Autopope! - The New Eclectics

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May. 2nd, 2008

10:04 am - The New Eclectics

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[info]matociquala linked to Richard Morgan's call for peace and amity within SF, and thus invited the usual ideological flame war to come roost in her LJ for a while.

Me, I read the Mundane Manifesto and felt called to write a Mundane SF novel.

(So for an encore, I had to do a Space Opera, in late Heinlein mode.)

I am sick of all these soi-disant Movements in SF. So I am hereby considering establishing my own.

My Movement is to be called the New Eclecticism, but you're very welcome to paste your own label on it and claim responsibility. (Schismatic sects welcome; the more, the merrier!) Our key tenet is to embrace and extend: "exclusivity is futile, your movement's tropes will be assimilated and remixed with gay abandon".

You, too, can be a New Eclectic! All you have to do is write something obeying the conventions of an SF movement you wouldn't normally be seen dead with. It feels weird and kind of icky at first, but as your sense of postmodern irony develops you will learn that trangressing boundaries of genre and taste can be both fun and creative! Cyberpunks? Try writing a 1960s psychedelic New Wave story, or an urban fantasy! (Better still, turn your hand to a 1960s psychedelic urban fantasy New Wave story!) Mundane SF folks? Let your hair down, strap on your, er, strap-on whatever, and indulge your filthy and ideologically impure appetite for flesh-penetrating luscious technophiliacal cyberpunk! (Fans self.) Paranormal romance folks? Just for once, how about a story where everybody is human?

We welcome splittists, schismatics, and fundamentalists of every stripe. You, too, can be part of our Official Opposition! All you have to do is denounce us as an impure, mongrel, non-serious, revisionist, or insert-other-derogatory-term-here bunch of no-hopers and you can contribute to the success of the New Eclectics by attracting attention to us! You can enjoy the self-righteous glow of puritanical zeal while knowing that secretly you're helping out!

Innovators are welcome too! If you can think of a new, strange, and hitherto inconceivable, indigestible or just plain immoral twist on SF, please contribute it! Metaphors happily mixed here! The iron jackboot may absolutely be cast into the melting pot while the fascist octopus sings its swan-song (words © and ™ by the Weasel)!

So, to reiterate: everybody is welcome to join the New Eclectics. The only rule is: Embrace and Extend. Opposition is, by definition, internal. You're one of us: live with it!

CAN HAS CHEEZBURGR NAOW?

Current Location: fish!!!
Current Mood: [mood icon] mad
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From:[info]inaurolillium
Date:May 2nd, 2008 09:39 am (UTC)
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Woohoo! Now there is a manifesto I can get behind!
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From:[info]mssrcrankypants
Date:May 2nd, 2008 09:44 am (UTC)
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At last, reason returns to SF! Eclecticism is the most effective approach to any genre of writing, even criticism. People who allow themselves to be bound by a single theory--evincing, to me, Emerson's "bugbear"--tend to get rather dull rather fast.

Great post.
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From:[info]charlieallery
Date:May 2nd, 2008 10:15 am (UTC)
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I'm all in favour. My reading tastes vary widely and it's nice to be able to count on the writing abilities and style of a known author while getting the enjoyment of variety - in fact, yes, I do tend already to read authors who write variety. Likewise my writing impulses vary enormously and I just enjoy having a go at something else. *hides affection for Westerns* I'd happily read New Eclectic authors ... as long as that wasn't all they wrote ... *g*

p.s. Charlie, I'd like to read your blog, would you add me to your flist?
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From:[info]quasi_hayley
Date:May 2nd, 2008 10:25 am (UTC)
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My icon says it all really.
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From:[info]fledgist
Date:May 2nd, 2008 10:27 am (UTC)
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Empiricist!
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From:[info]johnrw
Date:May 2nd, 2008 10:30 am (UTC)
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I've never really understood the internal factions in SF Sure I have opinions, butif I don't like a story it's that story not the subgenre someone has classified it as being.

For heaven's sake I don't like/can't stand, custard but I don't go around campaigning for it to be classified alongside heroin.

So yes I'm a new eclectic by nature! it's just that I've not written anything - I'm a evourer of words and stories rather than creator.

CAN HAS CHEEZBURGR NAOW?

Of course,next time we meet, and I'll even pay for it!
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From:[info]watervole
Date:May 2nd, 2008 10:35 am (UTC)
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"Our key tenet is to embrace and extend: "exclusivity is futile, your movement's tropes will be assimilated and remixed with gay abandon"."

Sounds like my approach to con-running. Exclude nothing. Chuck the whole jolly lot in together and see what interesting things come out of the mix.
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From:[info]cairmen
Date:May 2nd, 2008 10:40 am (UTC)
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I signed up; now where do I get my Official Opposition badge?
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From:[info]julesjones
Date:May 2nd, 2008 11:27 am (UTC)
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Paranormal romance folks? Just for once, how about a story where everybody is human?

