/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2217381]

I'm having a hard time suspending my belief in this book.

I think it's because it was written in the 80's.

I've read better dystopian novels that performed better than this.

[Anonymous No.2217509]

>Alas, other authors who are lionized, like Margaret Atwood and Ursula LeGuin, use dystopia as a rationale for finger-wagging polemic and formulaic prescriptions, rather than gedankenexperiment. With their gifts, this limiting flaw is just tragic. Shippey is especially biting toward Ms. Atwood's sycophants, who claim her works are "realistic" and therefore "speculative" - not that childish science fiction junk.

>Um, sorry - not quite. For one thing, Ms. Atwood's cartoon portrayals of science are tendentiously inaccurate to the point of libel. Like Crichton, her premise always depends on the absence of cleansing transparency, which would resolve nearly all of her complaints. Moreover 70% of males in North America would have died fighting to prevent the scenario she portrays so chillingly in The Handmaid's Tale. That book had many merits! But realistic plausibility was not a trait to brag about, distinguishing it from science fiction!

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-define-science-fiction.html