Lists and definitions highlight the stories in today’s Scroll.
(1) Pat Cadigan on Facebook about winning a Seiun Award:
Anyway, since 1990, when I heard Cristina Macía talk about the challenges of translating work from English, I have tried to be more conscious of my language. I don’t know that it always makes a difference…actually, I don’t know that it ever makes a difference. But I do know that stories change in translation.
The first story I ever had translated was my first sale, “Criers and Killers” (thank you, Marta). I read French well enough that I can check a translation provided I have a French-English dictionary handy. That story is so much better in French. I can’t even tell you how much better it is. I’m sorry I can’t remember the name of the translator. I was less conscientious back then (pre-1990).
And now “Girl-Thing” has won the Seiun for best translated short fiction in Japan. (If you’re tried of hearing about that, I’m sorry. My only advice is, scroll, baby, scroll.) I’m so pleased that it’s my first Seiun and I’m delighted. But I know that my translator, Mr. Yooichi Shimada (yes, it’s Yooichi with two o’s) made me look good in Japanese.
Translators, whether they are translating to English or from English, don’t get half the recognition they deserve. They not only have to know the other language well enough to understand *intended* meaning as well as vocabulary and syntax (synecdoche, anyone? How about sarcasm? Hyperbole?), they have to understand story structure, the characters, the setting *in the cultural context of the writer* and to make all of it meaningful to people of a different culture. Maybe that sounds like something not so hard to you. And it’s not like people in a non-English-speaking country are totally aliens––thanks to global media, we know more about each other than ever before.
But there are certain *ambient* differences that never occur to us, things that are virtually invisible in our lives, the things we do all the time without even thinking about them. Translators have to keep those things in mind, too.
So my humble thanks to Mr. Shimada.
(2) Click to see a photo of Jim C. Hines hugging the restored Galileo shuttle that File 770 has been tracking since it was rescued from storage and auctioned for $70,000 in 2012.
Before.
(3) Friends have sent me this link a total of six times! It’s a post on Mental Floss about Harlan Ellison, “The Author Who Wrote In Bookstore Windows”.
He started at 1 p.m., craning the necks of passerby outside the shop. They wondered about the man sitting in the window, hunched over a typewriter. It was like a piece of glass that allowed you to see the gears and pistons of a machine.
When the Dangerous Visions bookstore in Sherman Oaks, Calif., closed that day, Harlan Ellison had completed “Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear,” a short story that, yes, included a pregnant corpse and added three suspects.
Ellison did this a number of times, including in a public area of the 1978 Worldcon where he was a guest of honor.
(4) BBC Culture has issued a new list of “The 100 Greatest American Films”. Here are the ranked sf and fantasy films (“fantasy” in the loose sense of magical and impossible).
Each critic who participated submitted a list of 10 films, with their pick for the greatest film receiving 10 points and their number 10 pick receiving one point. The points were added up to produce the final list. Critics were encouraged to submit lists of the 10 films they feel, on an emotional level, are the greatest in American cinema – not necessarily the most important, just the best. These are the results.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
- Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
- Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
- It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
- Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
- The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
- Night of the Living Dead (George A Romero, 1968)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
- ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
- The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
(5) Lawrence Person goes into overwhelming detail about additions to his Zelazny collection in “Library Addition: Another Major Collection of Roger Zelazny Books and Manuscripts”.
(6) John C. Wright’s “Great Books and Genre Books” is generating quite a lot of comment. Its premise, which he develops in detail, is —
As much as it pains me to say it, my reluctant conclusion is that there is no great Science Fiction literature.
Now, before you get out your crying bags, fanboys, keep in mind that the standard for being a Great Book is extremely, absurdly high. It is the best of the best of the best. There is no Western that makes the cut for being a Great Book; no mystery novel; no horror novel (unless we stretch a point to include HAMLET, because it has a ghost scene). One might even argue that no romance novel that makes the cut, not even GONE WITH THE WIND, and that is a damn fine novel. Genre writing does not reach the stratospheric heights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
However, the part I like best is Wright’s effort in the comments to combat nihilists who want to define classic sf works out of the genre. (I can’t make the link work, but it’s a comment logged Tuesday, July 21st 2015 at 2:30 am.)
Any definition of science fiction that rejects the core books and stories that are on everyone’s list of the greatest science fiction books and stories of all time is a useless definition.
And, in each case, the argument is the same: anything not Hard SF is not SF at all. Unfortunately, the statement is false. Even at the height of the Golden Age Campbell published and readers read works that do not fit the stricture of Hard SF, including all the books but one listed on the Baen list. That one is 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.
