I think I want to talk about science fiction some more.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember the first time I heard the expression \u201cliterary science fiction?\u00a0 But I think it was being used to compare to space opera.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m not well versed in the history and evolution of science fiction past the 1970s.\u00a0 Halfway through that decade I became deeply interested in making a living so I didn\u2019t have the leisure to read all of the books coming out.\u00a0 But what I could tell was some of it didn\u2019t seem to be science fiction.\u00a0 I can remember reading a couple of Samuel R Delaney books and thinking, \u201cThis guy has problems that I\u2019m not interested in.\u201d\u00a0 And so, I decided that literary science fiction was not for me.<\/p>\n
It seemed to me that there should be a middle ground between space opera and Samuel R Delaney.\u00a0 Without a doubt some of the writers from the olden times like Asimov completely eschewed producing characters that sounded and acted like real live human beings.\u00a0 Now granted, we don\u2019t expect to get James Joyce when we pick up a book with a cover illustrated with a half-naked woman in the clutches of a giant lobster.\u00a0 But by the same token once you\u2019ve grown up and have some understanding of what people say and do in real life it would seem to me that an author who wants to make his story interesting would make his people act and speak like \u2026 people!<\/p>\n
So, if you go back and read, for instance, Jack Williamson\u2019s \u201cThe Legion of Space\u201d as an adult you may be amazed at how threadbare the writing seems.\u00a0 The characters are for the most part caricatures of the chivalrous hero battling monsters (literally) to save the damsel in distress.\u00a0 And this is too far in the other direction from literary s-f.\u00a0 Space ships, evil giant intelligent amoebas and space-time tearing secret weapons are great stuff but unless the characters have at least some similarities to actual human beings it\u2019s kind of hard to get the readers to want to finish the story.<\/p>\n
And there is a pretty wide bandwidth between these extremes.\u00a0 Writers like Asimov and Clarke didn\u2019t spend much time on characterization.\u00a0 Hari Seldon and Dave Bowman were thumbnail sketches that barely provided enough description to convince the reader they existed.\u00a0 But these were plot driven stories and as long as their authors would give us anything at all to allow us to pretend that they were people, we could suspend disbelief.<\/p>\n
And Heinlein was able to write dozens of stories that were populated with various flavors and ages of his \u201ccompetent man\u201d whom I guess we were supposed to imagine were stand-ins for Heinlein himself.\u00a0 And there was some humanity on display there.\u00a0 Definitely not James Joyce but voices that were reminiscent of real people (at least somewhat).<\/p>\n
And over the decades, characterization, especially in the hands of female authors (authoresses?) has become the dominant ingredient in literary science fiction.\u00a0 And now it has reached the point where leaving out the science is completely acceptable.\u00a0 Wonder has been replaced by social justice and grievance reckoning.\u00a0 That\u2019s how you end up with something like \u201cThe Handmaid’s Tale\u201d as the exemplar of successful science fiction.<\/p>\n
Well, all of this is very interesting.\u00a0 But there\u2019s nothing like actually trying to write a full-length novel to show someone just how much work it is to balance along that tightrope between too much and too little characterization.\u00a0 And the hardest trick (for me) is getting dialog between a man and a woman to work.\u00a0 I really only have my discussions with Camera Girl as my template.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve known each other for fifty years so it\u2019s almost a pantomime at this point.\u00a0 One- or two-word sentence fragments, facial expressions and gestures gets a lot done at this point.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t translate into character dialog.\u00a0 Nor would I want my protagonist to sound like me.\u00a0 I\u2019m anti-heroic.\u00a0 I\u2019m more like comic relief.<\/p>\n
But it has given me greater respect for good writing, even in other genres.\u00a0 And I think I\u2019m getting a taste for it.\u00a0 It grows on you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think I want to talk about science fiction some more.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember the first time I heard the expression \u201cliterary science fiction?\u00a0 But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2510,1289,1263,4],"tags":[3269,76,1290,265],"class_list":["post-32253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-american-archipelago","tag-fiction-writing","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n