Writers and "immigrant" culture. I've pondered this before, but I think it's just another stereotype that ethnic authors have to break out of. White writers set their stories in different cultures all the time and no one says anything. (White priviledge, perhaps?) Off the top of my head, some writers that don't write ethnic-centric stories: Kazuo Ishiguro, Nalini Singh, Marjorie M. Liu, Ted Chiang. I'd say--write wherever the muse takes you and not what society dictates as "proper" or "expected". (Proper and expected makes for boring stories anyway.) Addendum: I just remembered Tess Gerritsen. Which brings up another question--what percentage of authors change their names to Western European ones for their pen names? Obviously, they've done it so that they could sell their books. Maybe there's some sort of bias against ethnic writers that no one is acknowledging.
Personal Summer Reading Challenge. Well, good luck. I visit the library regularly so I'm always bringing home books. And then sometimes I buy books. So my to-be-read pile grows and never shrinks. Let's just say that the number of books in my queue is greater than 80.
Hunting the Mongolian Death Worm. Perhaps it's all just exaggeration of a not-as-interesting animal. Or maybe someone's had a bit too much tequila and HPL, if you know what I mean.
Were-clams and other we(i)r(e)d possibilities. From the comments on that post: "I suspect there wouldn't be many editors who would buy it." And I suspect she means romance editors. How about SF/F editors?
The new age of ignorance. Also see the (bad) answers to simple science questions given by a celebrity panel. Sigh. This just reminds me of contradictory reports--on one hand, students are slacking off on the math and science because they claim that they're better at humanities, and on the other hand people not knowing anything about the humanities because the schools are supposedly emphasizing math and science since those skills would be more "marketable" in the workforce. Perhaps education is only part of the problem--people don't remember stuff because most people never use this information in their daily lives. (And if you do remember it, you're branded as a trivia freak.) If the light goes out, people aren't going to ponder about the circuitry. They'd just change the light bulb or call an electrician to figure it out.
Oh, now that Guardian article is just depressing. I believe it though. And on top of all that science ignorance, reading is way, way down. I just put together a bunch of stats, initially thinking it couldn't be that bad. Well, it is. in 1982, 57% of adults read fiction at least once a year. (Once! That's not much.) In 2002, the number was down to 47%. So what is everyone doing? Not learning math, or science, or humanities, or even to love books.
And some stats I just found tonight say those who read sci fi are more interested in "real" science (follow science news, watch science TV, have more science education).
Perhaps today's pop culture and alluring media are drawing people away from books and shortening attention span. But that's just my speculation.
As for reading sci-fi--maybe they should put more of those books into the reading curriculum. I can easily envision people getting turned off from reading because they're forced to read the depressing "classics" in school.
I love the classics--but sometimes what's taught are the crappiest, most hard-to-relate-to of the classics. I do agree the curriculum-gurus ought to place a higher value on enjoyable/interesting reading.
