From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 02:34:31 MDT
At 12:51 AM 6/4/01 -0400, John Clark wrote:
>I've never heard of this Norman Spinrad person
Norman wrote some very interesting and controversial sf novels in the
1960s, most notably BUG JACK BARRON, and some extremely good short stories.
He's had a fair bit of trouble having his work published lately, it seems,
which is more a reflection of the dire publishing scene than of his work
(publishers don't want to take risks, and won't support what they do
publish with decent amounts of promotion investment unless it looks like a
guaranteed bestseller). He's also written some good commentary on sf.
>and I'm not impressed by
>his brilliance.
He's a smart cookie, but I feel about his ideas rather as I do about those
of Harlan Ellison: they write dashing science fiction without knowing all
*that* much about, um, like, science.
>I just quickly glanced at his reviews and quickly found two
>very stupid remarks.
There are certainly more than a few there. It's very sad. E.g., his
complaints about my supposed misuse of Gregory Benford's ideas is perhaps a
non-obvious example. I discussed Benford's fictional idea of `kenes' and
`datavores', or information life forms, with Greg by phone at some length,
and when I caught up with him when he was in Oz for the sf worldcon in
1999; he said he was quite serious about the notion, although he referred
me to his twin brother Jim, an even stronger proponent, for the full
version; I didn't get a chance to do that. It's one of the reasons I'm
irritated by Spinrad's review, because he could have checked with Greg
first if he wished to learn whether these were simply ideas recycled from
pulp sf or actually taken seriously as possibilities by the likes of
Benford; it's as if someone lambasted Clarke in the 1950s for his books
about space travel prospects, whining that all they were was recycled
ASTOUNDING (or more likely, given the out of date ignorance of most
complainers, Verne and Wells) stories.
Damien Broderick
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