Conversation

Mildly pissed after reading a story advertised as “science fiction” that literally had no fictional science premise to it. It was just a bad regular story set in the future with a couple of cosmetic props with no plot use. This is bullshit. Don’t do this.
I’ve tried to read some recent emerging stuff, but it’s tiresome how speculative fiction seems to have been taken over by a narrow kind of wishful ideological pseudo-speculation that displays no real curiosity, only crude moral conceits Very depressing
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I almost think hard vs soft scifi is a useless distinction. There’s only curious and incurious. Often the answer to “what was the writer curious about when writing this?” is “nothing”
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Bad speculative stories often seem to have a clear answer to “what was the writer convinced about from the beginning” that plays the main role in the story. Making it closer to propaganda. Like Ayn Rand type shit.
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Central certainty + no curiosity = guaranteed bad story Central curiosity + marginal certainties = shot at being good
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Replying to
Can't recall where I read it now, but in the pulp era there were claims that some "sci-fi" stories took old cowboy stories and replaced "revolvers" with "lasers". Obviously not as easy as that but the idea was the same, props over theme.
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