KFL@MIT-MC.ARPA (09/26/85)
From: Keith F. Lynch <KFL@MIT-MC.ARPA>
From: druri!dht@topaz.rutgers.edu (Davis Tucker)
Date: 19 Sep 85 21:28:09 GMT
Some would have the field move strictly back to its roots, to the Great
Idea and hard science and predictions. Others would have it move
into the mind and the surreal, become experimental in all ways, and
cast off the chains of its past. Both are doctrinaire and dogmatic.
I think there is room for both, and for much more. Whatever readers
are willing to pay for.
SF is already to the stage where it is somewhat silly to think of it
as just one genre. Just look at the enormous variety of things
discussed on this list. Is anyone interested in as much as half of
these messages? I am not. Of course everyone picks a different half.
Quality writing
means attention to details like plot twists and avoiding loose ends,
characters who live and breathe and talk like they were people, not
cartoon characters. Real people don't expostulate for pages, like
Jubal Harshaw or Lazarus Long ...
Lazarus Long is my favorite SF character! And one of the most
believable (excluding the trivial).
James Clavell worked just as hard to make "Shogun" believable as
Herbert did with "Dune".
I didn't find DUNE at all believable. I don't see what people see in
that book.
Motivation, of a society or an individual
or a destiny, requires some kind of internal consistency, unless the
novel is one that is deliberately inconsistent ...
Agreed. It should also be consistent with known (or extrapolated)
science. The lack of this is what ruins most SF for me.
The only deliberately inconsistent books I have ever enjoyed are those
by Robert Anoton Wilson.
Hard science fiction needs to take a long look at its
traditional insensitivity to its characters and its dialogue.
All else being equal, I would agree. But there is too little really
good hard SF for me to want there to be more stumbling blocks in the
way of potential new SF authors and new books. I would hate to see
criticisms like this discourage Robert Forward (who is on the net and
possibly on SF-Lovers) from writing more stories.
I myself would like to see a time when science fiction is no longer
considered merely a "genre", but a large part of the literary scene,
as biographies and spy novels are considered now.
Or vice versa. All other fields to be a sub-genre of SF.
These literature types are incredibly stuck up. Harper's just published
another critique of SF. Of *ALL* SF. The second in as many years.
Criticizing all SF is as stupid as criticizing all movies, or all
paintings, or all music. Especially since the critic obviously didn't
have any idea what he was talking about.
Whenever a 'mainstream' author attempts SF, he generally uses plot
elements that have been obsolete in SF since the 1940s.
Classical music is hardly being composed at all anymore ...
But then, it doesn't have to be. Music does not become dated.
SF does.
...Keith