Post by Radrook Admin on May 16, 2021 8:31:11 GMT -5
Nonsense as Science in Hard Science Fiction?
There are two kinds of science fiction, soft and hard. Soft science fiction doesn’t require extensive explanations or proposed explanations about the technology behind what is being proposed,.. In fact, it is very often mixed in with fantasy. In contrast, hard science fiction, as written by Isaac Asimov does. Now, I personally don’t enjoy seeing drama sacrificed for the sake of convoluted meticulous reams of data explaining how the proposed technology emerged in the story’s environment.
I prefer that such very important time in any short story make me feel emotionally involved in caring for the well-being of the main character or characters so that when something serious occurs to the them, I can care by feeling compassion, pity, revulsion, happiness, joy, sadness, anger, or whatever other emotion is elicited via persuasive storytelling. Sure, I will be impressed by the knowledge and the creativity of going into convoluted explanations.
But that is not the reason why readers read Sci Fi. If indeed readers wanted to read such explanations, then they would read a textbook on the subject.
So this antic, constitutes a very unnecessary and very distracting pause in which the author gives the impression of trying to impress the reader with how much he knows on a subject. It’s like the writer were pausing the story to say.
“Hey! Look at me! See how much I know?”
Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to recover any interest in a story after such a hiatus, in fact, it is impossible since the author’s voice comes across so strongly, that the suspension of disbelief is permanently compromised.
Even worse is when a non-scientist writer engages in such an unnecessary and distracting technique. Then the explanations provided are adorned with high-sounding words and phrases in order to camouflage absurdity and ignorance and the whole thing ultimately results in nonsense involving constant repetitions of distracting somehow it came about..., in some way..., and eventually it turned out..., or eventually it seems that..., are used.
In other words, this is tantamount to saying abracadabra! and the reader is urged to mindlessly accept the nonsense explanation as SOMHOW feasible because the author said so. Such frenetic efforts are usually brimming with the repetition of some idiosyncratic phrase that the author thought up during some brainstorm and considered nifty. He will constantly repeat it because he deems it crafty and mesmerizing. In short, once again the author is saying.
“Hey, look at this! Look at me! See how crafty and nifty I am?”
Even worse is that the author is assuming reader ignorance, gullibility and stupidity. That in itself seriously distracts from the story since it is that narrator who is proposing this and in this case the narrator is the writer himself with the same disinterested tongue-in-cheek attitude as always which causes the reader to say:
“Well, here he goes again!”
In the meantime, the drama is virtually non-existence. Main characters are unceremoniously tagged as non-descript, he and she, making them merely cartoons set up to buttress the proposed absurdities. Their relationships seem like afterthoughts that are cleverly attached to the nonsense in a rather unprofessional, weak attempt to appeal to the reader’s empathy.
The terms true-love and infidelity are cunningly included in a feeble effort to hook readers into caring. But the reader has no real reason to give a damn for the outcome one way or the other since these characters one-dimensional, non-descript names and pronouns-nothing more. So the caring becomes weak and generalized emotion. A mere mechanical, knee-jerk, recognition that such things are wrong in a general sort of way.