Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Science Fiction Discussion => Topic started by: wakela on February 16, 2007, 04:46:50 AM
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What makes you cringe when you come across it in a SF/F/H story?
How bad a deal breaker is it? Is there anything to make you stop reading an otherwise decent story?
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This could apply to a story in any genre, but I hate unexpected twists at the end. The kind of twist which was not hinted at AT ALL in the story. Some huge development just comes out of nowhere, and the characters can accept it even though it's just DUMB.
I recently read a story that started out awesome. There was character development, and the science was sound, and it was really interesting. So some characters go up into space and decide to orbit the sun, and what to they discover? Another planet sharing Earth's exact orbit, exactly six months behind. WTF. The explanation for why this planet hadn't been discovered until people went into space and saw it didn't make any sense. But I can forgive bad science if the rest of the story is good. I just hated this ending because it had nothing at all to do with the rest of the story. The author spent pages and pages building up round characters, that I really got to know and like, and the discovery had nothing at all to do with them. /rant
Anyway, here's a list of other pet peeves:
-cute and cuddly creatures that turn out to be deadly
-faster-than-light travel using some sort of "hyper drive;" I'm okay with worm holes.
-boring political/ethical exposition. This is why I didn't like 1984; I prefer my messages a little sublter.
-super heroes. I don't know why. As soon as super heroes enter the equation, I probably won't like it. I even didn't really like The Incredibles because of the super heroes.
-Rich and spoiled prince/princess wants to escape the demands and limitations that comes with being rich and royal. Scruffy peasant orphan (or with sickly parents, or just one parent) wants to rise above his/her pathetic life and live in the lap of luxury. They meet and at first hate each other, then fall in love. This will probably not stop me from reading a story, and it can be done well (Aladin, anyone?), but it will usually make me enjoy a story less.
-Anything do to with Eragon. I really wish I hadn't wasted the money, time, and space on that book.
-Long descriptions. I don't care how beautiful the sunrise is, or how the lake was reflected in the full blue eyes of the princess and it made the main character think about the pointlessness of life. Unless all this detail is essential to the plot, mention it then move on.
-I also am not a huge fan of stories written in present tense. If the story is otherwise stellar I can get over it, but I do prefer to read things written in past tense.
If I can think of any more things I will be sure to post them.
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Personal Pet Peeve - Pointless Pornography.
Your in the middle, of a great sci fi story, hi tech tech stuff is blowing your mind, epic struggles, then a quick break for some sex. Totally throws me off my reading. Takes me out of the story, ruins it.
An example was the "Singularity" story on podiobooks. Really good dramatic sci fi obviously building to some fantastic conclusion, them BLAM! Pointless sex scene.
The author ( apologies , forgot his name ) claims it was all about developing the characters, showing them growing together.
I didn't get that. They were already buddies, friends, it didn't need to go there, why did it? As far as I could tell it didn't add anything to thier characters other than that they would sleep with each other. I always see that as a cheap-shot, a sales ploy, weak writing.
I do appreciate that theres skill in writing it but what does it add to the story, [null].
It's been a while since I read one but I think S.King does the same sort of thing in a bunch of his novels.
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The author ( apologies , forgot his name ) claims it was all about developing the characters, showing them growing together.
Bill DeSmedt
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Good stuff so far, guys.
My personal pet peeves:
- Pretentious cultural exposition where the writer throws out terms they're familiar with while offering no frame of reference for the unfamiliar reader to understand their meaning. Some authors can do this well, but almost always they seem to be screaming "Look at me! Look at me! Marvel at my worldliness!"
- When authors don't listen too, deride, or flat-out insult their readers. Even if the reader didn't pay anything for the work, they still invested time. They're still a customer, and a potential customer of future work, too. I think writers should show courtesy and resist the temptation to look down their noses at them, no matter what they say. Writers don't have to agree with them, or respect them personally, but I think they should recognize they are the customer. On that note, the customer has no obligation to use tact, in the same way one has no obligation to dance around their opinions of the latest movie they saw.
- Stories that ham-fist their writer's political leanings. Even my favorite political story on EP is guilty of this one, as Stephen correctly pointed out.
- Characters that constantly, suddenly, finally, seemingly, etc. I won't name the author, but there's a prominent fiction podcaster whose work is full of their lead characters "suddenly realizing" everything. It's jilting. Just say he realized it, and be done with it.
- Yet another fantasy story about yet another modern everyman/woman encountering yet another fantastic creature alluded too in the first half of the story. The sad thing is, these are often done well, but the good prose is wasted on an old theme, like spraying air freshener around unwashed, tattered gym socks. And, come on -- do you really expect surprise from the reader when said critter shows up after you spent three paragraphs describing, through the conveniently-placed friend/bartender/street kid the mythical Dearbax of Cambden Bend?
