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This is now Out of Date. Please see MORALFICTION.
So. Article in SF Eye, about "Amoral Responsibility" Horror fiction. A guy presents his by Peter Lamborn Wilson manifesto fairly persuasively, but really his point of view is pretty I didn't know it when narrow. He's just fallen into I wrote this, but another trap, and I'll be amazed if Peter Lamborn Wilson he can take this anywhere. is otherwise known as Essentially, he's taking the side Hakim Bey. that "Fiction should be moral", that everything an author chooses to write is a presentation of the way things _should_ be. Using erotica as an example, he takes the (conventional for asb) side that everthing is fair game as long as it's consenual and "loving". So for instance, it's okay to write about people playing pretend rape in some kind of bondange scene, but actual rape is a no-no. Would it be okay to write about two people who get off together by reading/writing stories about rape? How many levels of indirection do you need, before it becomes palatable? Of course, the position that Tom Maddox was taking on the net a few years back (about how art must be amoral, because didactic fiction is inevitably boring) is *also* too limited. You can't say anything meaningful without it having some moral dimension to it... I think he misses the real evil of Horror: The problem is not that it lacks compassion, but that it's inherently opposed to rationality. HORRIBLE_TRUTH ----------------- [NEXT - ECODIS]