this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
487 points (97.8% liked)
Political Memes
5428 readers
2145 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Just don't ever meet Atwood. She's insufferable and rude.
Atwood refused to accept the science fiction label for a very long time. Le Guin is much kinder to her friend than Atwood was in person to many folks about this (this is harder to cite because older convention and genre drama doesn’t really show up online, unlike modern). In recent years, Atwood has accepted speculative fiction (the umbrella term for lots of stuff including SF) because it’s convenient for her and helps sales. She was and imo still is a huge genre snob. Don’t get me wrong, Atwood writes great stuff. She just hates a lot of her audience.
Why do I care? Compare and contrast her to Vonnegut, whose agent wouldn’t let him use the science fiction label but actively attended conventions, telling fans he wanted to be SF but the money folks wouldn’t let him. Octavia Butler is equally fantastic as is Atwood’s dear friend Le Guin. Both love SF and are happy with the label.
All three were also subtler and more skillful writers than Atwood -- Butler in particular is criminally underappreciated. Her stories were far ahead of their time, exploring ideas about race and gender in a way that really makes you think rather than bludgeoning you with it. She should be a household name.