“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.” and “But aside from the science fiction, I find it tedious to read any ordinary writing at all. It all seems so conventional and repetitive.”
That's... stupid. First, "people getting into problems and screw[ing] their lives up" has another name- conflict- and conflict exists in almost every form of story imaginable.
Second, what would the "everything else" in sci-fi be? Technology? The best sci-fi has detailed, at least semi-plausible futuristic technology or concepts, true, but the way sci fi works is that it shows how all of that affects humanity.
Star Trek isn't about transporters, it's about people who use transporters to explore the universe.
And as for "ordinary" writing being tedious and repetitive... 90% of everything is crap. This includes "ordinary" writing AND sci-fi. ESPECIALLY back in the days when all it took to write a sci-fi book was to put your hero on Mars, have him kill a Martian Dragon with a laser pistol, and save the day.
Syfy's still a stupid name, though.
I amuse myself.
Science Fiction is only for men and Women ruins it!
- 16/10/2009 02:35:43 PM
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The first problem with this argument is that SF was invented by a woman.
- 16/10/2009 04:07:10 PM
424 Views
Agree. The article seemed more a jab at SciFi / SyFy than pertinent to anything else.
- 16/10/2009 08:23:29 PM
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"Science fiction is about everything else"
- 17/10/2009 11:06:17 PM
418 Views