Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>Post by Christian WeisgerberBarry Nathaniel Malzberg (July 24, 1939 – December 19, 2024) was
an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and
fantasy.
I recognize the name, but I don't recall ever reading anything by
him.
Very New Wave. What I read of his I really did not like. In
particular his "novel" _Galaxies_ was packaged (perhaps not by him)
as a space adventure when in fact it was a meta-novel set of notes
about writing a space adventure. 14 year old me was very non-plussed.
[snip]
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>Malzberg's serious fiction (unlike the fiction that he produced to
pay the bills) mostly explored the notion that "the literature of
technology and its effects upon man must at the heart be pessimistic",
as he wrote in his May 1976 article "Down Here in the Dream Quarter".
I also quoted his essay "Rage, Pain, Alienation and Other Aspects of the
Writing of Science Fiction" (written in December 1975, first published
in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1976) which
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>I realized by June of 1965 that it would be impossible for me to make
a career in what was my field of choice: as a literary writer. The
quarterlies were impenetrable, the coteries omnipresent, the competition
murderous, the stultifying control of the publishing houses' literary
editors absolute. If I was ever going to achieve outlet as a writer of
fiction, I saw I would have to go to the commercial markets [snip]
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>Science fiction was what I chose because from the outset science
fiction seemed to be that field in which one could sell stories of
modest literary intention with the least amount of slanting: one could,
if one touched the base of stricture, be paid a living wage for somewhat
ambitious work [snip]
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>In less than seven years I sold the aforementioned number of works,
about two million words in all, I won a major award, I even, for a brief
period in 1973/4 had the exhilarating experience of almost making a
living from the writing of s-f alone. [snip]
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>But if you win, you lose; my ambition had turned upon itself. I had
beaten the system by getting out of the system, but the system wouldn't
be beaten after all because it would not acknowledge that I existed and
that made my work meaningless. Also I was getting knifed up pretty good
inside s-f. Ambitious writers always do; historically the field has
silenced or reduced to ineffectiveness its best writers. There is not a
single American s-f writer over the age of forty-five, whose work is the
equal of what it was a decade ago, if it even exists.
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>So there I was: devil and the deep blue sea.
Denied as a literary writer, loathed and largely isolated within s-f.
[snip]
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>But I also decided to get out. Where yet I am not sure; perhaps to
the field of the commercial novel, perhaps into something else, perhaps
into light manufacturing or the processing of ceramic mix. [snip]
Post by Ted Nolan <tednolan>I want to make it clear on December 6, 1975: I love this field. My
debt to it is incalculable. What has happened to writers like myself,
Silverberg, Ballard, Disch, is not the fault of the category itself
(which allowed us to go as far as we wanted artistically for a while) or
necessarily even the audience. The fault, as in most other aspects of
America, is in what has happened to squeeze diversity from our culture
in the last five years. [snip]