Some years ago, I was visiting the NC Renaissance Faire with a friend, and we came upon a man selling his science fiction novel. I picked up a copy to glance at the back matter. Before I could read a word, the man took the book from my hands, opened it to the introduction, and handed it back. “Read that first,” he said. It was a long diatribe about how stupid most SF was. He’d written the book because everything else on the market was worthless. In addition, the readers of his books would require advanced degrees in math, physics and chemistry to understand his brilliance. If you didn’t have that background, the intro said, you shouldn’t bother trying to read the book in your hands. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I put the book down and walked away without a word.
He was an extreme example but definitely not a one-off. I’ve met a number of people who admit they don’t read much in the genre even though they write in it. It blows my mind when they announce this, as if they should be proud of having avoided the very thing they hope will make them rich and famous. For one thing, the F/SF world is tight-knit, and word gets out pretty quickly when someone is behaving like a jerk. I’ve never seen the faire guy in any of the usual genre spots since that day. He’s probably still trying to unload boxes of his massive brilliant books from his garage. The bigger concern, though, is writers trying to break in without knowing what came before. The last thing you want is to send off your manuscript to an agent and be told “This has been done before and you’re not coming at it with an original slant.”
I understand why some writers aren’t familiar with the classics. It’s hard for younger readers to enjoy the style of writers like Asimov, Heinlein and Sturgeon from the Golden Age SF and fantasy (1930s-1950s). Those stories are nearing the century mark, and the world changes faster with every generation. The language feels old-fashioned and stilted, and the racism and misogyny often overshadows the stories too much for post-millennial readers. Remember how painful it was to slog through The Scarlet Letter in junior high? That’s how books like Stranger In A Strange Land or Foundation can feel to younger readers. It’s important that readers eventually find their way to the older works, but there’s much to learn from later books. We’re never going to change the jerks, but people who truly want to read SF/F need to be offered work that will spark their imaginations and help them find their own original ideas. So what should we suggest they read? Here’s my list.
– The Expanse series (James S A Corey)
– Kindred (Octavia Butler)
– A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K LeGuin)
– The Lies of Locke Lamora (Scott Lynch)
– The Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey)
– The Farseer trilogy (Robin Hobb)
– The Dark Is Rising sequence (Susan Cooper)
What’s on your list? Where do you like to steer readers looking to find their way into the genre?