Hildegarde

So, for the past few weeks since I posted last, I’ve been t hinking.

I’ll also been doing really draconian revisions, but that’s another story.

And what my thinking has boiled down to is this:

I really don’t have the stomach to be a censor, and I’m not going to do it.

Unfortunately, that leaves me in the same position I was when all this nonsense started.  I can do one of two things:

1) Accept the fact that perfectly neutral, in no way negative statements about fantasy and science fiction will be taken as an act of war with gauntlets laid down and fight my way through the ensuing firestorm

OR

2) Censor myself by making sure that I never say anything, no matter how bland, about the genres in question

OR

3) Preface anything I do say about the genres in question, again no matter how bland, with mousy little acts of propitiation like going “Of course, there are many things to admire in sf and fantasy, but…”

Number 3 positively makes my head explode, and I’ve replied to both of the people who suggested it the same way:  I’LL start doing that when the rest of you start prefacing your contempuous put downs of the fiction I love dearly (rememberBurning Questions?)the same way.

But the simple fact of the matter is that I just don’t have the stomach for this.  I started this blog so that I could talk about the books I love and ideas that don’t have a home on either side of the political divide and other things that just sort of wandered through my head.

I don’t want to have these petty arguments.  I don’t want to go back to high school and defend what I do and don’t like or dislike in the way of reading  material.   I don’t want to watch my words and put up a smokescreen of “nice” to fend off attacks.

When I explained this to one person, he suggested that if this is the way I felt, I shouldn’t be writing a blog at all.

Maybe he was right.

I’ve spent two weeks trying to write a post, and every time I’ve tried, I’ve ended up so furious I couldn’t actually type anything.

So let me make explicit what has been tacit for more than half a month.

This blog is on hiatus.  I may come back to it at some point, or I may not, but it will not be any time soon.

I do, however, want to leave one little note for the sf and fantasy people:

THIS is a criticism:

“Heroic fantasy is nothing but a lot of adolescent posturing–virtue! honor! villanny!–punctuated by mind numbingly boring “epic” battles and hyperemotive delusional sex.”

THIS is NOT a criticism:

“All the sf I’ve read is about government employees on government missions.”

That above is just an observation, and says nothing negative about sf or anything else. 

Nor does noting that a lot of fantasy sentimentalizes the Middle Ages, although they change the places and the names and throw in magic most of the time.

If you really can’t tell the difference between that first thing up there and the other two, then let me suggest that you CONSIDER the possibility that you are so hypersensitive to any discussion of the genres involved that you’re not able to properly interpret mentions of them.

I’m going to go watch Dr. Who.