3 ms·

Oh come on Charlie! At any level of abstraction, nothing is new. But stories aren't abstractions; they're fundamentally about people, emotions, and reactions. "

Oh come on Charlie! At any level of abstraction, nothing is new. But stories aren't abstractions; they're fundamentally about people, emotions, and reactions. "Oh geez, another story set in WW2 London," said no-one, ever. Heck, I challenge you: go through all of the Black Mirror episodes and write a story that, rather than emphasizing the worst, most cruel and horrific outcome of the setting, does the opposite. It's not the idea that makes the story, it's the people. It's the emotions. Imagine a close-up on a door-knob. It begins to turn. The door creaks.... What do you feel? Portent? Eagerness? Fear? What about a door-knob turning is unique? It's like human faces. They (mostly) have eyes, a mouth, nose, lips, etc. But a few are extraordinarily nice to look at, even though they really only have those same things. Stories are like that. They've got to have plots, characters, (and in SF) presumptions about the world, but the extraordinary ones don't need a new kind of orifice, a new kind of sensor. They present something extraordinary with the thingies we already have. No-one ever said about a super-model, "Oh her? She's just got eyes and a nose and lips. Nothing new..."

Retric 5y ago
The issue is people get used to repeated stimulus. Trench warfare is about as stressful as things get, yet eventually soldiers would nap and play card games while being shelled. For science fiction you need enough familiarity for people to care without becoming stale. Which generally means copying from other science fiction to the point where people just accept things like planets with uniform weather and ecosystems.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
It's not about newness; it's about things that are obviously wrong when one thinks about it, like space combat being just like WW1 / WW2 naval warfare except with spacecraft. Mr. Stross is musing over whether it's possible to do space opera without omitting the "science" part of "science fiction".
- javajosh 5y ago
  Interesting take, because it read to me like he was enumerating SF ideas in an attempt to not repeat them. Avoiding implausibility is a worthy goal for SF - to do otherwise is to write fantasy in science-fiction clothing.
jhbadger 5y ago
>But stories aren't abstractions; they're fundamentally about people, emotions, and reactions Some stories are. But others, especially SF, are about ideas, not people. There is really no point in setting your story in the future, or in space, or whatever if you are just going to write about people. You can set them in the here and now like most literary fiction does.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Yes. It's easier to understand an idea-world when you have a bunch of familiar archetypes/stereotypes blundering through it. I read an essay a long time ago that said that a more general name for a lot of science/fantasy fiction is "environmental fiction," because science isn't the important part, it's the portrait of an environment. And the way we get to understand this environment is in the ways the characters react to it. If the characters are also confusing or unintelligible, then there's no grounding for the reader. Of course, that's why all of these genre clichés build up - because in a stereotypical Fantasyland that readers will be familiar with, you can write your character drama.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Remember "Wagon Train to the Stars"? Oops, I meant Star Trek!
- javajosh 5y ago
  You're not wrong. Maybe I'm not saying it right. The Black Mirror quip in my original post is along the lines of what I'm trying to say. It's not like there's only one angle to an "uploaded consciousness" ("White Christmas") story, or a "panopticon" ("The Entire History of You") story. It's possible to take any given idea in any number of directions. For example, take (the excellent) "The Expanse". Does the existence of that story mean that all near-future, in-solar-system, politically complex SF is done now? No, of course not! It's like saying that the Beatles "Hear Comes the Sun" was written in D, so now no-one can write in that key anymore. My point is, even if all you see SF as is a vector for new ideas, there's still infinite (well, combinatorial explostion) variation in how that idea plays out. To take one last example: is "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" the last word in the SF meteor-gonna-kill-Earth sub-genre? Heck no! What if there's a robot civilization rooting around in the asteroid belt for resources, and it becomes aware of the threat first, and has to figure out a way to avert the threat (and a sub-faction doesn't want to avert it)? What if you focused on "preppers" on Earth who want to make a sustainable human colony underground? I'm just sayin', even if you're idea driven and not character driven, literally every idea could stand to be treated again.

Retric 5y ago

The issue is people get used to repeated stimulus. Trench warfare is about as stressful as things get, yet eventually soldiers would nap and play card games while being shelled. For science fiction you need enough familiarity for people to care without becoming stale. Which generally means copying from other science fiction to the point where people just accept things like planets with uniform weather and ecosystems.

ThrowawayR2 5y ago

It's not about newness; it's about things that are obviously wrong when one thinks about it, like space combat being just like WW1 / WW2 naval warfare except with spacecraft. Mr. Stross is musing over whether it's possible to do space opera without omitting the "science" part of "science fiction".

javajosh 5y ago
Interesting take, because it read to me like he was enumerating SF ideas in an attempt to not repeat them. Avoiding implausibility is a worthy goal for SF - to do otherwise is to write fantasy in science-fiction clothing.

jhbadger 5y ago

>But stories aren't abstractions; they're fundamentally about people, emotions, and reactions Some stories are. But others, especially SF, are about ideas, not people. There is really no point in setting your story in the future, or in space, or whatever if you are just going to write about people. You can set them in the here and now like most literary fiction does.

pessimizer 5y ago
Yes. It's easier to understand an idea-world when you have a bunch of familiar archetypes/stereotypes blundering through it. I read an essay a long time ago that said that a more general name for a lot of science/fantasy fiction is "environmental fiction," because science isn't the important part, it's the portrait of an environment. And the way we get to understand this environment is in the ways the characters react to it. If the characters are also confusing or unintelligible, then there's no grounding for the reader. Of course, that's why all of these genre clichés build up - because in a stereotypical Fantasyland that readers will be familiar with, you can write your character drama.
WalterBright 5y ago
Remember "Wagon Train to the Stars"? Oops, I meant Star Trek!
javajosh 5y ago
You're not wrong. Maybe I'm not saying it right. The Black Mirror quip in my original post is along the lines of what I'm trying to say. It's not like there's only one angle to an "uploaded consciousness" ("White Christmas") story, or a "panopticon" ("The Entire History of You") story. It's possible to take any given idea in any number of directions. For example, take (the excellent) "The Expanse". Does the existence of that story mean that all near-future, in-solar-system, politically complex SF is done now? No, of course not! It's like saying that the Beatles "Hear Comes the Sun" was written in D, so now no-one can write in that key anymore. My point is, even if all you see SF as is a vector for new ideas, there's still infinite (well, combinatorial explostion) variation in how that idea plays out. To take one last example: is "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" the last word in the SF meteor-gonna-kill-Earth sub-genre? Heck no! What if there's a robot civilization rooting around in the asteroid belt for resources, and it becomes aware of the threat first, and has to figure out a way to avert the threat (and a sub-faction doesn't want to avert it)? What if you focused on "preppers" on Earth who want to make a sustainable human colony underground? I'm just sayin', even if you're idea driven and not character driven, literally every idea could stand to be treated again.