This week (episode 3 of season 13) we return to our tradition of almost entirely unstructured rambling. Jonathan and Gary consider such questions as to whether a novel can be good SF, but not much good in literary terms, or a good literary novel not much good as SF.
While we recognize that many popular subgenres, from military SF to heroic fantasy, have plenty of readers loyal to the old traditions, we muse about whether many of today’s writers feel some pressure to meet both traditional literary and SF standards, and Jonathan namechecks R.F. Kuang. Some writers we mention, such as Arkady Martine, seem to effortlessly do both. On the other hand, why were several genre mystery readers of the 1930s and 1940s, like Hammett and Chandler, were later recognized as major literary figures, the same didn’t seem to have to SF writers of the same period.
Toward the end, we touch upon Paul Kincaid's provocative new essay, "A Taxonomy of Reviewing" and his book on Brian W. Aldiss, amongst other things.
As always, we hope you enjoy the episode.
Episode 393: Ten Minutes with Charles Stross
Episode 392: Ten Minutes with Cory Doctorow
Episode 391: Ten Minutes with Martha Wells
Episode 390: Ten Minutes with Alastair Reynolds
Episode 389: Ten Minutes with Gwyneth Jones
Episode 388: Ten Minutes with Ian McDonald
Episode 387: Ten Minutes with Fran Wilde
Episode 386: Ten Minutes with Tade Thompson
Episode 385: Ten Minutes with Liz Williams
Episode 384: Ten Minutes with Lavie Tidhar
Episode 383: Ten Minutes with Angela Slatter
Episode 382: Ten Minutes with Alex Irvine
Episode 381: Ten Minutes with Tamsyn Muir
Episode 380: Ten Minutes with Andy Duncan
Episode 379: Ten Minutes with Ellen Klages
Episode 378: Ten Minutes with Garth Nix
Episode 377: Books in the Time of Coronavirus
Episode 376: Ten Minutes with Naomi Kritzer
Episode 375: Ten Minutes with Jeffrey Ford
Episode 374: Ten Minutes with Tochi Onyebuchi
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