I read your posts about teaching and find myself wishing I could take your class. It sounds like something that would have really made a difference to me back when I first thought about writing as a career.

Your comments about the self-referential nature of SF are interesting. Do you see that as a problem in fantasy as well, or are the tropes of fantasy common-enough knowledge that most new readers can understand if they give it a chance? I'm wracking my brain now, thinking about what I've read recently, and whether I'd have 'gotten' it even if it was the first fantasy book I'd picked up.

It seems as though a lot of the literary (or non-literal--I like your term) fantasy gets slotted into mainstream literature if it comes from the bigger publishing houses, so it's not really seen as 'genre'. Or, as you noted, it goes to the smaller venues that are willing to take a chance on something different, but that can reduce its visibility. In my experience, the problem for new readers of fantasy lies in that 'leap of faith' the reader has to take, being willing to seriously consider whatever fantastical elements the author puts in the story.

I've talked to a lot of people who just aren't able to make that leap, out of discomfort or some other reason. (One e-list I was on suggested it might be something hardwired into the brain--there are people who can accept the idea of things that aren't present in the physical world as we know it, and others who find it really threatening, or too weird to be taken seriously.)

I haven't read as widely in SF as I have in fantasy, though enough to recognize, say, "The Cold Equations". I think any field of literature is poorer if it *can't* refer to the past for fear of alienating the present. But there's always the danger that a writer starts to make references just to show how well-read he or she is. That, I think, falls into the same category as using stylistic obscurity to lord it over readers--at a certain point, those writers are just playing to impress themselves and whoever belongs to their little artistic clique. But that's a viable artistic choice, as long as they don't expect me to be impressed.

I think it's a matter of degree and kind--a good story works on several levels, entertaining the new reader and, at the same time, rewarding those who have a wider frame of reference. There's a long history of allusion in literature, and many books wouldn't be anywhere near as entertaining if they were purged of any reference to other works.

The problem occurs when allusion is used as a fence rather than a bridge. (Or as a clubhouse with a members-only sign on it.) And as you said, that kind of writing is legitimate--it just doesn't invite new readers into the fold.

I had to laugh at the reference to RPG folks. My 12-year-old son loves RPGs of all kinds (and I guess we only have ourselves to blame, since my husband and I are the ones who taught him how to play). We're having the hardest time convincing him that it's not civilized behavior to discuss games in agonizing detail with anyone who's too polite to run away screaming.

As a somewhat tangential question, what do you consider to be the must-read works of SF, both from the past and more recently? (I'm thinking about this because I just picked up Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer at the library. The appendix has a list of must-read books, but aside from Kafka's Metamorphosis and James' Turn of the Screw, there's not much that could be considered genre. So I was thinking it would be good to put together a similar list for speculative fiction.)

Funny, Richard Parks and I were talking about the same thing last night during our writer's group. We were discussing how SF has fragmented into so many different sub-genres and whether it was good/bad for the genre as a whole. Our preliminary decision was it's probably bad, but there's nothing that can be done about it...

As a younger writer, I see this inward discussion as a terrible thing for science fiction, perhaps one of the worst things about the field. It's one of the reason that comics are dying and I'm positive that it is partially responsible for the decline of the field as well.

This discussion is like a clique, and it's a barrier to entry for younger people whose only mistake was to be born after 1960. The weight of "required reading" gets heavier and heavier every year, with this tradition.

Sometimes, I think younger writers should read as many of the classics as they can, and sometimes, I think they should come to the table knowing absolutely nothing about them. I can't really make up my mind, and I think they result in different writers, not necessarily one better than the other.

If I had a good clean definition to entry-level SF, it's all I would write.

This was discussed at the Campbell Conference last year. I think one conclusion was along the same line--that a lot of science fiction would be difficult for entry-level into sf. The entry level works out there tend to be media tie-ins. Whether people would progress from the media tie-ins to the more "difficult" sf was debatable. But one problem with that progression is the possible lack of "mid-range" work.