- Enslaved robot stories. They're just not usually done well.
- Punchline fiction. Satire is sublime, but if I wanted a lame joke, I'd sit in a congressional session.
- Fiction involving any aspect of spirituality, and not just because I'm agnostic, but rather because it's usually poor quality.
- The latest story with Awkward Geek, Headstrong Rival, and Sally Coldheart.
- Stories that sacrifice flow for descriptive banter. I prefer good pacing.
- Not really literary, but whatever happened to "thinking". People "feel" everything these days. Are you really emotionally invested in that much stuff?
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Omnicompetent men The always confident, always right, cigar smoking, highly intelligent, gun-toting heroes of the old juvenile SF novels I was exposed to as a kid. I'll take my heroes flawed and human, please.
Empires and Kings in futuristic SF Sometime in the future we'll abandon democracy and go back to having kings? Despite the fact that the technology that let us go to space in the first place was a result of allowing people independence from this b/s? Not only is it unlikely, but setting a story in this kind of universe lends itself to heroes of the mythical type rather than the preferable little guy who wins against the odds.
Using an imperial setting for ironic purposes (like How lonesome a life without Nerve Gas) is OK.
Omnipotent technology All technology has its limitations. Nanotech that can create anything is pixie dust in SF clothing. Computers that are all-knowing are oracles in SF clothing. Aliens that can do anything are Gods in Sf clothing. Omnipotent technology turns SF into fantasy. Not that fantasy is all bad, but fantasy that thinks it is SF doesn't work. Show me both sides of your miracle technology (like Nano comes to Clifford Falls).
Technology that follows arbitrary rules. I'm talking about the 3 Laws, basically. This will never happen. If tech can be used for something, it will. Stories where every example of a certain technology follows some made-up law bore me.
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This applies to basically any story in any genre, but I hate it, HATE IT, when writers write accents phonetically into a story.
As soon as I see something like: "Oi Whot! Aie dere Guvnur'" I go into a kind of killing rage.
Books have gone hurtling across the room, pages flapping, for this kind of offense.
This is probably the biggest deal breaker for me. Tenses, themes, settings, politics, random sex, nonrandom sex, drugs, royalty, method of travel, aliens, robots, green dancing girls, silly heros that always win the day, twists, detectives stories, cute aliens, ugly aliens, using alien life as a metaphor for racism in America, aliens that look like people, robots that look like people, military themes, violence, utopia, old themes written by new writers, new themes written by old writers, outdated or dated genres, alternate histories and silly parodies are all fine with me, as long as they are done well, but the arbitrary definition of well that I set for the fiction I like.
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I want to make absolutely clear that I am talking about novels in this post. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT SHORT STORIES. I'm reluctant to even participate in this thread, because any time an editor says "I like..." or "I don't like..." anywhere, there's a risk of people gaming their submissions around it. I don't want that. I want to see all of your short stories. You can usually get away with more things in a short story anyway, simply by wrapping the story around it.
- I am annoyed by prophecy. It's a cheap trick. The farmboy who's Chosen by Destiny has been done far past death, into undeath, and it's unnecessary. The moment you tell us what has to happen later in the book or series, the plot turns tunnel-shaped. And the inevitable reversals -- "Muaha, you thought I was going to fulfill the prophecy this way, but I did it this way instead!" -- just make it worse. I'd much rather read about the farmboy who becomes a badass hero because he's smart enough and he wants to.
- Come to think of it, reluctant heroes annoy me too. Not so much that they're hesitant to take on that nine-headed hydra -- that's just common sense -- but that they spend half the book bitching about being the protagonist, and how miserable it is to have all this power, responsibility, and magic weaponry. Tough. At this point, I'd actually cheer if a character in a fantasy novel said, "You know what? Screw this quest. I'm going home!" Meanwhile, though, let's have a hero who can have some fun being a hero.
- Prologues annoy me. The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about. Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is. (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.) I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.
Hmm. Those are all primarily problems of fantasy. I guess I should come up with some SF ones too.
- I'm annoyed by clunky prose. It's getting better, but hard SF is still the clunkiest of all the subgenres.
