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Title: Weary sci-fi tropes badly written
Review: Brian W. Aldiss's great novel Greybeard, published in the sixties, uses the same themes as James (i.e. no children are being born on the planet) but is original and funny, elegaic and sad. Yet Aldiss's novel is sidelined as science fiction and James's book, which uses very tired and unoriginal sf tropes, is described by its fans as 'too real to be sf'. This is nonsense.If you really want to see this theme explored with originality by a fine writer, go to the Aldiss. This is one of the best examples I know of a bad book by an establishment writer being admired by people with no knowledge of fine literary sf and believing that it 'can't be sf because it's too real'. If you want literature which deals with realities try some Aldiss, Ballard, M. J. Harrison, China Mieville, Thomas M. Disch, John Sladek and a dozen others. This book was an insult to my intelligence.
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