If this goes on without challenge, everyone from Damon Knight to Harlan Ellison, from Lucius Shepard to Ted Chiang will end up as second rank, and not worthy of Grand Master awards no matter how fine their stories. And to put it bluntly, there are a disproportionate number of excellent short story writers in the SF tradition, but not a lot of first class novelists. Better than half the present Grand Masters made a major part of their contribution to SF through their short stories, some, such as Fritz Leiber, were most important for their stories.
Never publishing a body of classic novels as a thumb rule for elimination from the main SF canon is the same kind of arbitrary literary politics as eliminating a writer from the canon because she or he only wrote SF. We ought not to forget this. And the point holds whether or not you care anything at all about genre awards.
End of rant.
Douglas Adams once said, when an interviewer asked what the difference was between Adams' writing and Sheckley's, that the difference is that Sheckley writes better. This speaks well of Adams as a writer of perception and taste. Like all great SF writers, and I do think Robert Sheckley is a great SF writer, Sheckley has a mastery of his individual style that other writers admire.
Never publishing a body of classic novels as a thumb rule for elimination from the main SF canon is the same kind of arbitrary literary politics as eliminating a writer from the canon because she or he only wrote SF. We ought not to forget this. And the point holds whether or not you care anything at all about genre awards.
End of rant.
Douglas Adams once said, when an interviewer asked what the difference was between Adams' writing and Sheckley's, that the difference is that Sheckley writes better. This speaks well of Adams as a writer of perception and taste. Like all great SF writers, and I do think Robert Sheckley is a great SF writer, Sheckley has a mastery of his individual style that other writers admire.