- This isn't so much a peeve as kind of an eye-roller, and I feel as if it even has to be explained delicately: but I'm always slightly thrown by what I have to call "gratuitous diversity." I'm not saying that diversity is bad, but it's pretty obvious that a lot of SF authors (and yes, I'll say it, white male SF authors) feel obliged to shoehorn it in without really thinking about it. You are no longer allowed in hard SF to have a leading scientist who's a white guy. And if you have a team of scientists, then one of them absolutely has to be Asian, one of them has to be African, the smartest ones have to be women, and if you can make one of them a talking primate or dolphin that's even better. Eventually there must be some sex between the scientists, too, though you can leave the primate out of that. (The dolphin's probably kinky enough to be interested, but the author never is.)
This is only a problem when it feels fake. An example of it clunking would be Greg Benford's Cosm. Black female particle physicist accidentally creates a centimeter-scale pocket universe and tries to study it. Cool story. Had a lot to do with academic politics, which Benford clearly knows. Only the character never felt quite right to me, and every so often he had to throw in some dating scene or some gratuitous dialogue with the character's best friend to remind us that she was black and female. Real problems that could have been explored -- glass ceilings, subtle attitudes from her coworkers, etc. -- never manifested in any interesting way. If I recall correctly there was a workplace discrimination issue related to grants or something, but she was able to just stand up and face it down directly, which didn't seem likely to me. What clunked is that you could have substituted any other person of any other race or gender, with appropriate academic credentials, and neither the plot nor the character's personality would have changed in any real way. It felt like making her a black woman was a formula decision on Benford's part: he was just checking boxes to make the book more 1990s.
Contrast this with, say, Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang. It's a future where the Chinese have taken over and established a semi-totalitarian world hegemony. The main character is a half-Chinese gay man. This makes his life...difficult. His race and sexuality are not gratuitous, they're central to the plot, and I found his personality totally convincing and compelling. (Heck, I'd probably be attracted to him in real life.) The story simply could not have worked with a different character.
Does the difference make sense? Again, I don't stop reading a book because of things like this. But I do notice, and it's at least a minor distraction.
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I see where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily agree. Following your formula, the scientist should have been what -- white, male? Isn't it equally realistic that she's a black, female scientist and no one gives a damn about that fact? I guess it comes down to individual point of view, and the time the story was set in. 1960's -- sure, the conflicts need to be in there. 2226? Not necessary; even detrimental.
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Nanotech that can create anything is pixie dust in SF clothing.
Good God, thank you, Brian. I think the same way -- at the very least, where is the matter coming from? If they're stripping particles away, where are they storing them? You can't violate the laws of physics and get away with it by calling it nano.
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Nanotech that can create anything is pixie dust in SF clothing.
Good God, thank you, Brian. I think the same way -- at the very least, where is the matter coming from? If they're stripping particles away, where are they storing them? You can't violate the laws of physics and get away with it by calling it nano.
That's it. Violaton of the laws of physics is what gets me. If you give me a reason, I'm happy. But without a reason, it doesn't fly.
Charlies Angels–Why the hell can they do that?
Matrix–It's really in a computer and only they know it. Cool, got it.
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I see where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily agree. Following your formula, the scientist should have been what -- white, male? Isn't it equally realistic that she's a black, female scientist and no one gives a damn about that fact?
You're right. And that's why I was so long-winded trying to explain it. It's a tough issue, because even bringing up issues of race and sex puts one at risk of looking like an ass.
It wasn't the fact of the character's race or sex, but just something about the way it was written -- as a choice deliberately made to look diverse, with the minimum characterization needed to make it plausible. And again, I probably only perceived it because there's so much of that in hard SF. The team formula where no two people can come from the same continent, and the author goes out of his way to say so once or twice then back to business.
This may be a no-win trilemma. I bitch about it because it seems forced in. But if it isn't done, then yeah, the authors would come under fire for not doing it.
And if the third alternative is chosen -- the author takes the time to flesh out every character, and make them all interesting and believable and deftly integrated with their backgrounds so it isn't a kludge -- then a large number of hard SF readers would probably complain that the novel was way too slow, spent too much time on characters and touchy-feely stuff, and didn't spend all its time on shiny particles and explosions.
I guess it comes down to individual point of view, and the time the story was set in. 1960's -- sure, the conflicts need to be in there. 2226? Not necessary; even detrimental.
Oh, and for what it's worth, Cosm was meant to be contemporary SF, or at most a few years after its late-90s publication date. So, more or less right now.
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This may be a no-win trilemma. I bitch about it because it seems forced in. But if it isn't done, then yeah, the authors would come under fire for not doing it.
You can blame the wonderful double-standards in our great PC nation. No one wins, no one loses, the generic thrives out of fear of bad will. Many people do think they have to place equal ratios of genders and races everywhere, and I don't really blame them. We all sandpaper our media with the Great Obligatory Multicultural Theory. If we were half as enlightened as we should be, we'd never give race and gender a second thought.
