What's Wrong With Sci-Fi?
Over on The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler there is a decent piece on how the 'fans' themselves are killing science-fiction.If we're just talking about readers, I agree that the negativity and trolling should be held responsible for some of the 'destruction.'
If we're talking about critical dissection among writers, that's another thing. Getting all nitpicky about a piece of work is one way that writers learn. Until I read Heinlein I had no idea he wrote such bad prose. Not that it matters in the face of the ideas--the ideas are what resonate with people, and why they love the works so much.
Similar can be said for Isaac "The Rambler" Asimov. I found his work to go off too much into the characters' headspace, which in general is a poor storytelling technique--at the very least overused in his case.
But this is relatively 'old' sci-fi, or well-entrenched to say the least. If sci-fi fans are holding back new sci-fi because they simply won't give it a chance, then yes... that is sad.
But as others may have suggested, don't read web forums then. Only misery seems to come from online negativity.
Just to be a thorn, the devil's advocate in me just has to ask... "What if they're right?"
Is there something wrong with sci-fi these days? If so, what is it?
1 Comments:
My feeling is that sciffy is too often ideas-driven (for some people, of course, that defines sciffy). When you concentrate on ideas, you step away from the spine of any story: the emotional journey of a character. Some writers can combine the two, but they are in the minority, I think.
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