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I think it's a cyberpunk thing. There's all this action, and it is fascinating and absorbing. It's all leading up to some major reveal and then -- the reveal is
by geophile 3y ago
I think it's a cyberpunk thing. There's all this action, and it is fascinating and absorbing. It's all leading up to some major reveal and then -- the reveal is disappointing.
There is the concept of a MacGuffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin. It's the thing that sets a story in motion, but is actually irrelevant, beside the point. Like the Maltese Falcon in The Maltese Falcon. The important point is something else entirely, usually about human nature.
What The Diamond Age, and much cyberpunk do, is introduce the MacGuffin, but then they stick with it, forgetting that the MacGuffin is just a plot device. They mistake the plot device for the plot itself, like the whole point is to retrieve The Maltese Falcon. The MacGuffin is a point from which the story takes off, not the point of the story.
- the__alchemist 3y agoSevenEves has a canonical MacGuffin, in its first sentence.
- bombcar 3y agoThe best sci-fi stories are ones that you could relatively easily translate to fantasy, or even just "normal world" - because it is extremely difficult to write an engaging story that is "only the MacGuffin" - it can be done, but it is quite hard (and often appeals to a particular niche audience).
- JieJie 3y agoDo you think, perhaps, that the Harry Potter series and its' Horcruxes is an example of a MacGuffin that worked?
- hutzlibu 3y agoSince I read all of the books, but forgot what a Horcrux even is, I don't think so. Because I would not have had forgotten the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. A central element that gets referenced often. I don't know if Harry Potter has a MacGuffin at all, maybe the wands and magic in itself?
- bombcar 3y agoIt had a few of them, more or less, but they're all basically just "quest items" and less "pure" MacGuffins- the philosopher's stone in the first book, for example.
- yongjik 3y agoI don't think Horcruxes count - it's introduced way later in the series where we're already very deeply invested in all the characters, and instead of disappearing, it becomes the center of the attention for the rest of the series. So, in a sense, I'd call it an anti-MacGuffin.
- rvbissell 3y agoMy favorite MacGuffin of all time was the one in _The_Amazing_World_of_Gumball_ (S5E27, "The Menu")