Worlds Apart

I was writing a comment in reply to Ray Davis on a previous post, and realized it might be better as a post than a comment.

Here's Ray's original comment:

Huh. The "problem that had long puzzled" Josipovici was precisely -- like precisely, except for some name-swapping which sharpens the point, like Joyce for Mann and Beckett for Bernhard -- what led me to start looking into science fiction in 1976. (And eventually led me here, of course.)

From what I've read of Josipovici, I suspect he arrived at different answers than myself.

My feelings are similar, and are one of the reasons that though my particular pleasures are different from Josipovici's, I'm sympathetic to his argument. Those feelings are also a reason why I have a knee-jerk negative reaction to arguments that pose science fiction (broadly defined) as the opposite of Modernism.  (Different, sure.  Opposite, nope.)  That's an interpretation that doesn't work for me because it contradicts my own reading life, which is, yes, a narcissistic (solipsistic?) approach to an argument, but hey, it's what I've got.  For me, science fiction and Modernism are complementary.