Ballardian

Brian Aldiss, figurehead of the New Wave along with Ballard, has written a letter to the Times:

Sir, At the Cheltenham Festival Margaret Atwood said that writers “are likely to be compulsive wordsmiths” — presumably a way of saying that writing is for some of us an expression of the life force.

Her life would have been more difficult had she not cleverly denied that her early science fiction novels, such as A Handmaid’s Tale, were science fiction. Had she neglected this strategy, there would have been for her no more literary festivals, no more reviews, no more appearances on BBC breakfast programmes.

It is a truth widely acknowledged that SF is not worth consideration by sane minds. Kurt Vonnegut and J. G. Ballard have adopted Atwood’s gambit. When Vonnegut grew tired of being a guru, he returned to SF and wrote such brilliant novels as Galápagos. No reviewer spoke its name. When — possibly because of my age — I was invited on Desert Island Discs this year, I was told that SF readers were nerds who were poor and could not “get a woman”.

And more.