Reading Notes

My feelings toward the SciFi novel genre 

Some of the science fiction writing have interesting ideas, carried within dialogue. But I tire of most SciFi books because the oft repeated pattern is overuse of made-up languages, phony bogus technical jargon to sound cool, and people talking to each other like the author never stepped outside of his room filled with comic books and Saturday morning cartoons.

The reading experience just falls too far short of 'believablity', not because ideas are too far fetched in forward speculation, but because the dialogues between characters gets social interaction so wrong. It is not the future of our present world, or an alternate world with convincing characters. It's just childish lack of experience of how people behave.

People talk at each other like superheroes and super villains. People scoff. People are fools. Arrogance when it comes to revealing one's superior knowledge is the norm. Egos are waved around on the tip of tongues, fighting overt battles for who is the super-character of the story.

Case Study

I'm going to pick on this book, because it prompted me to talk about the genre. Not because this particular SciFi novel is strong offender; it just happened to be the one I came across and took a chance at.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Night Shade Books. 2009.

A SciFi novel about a future where natural crops have failed and radically new genetically modified foods are the last remaining sustainable asset - biological organisms that can mutate into carriers of disease at any moment.

I want to share some of the cliched story elements I notice in the SciFi genre, and refer to them as 'tropes'. See http://tvtropes.org/ for an explanation of the trope concept.

To the geeks who have read and loooove the book: yes, you will probably see all that my characterizations about the book are all wrong, and defend the author to the death. But to these nuisances I employ a Laser Death Beam 4000 (scoff, no such thing can be invented. fool!) or I can distract them with a hypothetical argument about who would win in a battle: Superman or Batman (laugh. It's so easy to see who would win!)

The stupid boss trope

Superiors accuse and blame. Subordinates rebel and retort.

'

"You should have informed us when you first saw the nightshades... They're obviously sitting on top of a seedbank, and yet we heard nothing from you."

"Not my department. I do energy storage. Not production."

Anderson snorted. "Where are you going to get the calories to wind your fancy kink-springs if a crop fails? Blister rust is mutating every three seasons now. Recreational generippers are hacking into our designs for TotalNutrient Wheat and SoyPRO. Our last strain of HiGro Corn only beat weevil predation by sixty percent, and now we suddenly hear you're sitting on top of a genetic gold mine. People are starving -"

Yates laughed. "Don't talk to me about saving lives. I saw what happened with the seedbank in Finland."

"We weren't the ones who blew the vaults. No one knew the Finns were such fanatics."

"Any fool on the street could have anticipated..."

"It wasn't my operation."

Yates laughed again....

'

And it goes on like a JapAnime battle of wits. Hawhawhawhaw! I am supreme intelligence man! No, you are not - I am! You are fool! Hawhawhawhaw!

And eventually there's a big brew-ha-ha where the boss is to be publicly demonstrated to be the fool, which we all knew from the first moment he is introduced. The equally bigoted, but undervalued subordinate hero is praised for his haughty geekiness. Statues are raised, earths are saved, robot sex is had and greasy pimply foreheads shine on for another day.

Okay, so Anderson is not actually a Boss character, he's the geek hero. But I stand by my mis-identification 'cause whatever roles these characters are playing, they're scoffing at each other with greasy geeky egos.

Fall of the invincible trope

Villains directly challenge the hero's might to be futilely weak, right before they are defeated.

"Emiko stares at the gaijin, shocked.

The Chinese laughs. "You will stop me?"

Anderson-sama shakes his head. "Times are changing, Hock Seng. My people are coming. In force... Starting today, everything changes."

"

The helpless but invincible heroine trope

Oh yeah, and there's always a weak defenseless girl who is either the most invincible fighter in history or by the heightened sense of danger slashes her way through unseen and pervasive enemies to unite with the super geek hero.

"The crowd around Emiko grows. People jostle her. There's nowhere to run. She's in the open, waiting to be discovered.

Her first urge is to slash her way free, to fight for survival, even though there is no hop of escaping the crowd before she overheats. I will not die like an animal. I will fight them. They will bleed."

A lonely geek's reality

Usually in the end though, the super geek and the invincible fighter girl turn out 'just friends'. Their platonic respect for each other and dedication to their Cause would make it inappropriate for them to rob each other of their virginities, etc.

Or the story takes place in a heightened fantasy universe, where everybody gets sex all the time - even lonely geekazoids. Robot parts and purple haired emo chicks are so prevalent that the geek and the heroine having sex one time in the heat of danger was No Big Deal. Once they escape their enemies, they awkwardly pretend like nothing happened and go back to being friends. Whatever the explanation for it, at least this part is believable to real life, the guy doesn't end up with the girl. Can't even imagine it happening LOL, not even in wildest dreams.