[extropy-chat] School libraries and skiffy

[Ben Goertzel]

On 11/7/06, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> At 03:24 PM 11/7/2006 -0500, Keith Henson wrote:
>
> >PS.  I went through about a dozen high school libraries in the San Jose
> >area around 1995 looking at the books of my childhood (Heinlein, Clarke,
> >Asimov and others) to see if the failure of those books to be read after
> >some point in the early 70s was widespread, similar to what I had  noticed
> >in my daughter's middle school.  It was.  I have no theory as to why.

Well, as a case study, my son loves SF, but he tends to find much of
this older SF relatively lame in terms of writing and character
development.  The truth is, the standard of writing in SF has improved
a lot over the decades.

And, the plot cliches of older SF (space battles, time travel) have
become **too** cliche' these days due to film, TV, etc.  You don't
need to read SF to find out about time travel paradoxes, it's all over
South Park year after year...

Newer SF novels on average tend have more currently culturally apropos
plot cliches (virtual reality, AI's, etc.) , as well as slightly
better writing...

When I pointed out to my son some of the gems among older SF novels
(Lem, Dick, Williamson, Clarke, etc.), he read and enjoyed them.  But
there is an awful lot of repetitive "space opera" stuff out there to
wade through, to get to the good stuff.

-- Ben G