Why Are so Many of the Great Writers in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Falling into Neglect ?

BAYLOR said:

I think so .

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Would anyone care to respond more helpfully to my question?

I would like to see sincere responses to the following questions and points.

Are many of the great writers in sf, fantasy, and horror falling into neglect?

What does "falling into neglect" mean?

I would say that the availability of classic sf, fantasy, and horror seems to be great. Major publishers and niche presses keep an enormous amount of work in print -- for example, the works of Clifford Simak.*

Who are the great writers who are "neglected"?

I'm not willing just to assume that great writers are "neglected," especially when the evidence of my eyes is that the opposite is true.

This is a golden age for the availability not just of the great writers' stories, but of their letters and of biographies of them.

List for me five "great writers" who truly are "neglected," someone. But you might want to check Amazon before you say they're neglected. If you haven't checked, you might be surprised by what is available.

I would suggest also that there can be an appearance of non-involvement with a writer's works when they are being read and enjoyed but people assume that they have nothing to say about them that hasn't been said already, in contrast to new authors.

*There is also the availability of a lot of work as free downloads from Project Gutenberg and archive.org,. etc. The fact that no one is making money off scanned issues of sf pulp magazines doesn't mean they are "neglected." Rather, the fact that people are taking the trouble to scan such things is a sign that those magazines are not neglected. Someone is making sure that they are available.

I have to agree with you that this is a great time for older books staying in print or even coming back into print after many years. So in that respect I'd say that older writers are not being neglected.

But perhaps by "neglected" Baylor meant that they weren't being discussed and generating the kind of enthusiasm that newer writers are generating. The problem with that is that it can be largely a matter of perspective. If the people with whom one regularly discusses books aren't talking about Writer X, are not even familiar with X's books, it may seem like they've been forgotten. But there are a lot of places where people talk about books these days, and in another community Writer X may be getting a lot of attention. (Plus, if it doesn't happen online, there is unlikely to be any record of a discussion. If I talk about X with my friends over lunch one day, and we all compare which of X's books we love the best, who else will know of it? The same if a local SFF club is revisiting X's most popular works. Who outside the club will know?)

Not to mention our older members may have read those classics years ago and had those discussions many, many times already. We haven't forgotten those older writers, nor do we esteem them any less but rather than rehash the same discussions we've had before (in another century and besides that forum is dead), we're just as happy to talk about books and authors we've discovered more recently.

Agreed with above.
Define one's metric for "neglect".
For a large proportion of the SF I have read over the last 40 years, I have found vanishingly few people with any idea of its existence.
The fact is that a lot of this stuff has always been pretty niche. Arguably fora like this stop older classics from falling into obscurity.

Thanks to Teresa and Hitmouse for those thoughts. Could I make these requests again? --

Who are the great writers who are "neglected"?

List for me five "great writers" who truly are "neglected," someone.

Those are fair requests...?

Extollager said:

Thanks to Teresa and Hitmouse for those thoughts. Could I make these requests again? --

Who are the great writers who are "neglected"?

List for me five "great writers" who truly are "neglected," someone.

Those are fair requests...?

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How about these? Who Are the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction?

AlexH said:

How about these? Who Are the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction?

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A great list , Seabury Quinn is on the list , not surprising because few know how he i. But Night shade books is reprinting all of his wonderful Jules De Grandin and it contrite 5 volumes o4 of which are current out. the picture on the last is volumes . The Horror on the Links . Abraham Merrit The author of the Moon Pool , the Ship of Isshtat ,tthe Metal Monster and the books and stories . Some thestoyr concerts and dead he came up were years ahead of their time and everyone else.., Today relatively few know of him . Henry Kuttner wonderful writer died at age 45, Had he lived longer, would probably be better remembered then he is. Ive red by him The Dark World and Elak of Atlantis first rate stuff . His Wife C L Moore too is great writer , Northwest Smith , Jierl of Joiry and they collaborated on a number of Storie books together. A number of those writer lister there I know of or have. read something by them .

Hmm -- if one has to cite the likes of Seabury Quinn in support of the notion of "neglected greats" -- ! Who's ever thought Quinn was a "great"? What does "great" mean if Seabury Quinn is "great"?

As someone commented:

---Moore & Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith, Merril, Lafferty, and to a lesser extent, Brown have all been visible in bookstores.----

Extollager said:

Hmm -- if one has to cite the likes of Seabury Quinn in support of the notion of "neglected greats" -- ! Who's ever thought Quinn was a "great"? What does "great" mean if Seabury Quinn is "great"?

As someone commented:

---Moore & Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith, Merril, Lafferty, and to a lesser extent, Brown have all been visible in bookstores.----

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Why do think Seabury Quinn doesn't belong on that list ?

A few years ago Nightsade book issued a 5 volume collection of Clark Ashton Smith but that no longer in the stores . Kuttner and Moore were both reissued by Planet stories a few years a back but you don't see them in book stories either . Merrit too is absent and so Lafferty and Brown. I don't see them outside of used bookstores.

pyan said:

The future technology of a lot of 'classic sf' having been equaled and superceded by modern technology may have something to do with it. What was the 'wow' factor in stories from the 40's, 50's and 60's is now the 'meh' factor - and often the story, characterisation and writing are not enough to support the loss.
For example, at the start of RAH's classic juvenile 'Between Planets' (1951), the protagonist is alone out on the prairie on his cow-pony, when his phone rings. I can still remember the jolt that that gave me reading it in about 1965 - but an 11-year-old of today would pass straight over the predictive idea that Heinlein put there without even noticing it.

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Did you know they had a working mobile field unit telephone system in 1889 in the United States?
A portable phone.

