5 ms·
Most "SciFi" on the shelves is just setting. Which frankly, is the way it should be. To a certain kind of person reading about how the whatever warp drive works
by sircastor 3y ago
Most "SciFi" on the shelves is just setting. Which frankly, is the way it should be. To a certain kind of person reading about how the whatever warp drive works is really interesting, but story-telling is about people.
One thing that stuck with me for many years is Joss Whedon saying that the Serenity flies at the speed of the plot. It's more important to understand how people interact in situations than it is to know how fast the ship can go. It can either get there with plenty of time, just in time, or we can't make it - and how that affects the people.
- Veuxdo 3y agoI think the issue is that the sci-fi "setting" has to be materially different than the modern world, otherwise you get the "____ in space" effect. This isn't an issue with historical settings, like the wild West or medieval Europe, since the differences are baked-in.
- sircastor 3y agoOnly sort-of. One of my favorite series has a situation where a terrorist is trying to destroy a wormhole - the only practical route for one particular planet to the rest of the galaxy. While the analogy is imperfect, it's basically permanently filling the only narrow channel that a ship can get through to the outside world. It's burning the bridge to the outside world. The Wormhole part of it is immaterial. Consider that a lot of the best Star Trek stories are merely allegory for our own struggles. Some of them are pretty thinly veiled (The half-black-half-white people hate the half-white-half-black people) but even a kid can pierce that veil and understand and say "Oh... racism is stupid" I think the "____ in space" effect is probably more related to poor writing then a specific component of the genre.