Sometimes I get frustrated with science fiction books. I love the genre, but not the affectedness with which some authors write in it. As well as being a repository for the most startling new ideas, it can also descend into a place for navel gazing.
I read one such book this week. It explored the politics of an empire through the eyes of one of its citizens. The story was supposed to be an adventure of this main character travelling out to a solar system to discover why the gate had been shut down there. On the face of it, the potential for a great deal of conflict, and action.
We're always told as writers that first person is more immediate, that it brings the reader more closely into the story. But this was the only writer I've known who could use first person in a distancing way. Somehow, the character was narrating the action at a distance, standing back and observing it, even when she was part of it.
This character came over as unemotional, yet she was motivated enough to take sides against a divided ruler. But the worst thing for me was the lack of passion in the story. She did what she did because she was ordered to, by a ruler with such a complete hold on power that to defy her would be impossible. And without the power to act, all a character can do is gaze at their navel.
It's this navel-gazing that irritates me about so much SF work. Every set of submission guidelines I read for an SF magazine always says that they want character-driven stories, they want people doing something with the tech a writer invents. And yet I still see far too much navel-gazing there. Not so much character-driven as character yawn-inducing.
No comments:
Post a Comment