I understand a certain desire among fans, readers and writers of science fiction, and to a lesser extent, fantasy, to redefine the whole damn genre, or to at least rename it. Science fiction has never been acceptable, reputable or even a guilty pleasure in lots of circles. Reviewers often sneer at it, readers of it feel the need to explain (over and over) that it’s changed from whatever-you-think-it-is. Writers can’t get reviewed because editors at newspapers disdain genre stuff, especially sf. Even that snotty snarky piece of work PublishAmerica put down science fiction, this while claiming of course to publish some of the best of it.

It’s what you read when you were 13 but “outgrew”. It’s that Asimov stuff (Isaac’s been dead for 15 years). It’s pulp magazine covers and aliens and spaceships. Which is so right and so wrong and so exhausting for us fans to have to explain. I don’t have to keep telling people that mystery is no longer relegated to the manor house or Los Angeles, so why people can’t get that another genre has gone through mega-changes and expanded?

The thing is, though, that I read science fiction. No matter what you call it I read it and will always read science fiction. I don’t read “speculative fiction” I don’t read “futurism” or “new wave fiction”. I don’t object to “science fiction” even though it’s inaccurate as I don’t object to being called “fan”, even though I’ve been lectured on how tacky and wrong that word is.

I won’t read books where the introductions are pretentious. I won’t, because I can’t, read books full of jargon and academese that I don’t comprehend. I guess I figure it’s not for me anyway. Perhaps it’s childish of me to pout about it and it probably has something to do with a little envy of their erudition but honestly, not a helluva lot. I believe that introductions are supposed to be read and if they’re supposed to be read they’re supposed to be comprehensible on the part of the reader. If a book is clearly academic (I dunno how you know that but let’s start with a) it’s likely from an academic press and b) it’s got a colon in the title) then I’m more likely to “forgive” the jargon since it’s more likely that said book is for a smaller audience. Said audience is more likely to be others in that academic arena familiar with the specialized words.

I still think you can write a damn introduction that HELPS, and does not HINDER comprehension of a book. Assuming you want people to read your book.

A few weeks ago, I got an anthology from the library, probably because there was a story by Michael Chabon in it. It was an anthology about, apparently, a new (ok, not so new, apparently, new to me) thread/subgenre, new way of thinking, category, definition in science fiction, called “slipstream’. New to me. COMPLETELY new to me. NEVER heard the word applied to fiction in any way before. Asked Stu, yeah of course he’d heard it. I was not especially elated to read in the intro that essentially when asked to edit the thing, the co-editors had hesitated because they didn’t know what slipstream was. Okay, not quite but come on. The introi begins “When we were first approached to edit this book we had to ask ourselves a hard question. Did we actually believe that there was such a thing as slipstream?” Oh GREAT. Apparently it was a subject, IS a subject orf some debate going back fourteen years when the phrase was coined by author Bruce Sterling who is quoted by saying it can be this or that or another thing but that “it is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the late twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility.”

Oh. Oh REAL GREAT. I’m not that person. I’m SO not that person that I have no idea what he’s talking about. NO IDEA why living today would make me feel strange nor why this time would make someone feel stranger than, well, um, any other time. He also mentions “postmodern” which I also don’t understand. How can I read a collection of work if I’m so, well, er um, insensitive that I don’t feel any stranger now than I did at any other time of my (so far) 54 years on earth and if I don’t seem to have “a certain sensibility?”

If you are approached to edit an anthology about a genre, I think you should already BELIEVE THAT IT IS A GENRE. Throughout the book, they offer some excerpts of on-line discussion by Sterling and others of the slipstream thing which did nothing to elucidate, nothing to help me understand why this stuff wasn’t the already established genre I knew. By the time I was told that “slipstream raises fundamental epistemological and ontological questions about reality that most other kinds of fiction are ill prepared to address” I knew I was wholly out of my league. I could understand most of what the editors were saying (they were John Kessel & Hames Patrick Kelly, by the by) but not everything and I wasn’t thrilled to feel so pedestrian, which I admit to feeling after finding out that I lack the “certain sensibility” this work requires, as I’m apparently too uncritical, too unaware, that I lack a necessary understanding because the late 20th century/early 21st century does not, in fact, make me feel very strange.

Then yesterday I got another anthology and uh-oh. THIS one is a collection of “interstitial writing”. Andi not happy. Andi just want to read book. This collection too argues that it contains “unclassifiable” work, that the work within does not fit into genre definitions. Argh. Then I tried the introduction HERE hoping this one would serve better than the last example.

The intro here soon had me floundering; the author described himself as an academic with “a background in a wide range of theoretical approaches, including semiotics and structuralism’”. These are words, concepts I have had to have defined for me repeatedly, at least “semiotics” and I have no idea what structuralism is. I’ve not ever been a student of theories of well, I’m not even sure. Literature? No idea what this falls under. And in my persona of bratty whining Andi, I must say I don’t want to know and I don’t care. This is not why I read. I don’t particularly LIKE theory, and I certainly don’t enjoy theories of literature. It’s probably why I was VERY WISE in deciding not to major in English in college, where, I imagine this is all old hat. “Interstitial” the intro went on to say, means “to stand between” referring to a space between things, like, the author says “a gap in the clouds, A DMZ between nations at war…a form of writing that defies genre classification.”

Oh GREAT. I already tried this last week, I whine. But it got worse because within seconds I was being told one might thin of “interstitial as “coterminous with ‘liminal’…a concept made prominent by an anthropologist who uses it to refer to the state “initiates go through in rites of passage.” It is, I am told, “suspended” but also transitional.

I’m so lost. I don’t get “coterminous” I don’t get “liminal” and I don’t get quoting someone talking about “venues that seek ‘to authorize cultural hybridities’. I wasn’t at that panel about Metafantasy, and haven’t been part of discussions of “multilocailty “ and metafiction and I don’t want to be. I have all the degrees I’m going to get and while yes, I like learning new stuff, I am not ready to take on that much in order to read a bunch of short stories – stories that I am starting to suspect I wouldn’t get EITHER.

And while I tried a couple, I was not happy about it and I did not continue to try reading the stories in this book because the introduction made me feel that I am simply too stupid to get what I would be reading. By using what I consider to be dense impenetrable jargon just to start off the book, the editors are sending the message loud and clear that “IF YOU CAN’T GET THIS, YOU’RE TOO CLOSE” and I should take my picture books and go off and sit with the other children for story hour. Or take my previously mentioned lack of that certain sensibility (which I suspect I need here too) elsewhere.

I HATE not getting stuff. I hate that last month I read a bunch of short stories in a collection that left me cold and baffled and wondering what the point was and wondering if I was really that incompetent a reader. Do I really need things so simple? The stories seemed pointless, not that I need, as Stu and I tend say car chases and things blowing up, for a story to get my attention but I was just left with a big “HUH” at the end of the anthology. And there aren’t too many worse feelings than “HUH” when you read something you believe you should understand.

I’m not sure how to end here. I don’t especially want to fall into a whiny “huh, is it me?” I will say I’m reading a flat-out science fiction novel right now and enjoying it. I continue to believe I’m literate, educated and smart reader so why do I resent this stuff so? I’m not sure, but I know it has something to do with being made to feel stupid. NO one likes that and I resent that it came from a book.