s WBN will redress the balance. However, if in the meantime you should feel the need to check out some excellent sci-fi, allow me to point you towards a Melville House steampunk extravaganza: Jean-Christophe Valtat’s Aurorarama is the perfect cocktail of a literary adventure novel that combines suspense, science fiction, romance and history. What more could you need?

4 Comments

Ira Nayman at 1:42 am on April 21, 2011
At a science fiction convention a few months ago, I was talking to another author about the lack of respect science fiction gets in literary quarters. “I understand what you’re saying,” I replied to her complaint on this subject. “On the other hand, comic science fiction (which is what I write) isn’t all that well respected in science fiction circles!”
It’s always something, isn’t it?
Abadah at 9:26 pm on April 25, 2011
Of course, it’s also that literary types consider literary SF (like Infinite Jest, Never Let Me Go, The Road, Gravity’s Rainbow, etc) to be literary fiction and not SF, vs. a book that fits the conventions of both genres.
Warren at 7:58 pm on April 26, 2011
I can see the source of outrage that science fiction and fantasy writers must feel at the apparent exclusion of their particular genres by the WBN. Coming from the perspective of a reader, I can think of a few instances in the past where I’ve been called upon to defend my choice of books — they typically fall into the sci-fi category, and the ones that aren’t science fiction are often fantasy.
The counter-point, that the BBC has produced science fiction programming, seems to be completely irrelevant, or at least unrelated. I’m an avid fan of Doctor Who, but I can comfortably say that watching the show is much different than reading any book. To posit another example, HBO has recently started a television series based on R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of books. Although both are good, the emotion one gets from reading A Game of Thrones (the first in the book series) is very different than the emotion one gets from watching Game of Thrones (the television series).
To shift to the defense of the WBN, I have to imagine it isn’t easy to be one of the panel that chose the books. There are nearly countless publications to chose from, and making a list that would sate every genre seems like an impossible task. Even if it is possible, one then has to ask if every book on the no-one’s-mad list of books deserves to be there.
timpelan at 10:36 am on May 22, 2011
Misfits?! David Barnett should do his research, that’s c.4. Perkins is just miffed The Lord Of The Rings won the readers choice programme a few years back, if I remember rightly. At the very least, it came out of it very well.Â