Arthur C Clarke a hack?

[suciul]

Sorry, but if I want to read good literature . . . rather clearly implies that most sf is not good literature, but you want to read it anyway.

Part of the problem here, I suspect, is the unstated but implied proposition that "literature" or "literary" has some special meaning other than "well-conceived and well-crafted fiction"; it doesn't. That is a silly concept that academia has foisted off on the unsuspecting, who don't know The Emperor's New Clothes when they don't see them.

The "well-conceived and well-crafted fiction" sounds to me like making a chair or following the latest 10 rules for writing good fiction that everyone is fond of posting these days; I strongly disagree in the sense that books have magic or do not have magic, they come alive or not - of course the experience of such is deeply personal and strongly depends on one's background, life experiences..., so books that will have magic for me, may be a big meh for you and vice-versa and I am absolutely fine with that...

"Literary" means something different, harder to articulate, but for me is essentially the ability to make me read and love a text irrespective of content, just by the arrangement of words - somewhat more nuanced than that but you get the idea; sf is in many ways opposite in the sense that as long as the prose is ok'ish and has enough flow, the content is king and I want the content to have sense of wonder, world building and such

I see a lot of emphasis on "characters" in discussion of "good fiction", but to me what is baffling is why "characters" need to be human, alive or sentient; why cannot language be a "character", or a world, or an universe?? If you hold to the idea that "fiction is about human experience" (implicitly of today since it's truly hard to understand another age) than you limit yourself needlessly...

Anyway enough rambling and back on topic, while nobody will accuse ACC of writing "literary" prose, i still hold firm that he will be remembered, read and will exert influence as long as genre-sf is around, while I strongly doubt R. Silverberg will be more than a footnote in 50 years from now

 

[E_Moon]

This is purely speculative, but from Silverberg's post, I get a sense that he's envious of Clarke. It is my supposition that Silverberg sees his own writing as being superior to Clarke's, in many different ways. How Clarke enjoyed such fame and recognition baffles Silverberg. (snip)

Again, this is sheer speculation on my part, but were I to bet on the situation, it sounds to me like Silverberg looks back on the course of Clarke's writing career, compares with his own and is stunned with disbelief that there would be such a comparative gap between he and Clarke, especially in Clarke's favor.

Agreed.

In my current view that no writer is perfect, and every writer is better at some aspects of writing than others, I would say that both Clarke and Silverberg have limitations...that do not match up. They weren't interested in the same things (either inside or outside writing and SF) and thus did not pursue the same paths to writing success. Their strengths and weaknesses were in different parts of the spectrum; it is not surprising that Silverberg does not recognize Clarke's strengths, but easily sees his weaknesses (which, in my view, are here exaggerated.) It would be instructive to know what mainstream commercial writers Silverberg appreciates (if any)--Clarke wrote well enough to have at least one book that I know of (A Fall of Moondust) chosen to be a Readers Digest Condensed Book--and that was not an organization full of, or appreciative of, SF.

 

[E_Moon]

An awful lot of sf doesn't do all of that, and too much of it doesn't do any of that. Now that is equally true of all other sorts of fiction, but the difference is that (at least by and large) no one claims it's good stuff anyway just because it's got this or that genre hook in it.

Actually...there are bland, less-well-written mysteries that are prized as mysteries because the mystery part is well-handled. I have in fact heard both mystery and romance readers say of a writer "Well he/she is kind of wooden, but it's got a really good (mystery setup/love story) in it." Agatha Christie, for instance, was not a great stylist (not to be compared to Dorothy L. Sayers) and yet--I have enjoyed many of her books. Any genre attracts readers who care about one particular part of that genre and will put up with less-than-stellar work in other areas of those books.

Even more confusing, even educated and experienced readers do not agree on what "good writing" is, and the academic definition changes over time. I remember when the idea of giving readers "an eye-kick" came in as an element of good style...using very obvious stylistic surface tricks, especially extreme sensory details, to create a nearly impenetrable surface experience, below which characterization and plot moved invisibly. (Explained this way by one of its proponents at a meeting I attended years ago.) Others consider this concentration on surface effects to be self-indulgent bad writing. Some think highly emotional writing is good, the more the better on every page. Others think that's self-indulgent bad writing, and the authorial tone should be calmly authoritative. All those are opinions, expressing the personal preferences of readers...not Rules of the Universe. (Rules only if you want to attract a certain audience.)

