Why mjj hates SF, as written by someone else. God *yes* to Heinlein. Not that I share the Miles love either. Twerp. Preferred Curse of Chalion for its sodomitical pirates.
Well, yes. Heinlein was a great 'boy's life' kind of YA author, but otherwise something of a conservative, sexist, pro-military throw-back, especially in his old age. I stopped reading him after the YA stuff.
The thing about that rant is the ranter doesn't really like reading science, so it doesn't seem quite fair as a basis for condeming "hard sciences" science fiction. I wouldn't have expected you to like it either -- I can't imagine you penciling out Niven's ring world physics and mathematics for fun as you read the novel, for example.
Now she's reading stuff that's, I don't know, "social sciences" or political or cultural or something, science fiction, which is really a different animal, but she's still confusing the two. Her comments on space opera display the same problem, Star Wars and Star Trek are space opera for the hard science junky, Miles isn't (leaving aside the twerpiness). (I think she's also confusing future settings with science fiction, which also isn't necessarily true.) LOL! She should have been pointed things like the early non-fantasy McCaffery or Tanith Lee. Or even that one reasonably decent novel by Elgin based on language, which I think was lost to the leaky laundry products.
I think not liking science is a pretty good basis for condemning hard science SF. Novels are about people. The science (or music or math or policis or whatever) is secondary, or should be. Novels that aren't about people- that are about philosophy or logorithms or nifty keen looka this world I made up!- fail in the basic purpose of writing a novel. Write a nonfiction discussion of your philosophy or the wonders of logarithms or the manual to a RP game that's set in your nifty keen world, but don't pretend to be talking about people when you're really talking about something else. That's cheating.
And writers only do it because they know no one will buy their philosophy book or their logarithm book, so they must pretend it's a novel with a story about people, and then they can deceive people into reading it.
"the people in them often seemed like toys who were set up to be played with alongside the spaceships and the science and the sassy alien ladies" is exactly why I don't read (American) male writers. American male writers don't write about people. They write about Me, wonderful Me, and the nasty 2D men who want to do nasty things to wonderful Me only wonderful Me beats them, and then has sex with some 2D Stepford Wife female, and that's their idea of a very satsfying story.
LOL! Well, to me science fiction is about the science, not the people. I'm not disagreeing with the rant, I think it's correct. But it's a bit like my panning Stephen King novels when I loathe horror novels.
they know no one will buy their philosophy book or their logarithm book
Unless they know they are really good at the BS-ing, like the guy who managed to sell this as non-fiction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision
What about CJ Cherryh (http://xsmoonshine.livejournal.com/293029.html)?
From Q, and Wiki, on one of the novels: Powerful female character assasinated, clone inherits harem of two cute boys and political intrigues. Q claims it's full of bishie harassments; but I have no idea whether it's not just a gender reversal thingie of the template you described.
[I did not read Niven's SF things for the physics! (Dyson sphere, whut? /boggles/) I read 'em for the biology. (Oooh, super-intelligent, yam-munching protectors!)]
BS-gold medal and top of the podium, by the looks of it.
Cherryh gives me hives. Dry-eyed as the Gobi Desert. Read some of her fantasy and SF in the 80s and it was all very commendable and heavy-weight, but not fun. Recently mikeneko gave me the book that's vaguely old China-Japan and it read like tapwater. Possibly the point is to undercut the expected heroics, but I haven't read enough heroic fantasy for the undercutting to work.
I think she's one of those '*you* figure out what these people are feeling. I've told you all I intend to' when all she tells you is what her characters do. This makes everyone come off as flat as using a cardboard steretype would. There are no people in her books either, is my feel. Mileage may vary, natch.
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The thing about that rant is the ranter doesn't really like reading science, so it doesn't seem quite fair as a basis for condeming "hard sciences" science fiction. I wouldn't have expected you to like it either -- I can't imagine you penciling out Niven's ring world physics and mathematics for fun as you read the novel, for example.
Now she's reading stuff that's, I don't know, "social sciences" or political or cultural or something, science fiction, which is really a different animal, but she's still confusing the two. Her comments on space opera display the same problem, Star Wars and Star Trek are space opera for the hard science junky, Miles isn't (leaving aside the twerpiness). (I think she's also confusing future settings with science fiction, which also isn't necessarily true.) LOL! She should have been pointed things like the early non-fantasy McCaffery or Tanith Lee. Or even that one reasonably decent novel by Elgin based on language, which I think was lost to the leaky laundry products.
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And writers only do it because they know no one will buy their philosophy book or their logarithm book, so they must pretend it's a novel with a story about people, and then they can deceive people into reading it.
"the people in them often seemed like toys who were set up to be played with alongside the spaceships and the science and the sassy alien ladies" is exactly why I don't read (American) male writers. American male writers don't write about people. They write about Me, wonderful Me, and the nasty 2D men who want to do nasty things to wonderful Me only wonderful Me beats them, and then has sex with some 2D Stepford Wife female, and that's their idea of a very satsfying story.
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Unless they know they are really good at the BS-ing, like the guy who managed to sell this as non-fiction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision
What about CJ Cherryh (http://xsmoonshine.livejournal.com/293029.html)?
From Q, and Wiki, on one of the novels: Powerful female character assasinated, clone inherits harem of two cute boys and political intrigues. Q claims it's full of bishie harassments; but I have no idea whether it's not just a gender reversal thingie of the template you described.
[I did not read Niven's SF things for the physics! (Dyson sphere, whut? /boggles/) I read 'em for the biology. (Oooh, super-intelligent, yam-munching protectors!)]
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Cherryh gives me hives. Dry-eyed as the Gobi Desert. Read some of her fantasy and SF in the 80s and it was all very commendable and heavy-weight, but not fun. Recently
I think she's one of those '*you* figure out what these people are feeling. I've told you all I intend to' when all she tells you is what her characters do. This makes everyone come off as flat as using a cardboard steretype would. There are no people in her books either, is my feel. Mileage may vary, natch.