See? Now I'm bitching :)
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That's it. Violaton of the laws of physics is what gets me. If you give me a reason, I'm happy. But without a reason, it doesn't fly. (sic)
This is the reason I preferred Marvel comics over DC as a child. Marvel heroes had explanation of how their powers worked, whereas DC characters often didn't. Flight is a perfect example. In marvel, Hulk "flew" by leaping with his super human strength, and Thor "flew" by throwing his hammer and letting the centrifugal force of the throw carry himself. On the other hand, many DC heroes simply had "flight" as one of their powers with no explanation at all.
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You're right. And that's why I was so long-winded trying to explain it. It's a tough issue, because even bringing up issues of race and sex puts one at risk of looking like an ass.
I think the trouble behind this problem (the problem being weak diverse characters) is that the science fiction genre is dominated by white males. This is not to say that there aren't amazing writers of many backgrounds, cultures and genders writing science fiction, but the genre is still dominated by men of the paler sort.
Diversity is something that science fiction has struggled with. I believe you can be from any background or gender and write good characters of other genders or backgrounds, but it would help science fiction to have a greater diversity of writers. How exactly to do this, I don't know. I do know that the more diverse voices we have in our fiction, the more accurate our reflection and understanding of the world.
I'm writing my Masters thesis on race and gender in Octavia E. Butlers fiction, and reading about her, she really had to struggle for recognition in science fiction. On the cover of Butlers 1979 release Dawn, her main character, an African-American woman named Lilith, was shown as a white woman! The publishers (Warner) were afraid a black female on the cover wouldn't sell books. I know that was 1979, and perhaps things have changed since then, but that is the culture that writers and readers are coming from. No wonder that a lot of diversity is token diversity!
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Swords in modern fantasy.
There's been thousands of years of weapon development, and hundreds of years since the sword stopped being a useful weapon. You want to write about swords--which is fine; swords are cool--put in a time period where having our hero pull one out make sense (ere's a hint; if he's on a motorcyle, it probably doesn't). An enchanted flintlock or a holy hand grenade shouldn't be that much to ask for.
Also, poor people--especially Southern poor people--being portrayed as idiots.
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I think the trouble behind this problem (the problem being weak diverse characters) is that the science fiction genre is dominated by white males. This is not to say that there aren't amazing writers of many backgrounds, cultures and genders writing science fiction, but the genre is still dominated by men of the paler sort.
True again, though that has been changing. At the very least, representation by women in the field gets better all the time. (I couldn't find easy data on race -- my anecdotal experience at conventions tells me that this is still a very white genre, though my hunch is that the problem is more about getting other races to write and submit in the field than editorial discrimination.)
I suppose I may be simply asking too much, or expecting writers with particular strengths to show strength in every area. I suppose a part of my mind says that if Maureen McHugh can write a convincing gay man, or Arthur Golden can write a convincing geisha, then Benford and Brin and company should either write convincing diverse characters or not bother.
But "not bother" may not be an option, and you can't make every writer perfect at characterization. My real beef may have been summed up by John Clute in his review of the novel (http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue61/excess.html):
"The face may be black, the sex may be female, and we may often be told that the buttocks are too large, but the voice is the voice of Benford."
I guess I was just hoping for a different voice. This isn't something that every writer has as a talent.
Diversity is something that science fiction has struggled with. I believe you can be from any background or gender and write good characters of other genders or backgrounds, but it would help science fiction to have a greater diversity of writers. How exactly to do this, I don't know. I do know that the more diverse voices we have in our fiction, the more accurate our reflection and understanding of the world.
Yes. But again, it is verifiably getting better. It's not a perfectly mixed stone soup yet, but at least today if an early-adolescent boy says, "Ewww, I'm not going to read anything written by a woman," he's cutting out somewhere between a third and half of the published field.
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I agree, Steve, sometimes it makes sense, but it often seems forced.
I had already become a fan of Samuel Delany when I found out that he was black and gay. I had been reading stories packed with race and gender issues, and I just thought they were cool stories.
At the 2001 Worldcon in Philidelphia I went to a panel on diversity. I was naive enough to think it would be about diverse alien cultures. The panel members furrowed their brows and used sociology terms to pretend to be scientific while they tsk tsked about groups that only welcomed a certain kind of member. I remember a characteristic of such groups was that they use one word to refer to themselves and another to refer to outsiders. None of the panel members seemed to get the irony that we were in a room of 200 white people who considred themselves fans and others mundanes.
Why don't more non-whites go to conventions? Do they not read SF? I could see how it would be intimidating to be surrounded by people different that you, but fandom seems to be a pretty welcoming bunch. I've met so many bizarre personalities at conventions, I can't imagine them rejecting anyone.