Over the course of a lifetime of reading (now reaching six decades of same) I've been able to enjoy many different kinds of writing--some of which I no longer enjoy (the kind of humor that attracted me four decades ago isn't as funny now...yeah, yeah, you can make puns about sex, big deal) but many of which still work for me. I have preferences (like every other reader) but tolerate things that don't stroke my preferences if there's another reward in the work. (Much more tolerant in mysteries than in fantasy, much less tolerant in "literary" writing than in fantasy.) I look at the style of writing in terms of its fitness for the particular story, as well as my preferences...and also consider the age of the story--is the style "right" for the time in which it was written?

One of my friends says there's not enough time in one life to waste on reading less-than-great books. I, on the other hand, believe in the old granny's saying "You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die" and swallow the mediocre for the pleasure I can extract.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Even more confusing, even educated and experienced readers do not agree on what "good writing" is, and the academic definition changes over time. I remember when the idea of giving readers "an eye-kick" came in as an element of good style...using very obvious stylistic surface tricks, especially extreme sensory details, to create a nearly impenetrable surface experience, below which characterization and plot moved invisibly.

You are not saying that every reader should decide for her/himself?

HERESY!!!

I think that is one of the world's problems. Too many people allow themselves to be told what to think.

What do you mean, "It's called education!"?

psik

PS - You will like REAL science in your science fiction. OR ELSE!

Sorry, couldn''t resist.

 

[psikeyhackr]

"Near future" is not an exact term, but a span of decades lies well within its scope. Projecting centuries, much less millennia or eons, is another matter. An Earth 1.5 billion years in the future with humans essentially identical--physically, mentally, emotionally--to today's, even with the excuse of "stagnation", seems something beyond risible. Even six centuries seemed to produce a vision little better than the then-contemporary world with some fancy gadgets. (Also, the ability to foresee or imagine the technology of the near future well--an ability no one denies that Clarke possessed in excelsis--has close to zero correspondence with being a good writer of fiction; it would make an excellent writer of science-fact articles and books, but that's not what we're talking about.)

ROFLMAO

owlcraft, may I ask what you think of Mack Reynolds writing?

psik

 

[owlcroft]

Some desultory observations . . . .

Actually...there are bland, less-well-written mysteries that are prized as mysteries because the mystery part is well-handled. I have in fact heard both mystery and romance readers say of a writer "Well he/she is kind of wooden, but it's got a really good (mystery setup/love story) in it." Agatha Christie, for instance, was not a great stylist (not to be compared to Dorothy L. Sayers) and yet--I have enjoyed many of her books. Any genre attracts readers who care about one particular part of that genre and will put up with less-than-stellar work in other areas of those books.

Ah, but that's just the point: such readers will indeed, as you aptly phrased it, put up with such flaws for some counter-balancing idiosyncratic pleasure inherent in the genre--but will they say "This is great stuff" or will they say "Flawed, but I like it"? I greatly enjoy The Shadow, and have read many of the old pulp novels featuring him, but I'd never say to anyone, "you know, these are good books."

(Incidentally, I think that that sort of thing is much less true today in mystery fiction than it was a few decades ago. Back then, agreed, mystery novels were expressly supposed--as many of their authors said--to not be "literary", a point of view that I have railed against elsewhere. But I think, though I am not expert in that field, that in modern times that has changed, such that Christie, for example, is now more revered as an icon than as a writer, while Sayers and Simenon and Stout remain esteemed qua writers. My impression is that today mystery readers expect more from a book than just clever puzzles.)

Even more confusing, even educated and experienced readers do not agree on what "good writing" is, and the academic definition changes over time.

Undoubtedly so, but the academic definition is not particularly related to the commonsensical critical view, which typically expects strengths in language use, plot, characterization, and setting. And language use refers to solidly crafted prose, which is not, as was suggested elsethread, a matter of some "10 Magic Rules of Writing" but of adherence to the basic principles one can find expounded in, say, Herbert Read's classic English Prose Style (Read wrote the acclaimed fantasy novel The Green Child). Good prose comes in many flavors, from Lord Dunsany to Jack Vance to M. John Harrison, but it's easy enough to recognize when encountered: it can be as various as those authors' trademark styles suggest, but it is not characterized by fanciness or tricks, just sound writerly talent.

As to the other elements, I won't repeat what I have said at great length at another elsewhere, but I reckon that most readers want characters who seem three-dimensionally human, not mere animated plot devices or (as is often said of Asimov's) walking, talking ideas.

