Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
The detective in The Caves of Steel is human. So it's not sci-fi? It's a detective story incidentally set in a world with robots? The same with the Naked Sun.
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CAVES OF STEEL isn't *about* the life of Lije Bailey, it is about the *world* he lives in, its customs, its phobias, its politics. Lije is our viewpoint and entry into that society. The murder mystery is the mechanism he uses to guide us through thst world.
Note how the rest of the books in that "trilogy" focus on other worlds and societies and the detective is again the guide. It's all about the world building.
Nora Roberts' JD ROBB books are focused primarily on the personal life of the detective and on the cases. The setting is just a stage and not the story. Take out the setting and you still have a story and a pretty good one.
Contrast it to Bujold's MOUNTAINS OF MOURNING, where the focus isn't so much on the whodunnit but on the history and culture of the villagers. The setting *is* the heart of the story. Take out the setting and nothing remains.
It's not that hard to figure out.
Edit: BTW, romance SF (as in being about both the ideas and the relationship) is hard to do right but it has been done; Philip Jose Farmer's THE LOVERS, Lois Bujold's A CIVIL CAMPAIGN, and an old obscure book by Donald Barr SPACE RELATIONS. SF mysteries are more common but can be tricky, often the mystery side gets short shrift.