From: Adamsc@io-online.com (Adamsc)
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 22:32:29 -0800 (PST)
To: "tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Why I Don't Read SF Much Anymore
Message-ID: <19961122063012375.AAA217@rn37.io-online.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Thu, 21 Nov 1996 00:14:49 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

>On the issue of why many of us don't read as much SF as we once did...

>1. I'm a lot older. The stuff that I thought was really great back when I
>was 14-22, or so, and even "pretty good" until I was about 25 or so, now
>really looks like dreck. (Not all of it, but more than I thought was dreck
>at the time.)

>Partly this is age and life experience, partly just increased sophistication.

Remember Sturgen's (sp?) law: 90% of everything is crap -  I think most of
us just take awhile before we agree.  The SF genre could be characterized by
a couple diamonds buried in a manure pit...

>(Vernor V. claimed to a friend of mine that the day he spent talking to
>several of us was the most fruitful day he'd spent in a long time...I take
>this as evidence that folks like us are to the new generation of SF writers
>what folks like members of the British Interplanetary Society were to
>writers of past generations.)

I'd agree 100%.  A community as small as the SF writers *needs* outside
influence.  Must be neat, though, to read a book and go "I *did* that!"

>(Interestingly, Eric Drexler says he cannot enjoy it because Simmons does
>not give nanotechnology a central enough role. This echoes the point Duncan

nanotech (and other things) can spoil a good story by making things too
easy.  Take most (all?) of Forward's books - great ideas, but it reads like
a press release.

>- Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." A good fictional exploration of online
>anony mity. In many ways, Cypherpunks was explicity a kind of combination
>of "Ender's Game," "True Names," "The Shockwave Rider," and "Atlas
>Shrugged."

I think those books are partly responsible for getting a great many people
interested in this sort of thing...

>- and of course Heinlein, though his best stuff is 30-45 years old now

Always a mark of a great SF author: his stuff is still good even if the
science is outdated...   Ditto EE smith - it's funny, when you read things
like the lensmen series it seems cliched until you realize it *is* cliched -
because so many others copied him.

#  Chris Adams  <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp
#  <cadams@acucobol.com>                 | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY"
"That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them."
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