I should be in bed, but...

[serpentstar]

...someone is wrong on the internet.

In this case it's John Mullan, Booker Prize judge and "professor of English", who said he "was not aware of science fiction," and "it is in a special room in book shops, bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other."

You know -- Mr Mullan -- you may be right.

Comments

[greylock]

I am actually speechless.

Assuming the quotes are accurate and in context.

[serpentstar]

I would have been speechless, but then remembered that swearing was invented for exactly this kind of occasion.

[strangerover]

I'm guessing by the tone, that you are as surprised as I am that a Professor of English Literature was not aware of Science Fiction?
Do you think he was perhaps being ironic in a cliquey humour sort of way, or just an epic fucking cunt?

[serpentstar]

I think that his cuntishness was fucking epic, and I think that though I am 99% pacifistic, I would like to bruise my knuckles on his smug, shite-talking gob.

[strangerover]

I find it interesting that he's a judge for a major literary prize

[agnosticoracle]

Instead of bruising your knuckles perhaps shoving some of Kurt Vonnegut's novels down his throat might be more appropriate.

[the_megstress]

It sounds like he's confusing sci fi literature with porn videos. Bah, I'm going back to the living room to finish reading The Gods Themselves.

[greylock]

And I'm going into the back room to finish viewing This Ain't Star Trek XXX.

....

Re: I'm going to love going back to college...

[eciklb]

I wouldn't assume that. As long as you're not walking in with an attitude of "I'm a published writer, so I can't learn anything from you," you're likely to get professors who are pleased as punch to have a student who can construct a sentence.

Re: I'm going to love going back to college...

[_twilight_]

Find out if you can take grad. level classes. Some teachers will allow it, and those count for upper level credits. Also, politely let your teachers know your background in advance, and they'll be a lot more likely to work with what you want to get out of class.

Just like some (okay, many) party girls have low self-esteem and some chunky girls don't, not all teachers teach because they want to but can't do. Some like the stability and dental plans, while they do their own stuff on the side. I can pretty much guarantee you'll meet some who fit that mold, and they may be irritating, but it's not everyone.

[_twilight_]

Not all English Lit teachers are like that, but there are enough loud snooty ones to give the job title a bad rep.

And yes, I've known ones who think that plot is detrimental to story, which should be purely about the emotions of the human experience or other such crap. You might remember my post about dropping a class last year because someone was waaay too much in that line of thinking.

But some of them are cool. One of my old teachers writes science fiction novels and is really into classic pulps. Another teacher wrote me today--out of the blue--to ask if I needed any letters of recommendation for anything because she thought some scholarship deadlines were coming up. And she's pure lit. analysis, but not stuffy about it.