Author Topic: Science Fiction/Fantasy Love Stories (Read 11105 times)

DKT · **on:** February 16, 2007, 07:05:26 PM

On the last episode's intro, Steve mentioned The Time Traveller's Wife (haven't finished listening to the story yet, so I thought I'd start the discussion up here). The only other novel I can think of is deeply routed in science fiction but is a love story is Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table. I guess that book's more about the bittersweetness of losing love, but I'd still consider it a love story at its core (and like most of Lethem's stuff, it's as funny as it is heartbreaking). Anyone else have any thoughts or examples on sci-fi/fantasy novels that are love stories?

Vanamonde · **Reply #1 on:** February 17, 2007, 01:44:28 PM

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. Ok not strictly a love story, but Harlan falling in love is important to the plot.

SFEley · **Reply #2 on:** February 17, 2007, 04:25:14 PM

Quote from: Vanamonde on February 17, 2007, 01:44:28 PM

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. Ok not strictly a love story, but Harlan falling in love is important to the plot.

Oh, I forgot about that one!

You're right. I'd count that. Which is extremely odd, that the one classic novel that's surfaced yet is an Asimov novel...

Jonathan C. Gillespie · **Reply #3 on:** February 17, 2007, 04:45:37 PM

Dude, you just ran "Ulla" not too long ago. What's that?

SFEley · **Reply #4 on:** February 17, 2007, 08:40:17 PM

Quote from: JCGillespie on February 17, 2007, 04:45:37 PM

Dude, you just ran "Ulla" not too long ago. What's that?

Not a novel.

We've done other love stories too -- "Feng Burger," "I Look to Remembering You," and "Down Memory" Lane to name three off the top of my head. And we've got at least three more in the queue. I don't think it's that uncommon in short fiction. I just wonder where it is in novels.

jeffwik · **Reply #5 on:** February 19, 2007, 03:58:29 AM

I'm guessing Stranger in a Strange Land doesn't count. Or I Will Fear No Evil, or To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Late Heinlein is the closest I can think of.

SFEley · **Reply #6 on:** February 19, 2007, 04:16:56 AM

Quote from: jeffwik on February 19, 2007, 03:58:29 AM

I'm guessing Stranger in a Strange Land doesn't count. Or I Will Fear No Evil, or To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Late Heinlein is the closest I can think of.

My memory is a little hazy on all three, but I'm not inclined to count them based on what I remember:

Stranger had a lot to do with love in a generalized, agapic sense, but I don't recall romantic love being that much of a motivator. (Regardless of how well he kissed.) >8->

I Will Fear No Evil was more like a detailed wet dream than a romance. Sexy premise, but if love was expressed, it was principally the protagonist's love for him/herself.

I read Sunset just once, shortly after it came out, so I'd have been 13 or 14. My memory of it is scattered, smothered, covered and chunked, but the only intimate love affair I can remember from the book is the one between Mom and Son. Call me a prude if you must, but I don't even care if it qualifies, I'm not going to count it. >8->

Heinlein was an incredible writer and SF literature owes him a very deep debt. But in his later works he was really flipping out.

Simon · **Reply #7 on:** February 19, 2007, 03:05:20 PM

I see Steve here has been forced into defending against all comments on SF love stories:

In the one story really stands out: The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

If there is a better novel dealing with the emotions of attachment in the SF cannon, I can't think of it. Also it is pure, down the line, ideas based SF with a full explanation of the world it is set on... I don't think there is a better example in the genre.

On a second front, my running obsession with Sturgeon pops up again with this one... Anyone with a passing knowledge of SF has come across the quote, oft repeated, that "all my fiction is about love"... Now admittedly he didn't write enough novels for one to fit the bill (although it's possible that Some Of Your Blood is a very wierd love story) but his short stories have this theme again and again and again... Love, love, love... All the way from Bianca's Hands to Slow Sculpture.

However, I can see where your coming from, and I think I know why it's the case as well. While love is a common subsidiary theme in SF (Is The God's Themselves by Asimov a love story? What about the gay romance central to OSC's Songmaster?) it is extremely rare for it to be the centre of the story. I suspect there are sound structural reasons for this - I remember reading an essay by Larry Niven explaining why he found The Patchwork Girl and his Gil Hamilton stories extremely hard to write (he mixed SF and Detective Fiction in it). When you start reading a Detective story there are some strong expectations about how the narrative will develop and where clues will be left that should allow the reader to know at the end of the story how it all fitted together. Whereas a good SF story is built around the idea, and therefor this "reveal" moment at the end of a detective story is particularly jarring when the story should be built around how the idea interacts with the setting... Or to put it another way:

Q: How did the victim die in this locked box story? A: Oh, someone has invented teleporters!

I'm wondering if the same problems occur with love stories (I haven't read enough romance to know how the structure of these stories is constructed). I'm guessing that love stories have got to have an emphasis above all else on the two characters, and an arc to their relationship... Wouldn't this jar heavily against the SF structure which asks either for a technological/science concept for the whole thing to hang on, or on the adventure/quest structure that is needed in spec-fic?

