Jeangoldstrom wrote on Apr 28th, 2012, 7:27am:"I mean, many of the authors cited on here (many of whom I have never heard of) are thirty to fifty years past their prime, if not dead for that long... or longer."
What an interesting approach to lit crit -- that works age, fade and die right alongside their creators. Then we had best close the door -- or nail down the coffin-lid -- on Shakespeare and Keats, as well as on Hemingway, Steinbeck and Cordwainer Smith...
What an interesting approach to lit crit.
Such uncalled-for snark. I could reply in like fashion, but I shan't. To do so would be beneath me.
My mistake: for not saying that I was including the characters in the polls, and the books they were in, as well as the comment section.
And since we're discussing genre fiction on this site versus hard literature, then you couldn't possibly have read between lines that weren't there. I am entirely cognizant of the works of: Shakespeare and Keats, as well as on Hemingway, Steinbeck and Cordwainer Smith, and James Joyce and Sam Beckett and Jorge Louis Borges and Umberto Eco and Franz Kafka and Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville and John Barth and Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Cormac McCarthy and John Crowly and Vladimir Nabokov and J.M. Coetzee and Michael Chabon and William Burroughs and John Milton and Dante and Chaucer and Mary Shelly, and on and on.
How would you classify HG Wells and Jules Verne and Doris Lessing and Salman Rushdie and Sir Arthur Canon Doyle and Iris Murdoch and John Le Clarre' and Virginia Wolfe and Shirley Jackson and Philip K Dick (And so many others): are they literature or genre writers?
Since we're talking
popular genre fiction here, on this site, how many of the younger audience remembers Andre Norton and Diane Duane and Carl Sherrell and James Blish and Ira Levine and David Morrell and Richard Laymon and Ramsey Campbell and Skipp & Spector and Robert McCammon and Clifford D Simak; Even Peter Straub, and on and on. Very few, nowadays. And as the years tramp by, even fewer. I've read some of the past posts on here and you, Jean, have been one of the loudest pointing out the decline of readership through the years to the present. And on this site, and others dealing in speculative fiction, the name that is said over and over and over and over, is Stephan King. So, yes. I say why not talk of other writers of popular speculative genre from somewhere in the last decade or two instead of a quarter to a half a century ago.
People like Jacquline Carey: Books:
http://jacquelinecarey.com/books.htm Fans:
http://jacquelinecarey.com/gallery_tats.htmChina Meiville: Books:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/china-mieville/Awards: Bram Stoker First Novel nominee (2000) : King Rat
Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Novel winner (2001) : Perdido Street Station
British Fantasy Society Best Novel winner (2001) : Perdido Street Station
World Fantasy Best Novel nominee (2001) : Perdido Street Station
Philip K Dick Award Best Novel nominee (2002) : The Scar
Hugo Best Novel nominee (2002) : Perdido Street Station
Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Novel nominee (2003) : The Scar
World Fantasy Best Novel nominee (2003) : The Scar
Hugo Best Novel nominee (2003) : The Scar
British Fantasy Society Best Novel winner (2003) : The Scar
Nebula Best Novel nominee (2003) : Perdido Street Station
Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Novel winner (2005) : Iron Council
World Fantasy Best Novel nominee (2005) : Iron Council
Hugo Best Novel nominee (2005) : Iron Council
Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Novel winner (2010) : The City & the City