Science Fiction versus Space Opera, Part 1/5: Opening Remarks
So three things.
1) I went to Barnes and Noble today because I have a $35 gift card to spend and left feeling extremely discouraged, in part because they didn’t have the one book I was looking for (WP has requested Catholicism for Dummies because he is a darling dear) and mostly because there’s such a narrow selection of books available there. I KNOW there are many more (good) books in the world than what’s represented at B&N (why oh why is the Paranormal Romance section so large), but if it’s not a classic, recent release, or bestseller (the latter two of course are absolutely no recommendation of goodness), it’s not there. I’d rather go to a used bookstore because I know there will be a bigger selection and I can pay a more reasonable $1-5 for a paperback instead of $8. But I also know that I have developed an almost crippling case of new-book wariness. I can never find the YA books y’all talk about, and the ones I do see don’t appeal to me, and as far as “adult” fantasy book/series go I’m never sure where to start and whether or not I’m going to get what I actually want from it.
And there’s a lot a lot a lot of hack writers out there, or mediocre writers with pretty good plots who have churned out book upon book because they keep selling (R.A. Salvatore), but it’s been so long that I’ve had lots of time for pleasure reading that I’m not as open to just taking a bazillion books home from the library and blasting through them, maybe loving one or two and not caring about the rest. I’m going to join the library in Savannah as soon as I get some mail to my name and hopefully that will help-I’ve fallen out of the habit of library-going. Anyway the point was that since I’ve had so little time for reading, I’ve wanted to find books that I know I will enjoy, which are beautifully written, and I have no idea where to start looking. I AM AFRAID TO TRUST.
And the longer I go without reading, the longer I go without writing, because the two feed each other.
Help. (Right now I’m in the mood for a bit of the mythic, I think? Unnamed queens and dragon-fighting heroes. Quarkie, I looked for the Riddlemaster books but haven’t found them yet. I also looked for Curse of the Chalion and they didn’t have it either.)
2) I am reading a book now! It is a book WP gave me to read many many moons ago-the second book in the BattleTech Twilight of the Clans series. I read the first one and absolutely despised it, much to his sadness, but I am enjoying this one more for what it is-I mean, it’s Mike Stackpole, and I loved his X-Wing books, and I recognize a lot of his tropes, and he’s super-heavy-handed on the politics (which is what the book is mostly about, thankfully) so it’s not the most subtle thing, but I’m getting invested in seeing the femme fatale destroy her political opponents (hint: she is one of the villains, so the likelihood of this is zero), and at least it’s not the first book.
(Other reasons to enjoy this book-the events of the first one finally got mentioned in this one, and these people correctly interpreted those events as “disgruntled man got manipulated by undercover agent who stirred up his disgruntledness into betraying his entire people for the sake of getting some command back,” unlike the first book, which seemed convinced that what he was doing was intelligent and honorable. Disgruntled man was an idiot.)
3) This leads me into what was going to be a comment on beth_shulman’s journal and is getting too long and is probably going to keep being long so, here you go. She was talking about not liking science fiction, and then Quark commented about having no idea where to start in science fiction (like me and all books it seems these days), and so I was like okay look guys I think we need to do some redefining.
REPLYING TO THIS BECAUSE why make my own comment when I can just piggyback off Quark.
So first I think what we have to do is make a difference between "science fiction" and "space opera" because the two are different things. The original Star Trek generally falls into the former while Star Wars is squarely in the latter. I mean yes in recent years books have come out with schematics of SW ships and the like, but my parents have old from-the-seventies books of Trekkies trying to work out the actual science of warp drive. People are Star Wars fans for the Force, the story, the epic battles; people are Star Trek fans for the technology and the struggle with big questions and ideas and the limits of humanity.
(also I am having SO MANY IDEAS brb jotting things down)
(oh boy settle in for the long run. This sucker is almost ten whole pages in Word, FYI.)
Disclaimer: Keep in mind that I have been meaning, for years, to do a more academic exploration of this, beginning with just reading everything in terms of the development of sci-fi. I own a few mid-60s copies of a couple of the Science Fiction & Fantasy-type magazines (I bought one that has the last installment of Dragonrider by Anne McCaffery--until then I had no idea that the book made its debut in serialized form) and I've read several short stories, but I'm woefully lacking on Asimov and Anthony and Clarke and pre-sex-with-myself Heinlein and the like. For years I considered myself a sci-fi fan just because I've read over 100 Star Wars books.
(Halfway through this is occurred to me that sartorias could show up at any time and blow this whole thing to bits with things like “actual knowledge” and “having read all these things”-LET ME KNOW IF I’M ON THE RIGHT TRACK.)
Suggested accompanying music.
Also I don't even remember what the OP was about. I'm just going to go with it now.
So, really, we have two different things going here--"science fiction" and what I'm going to call "space opera." I think most of what people end up reading falls more into the latter than the former.
onto the definitions!
