Uz jutarnju kavicu: MALO SF-A, MALO STVARNOSTI
Kategorije: Online čitanka
Autor: Ire
November 4, 1979, began like any other day at the US embassy in Tehran. [...] And when some of the local employees came in and said there was “a problem at the gate,” they knew this morning would be different. Militant students were soon scaling the walls of the embassy complex. Someone forced open the front gate, and the trickle of invaders became a flood. [...] The CIA was in chaos when Tony Mendez arrived at his desk the next morning. People dashed through the halls, clutching files and papers. Desks were piling up with “flash” cables — the highest-priority messages, reserved for wartime situations. [...] CIA cover stories are generally designed to be mundane and unlikely to attract attention. That’s how Mendez’s plan started out …
Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” is set during a nuclear winter. Two survivors walk south, breathing toxic air, seeking out the continent’s last canned food while ducking bands of flesh-eaters.
Describe it as “post-apocalyptic,” as most critics did, or as a masterpiece of dystopian literature. Just don’t call McCarthy’s novel “science fiction.”
Even when clearly appropriate, film studios and publishers avoid the phrase “science fiction.” So do the novelists, film directors and editors in their employ. McCarthy’s book, which is about to become a blockbuster - Oprah Winfrey will tout it on an upcoming TV show as part of her book club - is just another example of how the powers that be dodge the term, especially when it applies to “serious” fiction or cinema.
There’s been a fair amount of blather lately about the general health of the fantasy / science fiction market, which by just about everyone’s account is not doing all that well, and SF worse off than fantasy. Publishers are deliberately trying to present such books as something other than sf, or at least are doing covers for them that don’t scream SF! Don’t Touch! to the prospective buyer. Circulation figures for Asimov’s and Analog are down, as are overall sales of SF books. Why?
The use of swear words in science fiction has a complex history. Until the 1960’s, many publishers would not print actual swear words, so writers were required to use their ingenuity if they wanted to use the full range of expression. Perhaps influenced by Norman Mailer’s 1948 novel “The Naked and the Dead”, in which the word “fug” was famously substituted for “fuck”, Francis Towner Laney coined the fannish slur “fugghead” around 1950. In the 1960s, Norman Spinrad’s novel “Bug Jack Barron” was considered so profane that the bookseller W.H. Smith banned sales of the magazine in which it had been serialized. And no doubt as a commentary on this state of affairs, Larry Niven wrote a series of stories in the 1970s in which the words “censored” and “bleep” had themselves become curses.