Has anyone read "Dark Matter: Reading the Bones?" (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Sheree-R-Thomas/dp/0446693774/sr=8-1/qid=1171669599/ref=sr_1_1/002-2847424-5354411?ie=UTF8&s=books) It's an anthology of spec fic by black authors. What about the books of Haruki Murakami? I found that I had fallen into the trap of assuming the characters were white even though the authour obviously assumed they were Japanese.
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"Do not go out at night. That's when They come out."
"Who?"
"They."
"Who's they?"
"Them."
"What are you talking about?"
"Those That Must Not Be Named."
"Throw me a bone, here."
"Once we lived in peace. But that was in The Time Of Peace. Then there was ... The Coming."
"For crying out loud, tell me what the hell is going on." (this is spoken by both the main character and reader).
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Diversity is something that science fiction has struggled with. I believe you can be from any background or gender and write good characters of other genders or backgrounds, but it would help science fiction to have a greater diversity of writers. How exactly to do this, I don't know. I do know that the more diverse voices we have in our fiction, the more accurate our reflection and understanding of the world.
Yes. But again, it is verifiably getting better. It's not a perfectly mixed stone soup yet, but at least today if an early-adolescent boy says, "Ewww, I'm not going to read anything written by a woman," he's cutting out somewhere between a third and half of the published field.
As someone that's probably more recently out of that phase than others on the forum, I don't think there's as big a "ew, a girl writer" than you might think. Especially if they're going to something like TAB (if I remember correctly, Teen Advisory Board, basically a book group during lunch periods), there are going to be about twice as many girls there as guys, and the author ratio was probably about evenly split. In my personal experience I read almost all of Tamora Pierce's Young Adult novels up to around 2002. I was also introduced to Terry Pratchett through The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (which has probably had a bigger effect on my funny-writing than any other book), and I got a lot of flak for liking a book about a Cat and Mice.
I also assumed Terry Pratchett was female until I looked at the back flap after I'd finished reading it.
Talk about disillusionment.
Plus, this is a post Harry Potter youth, and that did a whole lot to kill that kind of sentiment from what I can tell with my younger cousins.
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"Once we lived in peace. But that was in The Time Of Peace. Then there was ... The Coming."
This is awesome. I very need to use this sometime.
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Plus, this is a post Harry Potter youth, and that did a whole lot to kill that kind of sentiment from what I can tell with my younger cousins.
That's a good point. And wonderfully ironic since, as was pointed out in another thread, the reason J.K. Rowling uses her initials is because the publisher assumed young boys would have exactly that sentiment.
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Plus, this is a post Harry Potter youth, and that did a whole lot to kill that kind of sentiment from what I can tell with my younger cousins.
That's a good point. And wonderfully ironic since, as was pointed out in another thread, the reason J.K. Rowling uses her initials is because the publisher assumed young boys would have exactly that sentiment.
Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever even seen her first name.
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"Once we lived in peace. But that was in The Time Of Peace. Then there was ... The Coming."
And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons). This is probably more common in television and movies, but it happens all the time in prose, too.
The Harry Potter books are a major offender here. Entire forests would be alive today if the adults had been willing to talk straight with the kids, or Harry wasn't having a snit with Ron, or whatever. Order of the Phoenix could simply not have happened if Dumbledore had, in the first couple chapters, scheduled a meeting with Harry in his Day Timer. (I won't even get into the major character who died because Harry got a package halfway through a book and forgot to open it.)
I don't want conflict because people are stupid. I want conflict because people are smart. It's far more enjoyable, and it doesn't make me want to reach into the page and throttle characters.
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Plus, this is a post Harry Potter youth, and that did a whole lot to kill that kind of sentiment from what I can tell with my younger cousins.
That's a good point. And wonderfully ironic since, as was pointed out in another thread, the reason J.K. Rowling uses her initials is because the publisher assumed young boys would have exactly that sentiment.
Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever even seen her first name.
I believe it's Joanne. Up until the third book you just didn't see her. I think they even left it vague on the "About the Author" page in the first few printings. On the third or fourth book they started saying, "this is such a phenomenon it doesn't matter" and that's when you just couldn't get away from interveiws of her.
I've heard so many different booksellers and librarians say in interviews that J.K. really broke through some barriers. Reading is really up among teens and they don't seem to care about the writer beyond being a writer. To say it better: male, female, black, white, yellow, green just doesn't really matter anymore.
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"Once we lived in peace. But that was in The Time Of Peace. Then there was ... The Coming."
And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons). This is probably more common in television and movies, but it happens all the time in prose, too.
