Hello, all:
In response to 2 recent questions:
1. "Would you consider C. Smith's work as SF or F?"
It's almost more "psychodrama" than either. The world he describes
is not so much unreal as surreal. His dreamlike images explore extremes of
emotional isolation and bodily pain (Paul Linebarger had terrible health,
died in his 50s).
Improbable and impossible indeed are some of the occurences in his
stories: space-faring cats, human beings who body-surf through the
galaxies, an alien race who, rejecting the old standbys invasion and
destruction, specialize instead in fancy architecture; an immortality drug
derived from the dung of diseased sheep. Yet these weird things in C
Smith's stories are logically extrapolated from premises that are stable
throughout the Instrumentality series. He keeps to his premises as an s-f
writer does. And despite all the fantastic elements, he's not an escapist.
Maybe he's writing neo-symbolist poetry, well disguised as space opera.
2. >>I used to think Fantasy was a large circle, and most of SF could be found
>inside of it.
>Hmm, you are not the only one who thinks this. Tzvetan Todorov, a French
>scholar, said almost the same thing approx. 30 years ago. But I suspect
>that that's not the way things really are.
Todorov publishes in French, though he's not French by birth.
Mention of TT
reminded me of a True Life Teaching Story; it really happened, though not at
my present school. I was assigned the task of teaching Literary Fantasy in
a large lecture format. We met in a huge lecture hall, and I spoke with the
help of a microphone. My lectures referred often to Todorov's provocative
book "The Fantastic," including introductory background comments identifying
Todorov as born and educated in Sofia, Bulgaria. Either the students
couldn't hear me in the vaulted space where we were meeting (there were over
300 in the class), or the students who never attended were all cribbing from
the same defective class-notes, but eventually I got back hundreds of
student essay exams in which poor Todorov was described by one and all as a
"vulgarian structuralist."
(Maybe they were thinking about vulgar Marxists? Or maybe they
weren't thinking at all!) Anyhow, I still smile whenever his name comes up.
Regards, Carol
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