Warning, you pushed one of her oldest buttons, and she rejoices!
HEAR, HEAR! She stands up at her computer and cheers.
Actually, you know, I remember arguing these same points back in the seventies, when there were just all the rabid Trekkies to cope with.
Somewhere around 1975, or maybe it was a little earlier, all the science seemed to go out of science fiction. I've been mourning its loss ever since. Now and then comes along someone who knows their stuff, like Greg Bear, but its rare. Really rare.
As for why this is... here, I'll tell you a story. I swear to all the ghods of space and time, THIS REALLY HAPPENED.
I write science fiction. I mean, I write science fiction. I've been writing AI code longer than most of the people I know have been alive. I have a Ph.D. in animal behavior and also degrees in genetics and biopsychology, so I know my stuff, or, especially in the case of genetics, I did at the time. It's gone on ahead without me lately.
I'm one of those writers you mention who writes the universe before writing the story. I can tell you in great detail minute things about satamuri "hormones" and how they work. I know the birthdays, addresses... well, you get the idea.
Back in the 1970's, 1974 I think this happened, I was trying to sell my stories. I don't remember if it was Analog or Amazing I approached at the time, but I met one of the staffers at a convention in New York City, and asked, "What about my story?"
"Well, we like the concept," the guy said, "but we won't publish it unless you change the lead character. He can't be an android. We're trying to appeal to women now, and women won't read anything that doesn't have a love interest in it."
(Sit down. It gets better!)
I'd been hearing things like this for months and I'd had enough at this point. I picked up the hem of my shirt and pulled it up to my shoulders. "What the {shocking bad word} do you think THESE are?!" I roared (much to the delight of many lookers on). "And I WROTE the damn thing!"
His reply?
"Well, you're different."
Hell, yeah, I'm different!
Well, that was the end of me trying to sell my stories. Now I just write them because I enjoy it... or rather, I enjoy the research that goes into some of them.
The trouble is that books are published not because they're good, but because they'll appeal to a wide audience. The wider the better. And even back in the seventies, people weren't studying science anymore, not in nearly the numbers they used to. Science was for nerds and other low-lifes. I think it's even worse now.
I never got into Star Trek like many of the people I knew because I always found it appalling that the "science" in Star Trek was twenty years behind the times. But I did talk to a lot of people connected with it and one thing became clear; it was easier to talk to people about "popular" science--things that, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, had an old, familiar, "sciency-ness,"--than to try to explain to them how something really worked. They didn't want to know. (And the proof of that was what came in Galaxy magazine's slush pile, which I was reading at the time. There were a lot of high-school science teachers crying themelves to sleep.)
But hey, if you find some good, new science fiction with some real science in it, PLEASE let me know!
HEAR, HEAR!!!
HEAR, HEAR! She stands up at her computer and cheers.
Actually, you know, I remember arguing these same points back in the seventies, when there were just all the rabid Trekkies to cope with.
Somewhere around 1975, or maybe it was a little earlier, all the science seemed to go out of science fiction. I've been mourning its loss ever since. Now and then comes along someone who knows their stuff, like Greg Bear, but its rare. Really rare.
As for why this is... here, I'll tell you a story. I swear to all the ghods of space and time, THIS REALLY HAPPENED.
I write science fiction. I mean, I write science fiction. I've been writing AI code longer than most of the people I know have been alive. I have a Ph.D. in animal behavior and also degrees in genetics and biopsychology, so I know my stuff, or, especially in the case of genetics, I did at the time. It's gone on ahead without me lately.
I'm one of those writers you mention who writes the universe before writing the story. I can tell you in great detail minute things about satamuri "hormones" and how they work. I know the birthdays, addresses... well, you get the idea.
Back in the 1970's, 1974 I think this happened, I was trying to sell my stories. I don't remember if it was Analog or Amazing I approached at the time, but I met one of the staffers at a convention in New York City, and asked, "What about my story?"
"Well, we like the concept," the guy said, "but we won't publish it unless you change the lead character. He can't be an android. We're trying to appeal to women now, and women won't read anything that doesn't have a love interest in it."
(Sit down. It gets better!)
I'd been hearing things like this for months and I'd had enough at this point. I picked up the hem of my shirt and pulled it up to my shoulders. "What the {shocking bad word} do you think THESE are?!" I roared (much to the delight of many lookers on). "And I WROTE the damn thing!"
His reply?
"Well, you're different."
Hell, yeah, I'm different!
Well, that was the end of me trying to sell my stories. Now I just write them because I enjoy it... or rather, I enjoy the research that goes into some of them.
The trouble is that books are published not because they're good, but because they'll appeal to a wide audience. The wider the better. And even back in the seventies, people weren't studying science anymore, not in nearly the numbers they used to. Science was for nerds and other low-lifes. I think it's even worse now.
I never got into Star Trek like many of the people I knew because I always found it appalling that the "science" in Star Trek was twenty years behind the times. But I did talk to a lot of people connected with it and one thing became clear; it was easier to talk to people about "popular" science--things that, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, had an old, familiar, "sciency-ness,"--than to try to explain to them how something really worked. They didn't want to know. (And the proof of that was what came in Galaxy magazine's slush pile, which I was reading at the time. There were a lot of high-school science teachers crying themelves to sleep.)
But hey, if you find some good, new science fiction with some real science in it, PLEASE let me know!
Hear, hear!