I'm sorry, but I would not call C. L. Moore a great writer. (And it wasn't so long ago that I came across a couple of anthologies of her reissued stories, so I wouldn't call her neglected, either.) I enjoyed most of the Northwest Smith stories, but even those were not great literature, and don't even get me started on Jirel of Joiry! I've not read a lot by Kuttner or Merritt, but there is a reason for that: what I did read did not impress me.

Clark Ashton Smith I will allow had a tremendous imagination, and although his work was uneven and often repetitive, I would agree that there is some greatness there.

And what is the real significance of "not available in bookstores" these days anyway, when someone's work might be readily available online?

BAYLOR said:

Why do think Seabury Quinn doesn't belong on that list ?

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No, Baylor. I asked first: why would anyone consider Seabury Quinn to be a "great" writer? Who's ever thought Quinn was a "great"? What does "great" mean if Seabury Quinn is "great"?

The default position is that someone is not a great writer unless the case has been made, and made reasonably convincingly. The case has been made, innumerable times, for the acknowledged great authors such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky, &c., and -- in our genres of sf, fantasy, and horror -- the case has been made, repeatedly, for Wells, Le Guin, Hodgson, Bradbury, Tolkien, Peake, Lovecraft, &c.

Unless great is to be unbearably cheapened, the word should not be used when a solid case for greatness has not been made or is not being made. Otherwise "great" may mean little more than "I like it," or maybe "He/she wrote some stories that are still worth reading."

August Derleth wrote some stories that are still worth reading. Is Derleth, for that reason, a "great" writer? Seriously?

Seabury Quinn may have written some stories that are still worth reading -- quick, name one! But that wouldn't make him a great writer.

So: let's hear it, if someone can actually make the case for Quinn as a great writer. Only after that should we bother with the questions of whether he is "neglected," and, if he is, why.

Much of the writers of the 20th century who had a lot of official press will be forgotten by audiences. Hemingway, Joyce etc. I think HP Lovecraft was 100% right when he wrote that publisher tastes were "insidiously molded" away from things that would have had appeal to the majority of audiences. This is why there was so much advertising of slice of slice social message stories through the 30s-60s. The best writing and art is not about social engineering, it is about expressing yourself and being sincere about life, Nature, and observable truths. This is one reason why, apart from language differences, Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer, are still accessible--the basic stuff hasn't changed. The general public will not seek out classic works by choice, and it is unfortunate that the mainstream is so dumbed down in ideas and themes. In general, speaking of fantasy and SF, I would say the good stuff rises to the top eventually, just by word of mouth and other readers making recommendations. Despite reading books about historical genre fiction for decades, I had not even heard of Fitz James O'Brien until his name came up in an essay that spoke at length about his work. And if not for the internet, I would not have known about him or been able to access his work so easily.

@KGeo777 Are you really saying that Joyce and Hemingway will be forgotten? Is that just a hunch or do you have some reason for believing this? It does not appear to have happened yet, and judging by school and university reading lists, and ( Joyce) a casual stroll through central Dublin, their demise does not appear to be imminent.

I don't think their writing will last in public consciousness. They were popularized by so-called mainstream critics, much in the same way abstract art was. I do not think they will be so fondly remembered by audiences once the artificial boost disappears (and it has already been happening). Ultimately is is the public as well as artists from the public who make the final decision on what stands the test of time, art-wise. I don't have much faith in the endurance of slice of life writing style-- looking at literature dating back to antiquity--Virgil's work on beekeeping isn't remembered as well as the Aeneid is. I forgot who said it but there was a quote about the body of world literature leaning to fantasy for thousands of years until the 20th century-and it would go back to normal eventually.

Joyce even has a celebration every year (Bloomsday).

If you mean would he remembered in his country of origin--that's different. I am talking about wider appreciation. Joyce and Hemingway were heavily promoted as the greatest writers of the 20th century, but it wasn't audiences who made that decision. Lovecraft thought of Joyce first when he wrote:
"Emotions grow irrelevant, and art ceases to be vital except when functioning through strange forms which may be normal to the alien and recrystallised future, but are blank and void to us of the dying Western civilisation. James Joyce…Erik Dorn...Marcel Proust…Brancusi…Picasso…"

KGeo777 said:

Despite reading books about historical genre fiction for decades, I had not even heard of Fitz James O'Brien until his name came up in an essay that spoke at length about his work. And if not for the internet, I would not have known about him or been able to access his work so easily.

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But some of O' Brien's stories are pretty widely available in anthologies. Maybe not in bookstores, just at the moment, but in libraries for sure. The Diamond Lens, for instance, I've come across that one in lots of anthologies over the years. The Lost Room. (I did have to hunt The Wonder Smith down online several years ago, also several of his lesser known works.) I don't know what one might find if reading books about genre fiction, but for authors like O' Brien, known for short fiction, reading actual compilations of ghost stories, and fantastic fiction, and early science fiction, one does come across stories from a wide variety of writers one might otherwise have missed. (I think we discussed earlier ... or was that in another thread? ... that some authors' popularity tends to rise and fall and rise again in cycles over the years.)

I can't recall him being listed in Penguin's Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural from 1986-if so it must have been a small entry-and never encountered the Diamond Lens being discussed anywhere else in horror literature books (Encyclopedia of Horror is another).

I'd call The Diamond Lens more early science fiction than horror, although it's one of those stories that is not so easy to categorize. Anyway, sometimes instead of depending on discussions by the critics one has to go out looking for the stories themselves, and form one's own opinions.

I figured it had horror elements since the guy commits a murder and also the negative turn of the story. Same with his invisible creature one. I though the Diamond Lens was like Poe combined with Dr Seuss.