There seems to be a small storm gathering in SF in the past several days, shocking, yes, I know. The question arises about classics of the genre–not does anyone read them, but are they the best entry into science fiction? In other words, have Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke become more like books that are assigned in high school–read by many but enjoyed by few, because they are considered “mandatory” somehow like reading Romeo and Juliet or The Old Man and the Sea?
Some think if you don’t read the classics, you can’t understand the field. Some are saying that the old stuff is, well, old, and doesn’t reflect what today’s readers know, so you can’t expect them to get into it. And some advocate a third alternative, which is just to let people read what they want to read. SFF is too wide these days to cover all of what is currently being written, let alone delve far into the past.
It’s been pointed out that we are only now coming into this problem in SFF because the genre is relatively young. While SF stories have been around for almost 200 years (and fantasy has been in vogue since we sat around campfires and waited for daylight so we could see the sabertooths (saberteeth?)), it wasn’t until the last century that it truly came into its own. The first Worldcon was only held in 1939.
We simply haven’t had to deal with the phenomenon of dueling “classics” until now. (We will avoid the hideous discussion of how you define a “classic.” Let’s just treat it as we would pornography and move on.*) But even with the greatest of writers, their stories eventually pass away. Even Shakespeare will fall into obscurity someday. We simply have to get used to the fact that it is happening with science fiction.
It isn’t even a new thing. There are a lot of authors out there who were hugely popular in the 1930s and 1940s whom almost no one knows today. I was at a writing retreat with more than a dozen accomplished writers a few years ago, and the question came up: “Who was Lester Dent?” I was the only one who knew the answer, but in the 1930s, Dent (author of the Doc Savage pulps) was enormously popular. He was a “classic” in the sense that Doc Savage was the direct inspiration for many of today’s superheroes (starting with a guy named Superman), but who reads him now? Almost no one. What are you going to do?
Every generation sees its stars, and a few of those become “classics” that people will be reading fifty or a hundred years later. Most won’t. But for a lot of readers, even those few won’t be their entry into the field. There’s too much else going on. It’s only after years of accumulated experience that you learn that even those whose stories may now be considered “quaint,” or even inappropriate for contemporary views, are worth reading.
And that’s okay. Because if you can’t stand the test of time, well, then, you aren’t a classic. That doesn’t mean no one will ever read you. Very little disappears anymore. Your work will simply wait until someone comes along who appreciates you. And then maybe they’ll make a movie out of your forgotten book, and you’ll be popular once more. Maybe you’ll become a classic the second time around.
*As in, you know it when you see it.
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Graffiti on the Walls of Time 