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BITWASTES_ANTIPOP

                                                        October 21, 2021

I have trouble fathoming the mind of someone
like Auerbach-- he claims familiarity with much
of popular culture, including "golden age"
science fiction, but it seems to leave him
completely untouched.

He comments in passing that he's "consumed" a lot of
it, but he has completely forgotten it all-- in         I submit that the key
comparison to the James Joyce that he's studied         thing here is the
extensively.  He hardly ever refers to popular          decision to study--
fiction without using dimissive terms like "trash"      if you don't engage
or "literary junkfood".                                 with the material
                                                        (because you feel
He comments that his parents exposed him to             you're not supposed
science fiction, but he doesn't mention *any*           to?) you're not going
of it-- leaving me wondering what he's actually         to remember very much
read.  E.E. Smith and A.E. van Vogt?                    about it.
Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein?
                                                        This is, of course the
Theodore Stugeon, Cordwainer Smith?                     kind of thing I *would*
                                                        say:
There's Science Fiction out there that the most
literary of literary snobs has to acknowledge:             TURNING_THE_SNOB
Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Disch, Joanna Russ, the
young Roger Zelazny, the older Robert Silverberg...

  A computer enthusiast of his
  generation that knows not of
  William Gibson or Bruce
  Sterling seems strange--
  though I guess Aurbach isn't      Every decade seems to
  the only one.  How about at       have figures like this
  least some Neal Stephenson?       cast up out of the
                                    science fictional froth.

     You have to give Auerbach a                  Ken MacLeod
     few points for standard                      Paolo Bacigalucci
     geekery in that he does                      Cixin Liu
     reference "Hitchhikers Guide
     to the Galaxy" and he has a                     They may not receive
     chapter on Games (which I                       reviews from the "New
     skipped, being a different                      York Review of Books",
     sort of snob).                                  but that absence is
                                                     hard to explain
                                                     except as "snobbery".

                                                        (But never mind, it's
        The gaming chapter leads                        time for the annual
        off with a discussion of                        Phillip Roth
        "Dungeons & Dragons"...                     retrospective.)

        "Dungeons & Dragons", much
        like James Joyce, looks to me
        like something that could be
        very absorbing if you got
        involved with it, but this
        might actually might be a
        good reason to stay away.






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