I thought we should take some time to review some of the reactions to our little project, not all of which has been good. Such is life.
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The Crotchety Old Fan form Rimworlds: “I love this idea!”
Thanks!
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James Bloomer at Big Dumb Object: “Here’s a bit of mischief that made me chuckle.”
Enjoy!
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Paul Constant who writes the SLOG for the Stranger wrote a piece with the title “Please Don’t Do This, Nerds,” in which he describes our effort as “an asshole move.”
Okay, this one takes a bit more of a reply. Mr. Constant has two complaints. The first is that our efforts will cause undue work for bookstore workers and will make it hard for consumers to find the books. The point of the protest is to draw attention to a problem and this does so for both the booksellers and the consumers.
His second complaint is that he thought we wanted all SF books rolled into one comprehensive fiction section. I suppose there may be SF readers who want this, but I certainly do not. There are times I want to read a mainstream book and times I want to read SF and I like being able to find the one I want.
I don’t think having a separate section “makes the genre books look cheap.” If you believe that “genre” is literary code for “crap,” perhaps it does. SF is only a ghetto if people think it is. The “Mystery” section of most bookstores is not seen as a dark and murky place, so why should SF? [That said, many of the covers on Baen books would look cheap no matter where they were shelved.]
It is unfortunate as well that Mr. Constant resorts to name calling. Referring to SF readers as nerds just reinforces the snobbery against which we are protesting. If he thought of us as readers of Atwood, Hoffman, Chabon, Murakami, and Updike, he would probably not grasp at the nerd stereotype, and yet some of those authors’ most enduring works are SF.
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AbeBooks continued the “nerd” meme with both a title claiming “The Nerds are Coming” and a Simpsons picture of, I assume, nerds. This covers much of the same ground as the SLOG post.
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Martin Lewis of Everything Is Nice mentioned us offhandedly as an example of “genretards.” I’ve seen that epithet before, but I still don’t think it works as well as its users think. In the noun “retard,” the first syllabyl contains an accented long e sound, which doesn’t match at all with the unaccented schwa at the end of “genre.” The above comments about the word “nerd” apply here as well.
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Nick (ajr on LiveJournal) wrote a couple of negative pieces: Hey, preacher, leave those books alone! and Kicking a dead horse. The former complains about the inconvenience we may cause, and then goes on a somewhat directionless rant about how people do not browse bookstores and many are just looking for bargains. What a depressing view of book readers.
In his second post, having complained about the idea of moving books, Nick complains about the unintrusive alternatives, calling them “shit ideas.” He then goes the same way as Mr. Constant, arguing that we should want SF moved to the general section rather than the other way around, as the SF section is a ghetto. Sigh. See above for counterargument.
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John DeNardo at SFSignal was kind enough to give us a mention, and left it to his readers to decide it our idea is good or bad. I didn’t count them, but I’d say there were more comments against the reshelving than for it, although some of it was mucked up by a bizarre anti-library/pro-library debate spurred by someone named Joshua Corning.
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Charles Tan compared ISFRD to terrorism, which seems a bit over the top.
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Brendan from Balancing Frogs wrote a very well thought out piece including discussion of whether “Gay” and “African American” work as genres. He ends up favoring the one-fiction-section approach, with which I disagree, but he gets there in a reasonable fashion.
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The SLOG article begat an article at Magers & Quinn which begat one at I Will Dare in which the author calles “SciFi nerds a defensive bunch of crybabies.” Sigh.
There are a few more, but those are the bulk of them. I’ll try to get to the others tomorrow, along with a couple of exciting Tweets to report.
Well it IS an asshole move, particularly in the holiday period, when the most illiterate customers come in to look for books off the wishlists of their more literate friends, when booksellers are at their most frazzled (particularly this year, when shops have held off hiring temporary staff because they’re so deeply in the red) and when the two will combine most unpleasantly.
Booksellers will be shouted at by morons during an already horrible, anxious time so that you can have a temporary buzz at your own cleverness. Well done.
You’re no better than the wags who stick the Bible in fiction (ho ho ho) or put erotica in the children’s section or hide books by Richard Dawkins. If you have problems with genre classifications, attack the publisher’s work, not the bookseller’s. It isn’t booksellers who get to decide these things, aside from the rare few, dying independent shops, which are quiet enough to catch you doing this, fix it promptly and possibly even ask you to leave.
Your protest is the equivalent of kicking the crossing guard in the leg because you find a new road layout inconvenient. It’s childish and ineffective and it hurts those who deserve it least, most.
Comment by LWJ — November 4, 2009 @ 4:57 am
Quote: “His (Constant’s) second complaint is that he thought we wanted all SF books rolled into one comprehensive fiction section. I suppose there may be SF readers who want this, but I certainly do not. There are times I want to read a mainstream book and times I want to read SF and I like being able to find the one I want.”
I agree with nearly all your other responses, (and I certainly don’t want a comprehensive fiction section either, oi!) but I think you forget: what about mainstream SF books? The assumption that there’s a difference between “mainstream” and science fiction is what’s creating this issue in the first place. We have to acknowledge that a lot of the authors proposed to be moved are, in fact, “mainstream,” at least in that they’re widely read by people who don’t otherwise follow the SF genre. “Time Traveler’s Wife” is a good recent example of that. How do you propose we deal with works that dip into both sides of the pool?
And I have to say, there’s a bit of hypocrisy in your saying you “like being able to find the one” you want, when you intend to move books to places others might not think to look.
Comment by TJ — November 4, 2009 @ 12:04 pm