She really needs to pick up a non-genre book...

I could make a cottage industry out of posting snarky rebuttals to the piffle Jo Walton spits out on the Tor blog. It's like she was specifically crafted in a lab to drive me insane. Last time, it was because she whinged about how she doesn't like to read the SF output of *superior* writers (ie: those not in the SF/F ghetto) because they don't understand the tropes. This time?

"Rosa sat so Martin could march, Martin marched so Barack could run, Barack ran so our children can fly."

Everybody seems to be quoting this without attribution, and I’d love to know who wrote it. The thing that struck me about it was how very science-fictional it felt. It’s got the ring to it of something from a future history book, or one of those oracular poems with deep special meanings you sometimes run across in fantasy. I hope everyone’s children can fly, but we’d better get working on the spaceships.

The comment I left:

I don't want to be really rude, but I can't remember a post of yours that didn't make me shake my head at least a little. This one's pretty severe.

The quote is not "science-fictional," neither does it have "the ring to it of something from a future history book, or one of those oracular poems with deep special meanings you sometimes run across in fantasy." It's a standard rhetorical trope, familiar to anyone who reads broadly and outside of the SF and Fantasy worlds.

It builds power and tension through repetition, similar to this quote from MLK:

Press on and keep pressing. If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk-CRAWL.

If you've seen similar in SF and Fantasy, that's because it is a very old form with which you should be familiar. For example, if you thought the line I quoted above was *original* in Firefly, you really need to get out more.

N.B. I corrected a typo I had in my comment. Not trying to hide anything, but I see no reason to quote myself and leave it uncorrected.

Who knows: maybe y'all'll disagree with me and think she's really hit that thar nail on the head. Though I suspect my few readers are a bit more well-rounded than Jo, so it seems unlikely.