In the Nooze
Nice review of Winterbirth in The Times over the weekend, which was particularly pleasing because it's comparatively - and given that The Guardian has dropped its similar sf/f review column, perhaps increasingly - rare for the genre to get even this kind of quite brief mention in the 'quality' press. I can't get that worked up about this low level of coverage - newspapers have no duty or responsibility to cover anything they don't want to, and plenty of other 'genres' don't get drastically better treatment - but I am mildly curious about the reasoning behind it. As a wholly uninformed guess, I imagine it's to do with some or all of the following:
(a) a belief that newspaper readers aren't interested enough in sf/f to justify the column inches
(b) an assumption that sf/f readers only read sf/f, and will therefore look to more specialist outlets for info on new releases
(c) a belief that sf/f books automatically don't have enough substance to merit more extensive coverage
(d) a personal lack of interest in the genre amongst those who commission the reviews
Others will know far better than me whether there's any truth in this, but from a personal point of view, while I suspect there might be a grain of truth to (a) and (b), I've actually found sf/f readers to quite often be rather diverse in their reading taste and habits, up to and including newspapers! With that as a rather feeble excuse, I offer a random selection of recentish newspaper stories that I found interesting in one way or another:
From the footballing frontline: pigs seen sprouting wings. I'm still in a kind of delighted shock about this.
We're all toast by the end of the century.
The latest 'but is it art?' installation to grace Tate Modern's fantastic turbine hall. It sounds great to me - wish I could go and see it.
How much is a load of people showing each other short videos worth? $1.6bn, apparently.
Is this the price of investigative journalism in Russia?
(a) a belief that newspaper readers aren't interested enough in sf/f to justify the column inches
(b) an assumption that sf/f readers only read sf/f, and will therefore look to more specialist outlets for info on new releases
(c) a belief that sf/f books automatically don't have enough substance to merit more extensive coverage
(d) a personal lack of interest in the genre amongst those who commission the reviews
Others will know far better than me whether there's any truth in this, but from a personal point of view, while I suspect there might be a grain of truth to (a) and (b), I've actually found sf/f readers to quite often be rather diverse in their reading taste and habits, up to and including newspapers! With that as a rather feeble excuse, I offer a random selection of recentish newspaper stories that I found interesting in one way or another:
From the footballing frontline: pigs seen sprouting wings. I'm still in a kind of delighted shock about this.
We're all toast by the end of the century.
The latest 'but is it art?' installation to grace Tate Modern's fantastic turbine hall. It sounds great to me - wish I could go and see it.
How much is a load of people showing each other short videos worth? $1.6bn, apparently.
Is this the price of investigative journalism in Russia?
posted by Brian Ruckley at 9:09 AM :: Permalink ::
4 Comments:
I'll go with lots of c) and a fairly hefty slice of d). Some fairer-minded editors might lean towards b) (or at least protest it when pressed) but I think most newspaper folks of a would-be-literati bent assume our genre is just kids' stuff and they'll make themselves look silly if they pay it too much attention.
Sad, really...
Ariel: daresay you're right. Still can't help feeling, re: (a), that if they really, really believed there was widespread interest amongst their readers (which I suspect there isn't), they'd publish a bit more stuff whatever their personal thoughts on the genre were. The papers are, after all, governed in part by commercial imperatives (I know most of them aren't really viable commercial propositions, but even so ...)
$1.6B is a bargain.
Here's a typical entry, posted by my 2 children:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-8150009539678548351&q=teaching+bees+to+swim
I think the notion of posting video of whatever comes into your head is marvellous.
Even better is the notion of my 7-year-old describing this to an adult from even ten years ago. What's everyday to a child now would be freakish and alien to that adult.
But can it influence hearts and minds or is it just brain-candy?
Tom
Tom, you know people can get on the Turner Prize shortlist with videos like that, don't you?
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