Heresy

[hirez]

Thanks to the quercus mobile library, I'm 30 pages into Niven's Ringworld. Thus far, I have put up with clodhopping sexism, amusing one-dimensional aliens with bizarre-physiology-for-the-sake-of-it (including some cheerily stereotypical 'noble savage' types who act like Klingons but have 'learned to respect US human firepower'. Still I suppose this was written mid-Vietnam), spacecraft-porn and eugenics off-hand enough to make me consider hoofing the book through the (closed) window.

Does it get better, or should I be content in the realisation that I've become one of those annoying lit-snobs who sneer at all genre fiction, but especially the 'nude alien totty having sex with machinery' stuff?

If so, four-fifths of my books are going to have to find a better home...

(That's yer hyper-bowl, that is. No-one's getting near the Ballards or the Wyndhams without a fight. I would also imagine that the only easier targets would have been Doc Smith, Piers Anthony or Lionel Fanthorpe. Oh, and Martin Amis. Jesus. 'London fields' was just bloody grim)

Comments

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I rather dispute that - were I any sort of lit-snob, I'd bang on about Umberto Eco (Although that's just so 90s, dahling.) and the slew of tedious bloody kitchen-sink potboilers the establishment shovel at the be-brogued hordes who've just come back from Hay-on-Wye.

As it is, I tried wading through some of the 'exciting new British authors' to be found in the Guardian and/or Waterstones some years back.

Good God, but it was horrible. I made a veritable dive for the comforting vistas of Vermilion Sands and never went back.

Apart from Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky and Ian Rankine.