Why is SF/F seen as geeky?

[Montero]

Picking up on a few things and wurbling on.

But then, by popularity of book sales, does that mean Tolkien be considered to have mass-appeal? Aside from being a leader in developing the fantasy genre, is there something present there missing from less popular writers?

With fashionable books I wouldn't bet on sales=readers. There was a fashion for having "A Brief History of Time" on the coffee table a few years back.

(Perhaps it's all just the case that "reading" itself is considered "geeky"!)

I think it is what you read that carries an image. Housewives reading Aga Sagas get a pretty poor press. (Pretentious dozy women escaping from their housework when they'd be better off polishing the door knob - so nothing geeky about that reading!) Reading newspapers is fine, but has political associations.
(I once met someone whose two conversational gambits were "What's your job?" "Materials research" and "What newspaper do you read?" "None, I prefer books" and that was the end of the conversation. He got out his newspaper and ignored me.)
Reading popular classics - probably Jane Austin for example - also seems fine. Not too highbrow. Probably comes down to "if its been made into a film or a TV series then it is OK to read the book".

I've also heard the opinion that it is only real-life stories that are worth reading that the speaker had no time for made up things.

Standing back a fraction, it seems to me that all story telling, including real-life stories, will have an element of lets call it "presentation" and of course point of view to it. (Every so often the relative of someone who became famous for writing their true life story will publish a book on their differing view of events!) Nothing is ever an absolute and I have concerns when something is presented as authoritative - for example dramatised history - and people believe it to be the one true answer. That won't ever happen with SFF.

And finally, on the image of writing, I read two books a while back (wish I could remember the author's full name and title of the books) which were basically amusing autobiographies of this lady's life and times. In the second book she commented that once the first book was published, her image in the eyes of her family changed. Up until that point her opinion was not especially sought after. Once the book was published she turned into the oracle of family history - ask Lucy was the cry. She said she wasn't always sure she was getting things right, would have been perfectly happy to wrap in views from her relatives, but no, her version became the definitive version.

Maybe another problem with reading some science fiction, is that it is not immediately obvious who you should be siding with, or identifying with. (Whereas with the more formulaic end of fantasy it is too obvious.) Many people are worried, not stimulated, by shades of grey.

 

[Toby Frost]

Part of it probably comes from the assumption that SFF is entirely seperate from "real life" in a way that, say, crime fiction isn't (even crime set in the past). There is an idea, probably taken from a mix of 30's pulps, the more technical, problem-solving Gold Age SF and the cheesier early-80s fantasy novels, that SFF is entirely about escape from real life, which tends to mean "dealing with other humans". The logic goes that the SF reader wants to gawp at faceless spacemen repairing robots with pure logic (or killing them with rayguns), and the F reader wants to dream about killing hordes of orcs with a battleaxe (or owning a fairy castle stuffed full of unicorns, depending on gender). Real Writers write about Real Life because it's the Only Subject Worth Talking About. (Unless they are writing a literary novel so brilliant that it's not actually about anything, in which case they'll win a prize.)

It's partly the act of getting lost in another world that people see as geeky - and yes, I think you can get to this point if you don't know when to stop - and partly the element of wish-fulfillment. Some see SFF readers as people who wish they were in the books they read (a bit like Jane Austen obsessives). Again, not real-world and hence geeky and sad.

This is patronising and largely untrue, of course, but it's also easy and gets a cheap laugh. Of course, occasionally one of these benighted SF types writes a book that's either satirical (SF) or based on genuine celtic myth or the like (F, but less often and usually for children) and is allowed to be a Real Writer.

And on a broader point, frankly, people who are really interested in something can be a little unsettling for people who don't have any interests beyond TV.

 

[Parson]

Nothing is ever an absolute and I have concerns when something is presented as authoritative - for example dramatised history - and people believe it to be the one true answer. That won't ever happen with SFF.

The Parson sighs and thinks of the one of the most successful (financially!!) SF writers of all times, L. Ron Hubbard, and wishes Montero were right.

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I would like to add that I don't think "Geek" is quite the pejorative it once was. There is a certain amount of awe for people who actually have some idea what causes lightening, why thunder comes after the flash. Know some computer language, write their own macros, that kind of thing.

For me I think why SF readers are judged as nerdy is what many have said previously. "No normal person would be interested in those kind of things."

 

[Vladd67]

For me I think why SF readers are judged as nerdy is what many have said previously. "No normal person would be interested in those kind of things."

