http://theseventhvoyage.com/valleryofgwangirebreview.htm

Too funny.

As for genres, I’ve beem reading a lot of “alternate history” novels such as 1632 by Eric Flint and Island in the Sea of Time by S. M. Stirling. Should we classify them as science fiction, fantasy, action, or a genre of their own?

Genre. If a genre is a small number of closely-related plots, well and good–but I seem to remember being told that there were only a finite number of “narrative arcs” anyway. I’m not quite sure how that meshes with mainstream being where anything can happen.

But in the belief that clear language leads to clear thought, I’d like to point something out. If genre is defined by plot, then science fiction and westerns are not genres, however teh publishers may do things. They are settings, in which stories of any number of genres may take place. Yesterday Jane pointed out that were “Blindness” a science fiction story, people would actually be trying to solve the problem instead of just cope with it. Actually, it’s very hard to come up with a good working definition of science fiction not met by a story in which a new disease of unknown origin and nature strikes a city, just as it is hard to come up with a definition of fantasy which doesn’t cover the Iberian Peninsula floating around in the Atlantic.

By “not science fiction” she meant that they were not adventure stories. And so they aren’t. But they are not alone. Asimov’s “Caves of Steel” and Bujold’s “The Mountains of Mourning” are legitimate detective fiction set in science fictional settings, just as Bujold’s “Civil Campaign” and McCaffrey’s “Restoree” are romances–regency and gothic, respectively. Garrett’s “Lord Darcy” stories are detective stories set in a fantasy setting, and we’ve had fantasy romances from the days of the Brothers Grimm.

A story is what it is. It is not poorly written because it speculates about the future of mankind, nor well written because it refuses to so speculate. And the nature and quality of the story is certainly not determined by the rocket ship the librarian glues to the spine. Critics who think otherwise are false to their craft.

All of which said, don’t miss the old “Generic Science Fiction Novel” which included a space cadet, a mad scientist (with beautiful daughter), giant ants and a galactic council at which Earth was to be judged. Nor BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS–a shameless ripoff of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN set in interplanetary space. Would you believe Robert Vaughn reprised his MAGNIFICENT SEVEN role? How about George Peppard as an interplanetary trucker with a Confederate flag painted on his space freighter?

My husband and I love watching just such screamingly bad movies and giving them our home-grown MST3K treatment. Our favorite so far is one that has both cowboys and pterodactyls.

Oddly, I think there may be some value in the worst of any genre. Their very awfulness and the obviousness of their use of the parameters of the genre can be educational, in that it can teach the observer to pick out the use of those same parameters in more subtle fashion in better-constructed genre pieces. Or something.