One of my friends says there's not enough time in one life to waste on reading less-than-great books. I, on the other hand, believe in the old granny's saying "You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die" and swallow the mediocre for the pleasure I can extract.

I think, if we're going for apothegms, that "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince" might be closer; but, on the other hand, a kissed frog that remains steadfastly batrachian need not be further romanced. I find it remarkable how little of a work one needs to taste to get the flavor; often a few paragraphs here and there will suffice. There are occasional exceptions, in both directions, but usually by just a few pages in I have a pretty good idea if the book in hand will be rewarding or no.

(When I was young and idealistic--not to bring the Civil War into this--I firmly believed that a glass of beer or a book, once begun, had to be finished; but it's been a long year since I first put down a book and said "Not another page." Beer, on the other hand . . . .)

 

[owlcroft]

That's owlCROFT . . . .

may I ask what you think of Mack Reynolds writing?

It's been many and many a year since I last read him. I have none of his work on my shelves, which means that my contemporary judgement of him was at best average; and I have so little recollection--even prompting myself with a bibliography list--of any of his stuff that I guess it went in one eye and out the other (so to speak). I know I have read him: back in those days, there were few sf books I didn't read (back then one really could read almost everything published, whereas today one would need to read, I forget, I think five books a day just to keep up with current ptoduction).

The Rival Rigelians, Code Duello, those are names I recall--but not the books' contents.

(For some reason I will never fathom, I keep thinking Reynolds wrote Brain Twister, which in fact is from Randall Garrett and Laurence Janifer--maybe it was the pseudonym, "Mark Phillips"; the book is notable for, among other things, a mob boss named Primo Palveri.)

 

[Psylent]

Talk about flame bait! No where in this article does Silverberg even come close to calling Clarke a hack. Me thinks a small fur-footed poster is looking to (and successfully did) stir up a controversy!

So I decided, for this series of essays on rereading my early SF favorites, to see what it was that I had found so marvelous in Clarke’s first novel when I encountered it more than sixty years ago.

Ok, so context is important. This article is part of series of articles wherein Silverberg discusses sci-fi childhood favorites. It isn't here because he's going out of his way to slam Clarke. He's discussing this particular early works of Clarke because they were childhood favorites.

But the earlier sense of amateur derives from the Latin word amator, a lover—specifically, a lover of literature, of fine wine, of rare postage stamps, of anything that can excite strong commitment, be it intellectual or emotional or both. We no longer use the word that way in English because, since it has come to take on negative connotations in its other sense, it has been replaced by its Spanish synonym, aficionado. But those of us who love science fiction are amateurs of science fiction, and I think there was no greater amateur of SF than Arthur C. Clarke, who when he was eighteen or so set out to show his love for the work of Olaf Stapledon and other SF visionaries by writing his own tale of the far future. And it is that love that shines through in Against the Fall of Night and most of Clarke’s later work and makes it compelling to us despite all its literary shortcomings.

This is hardly an all out attack on Clarke.

Silverberg's thinks that Clarke is a poor technical writer with some really nifty ideas and that Clarke's love for science comes through clearly in his books. Basically every post here has agreed with him. And yet some people seem to think that he wrote this piece out of envy. Sigh.

 

[Hobbit]

Me thinks a small fur-footed poster is looking to (and successfully did) stir up a controversy!

No: wasn't my intention, but was interested to see what others thought. In my first post I did say that I could be misinterpreting Silverberg by being too precious.

Personally I don't think a reasoned debate here is anything like a 'flame war', nor the number of posts 'a controversy': flame wars we don't usually do at SFFWorld.

So, just for the record: no intentional stirring-up done: have enough to do here without deliberately causing a fuss.

I like both Silverberg and Clarke's writing but my reaction to reading that article was that: I was disappointed that Silverberg had written the article and although it may use subtler words than that, my overall impression was that. Hence the title. I am pleased to see what others think though, and can't say I particularly disagree with much of it on either side.

Mark

 

[Werthead]

I think another issue is that Clarke originated - or at least much more cannily popularised - a lot of interesting and major ideas, whilst Silverberg tends to build his works on what has come before. Looking at Silverberg's notable works, Dying Inside came after Bester's The Demolished Man, arguably the previous great work on telepaths (although they are otherwise pretty dissimilar), whilst the Majipoor series has some similarities to Vance's Big Planet, not to the mention the SF-rationalised-fantasy of writers like McCaffrey. These are great books, well-written, but they don't have the impact of Clarke's introduction of space elevators to the masses in The Fountains of Paradise or simply the grand vision of a technologically-advanced future in 2001.