The Harry Potter books are a major offender here. Entire forests would be alive today if the adults had been willing to talk straight with the kids, or Harry wasn't having a snit with Ron, or whatever. Order of the Phoenix could simply not have happened if Dumbledore had, in the first couple chapters, scheduled a meeting with Harry in his Day Timer. (I won't even get into the major character who died because Harry got a package halfway through a book and forgot to open it.)
I don't want conflict because people are stupid. I want conflict because people are smart. It's far more enjoyable, and it doesn't make me want to reach into the page and throttle characters.
That's what I've thought while reading everyone of the books. The one good thing about the HP books though is that they're written on recycled paper, so not that many trees bought it for the francise.
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Here's another peeve.
Plots that depend on the characters failing to notice something that is bloody obvious.
For example, you have a saboteur and can see the evidence that it is them, but none of the charcters can. I'm not talking about a situation where the author has chosen to reveal information to the reader that the charcters do not know, but situations where the facts are obvious but the characters don't see it because the plot demands that (for example) they trust a certain person.
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That one is so easy to fall into. It usually takes the form of the Unknown but Necessary Stranger the characters are "forced" to rely on for a little while.
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And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons). This is probably more common in television and movies, but it happens all the time in prose, too.
I don't know if it rises to the position of peeve with me, since people often fail to convey critical information to one another and I have been known to enjoy books using this tactic (Harry Potter books included), but it did at least irk me in Melusine, which is the place where I've found this particular dead horse plot most recently.
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I just finished reading a book last night that really p***ed me off with one thing. Which brought up my biggest pet peeve.
When the writer needs to build suspense, but has nothing related to the plot to talk about; The writer starts just BSing to fill space.
In this book one of the main charators was taking a two-person submarine down to engage the enemy. We don't know if they're going to kill her straight out or if she can do what she wants to do. The writer kills 2 pages talking about claustraphobia and fear of the dark. Then he goes metaphorical. He writes that the submarine is just like a particle in the ocean and describes the 1000 year journey a particle in the ocean would take before it can back to the same place. Then he describes the 80 million year journey a piece of ocean bottom would make during the cycle of the single continent (last one was Pangagea) breaking up and then reforming. It was the only time in my life I thought of not finishing a book when I had less than 20 pages left.
The whole thing was a marvel of bad writing.
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I just finished reading a book last night that really p***ed me off with one thing. Which brought up my biggest pet peeve.
When the writer needs to build suspense, but has nothing related to the plot to talk about; The writer starts just BSing to fill space.
Heh. I'm reminded of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books. (Wow, that takes me back...)
The whole series was padded extensively, but at one point there were several chapters of tunnels. Just one of the characters wandering in the dark, alone and frightened. Nothing actually happens to him -- just lots and lots of tunnels.
By the end I was devoutly wishing for a grue.
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This is a rare one, but it was in this weeks podcast, {N + 1, N-1}.
When a character can somehow absorb a mysterious power from another character. I think powers should work pretty much like the powers that we already have. I cannot give my power of seeing things to a blind person or my ability of abstract thinking to a cat.
"Ha! You cannot defeat me. You're Powers do not work on Wednesdays!"
"True, but I put some of my Powers in this mason jar yesterday. Take that!"
"Lo, I am undone. Curse you, Powers Boy!"
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Mike "Jurassic Park" Crighton peeves me with 10+ pages of expo at a time. It's his research poured out , nicely written well informed, but fundamentally boring. I have found myself ,skipping, pages when he gets in his stride.
Incidentally his best book is "Airframe" but I dont think it'll ever be made into a film, and that kind of peeves me too.
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I just finished reading a book last night that really p***ed me off with one thing. Which brought up my biggest pet peeve.
When the writer needs to build suspense, but has nothing related to the plot to talk about; The writer starts just BSing to fill space.
Heh. I'm reminded of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books. (Wow, that takes me back...)
The whole series was padded extensively, but at one point there were several chapters of tunnels. Just one of the characters wandering in the dark, alone and frightened. Nothing actually happens to him -- just lots and lots of tunnels.
By the end I was devoutly wishing for a grue.
Padding in general I can stand. It's only when it's used to make pseudo suspense that it really gets me.
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Prologues annoy me. The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about.
I'm a bit of a sucker for them, but only when they work the other way around: when the prologue's an intense burst of action that makes up for the fact that the first few chapters are slow scene-setting.
Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is. (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.) I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.
Oh, that one's deadly. I love the book to bits but even when I re-read it and had a better idea of the relevance of that character's introduction in the prologue, I could barely concentrate from one sentence to the next. Not that there was really any one character that I cared about by the end of the book. Well, maybe the slake-moth runt.
