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Well-written sci-fi? (pg. 2)
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| SYSTEM-J |
Yes. Ian M Banks.
In his book "Reading By Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction", Damien Broderick includes mediocre prose in his list of key genre features:
| quote: | * The concomitant de-emphasis of 'fine writing', which is the insignia and medium of a socially restricted paradigm set deployed through recognised and canonised syntagmata, tropics of discourse, which SF escapes at the very instant it fails to meet tests of literary credential...
* Attention to the object in preference to the subject, where 'object', under the scrutiny to which we have subjected discursive sites, is no unimpeachable essential Real, yet retains a genuine externality, a power to shock equal to Dr Johnson's stone striking the back of his shoe: and where 'subject', if not quite decentered, is labile, socially miscible, cognitively multiplex |
What this basically means is that SF is a genre concerned with object rather than subject: it deals with materialism instead of spirituality. SF encodes its meaning and messages into material narrative elements and drama. It de-emphasises artistic writing such as metaphorical language or imagery because its metaphors and images are concrete partipicants in the narrative world, rather than imbued on that world through the authorial voice.
So really, most pure SF is going to have mediocre prose as part of its very generic constitution. The reason Ian M Banks writes SF with good prose is because he's an outsider: he mainly writes "literary" fiction and his SF novels are something of a side project. Which isn't to demean them: read Consider Phlebas, The Player Of Games and Use Of Weapons in that order. Brilliant stuff. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
I don't know, I think it's just that most sci-fi authors seem to have technical or scientific backgrounds and interests rather than more "literary" ones. As such they're more focused on developing concepts rather than crafting a distinctive style.
Also, sci-fi prose may be bad but it's pretty nice compared to that of many "postmodern" writers and the bloated heaps of five-syllable adjectives they call "sentences."
:wtf: |
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| lücid |
Orson Scott Card
not that i have anything to compare his writing to. i just like Ender's Game. :p |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| I liked it as well. But on the level of writing style it's just decent, I think. |
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| denys envy |
| ohh yeah - Night's Dawn Trilogy is really good too. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
I don't know, I think it's just that most sci-fi authors seem to have technical or scientific backgrounds and interests rather than more "literary" ones. As such they're more focused on developing concepts rather than crafting a distinctive style. |
This is a broad and inaccurate statement. Perhaps it's true if we're referring only to "hard" SF, but soft SF grew up in the pulps, where it was cheap and lurid escapism churned out to earn a living. The pulp writers generally had no scientific or technical backgrounds. Most of the authors and books mentioned in this thread are soft SF.
| quote: | | Also, sci-fi prose may be bad but it's pretty nice compared to that of many "postmodern" writers and the bloated heaps of five-syllable adjectives they call "sentences." |
Examples? |
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| Capitalizt |
Robert A. Heinlein?
Starship Troopers beeyutch! |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
This is a broad and inaccurate statement. Perhaps it's true if we're referring only to "hard" SF, but soft SF grew up in the pulps, where it was cheap and lurid escapism churned out to earn a living. The pulp writers generally had no scientific or technical backgrounds. Most of the authors and books mentioned in this thread are soft SF. |
True. I think I may like hard SF more, so I guess my bias is showing. :p
Just open up a literary theory compilation, close your eyes, and point somewhere in the table of contents.
Or look in the cites of this classic parody:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/...singlefile.html :D |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
True. I think I may like hard SF more, so I guess my bias is showing. :p |
Well it's fairly obvious that hard SF isn't going to be well written, given common literary concerns like story, characters, themes and style are far less important than presenting a scientific theory or idea. I was reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson recently, and while he bombards you with endless scientific knowledge from all kinds of areas, the actual novel is incredibly dry and uninteresting.
| quote: | | Just open up a literary theory compilation, close your eyes, and point somewhere in the table of contents. |
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| To clarify: I'm talking about what's commonly called "critical theory," Derrida and Foucault and their many acolytes, not the works of fiction that sometimes get called "postmodern." |
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| SYSTEM-J |
Oh, I'd agree with that, although it's a strange comparison between theoretical/philosophical writing and prose fiction. To be honest, most philosophical writing is ungainly and needlessly bombastic, whatever era it's from. It has intensified as the years have gone on because that kind of writing is endlessly referential. A paragraph of Derrida will contain about a dozen terms borrowed from semiotics, philosophy or other critical theory, and each one of those terms encapsulates an entire intellectual concept or theory. If you've had an expensive education and access to a good library it becomes much more readable.
Postmodern literature is generally very easy to read, in my experience, and often very funny and playful. |
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