Okay. ISFRD is a bad idea. Hell, it’s a terrible idea. It’s not my first, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. But this one I can do something about.

ISFRD is cancelled.

• It hides from mainstream fans the SF books they might actually read.

  A key part of my thinking for this had been to get the attention of non-SF readers and make them realize that they might already like SF and not even realize it. I hoped this would lead them to try other SF books. Essentially, I wanted to make Margaret Atwood into a gateway drug. Well, we won’t get anyone hooked on SF if we hide their first fix.

  It has also been pointed out, correctly, that it is hypocritical of me to want to move these books while arguing against a single catch-all fiction section on the ground that it would make it hard for me to find what I want. I am guilty as charged.

• It will annoy and frustrate booksellers.

  Contrary to what many people might think, I am not unsympathetic to bookstores and their employees. I love bookstores and always have. When I was growing up, the bookstore landscape consisted on B. Dalton and Waldenbooks, the occasional independent bookstore (I loved a place called Lauriats), and used bookstores that my parents never wanted to visit. Going in to Boston or Cambridge to a larger bookstore was a treat. So, while I do find myself frustrated when I see The Lathe of Heaven in the general fiction section, I also understand that my complaint is not with the booksellers or even the publishers or authors, but with a pervasive view that SF, and genre fiction in general, is somehow inferior to mainstream fiction. If the booksellers are not the root of the problem, they should not bear the brunt of any attack on that problem.

• I have changed my views on the relationship between genre fiction and mainstream fiction and reshelving is incompatible with my new thinking on the matter.

  I know. Who cares what some guy in Pittsburgh thinks? Why does that make it a bad idea? Well, since I’m the one pushing this thing, if I no longer hold the beliefs that kicked it off, then it is a bad idea for me to continue.

  Frankly, I was very surprised to realize that my ideas about genre fiction were changing. I’ve been reading SF and fantasy for as long as I can remember. My mother read to my sister and I every night when we were growing up. She read us The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and even The Silmarillion. She read us The Once and Future King and Watership Down and Duncton Wood. The first “grown-up” novel I read was in sixth grade at age 10 or 11. It was Omnivore by Piers Anthony. I remember that it was that book very clearly, because I was caught reading it in Latin class and, thirty years later, I am still disappointed that I didn’t think to defend it on the grounds that the title was clearly a Latin derivative. My tastes have improved in the last few decades, but they have remained centered on the SF world.

  In high school, my goal had been to become a published novelist. In college, I was a creative writing major for two years and like to think I was not without some skill. Thinking about the relationship between genre and non-genre fiction is not new for me. Yet, at 41, I find my views have changed in just the last few weeks.

  My belief had always been, and to some extent remains, that it was the storyteller and the story that mattered much more than the shoulders on which they stood or the tropes they used. This is of course true. Shakespeare did not come up with the story of Romeo and Juliet, but he made it immortal. Similarly, stories about triumph over adversity, overcoming one’s past, coming to terms with ones mortality, etc. exist in both genre and the mainstream and can be written well or poorly in both.

  I cannot speak for all genres. I have not read any romance novels and very few mysteries. I have read some horror, but it is not generally my cup of tea. But I will speak for SF and I am of course repeating what others have said before me, both from a better position and more eloquently.

  In my mind, mainstream fiction aims to shine a light on the human condition. Sometimes that is a happy thing, but it seems as if it is more acceptable for it to be a sad. Look at The Joy Luck Club or Atonement. The Grapes of Wrath or The Remains of the Day. The Age of Innocence or A Farewell to Arms. Wonderful books all, but if they don’t leave you depressed you weren’t paying attention.

  Science Fiction does not have this aim at its heart. Science Fiction starts with a question of “what if.” What if some thing that is so in our world were not. It might be some event in the past, which leads to alternate histories. It might be about something being invented or discovered, a path to hard science fiction. It might be that something has gone or will go terribly wrong, giving us post-apocalyptic fiction. It can even be that we somewhat forget a lot of the laws of physics when they are inconvenient, leading us into space opera. But it starts with a question.

  Kim Stanley Robinson says that science fiction is the fiction of ideas, and I think he is right and that I’ve been damn slow to realize it. SF is a fundamentally different type of story telling than mainstream fiction. The one explores ideas about the world while the other explores ideas about ourselves. Neither is superior, despite what both sides may say. They are just different.

• My motives may have been less than pure.

  I have a low tolerance for snobbery. Of course, I am guilty of it myself at times, such as with this ill-conceived project. Even so, blatant displays of snootiness tend to ruffle my feathers more than is perhaps warranted. As a result, I let Margaret Atwood’s snippy comments about SF get under my skin. Honestly, it was the squid comment that did it.

  When I read about the squid comment, I wanted to do something in return. I thought of the reshelving idea and figured her birthday would be a great day to pick. When I discovered when her birthday was, I decided that I had to do it. You see, Margaret Atwood and I share a birthday, albeit 28 years apart. What could be better, I thought, than to stick it to the old windbag and celebrate my own birthday doing so? In hindsight, my thinking was less than clear-headed.

  I will probably still find her snobbery annoying, but I understand why she does it. She wants the respectability and readership that an SF label would not give her. Given that she is clearly dabbling in SF tropes, she needs to deny it strongly and humor succeeds better than emphasis. By making amusing denigrating remarks about SF, she reinforces the attitudes of her literary audience and distances herself from the SF ideas she is using. They feel better about reading it and she gets what she wants. Brilliant, really.

  For the record, the reshelving idea did not even succeed in annoying Ms. Atwood. She tweeted about it a few days ago:

  

  It is good to see that she has a sense of humor, although it is not clear whether she was laughing with us or at us.

  I will be watching my mail to see if I get a birthday present from her this year. One can hope.

So. Let’s put the reshelving idea to bed.

I still disagree with the view that SF is inferior to mainstream fiction. Nor, of course, is it superior. It is different.

Long Live ISFRD?

I suspect I will redub this site as International Science Fiction Recognition Day instead, and try to create a day one which we show people what is good and even great in SF. Maybe we can try to convince bookstores and libraries to do displays of science fiction on and around that day. SF is far more worthwhile than many people realize and promoting it to new readers is a good idea, I think.

As to when this should be and how it should be done, I am wide open to suggestions.