I was struggling to think of any pet peeves until I read the other posts on this thread. Then I remembered that "yeah, those things are annoying" and worse "I've seen that far too often".
To throw another couple into the mix:
Non-genre authors who write inept genre fiction where basic well-trodden concepts are treated in laborious detail, but insist that it's not SF because it doesn't have spaceships in it.
Magic with no underlying logic, no apparent rules or restrictions on when it can be used (except to put the hero in peril for a bit, when he can't use it or forgets that he has it) and no apparent rules or restrictions on the extent of its power (so it can get the hero out of any peril when the author can't think of a cleverer resolution). The rules don't have to be explicit, I just have to have some confidence that they exist and are adequately consistent.
The phrase "magic realism". Usually seems to describe "gratuitous symbolism". This one may be a bit off-genre, but I'll justify it with an aphorism I've seen attributed to Iain Banks: "Magic realism is just fantasy written by someone the critic knew at university."
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Also, poor people--especially Southern poor people--being portrayed as idiots.
So, true. If any writer wrote Blacks, Asians, or women, in the stereotyped way people in the SF/Fantasy field write Appalachian men 99% of the time, they would be burned at the stake.
My pet SF peeve is making people of faith, any faith but especially Christians, the bad guys. I'm not a religious fanatic by anyone's standard, but this really gets on my nerves. Not everyone who has their butt in a church on Sunday is a raving, child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic but you wouldn't know that from reading most SF and much Fantasy.
My biggest pet peeve in fantasy is out of place ethnic names. Either a real well done original fantasy universe with characters names Bill and Suzy, or far more common a non Celtic universe full of Brans and Meaves and MacWhatevers. Why does everyone in Fantasy World seem to lust for Celtic names?
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This applies to basically any story in any genre, but I hate it, HATE IT, when writers write accents phonetically into a story.
As soon as I see something like: "Oi Whot! Aie dere Guvnur'" I go into a kind of killing rage.
Books have gone hurtling across the room, pages flapping, for this kind of offense.
I don't quite have the words for how much I agree. Back when I ran a comic and game store, we used to have a running joke about the 'Marvel comics three letter accent'. If a character was foreign then it would always be portrayed by a three letter word that people of that nationality would, allegedly, use. This is why Wolverine always said 'bub', why Maggot always said ''Mon' and every English character they had always said 'luv'. Along similar lines I remember one particular issue where the main character, a Superman-type, asked a question of an English police officer and he responded with 'Well, wanker...'
As for my own pet peeves, as Brian pointed out earlier in the thread, I can't stand characters being required to be incredibly stupid to further the plot. The worst offender I saw for this recently was an episode of CRIMINAL MINDS which established in short order that:
-The killer knew where the agents lived.
-The killer had a medieval fixation, evidenced by a body being found with a broadsword driven through its chest.
-The youngest character's mother is a scholar of medieval literature.
-The youngest character receives a key from the killer whilst visiting his mother.
-The killer sends a message to the other agents saying 'The youngest holds the key'.
-The killer then sends another message couched in faux medieval language.
So of course, no one thinks that the 'key' might be symbolic as well as actual and that they might actually be in some real physical danger. Cue female character going home, being held hostage immediately and Al's respect for the series dropping several points.
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This applies to basically any story in any genre, but I hate it, HATE IT, when writers write accents phonetically into a story.
As soon as I see something like: "Oi Whot! Aie dere Guvnur'" I go into a kind of killing rage.
Books have gone hurtling across the room, pages flapping, for this kind of offense.
The first time I saw that (when I was maybe 9? :P) I thought it was kind of cool, but it gets old VERY fast. I think anything that makes the text more difficult to read is probably a bad idea.
Also? I hate stories where women are killed/raped/hurt repeatedly just to move along a man's character development. ::cough:: Heroes ::cough::
I remember reading fantasy trilogy several years ago (can't remember the name - sorry) that did a nice job of turning that stereotype inside out. It was a standard "someone from our world gets magically taken to a sword and sorcery fantasy setting" series where the two of the main characters were a female college student working on a masters in history and a similarly aged biker/slacker who's just hanging around. Unexpectedly, she is the one who has the natural talent for swordsmanship and he ends up becoming the wizard. Further, she ends up saving everyone by using her research talents to figure out what the cause of everyone's problem is coming up with a solution. I remember reading it and thinking "wow! the librarian saved the day!"
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I think that's Hambly's Dark is Rising series, but I'm not sure.
It was not a typical fantasy on a bunch of levels.
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I think that's Hambly's Dark is Rising series, but I'm not sure.
