Movies, Generes, and a B@st@rd
October, 1999
I had a very bad experience in "Great Literary Movies" (feel free to laugh, it’s my cop-out class) today (10/15/99). In case you’re fortunate enough not to know the ‘teacher’ in question, Adams is one of the most hypocritical twips this side of Alpha Centauri, a lazy b@st@rd who relies on his students to come up with questions for tests, and an apparent fantasy hater. He spent part of today’s class on sci-fi versus fantasy, basing his lesson on a quote by Isaac Asimov, that goes along the lines of good sci-fi puts down concrete rules and follows them throughout the story, while fantasy goes by ‘well, because!’ reasoning; ‘if a man blinks his left eye, then he will disappear’. This lack of reasoning also (supposedly) makes it hard to sympathize/connect with fantasy characters.
Mind you, while I disagree with this, I have no problem with it coming up, tho I seem to recall for some reason that Asimov did write a fantasy novel or two. What got me up in arms was Adams’s comment: that fantasy was also bad because fantasy writers are second or third rate hacks that write fantasy because they can’t make it otherwise.
EXCUSE ME?!?!?!?
Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradely, R.A. Salvatore, Ed Greenwood, Anne McCaffery, Margaret Weis, Tracey Hickman, Christine Morgan, Greg Weisman, David Drake, Terry Pratchett, Piers Anthony, Tolkien, for gods’ sakes! All of these are just off the top of my head. I haven’t even looked in my library yet!
This drek-head thinks New York Times best-selling authors are third rate hacks?!? D&D has no rules? Wanting to write this sort of stuff for a living is the most idiotic goal I could possibly have, that I shouldn’t even do what I love because it’s stupid?
And this is the same @$$hole that spent the first few days of class trying to drill into our heads not to generalize.
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