June 15th, 2006
by
Liz Henry
Deep Genre is a new blog on “Reading and Writing, Commerce and Art, Fantasy and Reality, Science Fiction and the Mundane”, headed up by fantasy writers Kate Elliot, Carol Berg, Constance Ash, Katherine Kerr, and Lois Tilton.
Constance says in “View 2″:
The elements of deep genre and genre, the primary, and the new, enthusiastically cross-pollinate. Deep genre re-vitalizes genre, which is why as writers we always re-visit the primary works, just as a prima ballerina will always go back to basic ballet class. Miscegenation is the means by which the genre categories propagate themselves, weaving their seductions, enthralling us with their glamours.
There’s a lot to talk about in there.
I noticed that Kate mentions reading age, and juvenile fiction or the perception of genre as juvenile, referring to the idea that “the golden age of sf is 16″. That tied in for me to something Karen Joy Fowler said in the “Is Reading Feminist SF a Theory-Building Activity?” panel at Wiscon 30,
where she described how every year, the Tiptree jurors “want to be 19 and reading The Left Hand of Darkness”. It’s much harder to blow our minds when we’re mature readers. In that same panel, Joan Haran talked about approaching a work in a somewhat open way, open to identification or immersion, and then re-reading with critical mind turned on. (Not to imply at all that 10 year olds can’t be critical readers – they definitely can be!)
We’re time travellers: the young parts of ourselves still exist, can be invoked by fiction or fed by it, can react to it. I’m thinking about that, and really digging on something else Kate said:
I’m not going to belittle my adolescent dreams even as I have moved into new territory with advancing age. Genre is deep, and there’s a lot in it – the good the bad the ugly the awful the brutal the sweet the trite the profound the mediocre the pedestrian the competent the lovely…
Great stuff! Check out their blog and give them some love!
I’m hugely excited to see feminist conversation go public in blogs. It’s really been exploding in recent years and now feminist sf/fantasy community is putting itself out there for anyone to see – not just those in the fandom loop.
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- More blogging by
Liz Henry at
http://liz-henry.blogspot.com
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Le Guin, Boys’ Own Adventure, and the Fine Art of Genderfucking
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