1 AUGUST 1998, Page 28

A bankrupt genre

Sir: I am indebted to Hal Colebatch for his letter (18 July) about Michael Harrington's brilliant description of the science fiction genre. I had intended to write and compli- ment Mr Harrington on his perceptiveness, but it had slipped my mind until I read Mr Colebatch's indignant squawk.

I am what the Americans would call a 'recovering' science fiction addict. I read a lot of it in my twenties and for a while looked like reading nothing else. I attribute my escape to a greater capacity for boredom than most SF fans. I have read all the books that Mr Colebatch cites and for me they sup- port Mr Harrington's point excellently. SF is for the most part the western in new cloth- ing. That a book describes the world's slow recovery from nuclear holocaust doesn't change the fact that it is, at heart, a western. In fact, post-holocaust environments are very popular with SF writers because they make such an easy setting for the hormonal fantasies which drive most of the genre.

Mr Colebatch's letter displays very accu- rately the poor capacity for argument of most SF buffs. Is sci-fi the better for C.S. Lewis's books? I don't think so. I have read his science fiction and it is puerile propa- gandising. Regardless of who has dabbled in it, SF remains a bankrupt genre and one which richly deserves to go the way of the western.

One other-worldly aspect of the SF scene is that its adherents have developed in one generation an awesome sense of grievance at the injustice of their exclusion from the world of 'mainstream fiction', whatever that may be. It took the Irish and the Jews cen- turies of suffering to become as aggrieved as they are today. It seems to have taken Mr Colebatch's tribe about 40 years. Now that is impressive.

Floyd Kermode

2-38-6 ICami-Igusa, Suginami-ku, Tokyo, Japan