Ask a reasonable question, please!

[mbranesf]

I just read in Samuel Delany's book About Writing an interview that he did in 1999 for the St. Mark's Poetry Project. The first question was, "What form/shape will writing of the twenty-first century take?"

Delany's response, in part: "I can't believe that you're really frivolous enough to think, because I am a science fiction writer, I have some privileged, informed or even interesting take on the future, more than do ditch diggers, dry cleaners, insurance salesmen--or, indeed the run of the mill poet or novelist...Once, about twenty-five years ago, some people in Missoula, Montana, flew SF writers Frank Herbert (Dune), Frederik Pohl (Gateway), and me to take part in an audience-packed, Saturday-night panel that addressed the question, 'What is the future of Montana geological study and mining?' They were incredibly impressed with their own cleverness and originality in inviting some science fiction writers along with the geologists and mining engineers who were the program's other participants. The organizers were quite convinced no one had ever done such a thing before. We were each paid five hundred dollars for our appearance...But I'm doing this interview for free. Therefore, you have to compensate me with intelligent and reasonable questions about which it's possible to say something interesting, based on something I might conceivably know." (p.299)

OUCH!  

Though I would hate to be the person on the other end of that, the more I read by Delany, the more I think he might be the coolest dude EVAR.

Comments

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

Delany's always been one of my faves. Great quote!

[mechphisto.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's a dumb question at all. It's a question that I and other English grad students have discussed at length as it affects our future careers, it's a question I have discussed with Marxist cultural critics because it addresses the concept of material consumption, it's something that scholars like Negri and Hardt address as they investigate how communication changes and technology affect how we create media and entertainment, and it's a question writers like Cory Doctorow and Michael Stackpole don't feel is beneith them to discuss.

It seems to me that Mr. Full-Of-Himself either is being needlessly obtuse or innocently has Asperger's if he can't suss from the question that he's not being asked to predict facts but simply provide either personal opinion of what he sees as trends and changes, or personal desires of what he'd LIKE to see happen. Granted, this is a question that can be asked of ANY writer regardless of genre, but SF writers like Doctorow and William Gibson (who has also gladly lowered himself to answer similar dumb and ridiculous questions, as have Vernor Vinge) tend to look at how technology changes the form of the product and its consumption.

It's such a dumb question that scholars like Roger Luckhurst and Carl Freedman seem to find a great deal of time writing peer reviewed articles and books discussing the form of literature, especially SF lit, and its future. Scholars, authors, and editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel feel it's such a dumb question that they dare to write on the topic as well and even appear, gasp! for free at on panels at such conferences as the Intl. Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts each year to discuss the issue.

I'm sorry, but while his impatient and arrogant reply may play well to the cynical and smug, it's ultimately superficial and shows complete ignorance of the fact that it's a completely valid question that is being discussed and debated all around his island unto himself. If he feels it beneath him to even attempt to formulate an opinion, he's welcome to play by himself with his crumudgeony misanthropeness while the rest of us go on without him.

[mbranesf.livejournal.com]

Actually, taken in context with the entire article from which I pulled that excerpt, I think that Delany wouldn't necessarily disagree with much of what you say (being a prof and a critic, he is pretty well engaged with these kinds of discussions), but your good points here are mostly on a related but different topic. Here he is reacting to a non-SF reader's assumption that SF writers are necessarily involved in prognostication more than anyone else. And I don't think the question was at all about literal form of the product either, but rather the possible direction of the literature itself. It's easy to forget that as recently as 1999 when he made these comments, there was little to no inkling outside the tech/geek world that technology was really going to change the form or consumption of the product in a way that would matter to anyone outside those little niches. The web was still quite primitive, there was very little e-publishing going on, and what was going on was not well-regarded, and there were few (and really no good) ways to distribute it to the consumers and no ways at all to monetize it. So not very many people back then were really talking about these things the way that Doctorow et al do now.

[mechphisto.livejournal.com]

*takes some deep breaths*
Point well taken. :) Hot-button topic for me, I guess. :)