1) I went to Barnes and Noble today because I have a $35 gift card to spend and left feeling extremely discouraged, in part because they didn’t have the one book I was looking for (WP has requested Catholicism for Dummies because he is a darling dear) and mostly because there’s such a narrow selection of books available there. I KNOW there are many more (good) books in the world than what’s represented at B&N (why oh why is the Paranormal Romance section so large), but if it’s not a classic, recent release, or bestseller (the latter two of course are absolutely no recommendation of goodness), it’s not there. I’d rather go to a used bookstore because I know there will be a bigger selection and I can pay a more reasonable $1-5 for a paperback instead of $8. But I also know that I have developed an almost crippling case of new-book wariness. I can never find the YA books y’all talk about, and the ones I do see don’t appeal to me, and as far as “adult” fantasy book/series go I’m never sure where to start and whether or not I’m going to get what I actually want from it.
And there’s a lot a lot a lot of hack writers out there, or mediocre writers with pretty good plots who have churned out book upon book because they keep selling (R.A. Salvatore), but it’s been so long that I’ve had lots of time for pleasure reading that I’m not as open to just taking a bazillion books home from the library and blasting through them, maybe loving one or two and not caring about the rest. I’m going to join the library in Savannah as soon as I get some mail to my name and hopefully that will help-I’ve fallen out of the habit of library-going. Anyway the point was that since I’ve had so little time for reading, I’ve wanted to find books that I know I will enjoy, which are beautifully written, and I have no idea where to start looking. I AM AFRAID TO TRUST.
And the longer I go without reading, the longer I go without writing, because the two feed each other.
Help. (Right now I’m in the mood for a bit of the mythic, I think? Unnamed queens and dragon-fighting heroes. Quarkie, I looked for the Riddlemaster books but haven’t found them yet. I also looked for Curse of the Chalion and they didn’t have it either.)
2) I am reading a book now! It is a book WP gave me to read many many moons ago-the second book in the BattleTech Twilight of the Clans series. I read the first one and absolutely despised it, much to his sadness, but I am enjoying this one more for what it is-I mean, it’s Mike Stackpole, and I loved his X-Wing books, and I recognize a lot of his tropes, and he’s super-heavy-handed on the politics (which is what the book is mostly about, thankfully) so it’s not the most subtle thing, but I’m getting invested in seeing the femme fatale destroy her political opponents (hint: she is one of the villains, so the likelihood of this is zero), and at least it’s not the first book.
(Other reasons to enjoy this book-the events of the first one finally got mentioned in this one, and these people correctly interpreted those events as “disgruntled man got manipulated by undercover agent who stirred up his disgruntledness into betraying his entire people for the sake of getting some command back,” unlike the first book, which seemed convinced that what he was doing was intelligent and honorable. Disgruntled man was an idiot.)
3) This leads me into what was going to be a comment on beth_shulman’s journal and is getting too long and is probably going to keep being long so, here you go. She was talking about not liking science fiction, and then Quark commented about having no idea where to start in science fiction (like me and all books it seems these days), and so I was like okay look guys I think we need to do some redefining.
REPLYING TO THIS BECAUSE why make my own comment when I can just piggyback off Quark.
So first I think what we have to do is make a difference between "science fiction" and "space opera" because the two are different things. The original Star Trek generally falls into the former while Star Wars is squarely in the latter. I mean yes in recent years books have come out with schematics of SW ships and the like, but my parents have old from-the-seventies books of Trekkies trying to work out the actual science of warp drive. People are Star Wars fans for the Force, the story, the epic battles; people are Star Trek fans for the technology and the struggle with big questions and ideas and the limits of humanity.
(also I am having SO MANY IDEAS brb jotting things down)
(oh boy settle in for the long run. This sucker is almost ten whole pages in Word, FYI.)
Disclaimer: Keep in mind that I have been meaning, for years, to do a more academic exploration of this, beginning with just reading everything in terms of the development of sci-fi. I own a few mid-60s copies of a couple of the Science Fiction & Fantasy-type magazines (I bought one that has the last installment of Dragonrider by Anne McCaffery--until then I had no idea that the book made its debut in serialized form) and I've read several short stories, but I'm woefully lacking on Asimov and Anthony and Clarke and pre-sex-with-myself Heinlein and the like. For years I considered myself a sci-fi fan just because I've read over 100 Star Wars books.
(Halfway through this is occurred to me that sartorias could show up at any time and blow this whole thing to bits with things like “actual knowledge” and “having read all these things”-LET ME KNOW IF I’M ON THE RIGHT TRACK.)
Suggested accompanying music.
Also I don't even remember what the OP was about. I'm just going to go with it now.
So, really, we have two different things going here--"science fiction" and what I'm going to call "space opera." I think most of what people end up reading falls more into the latter than the former.
onto the definitions!