It is preachy (there’s a warning for that in the stories index) but the preached idea was a little more complex than that. I gave earthfic the status and market wherewithal of real-world fanfiction (and promoted fanfiction to a respectable position), and was also making a point about fanfiction.
True, it was more generally a “Don’t be snooty about genre perceptions” piece. Good literature is good, bad literature is bad, and genre be damned. I’m not arguing with you, I just wasn’t a fan of the style.
There were also non-genre-related criticisms of fanfiction being addressed. Basically, a lot of criticisms of fanfiction can be plausibly applied to earthfic. For example, “If you’re too lazy to create your own characters / world, then you’re not a real writer” is bandied about by anti-fanfic folks, and yet they do not consistently apply it to biographies, or historical fiction, or older ‘fanfic’ writers like James Joyce and T.H.White, or sequels/series.
Really? Seemed rather preachy to me. I got the point within a couple paragraphs, and got bored.
Could’ve been shortened with further editing (I think) but there was more than one point in it.
What did you think it was preaching?
“SF/Fantasy is as good as realistic fiction”. It’s a point I agree with, I just think it was overdone.
It is preachy (there’s a warning for that in the stories index) but the preached idea was a little more complex than that. I gave earthfic the status and market wherewithal of real-world fanfiction (and promoted fanfiction to a respectable position), and was also making a point about fanfiction.
True, it was more generally a “Don’t be snooty about genre perceptions” piece. Good literature is good, bad literature is bad, and genre be damned. I’m not arguing with you, I just wasn’t a fan of the style.
There were also non-genre-related criticisms of fanfiction being addressed. Basically, a lot of criticisms of fanfiction can be plausibly applied to earthfic. For example, “If you’re too lazy to create your own characters / world, then you’re not a real writer” is bandied about by anti-fanfic folks, and yet they do not consistently apply it to biographies, or historical fiction, or older ‘fanfic’ writers like James Joyce and T.H.White, or sequels/series.