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.
Conversation
Even generously interpreted as speculative fiction, the speculation didn’t really play a serious role
1
9
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
2
3
15
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”
Replying to
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.
3
20
Central certainty + no curiosity = guaranteed bad story
Central curiosity + marginal certainties = shot at being good
1
13
Replying to
"Hard scifi" often isn't much more plausible than "soft scifi". I was constantly frustrated reading "Three Body Problem" because it went on for pages about technical details on human-powered computers full of horrible design decisions and ignored blatant synchronization problems.
1
1


