Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I wasn't attempting to propose Sturgeon's notion as a definition of SF. I just thought it was a useful measuring stick. If you can remove the tropes and still have the story, maybe you aren't writing SF, and should consider removing that window dressing.
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Speaking of tropes, here's an interesting post with illustrations:
http://io9.com/5628989/ten-tropes-yo...and-over-again
Round up the usual suspects, said Claude Rains. One immutable law of science fiction, which is rarely violated, is that SF is disrespected by the academic community, some of whom are anti-science liberal arts majors. If you exam the list of Nobel Prize winners in literature, you will hardly see any major SF writers on the list. Who are the great SF writers? Sturgeon, Dick, Disch, Lafferty, Orwell, to name a few. At least IMHO. The fact that 1984 is regarded as a piece of SF is a technicality to some. But one wonders if that was the reason he was denied a Nobel prize.
http://bookstove.com/book-talk/famou...in-literature/
Which brings up the subject of Doris Lessing. I really cannot comment on her abilities in SF writing, as her works did not catch my interest during my SF reading heyday. Though, honestly, I should do some catching up.
http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/12/nob...12lessing.html
Don't worry, aspiring SF writers. I love your work as much as that of Steinbeck, Melville, etc.