Do you prefer pre-late 60's sci-fi books? Or late 60's and after sci-fi books??

[OutofThisWorld]

Do you prefer pre-late 60's sci-fi books? Or late 60's and after sci-fi books?

 

[Fried Egg]

I suppose I tend to prefer pre late 60's SF books. For me, a more useful date to go by is pre or post cyber punk, in which case I most definitely prefer pre.

 

[Connavar]

I prefer pre late 60' SF to any other kind of genre.

You wanna know why ? My alltime time favorit SF authors wrote their best books pre late 60. PKD,RAH,Vance,Asimov,Bester etc

 

[Happy Joe]

No preference here... but, comparatively, few were written before 1860...

Enjoy!

 

[j d worthington]

No preference here... but, comparatively, few were written before 1860...

Enjoy!

Oh, Joe, that one deserves a BIG bap on the noggin....

I'm not sure this is a particularly useful division, either. If you're meaning "pre-New Wave" or "post-New Wave", then we're dealing with a movement within the genre during the 1960s-early 1970s period, but it was by no means the entirety of the genre -- not even close. A large amount of sf continued to be written very much like what it had been before, albeit eventually some of the changes that came with the Wave had some reflections in even the stodgiest of sf writers.

If such is your intention -- I'm about half-and-half. I first encountered Golen Age sf, but by age 12 was reading as much New Wave; I find plenty of strengths and faults in both, and so it largely depends on what I'm "in the mood for" at that point....

 

[Omphalos]

Im not sure why your dividing line is the late 60's (the New Wave? It was in full swing then), but I like books from before and after that period. The only kind of SF that I dont have much of a taste for is Golden Age/Pulp stuff from before the 40's, with exceptions of course.

 

[Razorback]

Like others, I enjoy both. There’s more material to chose from in the post period and some of the pre stuff is a bit dated, but there’s still a lot of great work in the pre period that holds up quite well. I also think familiarity with the earlier stuff provides useful texture and context for a lot of the later work.

 

[chrispenycate]

I suppose that now I read more new stuff than old, except for nostalgic rereads, so that means I prefer… no, actually it means I've read so much of the older stuff that there isn't much left, so the newer is the way to go.

 

[Rane Longfox]

I guess "late sixties and after", considering I read new sci-fi.


And honestly, you need to put more effort into starting threads. At least have some sort of discussion or opinion.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

I started reading SF in the 1960s and probably read most intensively in the late 1960s/early 1970s period, so I have an attachment for novels from that period. It also produced some real classics (Dune, Ringworld, Dragonflight) which remain among my favourites.

 

[Nikitta]

I find that I read both older and newer sci-fi, but if you draw the line at the late 60's then the vast majority I read falls at or after that as I know only very very few authors from before that; even a lot of PKD's books fall at or after the last 60's.

 

[Connavar]

I suppose that now I read more new stuff than old, except for nostalgic rereads, so that means I prefer… no, actually it means I've read so much of the older stuff that there isn't much left, so the newer is the way to go.

Thats my goal in SF reading. Because every old SF is new to me like they were written yesterday. Atleast the good ones who arent severaly dated.

Im the opposite of you right now. I want to read so much that there isn much left.

New SF is easy to get,cheaper often but not near as fun to me.

 

[williamjm]

I tend to read more recent Science Fiction more than mid-20th Century Science Fiction. It is a generalisation but I often get the impression that the characterisation and the quality of the prose tends to be better in more recent SF, although sometimes the older SF does have better ideas and concepts. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and there are older SF works with good characterisation.

 

[steve12553]

.... It is a generalisation but I often get the impression that the characterisation and the quality of the prose tends to be better in more recent SF....

I have to suspect that each era has a manner of thinking and understanding the world outside that is unique to that timeframe. Because of this the descriptions and style of prose is unique to that era. If a person is young enough to have not experienced multiple eras maybe the prose and characterisations tend to seem "hokey" (for lack of a better word) because they are associated with a bygone era. Sometimes you have to fight (with yourself) to appreceate something 20 or more years old. I have learned to try and put it in the context of its era.

 

[j d worthington]

I have to suspect that each era has a manner of thinking and understanding the world outside that is unique to that timeframe. Because of this the descriptions and style of prose is unique to that era. If a person is young enough to have not experienced multiple eras maybe the prose and characterisations tend to seem "hokey" (for lack of a better word) because they are associated with a bygone era. Sometimes you have to fight (with yourself) to appreceate something 20 or more years old. I have learned to try and put it in the context of its era.

Bingo, Steve! Not that there aren't examples of both good and bad characterization, poor prose and excellent prose, etc. But none of these are exclusive to any particular period or region. I agree that most people really do fall into this trap, and it takes exposure to, if not living through several decades, the literature and to some degree the philosophy, science,and criticism of several eras, before one begins to see the difference and be able to tell that which is according to current (and therefore transient) tastes and that which is genuinely good or bad from any particular time....

