Re:The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
by 7thaccount on Sunday June 22, 2025 @11:56PM
(#44352334)
What sci-fi books are you reading with a "complete lack of adjectives, non-existent metaphors, and middle-school sentence structure"?
Humanity's Fire by Michael Cobley
Lightspeed Trilogy by Ken MacLeod
Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (the first book started off quite well, but the other two became a boring slog)
Rise of the Jain by Neal Asher. This one is just so egregiously bad, I don't know how I managed to finish. If I ever have to read another "erstwhile ship" I'll barf.
etc. etc.
Since I'm reading a lot of sci fi, I've ran out of top 1% or so of books an authors pretty quickly. Now I feel like I'm running out of middle-of-the-road authors, too.
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Edit. I'll add that most sci fi is incapable of even writing characters that have more distinction than "she's a woman, he's a man". They all talk and behave the same.
Re:The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
by 7thaccount on Monday June 23, 2025 @06:34PM
(#44360888)
I liked reading "this is how you lose the time war" recently if you want something that is essentially sci-fi themed poetry. If you haven't already read it, maybe that'll be a fun break.
In recent years I've also enjoyed Too Like The Lightning. It's not sci-fi, but it's complex, and twisted, and the language is used in delightful and brain-breaking ways.
Re:The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
by 7thaccount on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @08:54AM
(#44365683)
I do like the sound of "language used in delightful ways". Too late in life I realized I didn't hate poetry at all ...just the Emily Dickinson kind I was exposed to in highschool. I guess I should've known as I loved Shel Silverstein as a kid.
Re:The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
by easterncalculus on Monday June 23, 2025 @02:55AM
(#44353147)
It's easier to name the ones that don't.
Re:The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
by 7thaccount on Monday June 23, 2025 @06:28PM
(#44360851)
There are thousands upon thousands of science fiction novels. I can't imagine they're all like that.
To do that authors need to very well versed in the sociopolitical realities of 18th century South America, and ancient China, and moden Europe, and... Most modern authors couldn't be bothered to do even basic research. Or can't afford to, because the pay is shit, and the deadlines are tight, and you have to produce a trilogy a year just to survive.
I've read a lot of scifi over the past few years. Most books are bad rehashes of existing ideas written in an extremely poor language (nouns and verbs with complete lack of adjectives and adverbs, poor and nonexistent metaphors, middle-school-level sentence structure etc.)
Fantasy books fare much better because they can easily borrow and steal "sociopolitical realities" and transfer them to pages wholesale.