A Meme In The Making

grahamsleight reported his Readercon schedule, which includes a panel titled: "What Do You Believe About Speculative Fiction That You Can't Prove?"

ninebelow took this question and gave his own answer:

Most science fiction is shit. A common, unthinking response to this is to quote Sturgeon's Law as if it actually means anything. This may come as a surprise but it isn't actually a natural law and saying 90% of everything is crap doesn't tell you anything useful. In fact the quality of most science fiction is substantially below the quality of most mainstream fiction - as most of us in the genre ludicrously persist in calling literary mimetic fiction. Of the science fiction novels published in any given year you would be lucky to find one that stood up against a handful of popular, well received mimetic novels.

what I believe about sf but can't prove is almost the direct opposite:

There are many different measures of 'good writing'. What they all actually mean is 'the use of the best, most appropriate techniques for the story being told.' The best techniques for telling a realist story may not be--in fact, are probably unlikely to be--the same as the best techniques for telling an sf story. Consequently, measured by realist standards many sf novels may look like failures (and measured by sf standards, many realist novels may look like failures).

I say all this without denying that the majority of published sf is, indeed, shit, and without denying that the majority of it could indeed do with the wider frame of reference ninebelow wishes for.

So: anyone else want to offer their own answers?

EDIT: And Graham has suggested almost the same argument already.

New BSFA website

The redesigned and much-improved BSFA website is now live. Among other things, you can now join online by paypal. (and so, among other things, make sure you'll receive Matrix and Vector).

Announcements will be made on the BSFA news community, which is copied to the website but which you may want to add to your friendslist anyway. If you're not on lj, the RSS feed for this community is here.

All credit for this redesign goes to tamaranth.

The Girl Detective

I just finished watching the first season of Veronica Mars. Everyone had said, 'oh, it gets much better in the second half of the season'; I'd been enjoying the first half so much that I'd basically ignored them, but they were right. Somewhere around what I guess must have been February sweeps there's a tipping point, and you just have to keep watching. I went through the last, what, eight? Nine? episodes in three days. Five of them today. I haven't had that sort of visceral reaction to a TV show for a while.

And yeah, you get worried, because you think there's no way they can do the setup justice. Answers are always less interesting than questions. And saying 'but this case is an exception!' is always risky, because it raises expectations still further. I know that. And the true test of something like this season of Veronica Mars is whether it stands up to rewatching. But since I'm looking forward to finding out if it passes that test--and I'm pretty sure it will--I don't feel too bad about saying:

I think the first season of Veronica Mars is the best piece of sustained storytelling I've ever seen on television.

It's not my favourite TV show. Not quite. But the plotting, the pacing, the characters, the complexity--they all make for a hugely dense, rich, vibrant, emotionally satisfying, balanced text, one that shuffles an amazing number of plots and characters and ideas on a weekly basis, managing to work in strong single-episode stories while advancing the ongoing plot in a way that no other show I've ever seen has done. It answers the questions it raises, and it does so without feeling either falsely drawn out in the middle or inelegantly rushed towards the end.

I'm not saying it's perfect: there are always niggles. That's part of the fun, after all. But it's really, really hard to believe that season two can match the level they've set here. It's hard to imagine they can come up with a story with as much personal involvement for Veronica, with parts for all the existing characters, without seeming contrived. Plus, the show is no longer new, and nothing is ever as special second time around. But hey, that doesn't matter: this season stands alone. I'll be buying the DVDs as soon as they're available, and I'll be tuning in in September hoping for the best.

In the meantime, two things:

1. Link me! I need reviews, commentary, discussion, and (aside from a few peoples' memories) I don't know where to look.
2. I'll be at the ton on Thursday. Anyone want copies of the pilot? :-)