We start with sf, then look at Poul Anderson within that. I am quoting statements made by Alexei Panshin published in 1968. Can anyone tell me to what extent - if any, of course - these statements remain valid in 2025? That is a long time.
Statements
Sf is not widely influential.
Nor is it about to become so.
It is minor.
Sneered at, mostly by those who have not read it.
It is not trivial, like locked-room mysteries.
It is not limited to a single form, like sonnets or Greek drama.
Most of its writers are second-rate or worse.
Most people are intellectually or emotionally unprepared to accept even good sf.
Many intelligent, educated people are indifferent to the cosmos.
Many are afraid to think of the further future.
Sf is about facts and change.
Sf that ignores facts and change might become popular but is bad sf.
Sf prepares us for the one certain thing to come, change.
It places familiar things in unfamiliar contexts and vice versa.
This yields insights and perspective.
Panshin cites Anderson's After Doomsday as asking how an all-male spaceship crew would respond on returning to the Solar System to find Earth destroyed. The familiar in the unfamiliar. A question about ourselves in a cosmic context.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
SF should be not only well written, it should also be interesting and fun to read, not ponderously boring political tracts. A good example of fun/interesting SF being Anderson and Dickson's Hoka stories (or Anderson's "A Bicycle Built for Brew").
Merry Christmas! Sean
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