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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1814153" data-attributes="member: 5171">I agree with your last sentence wholeheartedly.  If you write some brilliant stuff, your other work has to suffer by comparison.  Inevitable, and sort of a sign of success in some ways.I disagree.  I don't intend this as a slam on your faves, but I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement.  As a writer, it's my job to read the classics, learn from them, see what they did right, and incorporate that into my own work.  As a reader, the only responsibility I have is to accurately judge whether I'm being entertained or not.  I'm not criticizing them because dozens of hacks stood on their shoulders or because they "seem" dated.  I'm criticizing them because they don't entertain me.  That's it.It's the ugly democracy of the fiction world.  You might've written the most deep and meaningful book in the history of the English language, but if nobody can understand it, then you've failed.I personally enjoy the pulp stuff from earlier years more than I enjoy the golden age stuff (unless, as is often the case, I'm mish-mashing genre-terms again).  The pulp stuff doesn't take itself too seriously.  A lot of Asimov does take itself too seriously, which would be fine, except that the concepts he's carefully explaining are no longer new to me.  That means it is dated.  If the Asimov stuff I've read had a ton of other stuff going for it, being dated in one area wouldn't be a huge problem -- but (and this is just from the Asimov stuff I've read -- I stopped reading for exactly this reason, and perhaps I missed stuff where it wasn't the case) without the cool factor of the new ideas, I thought that Asimov's work was by and large stilted and his characters were wooden.  It reads as though he was trying so hard to separate himself from the pulp forms that he decided to remove any possible traces of fun or excitement from his prose.That's not a complete slam, mind you.  A good thriller can work well with wooden characters.  A good mystery can work well with wooden characters.  Heck, much good science fiction works well with wooden characters.  But it doesn't meet my own personal needs.That's what it all comes down to.  People read based on their personal needs.  I love good dialogue, lively and fleshed-out characters, and a fun, fast-moving plot.  If a story's main selling point is its setting, it's not for me.  If a story's main selling point is its science or its sense of wonder, it's not for me.  People are free to have their own personal needs -- that's what makes a market.Publishers are not evil folks bent on destroying the rise of new ideas.  Publishers print what they've seen people buy.  I still see Asimov on the shelves, so there ares still people enjoying him.  If more people agreed with you, he'd be on the shelves in larger quantities.And one minor quibble: Hacks standing on shoulders?  Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  I'm sure there are some bad writers out there, but come on.  Standing on someone's shoulders does not make one a hack.  Shakespeare and Chaucer stole ideas and wrote bawdy humor for the masses.  Gilbert & Sullivan were writing their day's equivalent of smash hit comedy blockbusters.Generally speaking, elitism is not a great idea.  Getting elitist about somebody who wrapped a story around their artificial intelligence social theories is not going to help the discussion. I deeply respect the contributions that the folks you mentioned made to the field I read and write in.I also respect the contribution that the Wright Brothers made to the field of technology, but if I want to fly from San Francisco to Baltimore, I don't hop in the Wright Flyer.If they're still worth reading for fresh readers, that's great.  I can tell you from my personal experience that they weren't for me.  Doesn't mean they didn't do what they tried to do.  Just means that what they tried to do does not today include me as the target audience -- at least, not when I come home after a long day at work and want to read something for entertainment.And if they are entertaining for some people, that's great.  I'm not arguing against them being entertaining for some people.  I'm arguing against your argument that nothing can possibly compare with what those folks did.  'Cause, well, by standards other than "Does Rodrigo like it a bunch?", I don't buy it.</blockquote>

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