> One thing I've noticed is that sometimes modern authors are too married to their big ideas, and neglect the rest of the story. IMO that's very far from a new

> One thing I've noticed is that sometimes modern authors are too married to their big ideas, and neglect the rest of the story. IMO that's very far from a new phenomena. Even Tolkien, for all the accolades he got, gets carried away describing absolutely irrelevant stuff that barely anyone cares about (controversial opinion, shoot me, but I know many others love his universe and agree with that take at the same time). To me falling in love with your fantasy / scifi universe is a huge writer sin. It seriously detracts from the quality of the writing and I've noticed this in authors young and old, and super popular and praised ones too. Same goes for Asimov btw... he tries so hard to present you a narrative and/or do some world-building that some (if not most) of this characters end up being extremely simplistic plot devices. They don't feel like living breathing humans at all. Examples abound.