"Literary Merit" Is Bullshit

The embarrassment of tradpub Science Fiction authors, as a class, for their field is revealing when talking about what they consider "early SF". Jim Fear nails it, taken from his Twitter posts of yesterday.

Frankenstein only gets grandfathered into Scifi because it's a philosophy book dressed up as fiction and it's taken seriously by the Literati, which is what Scifi wishes it was because it thinks boring shit like The Scarlet Letter is "grown up".

Scifi Authors are just trying to graft Mary Shelley into their thing because she's taken seriously by Literary Fiction Teachers and the Scifi Authors really, *really* wish that LitFic-senpai didn't think of them like a filthy fucking tramp who dresses like a whore.

Noticing that tendency was a tell of a certain too-common male psychology pattern, I took that ball and ran with it.

That's because they're fucktard cowards who don't get that wealth = power. Either you use the wealth to buy the power, or you use your power to get the wealth; the routes vary, but the destination is the same.

These fuckers are scared to take EITHER route.

Instead they simper like the gamma faggots they are, trying to ride coattails to the destination whereupon they somehow assume both Because Vrry Smrt and get all the winning forever like some retarded Hollywood movie.

That's what all this Muh Literary Merit bullshit really is: childish simpering because they either can't or won't do what is required to succeed as writers of fiction, namely to entertain the fucking audience as best you can. That's why the pulps were, and remain, superior SF.

The fundamental lie is this: the refusal to accept Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars not only as Science Fiction, but as the seminal example of it.

The original cover to A Princess Of Mars.

Exposing this bullshit is part-and-parcel to the reclaimation of the field from the frauds that stole it nearly a century ago. It's Fear Of A Pulp Planet, and they desperately hope that it cannot be stopped. Sure, and the Death Star was invincible. We all know how that ended, don't we?

Fiction is about entertainment, first and foremost. The quality of entertainment, in an honest market, is proven by continuing sales year over year. The old pulps still sell like hotcakes and continues to influence authors around the world. SJW garbage rots on the shelves, when it gets there at all. The real Science Fiction, therefore, comes from the pulps- even later darlings like Dune have that influence and it shows. Appealing to lit-snobs is a pointless waste of time, especially since they haven't mattered for about as long as the commie faggots who destroyed the pulps--in part to get their approval, being fellow travelers--have held the field.