Comments on: Speculative Fiction and Me, part 2

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 07:05:57 +0000

I suppose my point was that “science should be the star” applies only to a small subset of SF – for Robert L. Forward, okay, sure, but even Greg Egan has a different focus. It’s perfectly reasonable, if you want to write a story about identity and its transformation (say), to set it in a science-fictional world. This lets you have (say) Iain M. Banks’ incredibly plastic Culture humans, for whom changing physical sex is just a question of wanting to. Lois McMaster Bujold does this; in fact she avoids giving the science too much of a role by sticking to a very standard space-opera setting.

If you *want* to write a story about science, well, that’s fine, but that’s the only time science should be the star of the story.

By: charlieanders

charlieanders — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:11:42 +0000

Hi Anne… Not sure what point you’re making. But yes, there are plenty of amazing women SF writers out there, and both women and men are writing some great character-driven SF. At the same time, the “science should be the star” thing does seem to predominate in some quarters.

I don’t really think of Ellen Kushner as SF, more fantasy.

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:06:39 +0000

There has been some very good character-driven SF lately – Lois McMaster Bujold, Ellen Kushner, Sharon Shinn – so perhaps the boys in your writers’ group were just dreaming of the Buck Rogers days? And, uh, there seems to be room for women writers too.

By: Rachel Edidin

Rachel Edidin — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:18:28 +0000