Did that already. Am being pestered for the sequel...
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From:[info]erikvolson
Date:May 2nd, 2008 12:29 pm (UTC)
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This reminds me of the Moderate Extremists: You will be calm and rational in all you think and do, or we'll kill you.
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From:[info]grimmtooth
Date:May 2nd, 2008 12:40 pm (UTC)

Arlo Guthrie smiles

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Am I the only one hearing Alice's Restaurant now?
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From:[info]bevhale
Date:May 2nd, 2008 12:51 pm (UTC)
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Thank you. I, too, have wondered why people get so upset about there being different types of SFFH. Why not have all the colors of the rainbow instead of one? They made chocolate because not everyone loves vanilla. Some like strawberry, or butter brickle or lingenberry. Who cares? They're all good flavors. And there is room enough for all of us.
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From:[info]suricattus
Date:May 2nd, 2008 12:57 pm (UTC)
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We tried something similar a few years ago called it the New Saleability. Locus refused to run our press release, claiming that we were damaging the inherent and exclusive intellectual fiber of One True SF by co-opting other genres just because they were fun to write.

I cop to it, gleefully, and support your efforts wholeheartedly.


(Movements are for the bathroom, anyway. Use tissue and clean up after yourselves is all decent folk ask...)
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From:[info]matociquala
Date:May 2nd, 2008 01:02 pm (UTC)
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Hee. As I said over at my place, this is like what Jeremiah Tolbert was calling Genre Piracy.

"We come for your tropes and wine!"
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From:[info]casacorona
Date:May 2nd, 2008 01:18 pm (UTC)
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Nice Manifesto. Sign me up!
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From:[info]nihilistic_kid
Date:May 2nd, 2008 01:22 pm (UTC)
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Killin' the genre, eh?


Finally.
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From:[info]chaircrusher
Date:May 2nd, 2008 01:31 pm (UTC)
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The best Science Fiction authors make their own genres. Hence Liz Bear's Promethean age novels which are fractally detailed urban/fairy fantasies with the entirety of Celtic faerie lore recast as dysfunctional family drama. Or Tim Scott's "Outrageous Fortune" which reads like Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman" along with some Sci Fi Big Ideas, leavened with ... surfer philosophy? PK Dick bowling with the Dude from "The Big Lebowski?" "The Warriors" where each gang turf is determined by a style of music?

It seems to me that the really brilliant writers are always eclectic. The merely OK discover a genre formula and use it to spin gold, in order to gain access to a middle class living without a time clock. I can think of easier ways to make a living.
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From:[info]zanate
Date:May 2nd, 2008 01:32 pm (UTC)
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Better still, turn your hand to a 1960s psychedelic urban fantasy New Wave story

Throw in the Singularity and you've got a royal flush.
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From:[info]rysmiel
Date:May 2nd, 2008 02:23 pm (UTC)
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I think given that the current WiPs variously have Drexler nanotechnology implemented via golem and Dyson crystal spheres with epicycles, changelings meeting the Queen of Air and Darkness in Chinatown because the Celestial Bureaucracy won't permit funny business on their turf, and most blasphemous mixture of all, cheerful cyberpunk, I'm in.
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From:[info]pantryslut
Date:May 2nd, 2008 03:06 pm (UTC)

It's good for you!

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I did this once -- I wrote a pure pulp story. Well, sort of. It had a mad scientist and a buxom lab assistant and cloning gone awry, so it must count, right? I had great fun using all the adverbs that we're usually supposed to eschew.

I also did that with the story I sold to Asimov's -- someone challenged me to write a story that could possibly be published in the pages of Analog, and outlined the various criteria: must have an upbeat ending, must star an engineer or scientist, and so on. So I did.

So I can say that being a New Eclectic has been very good for my career already!
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From:[info]desperance
Date:May 2nd, 2008 04:30 pm (UTC)
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*signs up*
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From:[info]derekcfpegritz
Date:May 2nd, 2008 05:48 pm (UTC)
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I ignore any and all "manifestos" concerning genre writing explicitly from the start, especially any of those coming from A) that crabby old pedant Harlan Ellison, and B) anyone who has recently one ANY award of ANY sort. I have precisely zero interest in any awards process and even less of an interest in exposing the world to my "do's and don'ts" of writing--why? Because I have none. Write whatever you damnwell feel like writing. If publishers and critics want to pigeon-hole you, fine--but that's their doing, not yours. I find myself edging closer and closer to the "New Weird" camp every day, but that doesn't bother me and it sure as hell isn't going to stop me from writing 100$ pure transhumanist sci-fi as well as perfectly mainstream narratives about growing up a video-game enthusiast in the '80s. I'm not trying to deride Richard Morgan--I happen to thoroughly agree that all the bickering and backbiting in the sci-fi world is counterproductive and, even more importantly, patently ludicrous--I just choose to ignore it completely. Let the pedants fight their idiotic combat scenarios; I'd rather just write whatever the hell I want and play D&D in my spare time.
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From:[info]wishus
Date:May 2nd, 2008 05:52 pm (UTC)
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I think I'm already signed...

By the way, may I be added to your FL too please?

Donna
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From:[info]ricerurouni
Date:May 2nd, 2008 06:26 pm (UTC)
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Heeheehee win.
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From:[info]pwilkinson
Date:May 2nd, 2008 07:49 pm (UTC)
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I'm looking forward to the anthology.
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