cornerofmadness

This past week was banned book week and I reread Fahrenheit 451 in celebration. I also presented it at my college library for the same reason. They recorded my few bits of reading so if you want to hear me reading (probably badly) click the youtube.



It got me thinking, not about being banned (though frankly that might not be tremendously bad for sales. I know I buy banned things I would never have read in the first place just to see why it was banned) but about genre. Written in the 1950’s, Fahrenheit 451 was a futuristic dystopia parading as a utopia. It is, in it’s core, science fiction and yet, it remains an enduring classic.

I know I’ve blogged in the not-so-distant past about genre, but I guess it demands repeating, mostly because I keep seeing people dismissing genre fiction as unimportant. I do not grasp this. Granted some of it is just there for sheer entertainment without much of a deeper message, but I think you could say that of most books. And there is nothing at all wrong about entertainment.

But here we have SF bringing a very important and ultimately timeless message of the importance of knowledge and free access to it. Star Trek often tackled many social issues, albeit occasionally very clumsily, but it still did it. This was echoed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Many crime shows and novels do the same and yet time and again you’ll see them ignored by award shows; you’ll see people on reading challenges dismiss you because you’re not reading ‘real’ books.

I suppose it frustrates me since I write genre fiction. In the end, I’m not going to let it stop me. If nothing else, to me, it’s a reason to read and write more of it.

Now if I could only get my nano characters screaming in my head as loud as my redneck vampire and his werewolf protectors. Whimpers.


Yearly word count-

69523 / 125000 words. 56% done!

Vacation in Victoria – still no work done

FMA bigbang –

3409 / 15000 words. 23% done!

Splinters of Silver – hopefully I forgot the flashdrive in my office at work or I’ve lost it. Whimpers loudly. At least I have a hard copy but a lot of important stuff was on that flash.