Why are science fiction and fantasy books so crappy?

buttocks lovingly rendered

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schilds-Ladder-Gollancz-S-F-Greg/dp/0575081112/ref=pd_sim_b_2/202-7650890-9767033

turned up yesterday, one of that series mentioned above that i largely bought for the covers. they are nicely done (i got fairyland as well, both half price), slightly odd looking without the titles on the front and tactile as well, nicely textured. plus the above glows in the dark!

Sticking this here b/c i don't know where else to put them:

Dan Simmons posting a short story three years ago about how all them dirty muslims were gunna kill us all

AND!

Anne McCaffrey's comment on how she knew this one guy who was raped with a tent peg and how this forced him to start acting totally nelly and all gay n' shit

christ why are so many sf authors reactionary dipshits?

Because of the Uncle Orson formula

1: Be reactionary asshole
2: ???
3: ENDER'S GAME HUGE SUCCESS

back to the original question:
cause they tend more topwards the plot, less towards the depth or uniqueness.
and because most of them are so unrealistic they become stupid

christ why are so many sf authors reactionary dipshits?

With a couple of few exceptions, the genre itself is still stuck in the Campbell/Heinlein 1940s and 1950s and the readers have balkanized their own political naivety. Most Simmons/McCaffery fans aren't at risk of reading Stanislaw Lem.

But they might read China Mieville and Charlie Stross.

But they might read China Mieville and Charlie Stross.

Totally subjective, but I kinda doubt that. Cult writers that don't merit sufficient shelf space in the Mass-Market Book Conglomerate of choice.

More to the point, hasn't the pool of potential SF readers abandoned the field for comics these days?

Anyway it certainly seems like the best SF these days is in comics.

With a few exceptions, hasn't the entire mainstream SF field now become an exercise in cargo cultism? It's like everything regressed back to libertarian reactionary era that promised moon colonies, jet packs, and basement-portable home nuclear reactors. Since none of that ever happened, the fans have gone into retreat.

Fuck, as much as I mourn J.G. Ballard I really really wish Thomas Disch and John Brunner were still around.

Who are these mainstream SF authors? I don't know about them but I know what I like - Reynolds, Banks, Egan, Bear... I guess they're mostly hard sf which is probably not mainstream?

Isn't Anne McCaffrey a big lesbo herself?? I heard this from an Irish person, someone's mum who knew blah blah. It made sense at the time, but it doesn't make her comments make any sense at all.

Being a lesbian doesn't mean you have to know what you're talking about.

I mean, perhaps Ms. McCaffery is not actually a lesbian but was actually just raped with a tent peg and got confused.

No, but being gay would imply that you might not be abjectly stupid about the subject -- or at least at lower levels than an older STRAIGHT person under the same environmental pressures. Too much to ask, I guess.

Who needs yr jet-packing moon-pods anyway? SF Themes Today:
- the grand, undefined Singularity will come and it will save us all
- the grand, undefined Singularity will come and it will destroy us all
- the grand, undefined Singularity will come and it will be, like, weeiird, man [700 pages of batshit explosions follow, leaving the reader unsure whether everyone was saved or destroyed or entirely imaginary]
- hello we are surfing thee cyberdelik drugspace from our gang-kult squat and the MAN is after us and you wanted a swearier Count Zero / Snowcrash set in the grimy edgy not-far-from-now while still ignoring 20 years of actual technological development, yes?
- never mind all that boring plot stuff, here's some rampant inter-species shagging between every possible subset of characters and a few items that yr retrograde 21st century minds expect to be inanimate but turn out to be made of, like, writhing psychic fish-worms. wooo!

Lock thread.

I think science fiction is a great idea, but why isn't genre fiction integrated into other literature? It's like these people read nothing else. I know only a little of science fiction from my childhood, I liked the genre, but when the same people read the same books, you're not selling the genre to a wider audience.

Oh boy.

