[note: apologies for not keeping the blog up to date. i have a few announcements lined up for when i have more time to post, please stay tuned.]<\/p>\n
This personal post was inspired by a blog entry in Philippine Genre Stories titled Generational Reading Gap [blog]<\/a> [multiply]<\/a>.<\/p>\n I grew up in a library that my father built up from scratch. Most of my literary education came from this. But I’ll have to admit, I feel like growing up with this repertoire led me to become more isolated from the readers and writers I correspond with.I know very few readers from my generation (or older) who call themselves “sci fi fans,” and at the same time know who Cordwainer Smith even IS. They may have read a little Asimov, a little Clarke, a little Philip K. Dick – but for the most part they’ve read and liked more Carl Sagan, Greg Bear, David Brin, and people who got published WAY after the “golden age,” than I ever will.<\/p>\n I sometimes get vibes from younger readers that run along the lines of: “Well, you’re not a real sci fi fan if you haven’t read China Mieville\/Iain Banks\/Stanislaw Lem” and my knee-jerk defense is to go “Yeah? To me, you’re not a real sci fi fan unless you’ve read “Doc” Smith\/Theodore Sturgeon\/at least one Aldous Huxley title that is NOT Brave New World<\/em>.”<\/p>\n No, I’m not automatically resentful… and I don’t blame people for this, of course. These are just some of the reasons why I don’t:<\/p>\n Moreover, thanks to my stable income and PayPal-savvy, I can probably pick up and read any new title, if I really want to – however, it’s hard for most people in my immediate vicinity to have access to really old titles, even if they were<\/em> interested in them.<\/li>\n You know what’s funny\/sad, though? I can see myself losing even more <\/em>interest in new writing. I think it’s happened once or twice already, except some Really Good Writers have popped up and pulled me back into the fold. But if we bear in mind that they’re more the exception than the norm, this pattern of disinterest seems to be something I will comfortably fall into – unless I develop the habit of forcing myself out of my comfort zone, which… may not be all that healthy, in the long run. I read because I love to read, and nobody can tell me how to love.<\/p>\n However, I also think it’s a natural thing. You’re young once, you go through a passionate “honeymoon” phase… then you grow up, it pleateaus, and it dies down. I don’t blame other people if they too become disillusioned and a bit tired of new stuff coming out. Very few people actually get to live their whole lives with youthful enthusiasm for new things… although of course it would be nice if we were all able to do it.<\/p>\n I still out try new things because I’m told they’re good, and I seldom regret it. But I do wonder if I can keep this up for much longer. I’m probably too easily jaded, but I’d still like to be the sort of person that can do something like this.<\/p>\n One more thing I have to mention: I sometimes feel like some readers\/writers enjoy a sense of culture that is built only around what happened in the course of their lifetimes – the newest bestsellers that came out, the latest trends (“new weird” and “unrealism,” anyone?), the latest awards given, the latest writers honored. I’m awed at their ability to absorb, embrace and share new information – but I’m sad at how much history<\/em> escapes them and their peers just because they’re not interested.<\/em>Watching them, it feels like, I dunno – like literature is not going in a way it’s supposed to go. Like it’s forgetting a lot of vital things while it speeds ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [note: apologies for not keeping the blog up to date. i have a few announcements lined up for when i have more time to post, please stay tuned.] This personal post was inspired by a blog entry in Philippine Genre Stories titled Generational Reading Gap [blog] [multiply]. I grew up in a library that my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-transparent-header":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philsites.net\/specfic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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