On the Merits of Asking What You Hate (or Love)
Filed Under: SF Business, Speculative Fiction
Jason Stoddard has asked “What do you Hate Most about SF Short Fiction?”. I must say, I was disappointed with the responses. There’s no consistency among the comments, just like there’s no consistency in the tastes of any large, diverse audience. I haven’t gotten to read the Something Awful responses yet, but I am looking forward to seeing if they are more useful to me as a writer than “Put in more robots” and “too much character development” (a comment quickly followed by someone complaining about too little character development).I kind of hoped a pattern would emerge, that we would diagnose the problem that everyone is so sure is there, because of the numbers. We’re like doctors huddled around a comatose patient we believe to be dying because of the monitors, each shouting their own diagnosis. We’ll never come to any kind of conclusion because it’s all a matter of opinion. And you know what? I’m sick of opinion. Give me information, stories, humor, not opinions. Anything but those. Everyone has one, and everyone is always wrong.* As an aggregate. Being sick of opinion probably means I am suffering blog burnout. Anyway–
What I am beginning to hate most about short SF is its incessant need to talk about itself. If I put half as much energy into talking about it and thinking about it, I probably would have gotten a damn novel written by now.
I’m just going to shut up and write now.
*Exceptions made for Nick Mamatas and David Moles.
Leave a Reply