Started reading “A Half-Built Garden” a few days ago, and – apologies to those of you who’ve enjoyed it/recommended it to me – found it so awful that I haven’t gone back to it. I have detailed thoughts as to why this is, but honestly they don’t matter. Let’s just say this book is Not For Me, and leave it at that.
I am so disappointed in science fiction these past few years. Writers I used to find reliable keep turning out work that misses by a mile (IMO, of course), and virtually all the new SF I’ve been exposed to seems to be written in the same clunky voice. I know this is a problem on my side, in that there must be great work out there I’m simply not seeing, but it’s a solid drag.
In all fairness: it is not easy. I got frustrated enough with the state of contemporary SF to try my hand at writing a short story a few years back, and it was terrrrrible. I sent it to Cory D to see if he thought it was worth working on further, and when he kindly indicated just how much work it would take to turn it into something readable, I figured I’d quit playing dilettante and leave the field to people who’d at least be able to dedicate all their time to their craft.
@adamgreenfield Erm, cough, cough, kinda same here. (Recent SF, I mean.) I'm trying to fight back by attempting to re-read Herbert's Dune saga under a climate-fiction/solarpunk perspective.
Then I fantasize about an anthology of solarpunk fanfic set in the Dune Universe which breakdances all over the Herbert Estate's IP.
I just finished her Monk & Robot series, and, well, I found it rather underwhelming. No specific reason (Chambers' dialogues are fine, even if not as good as N.K. Jemisin's).
I'm getting a feeling that the emphasis on positive, optimistic subject matter in #solarpunk is sucking the wind out of the narrative arc.
@cian Strangely enough, for me the best solarpunk is solarpunk "avant la lettre", that is, authors who have been crucial in shaping what we now understand as "solarpunk". I mean KSR, Ursula, etc.
Specificaly, KSR's "Ministry for the Future": more "solar", and much, much more "punk" than anything labeled as "solarpunk".
It's misguided in places, but KSR solves the problem of how to write an optimistic plot by situating a traumatic event in the first ten pages of the book, and then making all relationships between characters in the book post-traumatic.
But Chambers (and KSR) are only examples: it's a general trend.
@acousticmirror@counterapparatus@adamgreenfield i mean, cozy fic (which chambers is writing, regardless of genre) is best viewed (IMO) as a modulatory modality. makes sense that there'd be a turn in that direction over the past few years, given all the VUCA.
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