On a related note

[james_davis_nicoll]

What should go on a Top Ten "In retrospect, what the hell were we thinking" list of once-popular SF?

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

You don't need DNA testing to blow holes in the Pak backstory. Bones alone tell the story.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, but DNA evidence is modern and shiny! Bones are musty old science which sometimes speaks ambiguously. Is one bone similar to another because of relatedness, parallel evolution or because the researcher misinterpreted the evidence?

But this is besides the point. The point is to write entertaining stories, or to be entertained by them, and part of that process is the sleights-of-hand that the author uses to hide the holes in the story — and there are always holes — and the readers' tacit compliance. After replaying the video-tape repeatedly for 40 years, of course we don't even see the sleights-of-hand any more, just the coins being dropped, the cards being hidden, the wires and the mirrors.

40 years ago, Niven (and others) wrote stories that entertained that audience, one that hadn't read any Stephen Jay Gould, didn't have any internets, was barely getting used to the idea that Mars and Venus weren't Earth-like planets. And his writing of those stories, and his audience reading them, was part of the process of the audience finding out about those things and now being in the position of pointing out how wrong they were.