Instead of Spinrad
There have been several more responses to Spinrad’s screed, in addition to Nick Mamatas’ at Haikasoru and Jason Sanford’s initial rant:
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Editorial: The Dilemma of the Term “World SF” Redux at the World SF News Blog by Charles Tan — in which he is far kinder than many, but at the same time doesn’t always pull his punches
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Where Is International SF? at the SFWA Blog also by Charles Tan — in which he provides a long list of recommendations for international science fiction that people can really dig into
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N. K. Jemisin dissects a specific point in Spinrad’s essay — and she does not pull her punches.
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Also a comment by Saladin Ahmed about using the downfall of Spinrad to praise other white writers who “really get it” as opposed to, you know, writers from the actual cultures involved.1
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A Whiff of Colonialism at Publishers Weekly’s Genreville by Rose Fox
And Rose Fox’s post also has a link to Nisi Shawl’s Appropriate Cultural Appropriation, which is light years ahead of anything Spinrad has to say. I wish I had known about it, say, a year ago.
You should really read that instead of Spinrad.
I’m currently popping the Internet popcorn for tomorrow. Sadly popcorn is a bit too expansive for bento boxes. There has been a lot of fuming on Twitter and on comments to currently existing blog responses to Spinrad, and it will almost certainly explode over the next few days.
And, Norman Spinrad?
- In my opinion, this is like committing a divide-by-zero infinite recursion of fail. It makes no sense and yet is the fail that keeps on failing. [↩]