No a normal person is obsessed by the goings on in a fictional London Square or a fictional street in a fictional northern town, this is perfectly normal. Normal people walk about in cheap replica sports wear that make them sweat almost as much as the poor under paid souls who produced them. Normal people spend hours watching wannabes and hasbeens doing pointless things on reality tv. Thank god I am a SF/F geek who knows his way round a book, and like so many people on this forum ready to try something a little different.

 

[clovis-man]

Talking about the printed word only: The mainstream public sees SF as some sort of refuge for techno-babble, ray guns, creepy aliens, etc. You know; quarks, red shifts, disrupter beams, lizard warriors. Fantasy readers are all lumped together as D & D freaks.

Until one has actually delved into the genre, I doubt if such opinions can be changed. Just my simplistic view. (Actually, I just noted that Tobytwo has said almost the same thing, but did a much better job of it)

 

[Pyan]

No a normal person is obsessed by the goings on in a fictional London Square or a fictional street in a fictional northern town, this is perfectly normal. like so many people on this forum ready to try something a little different.

Or a mythical suburb of Melbourne ...

True, Vladd - and I gather it's not geeky to know who a character got engaged to in 1998, or what the name of a character's dog was in the soaps - apparently there are actual, best selling magazines devoted to what goes on in this mythical "Soapland"...

 

[Parson]

No a normal person is obsessed by the goings on in a fictional London Square or a fictional street in a fictional northern town, this is perfectly normal. Normal people walk about in cheap replica sports wear that make them sweat almost as much as the poor under paid souls who produced them. Normal people spend hours watching wannabes and hasbeens doing pointless things on reality tv. Thank god I am a SF/F geek who knows his way round a book, and like so many people on this forum ready to try something a little different.

Well nobody said "normal" was sensible.

 

[Montero]

The Parson sighs and thinks of the one of the most successful (financially!!) SF writers of all times, L. Ron Hubbard, and wishes Montero were right.

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I'm afraid I just don't get what you are referring to. Could you expand a bit please.

 

[ghostofcorwin]

I think the negative connotation of "geek" is an "unfit" loser with thick glasses, no girlfriend or boyfriend, excessive natural interest in techy or abstruse subjects, and a desire to escape the cruelties of a social environment that doesn't accept them by immersing in things like other worlds, speculative science fiction, aliens, role-playing games with monsters, or anything that could be construed as avoidant of alpha competition.

Now that I've described myself I figure we have to be fair and look at both sides of the term. In the end it's not about the quality of the science fiction the geek reads, but why he reads it at all and what he/she is avoiding by doing so... geek is, in this sense, more of a social definition.

Okay, back to my werewolf stories....

 

[J-WO]

I have this childhood memory (My own of course. Be weird if it were someone else's) of taking an SF picture book to school. I must have been about eight. It was one of those books they released in the eighties that had a story/ theme of sorts that tied together many disparate sf magazine and novel covers from the decade before. It must have belonged to one of my older brothers.

The other boys--even the 'jocks'--were fascinated. But then the girls came over. The leader took a peak at it and decided I was a baby and the others all agreed. I made out I wasn't really into the book that much anyhow. Which was a total lie.

I only remembered this recently but it obviously left its mark. I feel embarrassed to tell anyone in Normalworld that I dig this stuff when I first meet them, especially ladies. Which is sexist of course, but I can always blame society for that one.

What scares me about this memory was that these girls weren't even ten and had decided the future--even considering the future-- was childish by definition. Who'd put that idea into their heads?

I told this to a friend and he took the Marxist view that its social pressure in order to control the masses, especially women. 'Marry and Reproduce' 'Get a mortgage' etc. I think there's a lot of truth to that outlook. Those girls were in a hell of a rush to grow up. And, come to think of it, so were the boys, though it took a year or so longer to sink in. Play-behaviour went out and football, with its timeless order and rules, came in. Almost overnight.

Ordinary people... go figure.

 

[Parson]

I'm afraid I just don't get what you are referring to. Could you expand a bit please.

L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of the Church of Scientology, which IMO is a complete farce. Scientology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia But the projuect has been economically very successful.

 

[Montero]

Thanks for explaining Parson.

I meant something written as part of an SFF story. Scientology was created by a SFF writer, but did it come from one of his books?

 

[AE35Unit]

Could it be becaause its written by geeks? And more to the point,is there anything wrong with geekery?

 

[Parson]

Thanks for explaining Parson.

I meant something written as part of an SFF story. Scientology was created by a SFF writer, but did it come from one of his books?

"Dianetics", which purports to be a result of L. Ron's own quest for meaning, but it smacks of a clever hook for a SF book to me.

(We're drifting off topic. If you would like to talk about this some more you could PM me, or start a thread. I think it could be interesting to what others around here think of L. Ron and Scientology.)