
When Popular Fiction Isn’t Popular: Genre, Literary, and the Myths of Popularity - kawera
http://electricliterature.com/when-popular-fiction-isnt-popular-genre-literary-and-the-myths-of-popularity/
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carlob
Iain Banks (who wrote both scifi and literary fiction) on this very subject:

"An ex-neighbour of ours recalled (in an otherwise entirely kind and welcome
comment) me telling him, years ago, that my SF novels effectively subsidised
the mainstream works. I think he’s just misremembered, as this has never been
the case. Until the last few years or so, when the SF novels started to
achieve something approaching parity in sales, the mainstream always out-sold
the SF – on average, if my memory isn’t letting me down, by a ratio of about
three or four to one. I think a lot of people have assumed that the SF was the
trashy but high-selling stuff I had to churn out in order to keep a roof over
my head while I wrote the important, serious, non-genre literary novels. Never
been the case, and I can’t imagine that I’d have lied about this sort of
thing, least of all as some sort of joke. The SF novels have always mattered
deeply to me – the Culture series in particular – and while it might not be
what people want to hear (academics especially), the mainstream subsidised the
SF, not the other way round. And… rant over."

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lmm
There may be no such thing as a fake reader - but most books bought aren't
read. And the ratio of how many are read is different between "genre" and
"literary" fiction.

Mitchell may always have written genre but he wasn't marketed that way.
Likewise e.g. Margaret Atwood writes science fiction but feels the need to
pretend it isn't. I'm partway through The Chimes, which was nominated for the
Booker prize - and again it's science fiction in literary drag (not even
literary-influenced; it's straight up classic SF). But I doubt it would have
got the nomination if it had worn its genre affiliation openly. If authors who
have the choice overwhelmingly prefer to position their works as "literary"
rather than "genre" when they could fit into either category, doesn't that say
there's something asymmetric about how we treat the two?

Honestly the Hugos were never about popularity. But they were a celebration of
something deeply unliterary, and I'd like them to continue to represent that
tradition, whether or not that means nominating books with higher or lower
sales figures.

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o_nate
The idea that the Hugos were a "celebration of something deeply unliterary"
seems bizarre to me. Looking at the winners over the years it seems pretty
clear they are generally works with higher than average literary merit within
the genre.

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lmm
"Seems pretty clear"? Maybe you should give some examples of what you're
talking about? The Hugos reflect some kind of merit (plot, worldbuilding,
plausibility) but it's in areas that the literary establishment places very
little value on, and winners IME often have less of the literary virtues -
less characterization, much less exploration of characters' mental states,
often even less polished prose - than other works of (nominal) SF, simply
because there isn't time for both.

Foundation's Edge is possibly the least literary book I've ever read; I don't
think Asimov wrote a deeply-characterized human in his life. The same applies
to most Heinlein, a lot of Dick, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and IME most Clarke
(though it seems I haven't read either of his Hugo-winning works); it's true
of David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson and Vernor Vinge. I've heard
Neuromancer described as an "obvious first novel", and while there's something
distinct about the Ender series, I certainly wouldn't call it literary.

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o_nate
I think you have a limited view of what counts as literary. Well-developed
characters are not a rigid requirement. Many classics of literature don't
feature them. Have you ever read Kafka or Borges?

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lmm
I've read a little of both.

Regardless of what we label it as, would you agree that some recent winners
(specifically I'll say Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Yiddish Policemen's
Union, The City & the City, Ancillary Justice, and The Three-Body Problem) are
in some sense alike, that they form a different cluster from the list of older
winners in my previous comment? That these newer winners are more similar to
e.g. older Booker Prize winners (so that we don't get caught up trying to
objectively define literary) than the older Hugo winners were? That there are
qualities that the older Hugo winners have that the newer ones lack?

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dstyrb
How esoterically meta.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, totally unlike discussions about Monads, or Haskell vs Idris, or the
workings of YC, or FRP etc. on HN, which are completely non-esoteric and
accessible to the general public...

