Came of across this blog entry, by Ian Sales. And I disagree with it's message, I must say.
From the post,
Readers new to the genre are not served well by recommendations to read Isaac Asimov, EE 'Doc' Smith, Robert Heinlein, or the like. Such fiction is no longer relevant, is often written with sensibilities offensive to modern readers, usually has painfully bad prose, and is mostly hard to find because it's out of print. A better recommendation would be a current author - such as Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, Stephen Baxter, and so on.
The author later goes on to bash 'Nightfall'. He cites literary reasons, like bad character names and the lackluster world building (to use his phrase). That might be the case (but I disagree with that too, see here), but IMO it has nothing to do with old and new. There is good and bad in SF, but not old and new. A good SF is good regardless of the time of its publication, like any other good story. Surely, it may not incorporate the latest scientific breakthroughs, it may hurt our modern sensibilities, but that does not make it bad, it can still enlighten. So it may not be right to recommend only the new stuff to new guys. The point is well taken that a few classics have been overrated, but that doesn't mean we start putting an expiry date on SF. But that's my (an average SF fan) opinion anyway.
From the post,
Readers new to the genre are not served well by recommendations to read Isaac Asimov, EE 'Doc' Smith, Robert Heinlein, or the like. Such fiction is no longer relevant, is often written with sensibilities offensive to modern readers, usually has painfully bad prose, and is mostly hard to find because it's out of print. A better recommendation would be a current author - such as Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, Stephen Baxter, and so on.
The author later goes on to bash 'Nightfall'. He cites literary reasons, like bad character names and the lackluster world building (to use his phrase). That might be the case (but I disagree with that too, see here), but IMO it has nothing to do with old and new. There is good and bad in SF, but not old and new. A good SF is good regardless of the time of its publication, like any other good story. Surely, it may not incorporate the latest scientific breakthroughs, it may hurt our modern sensibilities, but that does not make it bad, it can still enlighten. So it may not be right to recommend only the new stuff to new guys. The point is well taken that a few classics have been overrated, but that doesn't mean we start putting an expiry date on SF. But that's my (an average SF fan) opinion anyway.
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