Should sci-fi die?

The blogger Mark Wallace reckons so:

It’s time to abolish a whole literary genre – science fiction must be destroyed. The signs should be taken down from Waterstones, the specialist shops should pull down the shutters and the conventions should be disbanded.

I say this as a fan, rather than an enemy. Science fiction as a genre should be abolished – so it can take its rightful place in the genre where it belongs: literature.

He then goes on to list some works usually classified as science fiction that he thinks are good enough to be go toe-to-toe with general fiction. His Top Five are:

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

I have a couple of reservations here. First, if he is forced to nominate two works by Philip K Dick, doesn't this rather undermine his contention that the sci-fi genre contains a wealth of writing as good as anything in mainstream fiction. By name-checking Dick twice, he's really saying either Dick (and a few others) are great writers who opted to write in a genre that is otherwise pretty weak; or his own knowledge of sci-fi is rather limited, in which case who is he to be pontificating on it's value?

Further, if you're going to cite an example of Banks's fiction, why plump for the inferior Player of Games and overlook the monumentally great Use of Weapons?

Use of Weapons IS the most obvious example of Banks's sci-fi that could be described as something more than 'just' science fiction, with its forwards-backwards structure, it's unreliable narrator and its still-impressive-even-after-you-know-about it double whammy twist ending. It's every bit as challenging and inventive as mainstream fiction, whereas Player of Games is just a bit of a space opera romp.

(As an aside, I used to think Banks - in either form - was brilliant, but now I can't be bothered. Most of his straight fiction seems pretty facile. The Bridge is so far up its own arse it might as well be renamed The Bert. Espedair Street is a rather silly bit of wishful fulfillment (Banks kinda wanted to be a rock star, he even wrote the songs referred to in the book), Crow Road and Whit are just a bit rubbish, Dead Air should have been great but wasn't (I suspect it was another bit of wishfulfillment, the wannabe rockstar re-casting himself as a DJ). The only one I still entertain any fondness for is complicity, largely because it was so deliberately nasty, and so very, very angry. And the description of the main character trying to wedge his bobbing erection under his computer desk while he plays a God game on his computer is amusing.

That said, I'm tempted by some of his recent efforts, because he seems to have become stridently political again, and that always gave his writing a bit more of an edge.)

However, Wallace, may have some sort of point. We need to get over the weird snobbishness that seems to exclude a novel like Use Of Weapons from consideration. I think the Whitbread put Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone on the short list, but that was probably more about making the prize seem relevant to general book readers, rather than a heroic blow against book-snoots. Otherwise, novels like Use Of Weapons would surely also feature - technically ingenious, imaginatively superb, character driven, full of ideas ... but since Use of Weapons was categorised as sci-fi, and generally ignored by readers (who for some reason didn't think there was anything odd about reading a kids book about a boy wizard at boarding school) it was also safe for prize panels to ignore it.

Sidney Lumet

A noteable, but undervalued film maker has just died:

Lumet was one of the leading film directors of the second half of the 20th century. He was prolific, directing more than 40 movies, and versatile, dabbling in many different film genres. Lumet, who was born in Philadelphia, often shot his movies in his home town of New York.

Lumet was nominated for Academy Awards four times as a director. He never won, but he did receive an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2005. (1)

If Lumet had been born a few years later, he'd probably have been given greater status than he achieved. He was too youthful and stylistically radical to really fit in with mainstream Hollywood; and by the time Hollywood changed, he was probably a bit too old - and too inclined towards realism - to fit in with the radical young things in the loud and shallow post-Tarantino world. Still, he made 12 Angry men; The Hill; Serpico; Dog Day Afternoon; Network; The Verdict; Running On Empty, and lots more. His last film (Before The Devil Knows Your Dead) came out in 2007.

His films maintained a very consistent focus on outsiders/rebels: The Man In White in 12 Angry Men; Paul Newman's dissipated lawyer in The Verdict; Serpico; Howard beale in Network. You get the drift ... Though you could say about 90% of films have outsiders as their main characters, the 'outsiderness' of Lumet's protagonists seemed to be pivotal to the film, whereas Jean Claude Van Damne is an outsider just so he doesn't have to obey the rules.

Probably his lowest moment came when he was name checked in the tiresome-apart-from-Halle-Berry's-tits thriller, Swordfish, in John Travolta's idiotic opening monologue. Really, the old chap didn't deserve that. Swordfish was an embodiment of everything Lumet wasn't. It was brash, flash, sadistic and empty. While Lumet's work was often cruel, it was because he was trying to portray the real world. He'd never have hung a bus underneath a helicopter, or film people being torn to pieces simply so he could show off fancy film techniques.

1 - "American film director Sidney Lumet dies aged 86," unattributed obituary. Published in the Telegraph, 9th of April, 2011. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8440301/American-film-director-Sidney-Lumet-dies-aged-86.html)

Craig Thomas has died

He was the chap who wrote lots of not-too-bad cold war thrillers that mentioned animals in the title, like Firefox, Sea Leopard and Wolfsbane.

He seemed to run out of titular beasts in the mid 90s. His last three books were called A Wild Justice, A Different War and Slipping into Shadow. Surely, he meant, A Wildebeest Justice, A Different Warthog, and ... er ... Slipping into Haddocks?

A Day to Remember

Writehandpalm notes the passing of Roy Ward Baker, director of such classics as The Vampire Lovers and And Now The Screaming Starts. He also made some good films, amongst the lurid titty-tastic Hammer pap, such as Quatermass and the Pit (Demonic bugs from Mars infest the London underground) and a Titanic movie, A Night to Remember. James Cameron paid him a supreme compliment by lifting several scenes and staging directly from Baker's 1958 film for his own effort, though he rather foolishly added in some hogwash about Jack and Rose and a diamond necklace. Baker had the right idea, and produced a straightforward, almost docu-drama account.

He was still directing for TV until the the 90s, having moved backwards and forwards between film and TV throughout his career. In the 60s, he directed episodes of The Avengers and The Saint, and the original Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased).