Derek Johnson finds little to love in this year's SF movies

[james_davis_nicoll]

WHich is only to be expected because SF movies are generally an even stronger proof of Sturgeon's Law than prose SF and prose SF is mostly forgettable crap. One detail did catch my eye:

You had to prepare yourself for the hate mail you'd receive if you said something even remotely negative about Ender's Game, despite the defensive, shrill tone taken by those who praised it.

This has never happened to me so I will take it as evidence of how experiences can vary widely on the web. I have seen something like that for other authors, though; the Heinleinophiles can be quite irritating in their insistence that everyone join in on the fawning adulation for Heinlein.

Comments

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

I just want it to live up to the standards it claims to have.

Ahhh, see, that's what I would regard as a big mistake. Never expect people to live up to their self-proclaimed standards. They never do. Look at what people do, and learn to appreciate mediocrity - don't listen to what people say about their aspirations for excellence, it will just make you depressed when you compare it to reality. :P

For instance, I expect fantasy to consist mainly of the author geeking out over how cool it would be if he could throw fireballs (and have sex with exotic women after rescuing them from dragons), and I expect science fiction to consist mainly of the author geeking out over how cool it would be if he could upload his consciousness into ten wildly different bodies simultaneously (and have sex with... well, pretty much everyone and everything, really), and both genres deliver entirely according to my expectations. Any claims of writing ZOMG THE LITERATURE OF IDEAS!!!!eleventy!! I have heard so many times and seen so little evidence for that I now ignore them completely.

This isn't to say it's all crap, just that a higher fraction is than in other genres.

Eh, if you say so. I can't say that other genres have impressed me especially with their beautiful prose and in-depth examination of the human condition. Now, the continued-in-the-next-volume thing, that I admit seems to be an affliction mainly suffered by the fantasy genre, yes...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think of it in terms of distributions: there may well be more crap in SF than in other genres, but there is some small fraction of material that I enjoy far more than I do the best of most other genres, so that old random-reward mechanism kicks in.

And I still do make some allowances. For instance, I'm currently belatedly reading Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief, a book Charlie has raved about. It's full of crazy ideas and lovely settings... and all of the characters are either stock pulp-adventure types, or people consciously playing the parts of stock pulp-adventure types (there's the Diabolik-type superthief, the stoic-warrior-race person, the consulting detective, and even a Justice League of masked superheroes), and the plot is like four or five different sets of shadowy puppetmasters engaging in endless backstabbing. Fleshed-out characters with regular human motivations aren't really there. But I'm greatly enjoying it.