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.
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Replying to
Even generously interpreted as speculative fiction, the speculation didn’t really play a serious role
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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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