I bet it can be done tho, there are masses of really good detective SF stories, and I still think they are a fundamentally bad idea.

Mfitz · **Reply #8 on:** February 20, 2007, 07:11:11 PM

C J Cherryh's Merchanter's Luck is essentially a love story inside an adventure that happens on a space ship.

rieux · **Reply #9 on:** February 21, 2007, 06:44:42 PM

How about Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield ?

Heradel · **Reply #10 on:** February 22, 2007, 09:24:31 AM

1984's is at it's heart a story about love, and it certainly fits on the fuzzier end of the SF spectrum.

ChrisCooke · **Reply #11 on:** February 23, 2007, 04:16:38 PM

As Roney pointed out elsewhere, I'd have thought that some of Iain M. Banks books would fit the bill? Especially Look to Windward but also Inversions.
http://www.iainbanks.net/sf.htm for those that haven't read them.
Chris.

Simon Painter · **Reply #12 on:** March 02, 2007, 09:15:12 AM

how about The Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moocock? Romance is central to the plot in that one. Well in a strange way that involves Time Travel and Castles with moats of Blood, anyway

Zathras · **Reply #13 on:** March 16, 2007, 03:40:59 AM

How about "Replay" by Ken Grimwood? Loved that novel. It is about a guy who, at a certain point in his life, dies and has to start his life over during the same point during his college years. He tries to meet up with his wife and it never goes as planned. Similar to the Murray movie "Groundhog Day".

Planish · **Reply #14 on:** March 17, 2007, 05:10:06 AM

There's Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, which has two lovers separated by many years as the result of time dilation.

How about William Gibson's Idoru? - Except that the love story is not so much the central story.

Russell Nash · **Reply #15 on:** March 20, 2007, 12:10:16 PM

There's Richard Matheson's Somewhere in Time that was made into a movie starring Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour. It may be thrown out of this discussion by the judges because the pseudo-fantasy idea is just a plot device. The main character uses meditation to travel through time to be with a women he has fallen in love with.

Mfitz · **Reply #16 on:** March 20, 2007, 02:11:57 PM

I'd say it's OK because it has a fantastic element so it's SF/F and the relationship between the two main characters is the focal point of the story so it's a romance. (In the true meaning of the term, not the throbbing turgid, ripped bodice, half naked cover model meaning)

Some of the other stories mentioned, Forever War and Stranger in a Strange Land have characters who are in love, but their relationship is secondary to some other plot so I'd say those aren't really love stories.

kahlil34 · **Reply #17 on:** August 05, 2007, 03:29:55 PM

The Sharing Knife books, Beguilement and Legacy, by Lois McMaster Bujold are definitely love stories and worth reading. My wife is reading them and she does not like science fiction and fantasy.

Kahlil34

sirana · **Reply #18 on:** August 19, 2007, 08:31:13 AM

to kick up another Heinlein, I'd say "Job:Comedy of Justice" is a relativly clear cut love story.

mjn9 · **Reply #19 on:** August 20, 2007, 01:36:27 AM

How about L.E. Modesitt Jr.s "Ghosts" trilogy? I've read that it parallels his own life a bit. Of course, many of his books have that red-headed love interest....

Listener · **Reply #20 on:** August 20, 2007, 02:24:09 PM

I can't remember the name of it -- I want to say "Voices from a Distant Star" -- but it's a SF love story anime, about 30-35 minutes long, about a boy and a girl who are in love when they're teens, and the girl is picked to go on a solo space mission, and time dilation separates the two of them so she's still a teen even when he's in his 30s and beyond. It's a good SF love story IMO.

As for Fantasy, the McMullen novel "Voidfarer" has quite a love-story subplot between Danolarian and Lavenci, and his novel "Souls in the Great Machine" has both positive (Zarvora and whatsisname) and negative (Milderellen and Glasken) relationships in it that are central to the plot. In fact, in the second and third Greatwinter novels, Serjon's relationships are central to a lot of why the plot happens.

I wouldn't necessarily call "Neverwhere" a love story, but Richard and Jess being fundamentally different people despite being engaged to be married is pretty important to the story as a whole.

"Superman's Diary" by B. Brandon Barker is a cool take on the Superman/Lois love story, and if you consider superhero stories as SF, then Superman and Lois really is a good love story in the genre.

A little more recent, the third part of the "Night Watch" novel pretty much revolves around Anton and Svetlana.

Oh, and re: Steve's intro in #119, the Timothy Zahn book "The Green and the Gray", the main characters (a couple) have a relationship that starts out rocky but solidifies rather quickly when they realize what they're up against, and in fact the whole main conflict of the story is because of a romance.

Author Topic: Science Fiction/Fantasy Love Stories (Read 11105 times)

Zathras

Russell Nash