From: Mike Sakasegawa 
Subject: Re: (urth) Generic Considerations
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 13:07:43 -0700

Blattid wrote:
> This reverts to the subect/object orientation of SF/MF. SF expends
> much of it discursive energy on the level of the object, creating
> and analyzing things that do not exist in the "consensus" world. MF
> need not do this and uses more of its discursive energy creating
> and analyzing the subjectivity of characters. But the subjects of
> attention and analysis in MF are no more (or less) "real" than the
> objects of attention and analysis in SF; though one could reasonably
> claim, I suppose, that they represent a kind of thing that exists
> in the consensus world, where deliquescing doors and transporters
> do not ...
> 

You talked about how an SF reader tends to decode the language used in different ways from an MF reader, and here you talk about the focus of the writer's discursive energy.  I'm still not sure I comp
I'm not an expert on genre criticism, especially in book form, but in film criticism, some critics define genres by the semantic and syntactic elements of the films which comprise it's body.  The sema
A lot of "soft" SF is mainly focused on the subjective experience and emotional state of the characters.  For example, most of the works of Orson Scott Card.  True, he does spend some portion of each f MF and for "hard" SF, but I'm not sure that it includes "lighter" works into each genre that should be included.

Unfortunately, it seems that what constitutes a genre depends highly on who is asked, and should that be the case?  To me, Vonnegut _has_ written SF, even if he doesn't think so, because he uses certa
On a completely unrelated note, I've decided on a Whorl-type name for myself.  I picked the Japanese word for "Sheep," as that is the Japanese zodiac sign for the year in which I was born.  Thus:

-Hitsuji


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