From: rmr@acsu.buffalo.edu (Richard M. Romanowski)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc
Subject: Re: (so-called) Diamond-Hard SF
Date: 19 Nov 92 08:50:57 GMT
Organization: UB

mike@AUDREY.LMF.ORG (Mike Kring) writes:

>I'm very new to this group, but in SF-LOVERS DIGEST Volume 17 : Issue 614

>szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>I second this, and go further.  Characters and plot are the exemplar
>>components of mundane fiction.  I do not care to see them at all, unless
>>they are important to the technology or to the artistry of the story and
>>almost always these days the artistry of the story is defecated upon by the
>>introduction of mundane characters or plot elements, polluting the
>>potentially fertile vast tracts of the SF landscape with the toxic reek of
>>an inferiority complex to mundane genres.

>This is a joke, right? 

	Well, no, I can agree with part of this.  Human beings are not
like characters:  characters should be as close to life as possible.
Heavy-handed exposition and cliches that happen in fiction but not in real
life should be deleted. Sure.  But there are some kinds of art that ARE
realistic.  And those can stay.  But anybody who talks about defecation
like that probably has a really bad self-image and wishes, deep down,
that he was a robot or at least a replicant.  Hey.,  Don't feel bad.
I wish that sometimes too.  And then I see really stunning women, and then
I'm ok again.  Well ... I don't want to be mechanical, at least....


>szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) continues:
>>For example: a poetic description of weird, original psychoactive effects
>>of a genetically engineered aphrodisiac would be quite interesting.  The
>>mere unaugmented desire of character X to take character Y to bed I could
>>read about in other genres, or live out in real life myself for that
>>matter, which is quite preferable to the fiction.  In good diamond-hard SF,
>>mundane characterization or plot movement is edited out, right along with
>>the bad grammar, violations of the laws of physics, cliched ideas,
>>engineering illiteracy, economic illiteracy, and other crap that we should
>>not have to put up with.

>Uh-huh.  I guess "Doc" Smith need not apply, since all he ever did was violate
>the laws of physics about once every paragraph or so.

	"Doc" Smith was a silly wanker.  
	He was not sci-fi.  He was action-adventure.  It's not a 
dishonorable genre ... but ERBurroughs, while primarily action-adventure,
did some decent sci-fi and social commentary.  

	I rather agree with the stream-of-consciousness freaks that
stories should not have plot.  Life doesn't have a plot.  Life is a 
great big mess.  Life does not have chapters, etc.  Life is fragmentary

and confusing, and to the extent that fiction is chiched, it is removed
from that.  The trick is that a story can have structure, but still 
follow so close to life that if you suspend your disbelief you can't 
notice.  


>szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) continues:
>>[paragraph deleted]
>>
>>Diamond-hard SF should be free from techno-cliches like space stations,
>>O'Neill space colonies, lunar bases, AIs, humanoid aliens, etc. unless they
>>are done in a radically different, interesting way.  Sadly, most SF has
>>been polluted with either cliched styles from mundane writing style or
>>cliched settings from techno-religions, and as a result, most of what could
>>be the best genre on the planet _reeks_.  Our task: to find the gems in the
>>manure pile.

>Maybe it's just me, but this entire screed seems a bit too, ummmm, "over-the
>top" to be real.  Do the people in this group play these subtle put-ons often?

	Unfortunately, this guy cuts his lifeline here.  Scifi should be
MUST BE realistic.  But there is AI in real life.  It's crude, but it's
there, baby, and sorry if the chiches havge ruined your image of it, but
it's not going to go away because a lot of bad stories have been written

about it.  Yes, cliche is awful.  Yes, the people who write it should be
incinerated.  But those cliches affect how tech and science work HERE
and NOW.  Everything that we build is a dream first, and our dreams are

shaped by scifi.  Someday there WILL be a space station, and when there 
is, it will have been shaped by the ideas of scifi writers.  Sorry.
The only thing we can do about it is write good fiction and do good
science.  Hard work, but worth it.


>>* Who out there like me reads SF for its original tech and prose, not for
>>  the blather of "character development" and "plot" that can be found in
>>  mundance forms of fiction?

>This *IS* a joke, right?

	No, it's not, and about forty-percent of his attitude deserves
consideration.  Plot is silly and can be left by the roadside if the

story can survive without it.  Unfortunately, this is hard.  I've
written some pure action pieces without character or plot.  They tend
to be violent and short, but the stream-of-consciousness boys sometimes
write huge messes of id-wallowing that no rational person can be 
persuaded to read.  Check out William S. Burroughs.  He'll give ten
pages without one coherent idea, just flashing images of various 
random junk at the reader.  

	The writer who does not characterize (IMHO) denies the validity
of human identity.  Think about Hawthorne.  His characters are flat,
because they are moral archetypes.  He denies individual identity.  He
denies that any human has any real individuality.  I like doing this
to show the reader that in fact he is just a behavioristic bunch of
reflexes and inhibitions who could and should slash his meaningless
wrists and leave the planet that much less overpopulated.  Note that
Jerzy Kosinski DID this  -- well, he used a bag to suffocate himself.
Hooray!  Otherwise someone with taste would have been obliged to douse him
in kerosene up to the waist and burn him slowly.

KOSINSKI:  This is a _Satanic_Verses_ kind of thing, right?  It's
because I'm rebellious and blasphemous, right?

VIGILANTE:  No, you're just a shitty writer! 

	Likewise, if you deny plot, you deny that life has meaning or
purpose.  This is good for horror stories, because you demoralize the
reader, and contributes to atmosphere.  BUT you have to keep the reader
hooked, and stories without plot are not very compelling.  If there
is no purpose, why not fuck it and go watch TV ?  Flipping through
the channels will provide more stability.

	I try to strike a balance between horrifying lack of structure
and compellig plot.  Any comments?