If the Baen list strikes you as not representative, please feel free to consult Hugo or Nebula award winners, or any serious reader of SF’s top ten essential books of SF. You will find the same result.
The reason why the clerks in bookstores you pretend to despise shelve those books where readers can find them is that this is exactly where readers look to find them when they are looking for what they the readers consider to be science fiction books.
If you wish to say that the consensus science fiction readers over decades and generations have not the authority to define what is science fiction, that would be an argument on which I have nothing further to say.
(7) We here in drought-stricken California are lucky to find living grass in our yards, but after last week’s heavy rain in Ohio John “Noah” Scalzi found a crawdad and a live fish in his lawn.
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I haven’t gone through all of the comments, so I can only hope that voting is still open at 11:52 AM Eastern Time. Also, I adore Kyra’s bracket titles!
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
C. J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
Frank Herbert: Dune
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
All of these were difficult choices.
Voting is definitely still open for this round! It is likely to be open for this round for at least another 8 or 9 hours.
Incidentally, a while ago bracket 2 in this round hit a tie when each work had 14 votes apiece. Then they tied again at 15 votes apiece. Then at 16. Then at 17 …
1. Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light – I’m a fanboy for Zelazny and gotta go with him at his best.
2. Frank Herbert: Dune
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
C. J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
I think I have to go with Cherryh on this one — I’ve read Downbelow Station more times than I can remember. I do also love Lord of Light these days, but I bounced off it when I was young and didn’t revisit it for years.
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Frank Herbert: Dune
Tough one; I think I have to go with Dune.
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
William Gibson: Neuromancer
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
If I admit I haven’t read Left Hand, will I be subject to opprobrium? But I’m happy with Neuromancer.
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
H. G. Wells: War of the Worlds
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Wells, just by a whisker.
Kyra, wow!
SF has yet to even have a Christopher Marlowe, much less a Shakespeare.
Wrong — for your consideration I submit: Ray Bradbury.
Also, every book in the current round has a double digit number of votes right now. There may be some big victories, but there will be no work which did not get significant support at this stage.
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light — no contest.
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
Frank Herbert: Dune — difficult choice, but I’ve read Dune more often
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness — Again, no contest.
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein — As was said above, Mom wins.
Kyra on July 22, 2015 at 7:51 am said:
A long, long time ago –
I can still recall the part where Frankenstein created Life.
But then he left it to its fate,
A grave mistake, he learned too late;
But he refused to build his child a wife.
Kyra, that was amazing! I’d love to hear this filk in performance!
The thing is, even Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare at the time.
Kyra, you are like unto a deity of filk.
Randomly, I know this blog isn’t puppy reporting central any more, but just something I discovered today. On reddit, the /sadpuppies and /rabidpuppies has now been collapsed into one category called ‘TorInAction’ and are moderated by one of the mods of ‘KiA’, the main Gamergate reddit community.
So much for the SPs aren’t the RPs and have nothing to do with GG arguments.
1. Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
2. Frank Herbert: Dune
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. H. G. Wells: War of the Worlds
I found these choices easier than previous brackets.
Can I confess that Ellison’s ability to write in public is utterly gobsmacking to me and inspires quiet envy? I’ve been known to kick the cats out of the room because they’re too distracting; the idea of writing in front of hundreds of passers-by fills me with twitchy dread.
(Can I also confess that I find it hilarious that Wright is saying, “There are no writers of SF/F who measure up to the standard of Homer and Virgil”, when Homer wrote about the gods giving people superpowers to help them in a war, and Virgil is most famous for his account of the founding of Rome that involves more divine intervention and several prophecies? Let’s face it, if you threw everything out of the canon of Western literature that didn’t involve SF/F elements, you’d maybe wind up with half of Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 🙂 )
This voting is getting harder.
1. C. J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station
2. Frank Herbert: Dune
Both of the above very close.
3. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
I need to read more. I have read exactly half of the books in today’s bracket, and by chance one in each matchup.
And I think it’s a little funny that Wright writes a treatise like that about “great” literature while leaving out any discussion of how our cultural background shapes our enjoyment of a book. He talks about “great books” from one, rather narrow perspective, and seems utterly unable to consider this narrowness problematic.
And he needs an editor.
Lori
I strongly disagree; Bradbury was an early forerunner of the Saudi School of Prose, whereas Marlowe was a poet who wrote gripping action sequences which guaranteed that people would pay to see them. People will still pay to see them 500 years later, just as people still pay to see Shakespeare’s work; sure, I could sit at home and reread Hamlet, but that is nowhere near the experience in the theatre.
