Here’s a way: Read a bad issue of the New York Review of Science Fiction. That can turn you off intellectualism big time :)

Seriously, though, the NYRSF has had some fine articles, but I recall that sometimes it seemed to get lost in a haze of aesthetic and critical theory, perhaps the only academic areas more obtuse to the outsider than sociology.

I stopped reading it after a while because the brows had gotten way too high over there for my taste, and as a self-confessed user of the word “etiolated”, those are some pretty high brows. But I admit I haven’t looked at that magazine in years, so perhaps it has improved. (Actually, now I’m interested; I’ll look at it again next time I’m in a SF bookstore.)

As an aside, by the way, since it comes to mind due to the similar title, despite its almost complete disinclination to deal with genre fiction, the New York Review of Books is still a great magazine, a good mix of random art, art history, literature, and political articles only some of which are actual book reviews.

Damn skippy there is. And it makes me nuts. How can you write fiction–especially speculative fiction–and yet sneer at intellectualism?

Of course, *using* literary tools is by no means a guarantee of having something to say; many comments have pointed this out. My favourite example of an author failing at what JP@21 calls “choate” theme is the perennial high-school assignment, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”; it sets up an entire self-contained universe in which people are barbaric, in order to show that people are barbaric. Not only is the theme heavy-handed, but it leaves no space for disagreement. “This is the way it is,” it instructs the readers. Such bullshit.

I’ve always found Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” to be the perfect counterexample. It isn’t a story, really; has no plot, no characters, no science, even. But it’s utterly brilliant, and deeply poignant. Unlike Jackson, who bludgeons her theme through shock&awe, LeGuin simply hypothesizes about a world — deliberately shaping it without ever leaving the realm of rhetoric — and then implies her thematic question, never quite saying it out loud.

I don’t mean to create an opposition between “choate” and “inchoate”; I agree with JP@21 that the former often fail but can be nailed in certain cases. Rather, I think it’s important to point out that stories don’t even need “story”, really, but, in order to sustain interest, theme is pretty crucial.

That’s part of what makes it fun, to write and read and talk about.

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is rife with ideas and statements on American culture and the taint of Puritanism on our collective souls. That doesn’t mean he consciously put the stuff in there, it just means he felt that way, so it’s in his work.

Sometimes I think we bring Theme to the novel, which is why two readers could read any given book and have differing opinions as to what the Theme of the work is.

When the author/characters are working through, chewing on an idea which is not resolved, theme remains inchoate. That’s cool, I think, as in most cases the ideas chewed on are not often subject to resolution. Leaving them open invites the reader to continue to chew/think.

Yet sometimes the author has something to say, most often causing the story to fail. I think this is easier to do well in a short story, a la Harlan Ellison. Occasionally a gifted writer who is not a very good story-teller will nail this (1984). When it all comes together, though, a good writer and story-teller who has something to say….

Jacqueline Carey, for example, works deftly with a singular idea on a very broad story. Take the concept expressed as “Love as thou wilt,” and the story of Phedre becomes a powerful statement as well. Hard to swallow for a veriety of reason (many of which have to do with the world-as-it-is), but I find it strongly compelling.

However from the writing point of view I think these themes develop themselves in gifted writers. Gifted writers I believe are people who care about the world, are as confused by it as the next guy and creative enough to put it in a context that anyone can identify with. (We’ll see if I turn out to be one of said writers. Seems to me like Mr. Brust would qualify.) I don’t think you can force a theme into a story. It has to come out on its own.
I especially love the way Stephen Donaldson uses overarching ideas in the Mordant’s Need duology. Rereading it recently really reminded me of what made those books stick in my mind. It was the underlying themes that unknowingly touched me so deeply. That I believe is what makes good sf/f of literary value. Because it can achieve the same effect and almost in a subversive way, that people enjoy. I digress though. As I usually do. lol. Interesting topic. Sometimes now I feel like I have a split personality wanting to go into literary criticism and writing, but it gives me an interesting perspective on things.