SF Signal Looks at the Classics of SF
SF Signal links to an essay on the classics of SF by James Wallace Harris and does some thinking about old books themselves.
Folks, Foundation always had prose like wet cardboard. SF fans used to tolerate bad prose, non-existent characterization, and horrible cliches because they were thrilled by new skiffy ideas, and new skiffy ideas were, more often than not, embedded in stories with all of those bad things. But, since the much-maligned New Wave, the standards for acceptable SF stories have gone way up. (And, to be fair, that wasn't the first time -- John W. Campbell was the first one to try to drag SF out of the pulpy muck, though he was still in thrall to the Cult of the Idea, and the mid-'50s boom driven by Galaxy also did its bit.) So, yes, some books from before that watershed now don't seem all that good -- but that's because they were never that good. We just all used to tolerate bad stories for the sake of good ideas, and we don't have to do that anymore.
This is a good thing, and if we can pull ourselves away from SF's insanely hypnotic form of neophilia for a moment, we'll see that.