Twenty years on I'm more critical of these books. In the intervening time I've learned to write commercial genre fiction. I've learned how to hook readers in, to shape stories, create narrative drive and cliffhangers. Now if I see rambling beginnings in published novels I don't worry about what they mean, I wonder why the editor didn't tell the writer to cut it out.
I recently read a fabulous book with multi-viewpoints, great pace, and a terrific twist ending, but if I hadn't persevered beyond the first pretentious two pages I would never have discovered that tale. The start of the book was a philosophical ramble about stories being circles, and speculating on where the tale began. The story started about three pages further in, and all that preamble should have been cut.
I've often had the suspicion that established SF authors get away with far more sloppy writing than authors in other genres would. Part of this is because of the 'speculative' part of the genre title. We're speculating on new worlds, new futures, new peoples.
Those worlds, people, and events might well be weird, but the way we write about them shouldn't be, one of my twenty year old how to write SF books makes the point that, the wierder the world, the more straightforward the writing needs to be. If your reader is pitched into the middle of a frightening or confusing world it's our job as writers to provide them with the map that allows them to navigate through it.
In the book I recently read I wonder why the editor didn't tell the writer to cut that beginning. It provided a barrier between me and the story. I was willing to read past it to the treasure beyond, but how many people wouldn't put in that work?
We're always claiming that SF is the forgotten genre, that not enough people read it. So let's make it easy for them. Let's kill the pretentious writing and make the reading easy,
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