Re: Terry Pratchett -EOS Alzheimer's

Rowland McDonnell wrote:
Rosemary wrote:

<snip>

The point I'm trying to get at is that using `space or not' as a way
to judge it at all is no good at all.

And you're not reading what I'm writing, That isn't what I've been saying
at all.

<snip>

A story set off Earth needn't involve anything to do with `space' as
such, you know.

Well, yeah, I know that, but I was getting tired of writing the word
space.

I dunno - I'm finding it a bit hard to get my head
round this. You see, we're all `in space' - everything that is just
floats along in the void along with everything else. There's no line
you can draw where you say `This is the border beyond which that
special place called `space' starts' - except in the very parochial
terms of `here be the start of no atmosphere' which does admittedly
mean something for high metabolic rate large multicellular organisms
like us.

Pedant. :-P

<snip>

so when they hear the words they think of
Farscape and Stargate and Star Wars and the space adventure comics
there used to be a lot of,

That covers a big time span, that does. The space adventure comics
died before I was born for the most part.

Yeess...

and Buck Rogers - so starting off by getting AWAY
from space entirely is a good way to change people's preconceptions
and ideas about science fiction. Save the space for later.

But why make the distinction? Surely it'd be far better, rather than
give prescriptions like that, to find out what sort of thing any given
person is looking for/likely to be interested by/whatnot, and then
provide some sort of specific clues as to how to spot the right stuff,
sort of thing.

I thought we were alreasy assuming that the person would be interested in
reading some good science fiction, and it's not easy for people to be
more specific about the kind of thing they want to read until they've
tried a few things. The goal is to get them to read some of the better
stuff so they won't have their prejudices confirmed, and they can
determine their own tastes from there. BTW, my derision of "space-cowboy
***" is no different from your low opinion of recent science fiction. We
may be defining space cowboy *** differently. To me that stuff is
typically very low on ideas, very low on interesting plot, very low on
characterisation, and gives me nothing to think about other than FLY
AROUND SPACE SHOOTING THE ENEMY YAAAYYYY AREN'T WE GREAT AND SO MANLY AND
LOOK AT THAT EXPLOSION.

<snip>

H.G. Wells didn't
sell his stuff as SF either - both authors wrote entertaining fiction
for money, and were fairly canny (more so in Wells's case, I suspect)
about getting it sold. Best off avoiding a niche market, if you think
you can do well outside it - a good general rule, I'd've thought.

Wells called them scientific romances or something, didn't he?

Rosemary

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