Benedict Cumberbatch is immensely popular, hence the fastest sale of tickets in London’s history, but his stature as an actor will stand or fall on his playing the role of Hamlet; the director doesn’t like doing read throughs precisely because Shakespeare didn’t write it to be read. He wrote it to be acted, a fact which some English departments still have trouble in grasping; Wright’s comments are very much those of someone who hasn’t managed to wrap his brain around the absolutely fundamental distinction between two very different art forms…
Back in my University days, I managed to convince a roommate who’d never seen the movie before to watch Casablanca.
His comment afterward: “I kept thinking to myself, ‘That’s such a cliché’, and had to keep reminding myself, ‘This is the movie that made it a cliché’.”
I suspect that’s a general problem in that it’s hard to really appreciate how groundbreaking a given work was a couple of generations later when that same ground has been tilled under multiple times since.
Actually, Shakespeare pretty well was “Shakespeare” at the time. One of the early “we can compare to the Ancients: look who we have to put up against them” works in English is Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia, dated 1598 (less than halfway through Shakespeare’s working life and before most of his really major plays), which notes “As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins: so Shakespeare among the English is most excellent in both kinds for the stage”. Less than 10 years after his death, his co-worker, fellow major playwright, and respected critic Ben Jonson (who had his own concerns about Shakespeare’s compositional style (“would he had blotted a thousand…But he redeemed his vices with his virtues”)) apostrophised him as “not of an age, but for all time”.
Modern-style bardolatry begins in the 19th Century, but Shakespeare’s exceptional stature was recognized very early on.
@Dex – I didn’t even know they had reddits to begin with.
Woo.
@Peace Is My Middle Name
I must admit that that it’s been 30 years since I read any of his prose (I do enjoy his poetry), but as far as I recall my impressions:
“Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers” was sort of OK, but did not seem to have aged well.
“Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre” was exactly the kind of pompous, droning, crap that would appeal to the Wrights of this world. There was no book in high school I hated reading more, and I can only ascribe its appearance on the high school curriculum to a centuries-long conspiracy of tollwütige Welpen of German literature.
Hope this isn’t too late- had to do that “sleep” thing.
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
C. J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station
Two excellent novels, but the unfortunate portrayals/roles for women in LoL gives the nod to Downbelow Station.
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
For quality of writing.
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Neuromancer is incredibly influential, but LeGuin’s work is simply a masterpiece.
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
As I said, Shelly gave us a term that’s used outside of SF&F
Kyra-The paragraph ending “I think works in translation may have more setbacks to overcome than others.”
I was interested by Pat Cadigan’s comments today on translators, having just been discussing it with someone. I generally don’t take to translated works and am never sure if it’s some kind of cultural dissonance or just bad translations. This came up a couple of times in Hugo reading this month.
Early in this Hugo kerfuffle there was some discussion of cultural diversity re the “World” Science Fiction Convention. It’s true that it has mostly been an anglophone award. (I think the World part was pretty much hyperbole on the part of the First Fandom guys-the wonder is that they didn’t call it the First Galactic Science Fiction Convention.) I look forward to continuing to improve our view of the whole world as reflected in the SF mirror, hoping for better translations.
Hope this isn’t too late also:
1. Roger Zelazny:
Lord of Light
2. Frank Herbert:
Dune
3. Ursula K. Le Guin:
The Left Hand of Darkness
4. H. G. Wells:
War of the Worlds
1. Zelazny.
2. Tiptree.
3. LeGuin.
4. Shelley
“Greats” spotting can be all over the place. As James notes above, Shakespeare got spotted while still producing, and Virgil, Dante, and Chaucer also seem to have been recognized as remarkable in their own times and their work quickly became canonical. (Though all three are involved in the establishment or–in the case of Virgil–perfection of their languages and poetry.) On the other hand, Bach suffered a couple generations of obscurity after his death before being rediscovered by admiring composers.
One might argue that there’s a serious discontinuity between the great Greats and the merely Really Really Good and Masterful (Shakespeare vs Jonson, Mozart vs Hummel), but the size and nature of that gap gets us right back to the fact that such judgments are not metaphysical but statistical.
1. Zelazny
2. Tiptree
3. Ursula K. Le Guin
4. Abstain (haven’t read Frankenstein – don’t hurt me!)
Petra on July 22, 2015 at 11:16 am said:
Actually, it’s because they wanted to hold it in conjunction with the World’s Fair happening in the same city at the same time. There wasn’t any official connection between the two events, though.