 

[Omphalos]

Well, to a degree you are exactly right J.D., but the genre really did not start getting developed in earnest until the 1950's. It was around before that, for sure, but the authors who write in it have not had an incredibly long time to develop the tools and language to tell the stories the way that they are best told. The language of SF has grown steadily in the last sixty years or so, and it was after the 80's that real scholars started helping with this. So you are right that each era has had its own bright lights and dim ones too, but the themes and motifs are so much better developed now that authors writing in 2008 must have had a completely different experience than those writing in 1958. And I can only imagine that for that reason, and because the editors know the language so much better now too, that the character of the books are actually different now than they were in the past. Now, my personal opinion is that the older stuff is by far better (although I am starting to come around after reading some newer books this year for the first time in a long time), but the time frame and the generally accepted (and taught, mind you) tools make for big differences. Actually, I think that the language of this genre is advancing faster than the cultures that purchase it, which makes this kind of analysis even more difficult.

 

[j d worthington]

I'd take serious issue with the field not getting developed in earnest before the 1950s -- what of Wells, Verne, Stapledon, Lovecraft, et al., just for starters? -- but to a large degree, you have a fair point as regards sf particularly. However, in that last post, I was thinking more along the lines of literature in general, rather than science fiction specifically, as I've seen the same claims for just about any genre (or even "mainstream") literature: that the newer work has better characterization, or better prose, or is "more realistic", etc.

 

[Omphalos]

I didn't say that the field wasn't developed before the 1950's. I said that the language style and "modular" tools that authors use started being developed in earnest then. It was in the 1950's that SF novels started being produced as the main revenue generating device (as opposed to stories for the slicks and pulps).

 

[j d worthington]

I didn't say that the field wasn't developed before the 1950's. I said that the language style and "modular" tools that authors use started being developed in earnest then. It was in the 1950's that SF novels started being produced as the main revenue generating device (as opposed to stories for the slicks and pulps).

We may be talking about very different things here, then; but on your latter point, I'd still take issue with you, as publishers have always been more prone to bring out novels rather than story collections or anthologies save by established names (and sometimes even then). Most of the work by the earlier writers of sf tended to be in the novel format, until the height of the pulp era; and even then most of them were also writing and publishing novels in the field as well; for the simple reason that their publishers preferred these. This, in fact, is one of the reasons Lovecraft never had a book professionally published during his lifetime: lack of a novel (he never went back and polished Dream-Quest, was so disheartened by Wright's rejection of At the Mountains of Madness that he never resubmitted it, and had disowned Ward as a bit of clunky antiquarianism and never went back and put it into final form, hence never submitted it for publication at all). Even then novels were the main revenue generator. Look, for instance, at Abe Merritt or Edgar Rice Burroughs. The money there didn't often come from the original serializations in magazines, but the book publication of the novel in toto.

As for the "language style and 'modular' tools" you refer to... I'm not sure I'm following you there. Could you give me a little more information or some examples, so I'm certain to what you refer? Thanks....

 

[Omphalos]

Most of the real effective SF editors in the field before the 1950's were working at magazines; the pulps and the slicks; and not at publishing houses. True, there were lots of SF novels published before the 1950's, but most of them really were nothing but mass market crap, or fix-ups of stuff that was serially published first, and all of the really visionary stuff was being done at the magazines. Then in the 1950's something changed (I think it was with the publishing of Greener than you Think by Ward Moore in 1948, then The Joy Makers by James Gunn in 1950 or '51, and finally Gnome's Foundation "trilogy" books), and the focus started to shift. Editors could get jobs editing works for novels, and publishing houses could make enough money in genre items to warrant taking a chance on some more esoteric or experimental stuff. So, novels were published, and authors liked them for economic reasons, but the industry really did not provide any incentives for publishers to take a chance on them until after the 1950's. For that reason the pulps and the slicks were where it was at, and that is pretty much it. I mean, come on! What publisher made a mark at all with a book prior to the 50's? Just take a look at either Clute reference book, or either Gunn reference work, or Tuck, or Aldiss, or Beliler or Sommers, or any other genre reference work, and show me where something more than the odd and infrequent SF book (other than a pre-genre book) ever made a mark that was not an anthology, fix-up or media tie-in. There really were not many. Wells' stuff was all in magazines first. Ralph 124C 41+ was too, and so was van Vogt, Bradbury and early Heinlein. Huxley, Stapledon and Lewis....maybe, but I don't think many of their works were really marketed as SF. Zamiatin was not published here until '64 or so. Weinbaum never wrote a novel. It just was not happening there.

As for language style, I'm not a scholar here, so pardon me if I flub this a bit. Genre literature of all types, SF included, has always used prior works to build up a library of knowledge in reader's minds that later writers capitolize on. Its not some sort of code that is indecipherable to non-genre readers, but I think that this may be part of the reason why it takes time for people to start loving SF. Consider: When an experienced reader picks up a book, for example, about a meteor hitting the earth, or first contact with aliens through radio telescopes, or an alien invasion, they automatically refer back to prior works to inform what they are reading currently, and authors know this and rely on it. For example, imagine how different books such as Moving Mars, by Greg Bear, Rite of Passage, by Alexi Panshin, and Footfall, by Niven and Pournelle would have been if War of the Worlds, A Princess of Mars and Heinlein's juveniles had not been published earlier. Those authors would have had to invent new ways to communicate their stories because they would not have had the benefit of the themes, tropes and motifs that the earlier authors I mentioned above had developed.