What would you want and expect from a good science fiction book?

Risu: What would you want and expect from a good science fiction book?
1) what’s an interesting theme?
2) should it be more science or more fiction?
3) would you want to learn interesting/important facts?
4) would you like it to have romance?
5) should it be complicated, but still undertandable or should it be simple?
6) Do you even like science fiction?
Even if it’s science fiction, it’s sceince so it has to have facts, real things that exist not only fction…
7) does it bother you if the information could be right, but it really isn’t?

Tyvm. I love science fiction and i’m just curious. I’m also a writer so i wanna know.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Jeff of the 140 IQ 😉
First and foremost, I want a well-told story. That’s something that just doesn’t seem to exist too much in today’s SF. All the writers and editors are padding the stories to make them the minimum 80,000 words when all they really have is a 40,000 words story. And I want to see something original. Something that makes me think. Something that makes me feel. Today’s SF has become bland and boring.

It should delve into the characters’ personalities and how the science has an effect on them. The best SF is character-driven, not science driven. Have you ever read “The Shortest Science Fiction Story Ever Told”? Can’t remember who wrote it (it is not the one by Forrest J Ackerman). It has two sentences: The last man on earth sits in an empty room. There is a knock at the door.

See how that just fires up the imagination? That’s what SF should do. It should leave the reader wondering and thinking.

Answer by Tarragon
My idea of a good SF books is several things:

1. actual science is a bonus, e.g. Hoyle, or Arthur C Clarke’s story about how he wrote of a geosynchronous satellite and had a visit from NASA, who hadn’t figured out how to do it.

2. Good characters. Real and tangible and preferably a little flawed.

3. A lack of geographic imperative. Some authors draw a map at the start of their book and then invent plot excuses to criss cross the whole damn thing. Give me a break!

4. A sense of spatial awareness, i.e. a point to it all. I started reading EE Doc Smith but once the cardboard characters started zooming around the known universe without rhyme or reason — I shut the book.

Kidnap the girl first, THEN thereby give the hero a reason to jump in the half-finished untested ship in pursuit…

5. Interesting aliens. Try Ursula le Guin’s “Left Hand of Darkness” where the aliens are hermaphrodites and trace their lineage matralineally. That was cool.

6. People who beat the odds, whether that’s Teela Brown or Ender Wiggin (Orson Scott Card) or Gordon R Dickson’s Tactics of Mistake.

7. Complex is fine as long as I can keep up. Helps to have some recurring clues if there is a mystery with a late reveal. That way I know that it doesn’t yet make sense because the reveal is yet to come — not because I missed the resoltuion back in Chapter 3.

8. Romance is fine. Sex is fine. within the right tone. What would really amaze me would be if any of the characters ate, drank, bathed or visited the little alien’s room, because all SF characters seem to have had these organs removed!

9. does it bother me if the info could be, but isn’t right? DAMN STRAIGHT it does. Golly, I would remove a few fingernails with a light sabre if I could find the culprits.

10. One last thing — pls spellcheck the text? There is one S/Fan writer I refuse to buy because his books simply aren’t spellchecked and the grammar is woeful. I pay good money for books, not idiot jottings!! sheesh.

All the best with your writing.

Answer by Kublah Kahn
1) a classic sciencefiction theme is that of the myth of Prometheus. He stole fire from the gods. Stories that include this theme are:
Frankenstein
Space Odessy 2001
The myth of sisyphus
The tower of babel
Blade Runner
ect.
Man defies god by “going too far”
Another great theme would be that of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. A man breaks out of his world that he thought real and sees the real world. But when he returns he is condemned for it. Because people just cant accept the truth. Stories that include this theme are:
Matrix
The three stigmata of palmer eldrich
The myth of the blue flower
ect

Above all theme as to come first in a good science fiction

2) The science in a science fiction is fiction itself. eg. The medotranites in my blood can be combined with marlaks from the planet zinothis to create a power source more powerful then darkmatter. This is what’s so much fun about science fiction. It is magic if it is given by spirits or inherently inside us, this is fantasy. Magic is not really explained. But science fiction is when the magic has a “scientific” explenation.
Because science fiction is firstly about theme the story should be more important then the “science”

3) YES! otherwise it becomes fantasy. But be carefull, you don’t want to bore the audience with things that they dont need to know. Every line in any book should be there to support the story as a whole.

4) Romance is a very general sub-genre in all genres . It’s something that every one can relate to. Don’t dwell to much on it. In many science fiction stories and films the romance is a very very very small part of the film. I personally like the idea of suggesting a romance rather then blatantly telling the story of how the romance plays off. In many science fiction stories you’ll notice that the hero has a greater goal and the romance is holding him back.

Look at the Film Noir idea of a Femme Fatale, they are always fun.

5) It depends who your target audience is really. I like the world to be too complicated for our hero to really understand but through him we understand the essentials. This makes the story infinitly complicated but also in a sense very simple. It then is up to the audience if they want to explore the world further in their own minds or if they only want to know the essentials so they can follow the story. This can make me lie around at night and wonder about the world and it’s rules.

Remember “The easiest way for a man to become boring is to say everything” Voltaire

You need mystery in science fiction.

6) Yea! I love science fiction
What you are talking about is called the “suspension of disbelief”. We tell the audience “This is my world, it is similiar to your world in many ways but it is not your world”

7) No, you are not writing an handbook or encyclopedia. It’s fiction, it’s a story