I’ve seen proposals to force Worldcons to be held in non-Anglophone countries more often. (Including Montreal, there have been four non-Anglophone host cities total.) But this does assume that there will be bid committees of volunteers to run them. I’m concerned that people making such proposals just assume that “of course the WSFS Board of Directors will hire someone to run the convention,” or something like that.
What about the modern arts — are great filmmakers more like novelists and painters or more like generals of armies?
Will R. on July 22, 2015 at 9:56 am said:
Shakespeare was a good writer who appealed wildly to the populace. The … dare I say it, John Scalzi … of his day. 😉
The Dispossessed by LeGuin is a Great Book (and I prefer it to TLHoD). There are many other Great Books in “genre” that hold up as well if not better in the years since they’ve been written than the classics JCW mentions did in equivalent years since they were written.
.
On another topic entirely, Kevin Standlee has posted a video he and Lisa shot at Westercon on WorldCon Business Meeting Basics. If you plan to attend the Business Meeting at Sasquan, it is worth your while to watch this.
https://youtu.be/fcQSRxE57o8
Regarding Simon Stålenhag: The pictures are basically sweden from the 70s-80s with added SF-elements. I recognize the plastic bags, the clothing, the cars, everything. If other people think they are good, I think they speak to the hearts of swedes in a totally different way.
When I look at pictures where kids are playing in the snow, it feels like it could have been me in that picture. Or walking in the field. I’m gonna buy Stålenhags books as a christmas present to my parents, I think.
Yes.
And since stage drama and comedy predate the novel, more like directors, too!
… and bracket 2 tied again at 19 votes apiece, and again at 20 votes apiece, and again at 23 votes apiece …
To Brian on the Issue of Somehow This Being Me Thinking it is a Big Thing about Political Systems of Representative Democracy with Chambers and Constituencies or Something. A set of faulty limericks.
The objection you are repeatedly raising
Is (assuming it isn’t some form of hazing)
more true for a long list
If you get the short gist
That you don’t is frankly amazing
No voting scheme is ever quiet fair
As Arrow’s paradox has shown here and there
What we want is the same
Better rules for the game
So the popular works get their fair share
An analogy with political position
Is of limited explanatory cognition
EPH isn’t used
(nor is it abused)
Because Parties are a different condition
Your preference for a three-stage approach
Would be a better target for your reproach
It would mimic the bit
When a party picks it
And acts as the candidate’s line coach
STV as an option is more true
Of party political application (not few)
It requires a set
On which we all bet
Which apparatchicks have already been through
EPH takes a quite different tack
It is less vulnerable to slating attack
But is also quite free
For you or for me
To nominate any old hack
But now I really must bid farewell
I’m afraid my mind has lost the spell
The short limerick
Is no longer so quick
And the joke’s wearing quite thin as well
@ ultragotha
Ouch. Not to diss Scalzi or anything, and I know it’s a joke, but that literally gave me a full-body cringe. If literary brilliance could be measured in weight, old Will Shakes would crush Scalzi like a – well, all right, not a gnat. Maybe like a small furry mammal with round ears and a hairless tail. A small furry cute mammal, needless to say.
What was that? You want the Internet back? OK you win.
1. AZI AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ASPECTS OF THE ACCELERATIONISTS
abstain. I’ve read neither. (Both obviously come highly recommended.) (I have read other books by both, but the classic work that is Amber vs. the minor work of Rusalka seems an inappropriately unfair fight)
2. THE SANDWORM SOLUTION
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
3. GENIUS AI IN WINTERMUTE VS. GENLY AI ON WINTER
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
4. SHOWDOWN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
With a note that I am almost certainly basing this as much on media representation as the books because it has been a looooooong time….
Wait, he mentioned Goethe too? The guy best known for writing a play about a man who literally summons Mephistopheles and makes a deal with him is listed in a separate category from SF/F writers?
Maybe the problem is that Wright literally commutes to our universe from one where the Greco/Roman and Christian deities walk around regularly and interact with mortals on a day-to-day basis, and as a result he doesn’t see these as speculative. He’s like, “No, no, ghosts are a little kooky, so I’ll give you Shakespeare, but it’s a well-known fact that the gods sport with mortals on a daily basis. Look what they did to Donald Trump!”
Ultragotha
Much as I like Scalzi’s work, he couldn’t write Hamlet, nor Lear; he’s not a playwright. He’s not a genius either, but genius makes its own rules. Again, the fact that most people really don’t understand the difference between plays and novels is that they were taught in school by people who don’t understand the difference either. It’s a very common belief, and the surest way to an actor’s heart is to be aware that it’s nonsense; the second surest is to be aware of the physicality of acting, hence the company working out together in rehearsals rather than sitting there reading stuff.
