"legitimacy"
Mar. 27th, 2006 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny[This originated as a comment in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeandink's blog, responding to her citation of Mary Papke quoting David Ketterer talking about Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe":
And I realized that I feel strongly enough about both Ketterer's use of the word "legitimate" and my response to it to want to stick my comment over here where I can find it again.]
Can we take that word "legitimate" out behind the chemical sheds and shoot it, please?
Because it implies that somebody somewhere has the authority to validate a story. YES, you are sfnal. Three cheers! Here is your propeller beanie. NO, you are not sfnal. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
And, no. It doesn't work like that. The story is a story that works, or a story that doesn't work. Genres are not members-only clubs, and it doesn't actually say anything useful about either genre or story to get into niggling technical debates about whether it's a "legitimate" member of the club or not. The story may work/not work due in part to its relationship to a multiplicity of genres, and it may work/not work for a particular reader based on her relationship to a multiplicity of genres. But it will not be a better story for having the word LEGITIMATE stamped on its forehead.
And if you're not writing "legitimate sf," what are you writing? Illegitimate sf?
Actually, I'm quite sure that's what I'm writing. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing sf.
coffeeandink's blog, responding to her citation of Mary Papke quoting David Ketterer talking about Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe":David Ketterer, for instance, in his New Worlds for Old, insists that like the work of J.G. Ballard, Zoline's story merely borrows "a science-fictional conception only for its metaphoric appropriateness." While her description of one woman's ennui in relation to universal entropy is perhaps "apocalyptic in a psychedelic or surrealist sense," he argues, "because the reality is grounded in a housewife and her kitchen and because of the lack of plausible scientific rationale connecting the end of the material universe with her state, Zoline's piece cannot legitimately be classified as science fiction."
And I realized that I feel strongly enough about both Ketterer's use of the word "legitimate" and my response to it to want to stick my comment over here where I can find it again.]
Can we take that word "legitimate" out behind the chemical sheds and shoot it, please?
Because it implies that somebody somewhere has the authority to validate a story. YES, you are sfnal. Three cheers! Here is your propeller beanie. NO, you are not sfnal. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
And, no. It doesn't work like that. The story is a story that works, or a story that doesn't work. Genres are not members-only clubs, and it doesn't actually say anything useful about either genre or story to get into niggling technical debates about whether it's a "legitimate" member of the club or not. The story may work/not work due in part to its relationship to a multiplicity of genres, and it may work/not work for a particular reader based on her relationship to a multiplicity of genres. But it will not be a better story for having the word LEGITIMATE stamped on its forehead.
And if you're not writing "legitimate sf," what are you writing? Illegitimate sf?
Actually, I'm quite sure that's what I'm writing. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing sf.
