NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/misc/writing/2728

Text File | 1992-08-30 | 1.9 KB | 48 lines

Newsgroups: misc.writing
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cleveland.Freenet.Edu!bf455
From: [e-mail] (Bonita Kale)
Subject: Re: Science vs. story in SF (Was: World Creation)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 11:33:15 GMT
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References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>


In a previous article, [e-mail] (JOSEPH T CHEW) says:
>
>In another posting, Alan Barclay recommends Larry Niven's Known Space
>Stories as examples of good "hard" SF.  You might start with a specific
>story, "The Soft Weapon" in _N-Space_, as an outstanding example of
>his point about how to use technology -- writing a story such that the
>central conflict exists only because of a speculative element.  In
>this case, it's a modal weapon which our heroes have to use, but which
>they may or may not figure out safely and in time...


Yes, this is one way to use technology.  But what I meant was that it isn't
always necessary to have an -excuse- to set a story in a distant time or
place.

Not that the story can be totally divorced from its setting.  If you work
out the setting carefully, it will affect the story (as, for example, the
slow communications, poor health care, and low position of women in the
early 19th century will affect the plot of your Regency romance).  But this
idea that a story can't be enjoyable unless the plot is -driven- by the
time/place/technology is not true for all readers.

I was responding to the idea I see frequently implied--that if you -can-
make it contemporary, or historical, you -must- do so.  I think the delight
of a future or fantasy setting can be reason in themselves to read and
write speculative fiction.

Bonita Kale