Criticism
I don't know how many people read say, GameSpot game reviews, Science Fiction fanzines, and the New Yorker. If you do, then you've probably noted the fact that New Yorker reviews are a wee bit more penetrating than anything you're likely to find in the first two. They're by no means perfect. E.g. the New Yorker might publish a review of a major new book written by a respected author who might be prone to criticise the former from a slightly concealed \"well I would have written this differently\" viewpoint.
Science Fiction and Games tend to be treated, at best, as \"genre\" products, and thus not worthy of serious criticism. This attitude is both frustrating and, I think, hypocritical. In a sense, any good book is a \"genre\" product, since (unless it really is about nothing) it will grapple in some detail with some subject which is not necessarily within the knowledge domain of every reader. (I remember vividly how some TV shows and books suddenly came to life for me after I got a mortgage; there are aspects of \"everyday life\" that aren't \"everyday\" for some people which effectively make knowledge of it as foreign as genre fiction to them.)
Science Fiction is different from most other forms (including to a large extent Fantasy, with which it is frequently lumped) in that, often, it comes with a fairly self-contained context. That is, a reader who is paying attention can pick up any specialized knowledge needed to appreciate the story (aside from the \"everyday\" stuff common to all fiction).
The reason, I think, that magazines with literary pretensions (such as Atlantic and the New Yorker) tend to ignore Science Fiction (except, occasionally, in the latter's movie reviews) is that most of it is so bad as to not merit serious criticism. Part of this, in turn, is driven by the poor standard of criticism at lower tiers.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T10:51:23.246+00:00",path:"egad-comments",_created:"2024-07-09T20:34:22.044Z",id:"24",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:34:22.044Z","$id":"24",_path:"post/path=egad-comments"}}