The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. A thunderstorm was brewing to the
north. Bruise-black clouds silhouetted a forest 0f giant gymnosperms while stratocumulus towered nine kilometers high in a violent sky. Lightning rippled along the horizon. Closer to the ship, occasional vague, reptilian shapes would blunder into the interdiction field, cry out, and then brash away through indigo mists. The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.

How can anyone read this? It's like he wrote it using Mad Libs.

Thanks to a passing spacecadet's summary, I can safely return all of my about-to-be-overdue sci-fi library books today.

brash away through indigo mists

okay what the hell is that from

Presumably one of the Hyperion books.

Building a bit on Elvis T.'s point, the older SF that thrives in the wider imagination is the one that ended up being the most 'real' to that audience. Philip K. Dick has gone from cult-within-a-cult status to being seen as one of the best writers of the time in general in large part because he was able to readily combine gee-whiz stuff with settings that were generally crappy and not good for your health, mental or otherwise -- which rather sounds like where we are right now, in the absence of jet packs and so forth.

How can anyone read this? It's like he wrote it using Mad Libs.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlins first loved livvy.

Now that I like. Which sci-fi writer is that?

more like philip k penis

zing zang zung

I think science fiction is a great idea, but why isn't genre fiction integrated into other literature? It's like these people read nothing else. I know only a little of science fiction from my childhood, I liked the genre, but when the same people read the same books, you're not selling the genre to a wider audience.

&_&

"these people" = me, basically

them nerds i seen onna news

Here's the Amazon list of best selling SF/F: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/25/ref=pd_ts_b_nav

Why is Atlas Shrugged number 6 on this list?

Not to mention that the wider audience has, until recently, rejected anything that smacked even slightly of sci fi. For decades. Which is why a bunch of authors had to publish their "speculative" or "fantastical" works as children's books or borderline young adult lit. Blah blah etc.

One good book out of 25 (maybe 2 if you count Red Mars and 3 if you love Gaiman). Nice job Amazon.

world war z is totally good v. funny reads quickly also lol @ d&d supplementary books this is just for last week i guess????

Anne McCaffrey's comment on how she knew this one guy who was raped with a tent peg and how this forced him to start acting totally nelly and all gay n' shit

this is really weird considering there's some pretty obvious pro-gay stuff in her later work

this is really weird considering there's some pretty obvious pro-gay stuff in her later work

in an unreasonable display of fairness to McCaffrey's stupid statement, stating that getting raped can make someone gay does not automatically mean that one thinks getting raped is the only way someone could be gay or that being gay in and of itself is a bad thing

pretty fucking stupid statement, tho

Stupid is an understatement though! It's bat-shit insane!

I was still in "unreasonable display of fairness" mode.

"It’s a proven fact that a single anal sex experience causes one to be homosexual."

I mean whether you think she's judging homosexuals or that this is the lone cause of male homosexuality is sort of beside the point isn't it when you are saying stuff like this.

lol i need to start working "it's a proven fact" into my conversations more

I've read (it's not a proven fact though) that TWO anal sex experiences can make you DOUBLE gay, but that three can sometimes turn you straight again.

I'm just saying Shakey's logic doesn't follow, ie it's possible to not condemn gay people en masse and still be crazy.

which, you know, is spending way too much time on this but I'd rather have a pointless debate about Anne McCaffrey than rewrite software

only if of those was a negative anal sex experience

xp

Note that the quote's source in the wiki referenced above is just another message board.

Actually I think the second and third have to both be negative, but the studies are kind of inconclusive.

Ooh, I thought this thread was about how sci-fi and fantasy are crappy as genres, and I was ready to bust out the popcorn before thread reading.

I like the question:

"Q: *audible pause* *sounds of paper rustling* But, uh, some people say one experience, especially under the control of outside forces dosen't really make you *emphasis* gay."

someone shouldve asked her if the square root of a negative anal sex experience was pure fantasy