Times Literary Supplement Gets It Right

The New York Times Book Review continues to subject us to übertwit Dave Itzkoff, the science fiction reviewer who delights in expressing disdain for the field about which he knows so little -- just this past Sunday he sneered at "the 25-cent bin of genre fiction."

Meanwhile, the Times of London shows its junior how it's done, printing this review by Tom Shippey of Anathem by Neal Stephenson.
I haven't read Anathem so I won't comment on Shippey's conclusions about the novel. (I suspect I would have a less positive reaction. I am a slow reader, so tend to be unforgiving of authors as long-winded as Stephenson has become.)

Whatever you think of Stephenson's recent work, SF/F readers have to love this description of the concerns of modern science fiction:

One of the great things about (much) science fiction is that its authors really mean it. They do think, for instance, that the human species is doomed to exhaustion and dieback if it does not get itself into space, and soon, while we have the technology and the resources, a window of opportunity shuttered by NASA’s inept bureaucracy. They really do believe that humans could be educated to their full potential and far beyond the levels reached by the tick-the-box grading systems of modern colleges, if we exploited available computer- and nano-technology. To them (some of them) mathematics is not just fiddling with abstractions but a guide to ultimate reality. Some of them think we need never die. In every case, though, there is strong awareness of the obstacles in the way of converting possibility to hard fact, some of them theoretical or technological, but even more of them social, financial, attitudinal.

Our future is upon us, and science fiction is one of the few fields encouraging folks to consider seriously what lies ahead. Shippey observes that "much science fiction, like Stephenson’s, has a missionary quality; its purpose is to get people thinking seriously about serious matters, not the trivia that fill modern versions of the unexamined life."

Shippey approves of this focus, although he is skeptical about how many readers out there can tackle what Stephenson is up to. Yet there are obviously many readers who feel up to the challenge -- Anathem hit #1 on the best-seller list compiled by that rag that employs Dave Itzkoff.

It is not surprising that Tom Shippey should engage in a thoughtful and respectful discussion of science fiction and fantasy. Shippey has won the World Fantasy Award and been a Hugo nominee for his Tolkien scholarship, and under the pseudonym John Holm he co-authored a trilogy of alternate history novels with Harry Harrison, beginning with The Hammer and the Cross. But for the Times of London to provide a forum for this discussion is encouraging indeed.

Return of Dave Itzkoff

Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times Book Review, the SF reviewer who thinks SF sucks, is back with his second column, a review of this year's Nebula Awards Showcase. Itzkoff continues to go out of his way to annoy, for instance putting the spoiler warnings after his spoilers rather than before, just to be clever. His suggestion that few in the SF genre today can hold a candle to Anne McCaffrey gives further evidence of how little contemporary science fiction he has actually read.

Still, this column is a great improvement over Itzkoff's previous effort. At least he raises a topic worth discussing: the fascination with nostalgia in SF, a supposedly forward-looking genre. He also finds one story in the Nebula Awards anthology to praise strongly, "Embracing-the-New" by Benjamin Rosenbaum. One hopes that if Itzkoff starts to catch up on his reading, he will realize how many talented authors there are in the SF genre today and eventually develop into an adequate reviewer.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Continuing our tribute to Octavia E. Butler, the Book of the Week is Butler's Parable of the Talents. This is the sequel to Parable of the Sower, in which a determined young black woman named Lauren Olamina fights to survive a ruined future America, and ends up creating a new religion and planting the seeds of America's resurgence. In an amusing twist, the sequel Parable of the Talents is narrated by Olamina's daughter, who deeply resents that Olamina neglected her family while she was busy saving the world. You just can't please everyone.

Published in 1998, Parable of the Talents was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Novel by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The Nebula Award and the Hugo Award are the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. The writers vote to decide Nebula winners, while the fans attending the World Science Fiction Convention vote on the Hugo. Not surprisingly, the writers and fans often have different tastes, but Octavia E. Butler was one of 20 authors to date in the history of science fiction to write fiction with broad enough appeal to be multiple winners of both awards. These 20 names read like a who's who of modern science fiction. (And they all have something else in common: not one of them appears on the list of ten favorite books of Dave Itzkoff, the New York Times Book Review's new science fiction columnist. For more on this jackass, see my two previous posts on this blog.)

More on Dave Itzkoff

We've been poking around, trying to figure out where The New York Times Book Review dug up a science fiction columnist who detests modern science fiction. Dave Itzkoff is a thirtyish editor and freelance writer who started as a low-level staffer at porn-lite magazines Details and Maxim. After that he was an associate editor at Spin magazine, but word is he was recently canned. He has published a memoir of his time in the soft-porn industry called Lads, the highlight of which we are assured is the line:

I don't mean to brag, but I can masturbate to anything.

As far as we can determine, Itzkoff has absolutely no background in science fiction. Whatever expertise he has is in pop culture and music. This is consistent with the The New York Times Book Review's obvious attitude that science fiction is a form of pop culture, not literature. Naturally, Itzkoff will not wish to write anything that might disabuse the Times of that condescending, ignorant notion.

Reaction to Dave Itzkoff Column in The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review has a new science fiction columnist, Dave Itzkoff. In his first column yesterday, he explained that he thinks modern science fiction is terrible, and really, what other qualification would you need to write about science fiction for The New York Times Book Review? He says he cannot in good conscience recommend new science fiction (which he calls "sci-fi") to anyone outside the genre, "because if you were to immerse yourself in most of the sci-fi being published these days, you would probably enjoy it as much as one enjoys reading a biology textbook or a stereo manual."

Here is our response to Mr. Itzkoff's column:

Editor, The New York Times Book Review:

Dave Itzkoff, your new science fiction columnist, is not only as contemptuous of modern science fiction as your other reviewers, he is just as ignorant of the field. No one knowledgeable of written SF uses the term "sci-fi," which the genre has long since abandoned to monster movies and Flash Gordon serials. More importantly, no fair-minded person could possibly read the work of the top SF writers of the past generation, such as Ursula K. LeGuin and Connie Willis, Iain M. Banks and Dan Simmons, James Tiptree, Jr. and James Morrow, and liken it all to "a biology textbook or a stereo manual." Given that Itzkoff's list of his ten favorites contains only two books of prose fiction from the past forty years (one by an author with whose work Itzkoff admits he is not "completely versed"), one must wonder how much of the best recent work he has even read.

One of SF's outstanding authors, Octavia E. Butler, recently passed away without ever receiving the attention her work merited. This lack of recognition resulted from prejudice, ironically not prejudice against her as an African-American woman, but as a science fiction writer. There is no shortage of SF reviewers like me would love the chance to dispel that prejudice in The New York Times Book Review. How sad that the Book Review prefers to print a columnist masquerading as an expert to reinforce the mainstream's ignorant disdain of science fiction.

Aaron Hughes
www.fantasticreviews.com