Mike
It’s worth bearing in mind that film and TV directors have more power over the production than play directors; the former can cut footage they don’t like, but once the actors are on the stage, in front of the audience, the director has to hope that s/he convinced the cast about the interpretation and/or pray…
ULTRAGOTHA: This confirms my suspicion that what happens in the comments and what happens around on the front page are like two different independent blogs…
I said in an earlier round of the Bracket that Plato was a spec-fic writer. I believe he is the earliest known person to say overtly that myths should be written that are intentionally fictional (i.e. that there is purpose in writing stories of gods, magic and great events that the writer knows not to be true and which they are inventing from scratch)
Arguably the other great Greek writers/dramatists don’t quite pass the SF test on the grounds that they thought they were re-telling true stories (although they take editorial liberties). However we know that at least by the time of Plato the notion of intentionally fictional supernatural stories was a thing (although Plato wanted people to believe the stories were true for edificational reasons).
So, on that basis:
1. Wright is wrong again. Intentional SF has always been there.
2. My write in candidate for the bracket is Plato’s myth of Atlantis (technically split between two different dialogues). Yeah it lacks characters, is full of pointless numbers just like Turncoat (seriously do we care how many stadia?) but for sheer staying power it beats the rest hands down.
Awesome filk, Kyra.
1. Abstain – still need to read Downbelow Station (starting it tentatively scheduled for the day after 2016 Hugo nominations close)
2. Frank Herbert: Dune – it’s Dune (which is akin to being Rock in the Seinfeld version of Rock-Paper-Scissors Kramer and Mickey Abbot play)
3. William Gibson: Neuromancer – for possibly no better reason than that I read it when it was published in my teens and cyberpunk was more exciting than catching up on what even someone of the stature of Le Guin was writing in the late sixties could possibly be
4. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein – can’t deny it casts the larger shadow of the two
Scott McCloud’s ‘Understanding Comics’ actually had a decent section on the differences between media and the resulting influences on storytelling. Looked at primarily from the point of view of comics and how the medium differed from both prose on one side and movies on the other, of course. But it might be a starting point to get people to think about the differences before going full-on Marshall McLuhan.
Quite. And there is always some subjectivity in these sorts of games, and when it’s one person attempting to quantify greatness, then that individual’s own biases are in play. I get the sense that JCW’s view (I skim-read most of the article) is that the Golden Age is in the past, and we live in morally corrupt degenerate times, so nothing we create can stand up to the Ancient Masters.
I had the same reaction reading Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”! It was *such* a cliché!
@Kyra and @Camestros,
Thank you for brightening up my day (also Kyra additionally for the earworm).
Also, I disagree with JCW’s conclusion that there is no great Science Fiction literature; just look at the current discussion we are having via the Bracketts [sic] for counter-examples.
@ Shakespeare people, thanks especially to Stevie and James
True, Shakespeare was celebrated in his own day, but the John C. Wrights of that day would have dismissed him as a writer of mere plays, not literature (like his poems). People laughed at Jonson, who dared to publish his oeuvre under the name of “works”, and the Folio followed Jonson’s trail (not labelled as Shakespeare’s works, of course).
There’s a fascinating book called The Making of the National Poet, that tells how Shakespeare became “SHAKESPEARE!”. I just like to remember that the nobody from the country, sans university degree, made it big in the capital, performed for kings and commoners, and finally went home to live in the biggest house in town, in addition to writing plays and poems with a lifespan of (so far) over 400 years.
@Mike Glyer
Do you consider that to be a good thing it a bad thing?
@Soon Lee
Correct, Wright firmly believes nothing Great was produced in the 20th Century and nothing Great could have been, because of degeneration etc.
Incidentally, Wright has commented on his Hugo ballot, and he only deploys No Award once. (Spoiler alert: it’s not against his own work). Guess MZW is ploughing his own crazy furrow in this.
If you believe Harold Bloom (who seems like a JCW-type critic since he wrote “The Western Canon”), there is at least one genre-oriented masterwork–John Crowley’s “Little, Big”:
http://www.powells.com/blog/guests/harold-bloom-on-little-big-by-roxanne-coady/
To be honest, what pisses me of most with Wrights post is where he says that no great horror book has been written. Dracula, Carmilla, Frankenstein, The Island of Dr. Moreau, everything by Poe or Lovecraft, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey…
Bah!!