I also disagree with the article's suggestion that Silverberg would be the biggest 'grandmaster' of SF today. I think Silverberg would be in the running but that either Brian Aldiss or Gene Wolfe would be more notable choices.

 

[Sparrow]

I think some of the points Silverberg makes are valid. Clarke spent the last twenty years of his life resting on his laurels, and never again approached the brilliance of his earlier writing. Most all the final books bear his name in big bold letters, but he only played a minor role in writing them. That said, 2001 and Rama are masterworks... out of all the hundreds of sf stories I've read over the last two decades, it's only 2001: A Space Odyssey that really captured the essense of outerspace.

Apart from his writing chops, Clarke was the face of Science Fiction (as was Asimov), and both helped the genre gain greater acceptance and respectability.

Is Silverberg a better writer than Clarke & Asimov?.. on a technical level he certainly is, but he lacks that last unknown, indefinable quality that Clarke and Asimov had.

 

[SallyC]

My father was a science fiction fan from the late thirties onwards, and introduced me to it at a very early age. I cut my teeth on the likes of Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov and the rest, aided by two decades worth of ASF that my father had carefully preserved.
I remember how much he hated the new wave, seeing it as slack on the science and technology he adored: I disagreed with him, seeing the growing emphasis on people, rather than devices and ideas, as something more in tune with my own feelings.
He gave up reading new science fiction in the seventies, preferring non-fiction, mysteries and detective fiction. Silverberg was no substitute for Clarke in his opinion.
I've continued to read whatever has fallen into my hands, good or bad. I've hated some things that have been highly praised ,and loved others, well aware that they are not particularly clever or well written. Over time, my prefernce has shifted towards fantasy, in part because I can't abide bad science.
A lot of the comments Silverberg makes apply to most early science fiction, back when it was written by men working in or fascinated by science and engineering for a very similar audience. Literary quality never entered into it. I don't think many people fully appreciate this.
I have no wish to denigrate any of the changes of the last seventy years; to make any progress we have to keep moving. I don't believe Silverberg was attacking Clarke, any more than I would. If his stories still hold up today, then he was truly head and shoulders above his peers.

 

[nquixote]

Clarke has lots of good ideas, but his stories (Rama, 2001, Childhood's End) are clunky - the plots are just a series of revelations, told in clumsy expository style. It's high-concept sci-fi, not engrossing storytelling.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Clarke has lots of good ideas, but his stories (Rama, 2001, Childhood's End) are clunky - the plots are just a series of revelations, told in clumsy expository style. It's high-concept sci-fi, not engrossing storytelling.

Could you list a few books that meet your standard for "engrossing storytelling"?

psik

 

[Werthead]

Clarke has lots of good ideas, but his stories (Rama, 2001, Childhood's End) are clunky - the plots are just a series of revelations, told in clumsy expository style. It's high-concept sci-fi, not engrossing storytelling.

Unless of course you really like high-concept SF, in which case it can make for engrossing storytelling

 

[Hobbit]

Found an article today that might contribute to the discussion. Article from the Guardian UK newspaper about the influence of ACC on the future.

Whilst it tends to take that old view of 'SF is about predicting the future', it does talk about his influence on inspiring scientists. And his positivity in his world-view (or perhaps 'galactic-view'!)

Mark

 

[KatG]

I don't myself think that Clarke was all that positive about the future, really. And the authors they decry as negative are hardly ever as negative as they are made out to be. I'm so tired of two-box systems.

I think Clarke will be studied for a long time to come, however.

 

[nquixote]

Could you list a few books that meet your standard for "engrossing storytelling"?

psik

From the same era? Most of the books I've read by Heinlein. Anything by Roger Zelazny. Anything by Samuel Delaney. Anything by Jack Vance. All much better storytellers than Clarke, though not always as visionary with the high-concept stuff.

 

[nquixote]

Unless of course you really like high-concept SF, in which case it can make for engrossing storytelling

Well, I do really like high-concept sci-fi. I just realize that there's a distinction between the "science" and the "fiction" components of the genre. If the concept is all your value in a sci-fi yarn, more power to ya.