Learning SF Protocols
The reading I most wanted to respond to this week was Jo Walton's SF reading protocols post on Tor.com. I've never really gotten into Science Fiction, but it's not for lack of trying. I end up feeling confused for the first 150 pages, which is enough to make me abandon a book altogether these days. (Stay tuned for my annotation of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness later this week.)
I appreciated this post for recognizing that my frustrations with SF are not related to lack of intelligence or effort. I just haven't developed the same tools as readers who have engaged with SF since childhood. I don't know when to wonder or ask questions about a detail, or when to "skitter over the surface" of an info-dump the same way my SF fan peers do. I saw myself in that description, for sure.
However, my problem with the article is that it heavily implies, and at least at one point outright states, that someone "who doesn't have the skillset can't learn the skillset by reading it." This claim felt dubious to me, because how else would one develop a skillset required to read a genre without, well, reading that genre? The tone of the article also felt sightly gate-keeper-y, which I don't think was the intention, but colored my reading of it. There was a tiny bit of encouragement to read Harry Potter as a "starter set" at the article's conclusion. Still, I didn't feel welcomed into a community of SF lovers who want to share their love with me and teach me how to "get it." There was even a moment where Walton admitted to laughing at her aunt for reading too far into an SF story she lent her. Ugh!
When it comes down to it, Walton didn't seem intent on sharing a peek into their toolkit, just explaining the difference between people who have it and people who don't. Perhaps that is covered in another post. I am no more enlightened about how to read SF and enjoy it than I was before I read this article. Instead, Walton (and a lot of commenters! my fault for reading these, though) made me feel like I could never live up to their level of enjoyment and understanding of the genre because I can't go back in time to my childhood and encourage myself to read more SF.
I call bullshit! Excuse my language, but I see the same kinds of arguments from people who gate-keep other media. Be it dudes at shows who ask me if I know any of the band's songs, to people in my undergrad poetry classes who sneered at classmates who hadn't read Pound or Keats or whatever other old white dude from the classic canon. I refuse to believe that I can't develop my own SF toolkit. Especially when, as we are learning in this course, the boundaries between genres continue to blur, or were maybe not ever that clear in the first place.
Instead of being offended, I'm taking Walton's post as a challenge. Both as a reader, who sees a genre she isn't familiar with and wants to know what all the fun is about, and as a future librarian whose job is to hold open the gates for all kinds of readers rather than keep them closed.
I appreciated this post for recognizing that my frustrations with SF are not related to lack of intelligence or effort. I just haven't developed the same tools as readers who have engaged with SF since childhood. I don't know when to wonder or ask questions about a detail, or when to "skitter over the surface" of an info-dump the same way my SF fan peers do. I saw myself in that description, for sure.
However, my problem with the article is that it heavily implies, and at least at one point outright states, that someone "who doesn't have the skillset can't learn the skillset by reading it." This claim felt dubious to me, because how else would one develop a skillset required to read a genre without, well, reading that genre? The tone of the article also felt sightly gate-keeper-y, which I don't think was the intention, but colored my reading of it. There was a tiny bit of encouragement to read Harry Potter as a "starter set" at the article's conclusion. Still, I didn't feel welcomed into a community of SF lovers who want to share their love with me and teach me how to "get it." There was even a moment where Walton admitted to laughing at her aunt for reading too far into an SF story she lent her. Ugh!
When it comes down to it, Walton didn't seem intent on sharing a peek into their toolkit, just explaining the difference between people who have it and people who don't. Perhaps that is covered in another post. I am no more enlightened about how to read SF and enjoy it than I was before I read this article. Instead, Walton (and a lot of commenters! my fault for reading these, though) made me feel like I could never live up to their level of enjoyment and understanding of the genre because I can't go back in time to my childhood and encourage myself to read more SF.
I call bullshit! Excuse my language, but I see the same kinds of arguments from people who gate-keep other media. Be it dudes at shows who ask me if I know any of the band's songs, to people in my undergrad poetry classes who sneered at classmates who hadn't read Pound or Keats or whatever other old white dude from the classic canon. I refuse to believe that I can't develop my own SF toolkit. Especially when, as we are learning in this course, the boundaries between genres continue to blur, or were maybe not ever that clear in the first place.
Instead of being offended, I'm taking Walton's post as a challenge. Both as a reader, who sees a genre she isn't familiar with and wants to know what all the fun is about, and as a future librarian whose job is to hold open the gates for all kinds of readers rather than keep them closed.
