4 ms·

Honestly, that sounds great to me. I often feel as though a lot of SF forces some sort of human-interest piece into what the author really wants to do, which is

Honestly, that sounds great to me. I often feel as though a lot of SF forces some sort of human-interest piece into what the author really wants to do, which is world building. Skipping the love story sounds appealing, like skipping the opening vinette that every journalist thinks is necessary before daring to mention a statistic.

maxerickson 7y ago
It's not a lot of material, check it out. Characters add quite a bit to world building though. "a lot of SF forces some sort of human-interest piece into what the author really wants to do" I think many authors want the world to serve the perspectives they want to communicate and examine, so if it doesn't work, they just aren't accomplishing that.
UweSchmidt 7y ago
You might like "The Wandering Earth" by Cixin Liu. Very little "story", but a fast paced, coherent sci-fi trip!
bowlich 7y ago
I collect role-playing campaign settings for this very reason. I love just reading through long geographies of made up worlds. Pouring over the maps. Imagining the geopolitical landscapes or how the alternative histories or technologies might function in that world. I don't actually play role-playing games at all anymore. But it's an entire genre of work (made up geographies, bestiaries, etc.) that isn't really served outside of games very much.
- n4r9 7y ago
  There's a niche for a completely new type of fiction on the Internet. Creating a world through a wiki style website. Readers explore by searching for phrases or following hyperlinks instead of going linearly from start to beginning. I've spent hours at a time reading things like the star wars wiki, Depp diving to solve my own questions like "where did the sith originally come from?" or "can you have a black lightsaber?"
  - shard 7y ago
    For me, the SCP Foundation (http://www.scp-wiki.net http://www.scp-wiki.net) gives that kind of feel, with different cases linking to one another. (SCP Foundation is a collective storytelling wiki about an organization that deals with the strange, mysterious, and horrifying.)
mattlutze 7y ago
One of the hallmarks of science fiction is building metaphors about the human condition and cultural phenomena in the world that the author creates. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017723690 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017723690 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244017723690 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/215824401772369... https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1339122 https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1339122 https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/5/ https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/5/
- jessriedel 7y ago
  That doesn't make it a good idea.

maxerickson 7y ago

It's not a lot of material, check it out. Characters add quite a bit to world building though. "a lot of SF forces some sort of human-interest piece into what the author really wants to do" I think many authors want the world to serve the perspectives they want to communicate and examine, so if it doesn't work, they just aren't accomplishing that.

UweSchmidt 7y ago

You might like "The Wandering Earth" by Cixin Liu. Very little "story", but a fast paced, coherent sci-fi trip!

bowlich 7y ago

I collect role-playing campaign settings for this very reason. I love just reading through long geographies of made up worlds. Pouring over the maps. Imagining the geopolitical landscapes or how the alternative histories or technologies might function in that world. I don't actually play role-playing games at all anymore. But it's an entire genre of work (made up geographies, bestiaries, etc.) that isn't really served outside of games very much.

n4r9 7y ago
There's a niche for a completely new type of fiction on the Internet. Creating a world through a wiki style website. Readers explore by searching for phrases or following hyperlinks instead of going linearly from start to beginning. I've spent hours at a time reading things like the star wars wiki, Depp diving to solve my own questions like "where did the sith originally come from?" or "can you have a black lightsaber?"
- shard 7y ago
  For me, the SCP Foundation (http://www.scp-wiki.net http://www.scp-wiki.net) gives that kind of feel, with different cases linking to one another. (SCP Foundation is a collective storytelling wiki about an organization that deals with the strange, mysterious, and horrifying.)

mattlutze 7y ago

One of the hallmarks of science fiction is building metaphors about the human condition and cultural phenomena in the world that the author creates. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017723690 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017723690 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244017723690 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/215824401772369... https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1339122 https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1339122 https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/5/ https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss1/5/

jessriedel 7y ago
That doesn't make it a good idea.