It was not a typical fantasy on a bunch of levels.
Yup! That was it. Thanks for reminding me.
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Moderator's Note: As the "sexism in the TV show Heroes" subthread was rapidly taking over the topic, making it difficult for anyone to continue to discuss pet peeves in literature, I have scrunched up my face and exercised my power over time and space, splitting it into a new topic. I hope nobody minds.
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And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons).
I tend to give authors/writers/creators a bit of leeway with this one. I fancy myself to be something of a "keen observer of human character", and almost every problem currently plaguing people stems from some kind of stupid or inane communication breakdown. I have several tedious examples I could share of friends or family members who spent years pointedly not talking to each other because each thought the other was angry at them. And then there's that whole "Palestine" thing...
But there is a line between allowing characters to react stupidly because they are human, and making them act unnecessarily dumb for the sake of a weak plot. Smallville is a good example of both sides of the line. There were some good stories highlighting the parallels between Clark and Lex and their relationships with their fathers (biological or not) in the second and third seasons. After that story arc peaked, though, they turned back into stock "hero" and "villain" cutouts, with much jaw clenching and posturing. (Why couldn't the folks who wrote Spider-man 1 & 2 write Smallville, too?)
Mike "Jurassic Park" Crighton peeves me ....
...by waiting until I get a really great idea for a story, and then churning out one of his formulaic term-paper as fiction shite-burgers with MY idea -- gutted and devoid of any soul -- to feed the pap-swilling masses.
Okay, I may be overstating, and I can't seriously accuse him of plagiarizing me, since I haven't yet written something he could plagiarize. But, I had a really cool idea brewing for a story that revolved around nano-molecular "Smart Dust" (which does exist, BTW), and he went and grunted out "Prey". My story ended up as my rejected <300 word story for the <300 word story contest. (It is here, if you would like to compare them: http://happyphuntime.blogspot.com/2007/02/ask-dust.html (http://happyphuntime.blogspot.com/2007/02/ask-dust.html).)
My pet SF peeve is making people of faith, any faith but especially Christians, the bad guys. I'm not a religious fanatic by anyone's standard, but this really gets on my nerves. Not everyone who has their butt in a church on Sunday is a raving, child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic but you wouldn't know that from reading most SF and much Fantasy.
I have a similar pet peeve regarding books where people of faith, any faith but especially Christians, get to cluck and shake their heads smugly as the rest of us are plunged into some kind of fiery retribution for our lack of faith. My mother, upon hearing my excitement over discovering Asimov, tried to make me read the first Left Behind book. I tried, but after three chapters of chest-beating survivors crying "Why, oh why didn't I listen to all of those wonderful, good-hearted Christians?" I started to detect a note of divine smugness.
In a similar vein, I recently picked up Robert Sawyer's Calculating God, which uses the story of the first arrival of aliens on Earth to frame a set of arguments in favor of intelligent design. The aliens all believe in the existence of the creator, and the protagonist, a paleontologist, gets to agonize throughout the book over his lack of faith. I kept waiting for him to realize that a) believing the evidence presented by the aliens that "God" exists did not in any way invalidate his beliefs about evolution, and b) evidence of the existence of God does not validate any one particular religion... in fact, it makes the petty differences between them all the more ridiculous. (The book delivers on this, though subtly. And by the way, the Big Scary Villains in the story are economically disadvantaged U.S. Southerners who also happen to be raving, Luddite lunatics. But Sawyer, a Canuck, didn't try to write in the heinous accents... much.)
My point is that there is science fiction out there that deals with religious topics, and some of it actually tries to handle those topics in a way that reflects well on religion. It is hard to find because it is hard to write; and it is hard to write because people of faith already have a (IMHO) fictional universe with set rules and conventions that they don't like writers tampering with.
One last point on this subject: it's not just sci-fi that deals harshly with religious figures. Remember Chaucer? Shakespeare? I seem to recall they took their swipes at the "corrupt priest" from time to time. Piety begs mockery, and false piety begs utter derision.
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One last point on this subject: it's not just sci-fi that deals harshly with religious figures. Remember Chaucer? Shakespeare? I seem to recall they took their swipes at the "corrupt priest" from time to time. Piety begs mockery, and false piety begs utter derision.
Well, there is a difference between Chaucy-Boy and Willie the Shake drawing out a nice villian hiding within the church and folks building straw men because they've got nothing else to burn. Considering the scope and reach of the power the church had during both men's lives, those characters my be more analgous to the sinister goverment agent in modern fiction than the "child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic" Mfitz is decrying. Villians come from power more than from derision.
Though dersision is good too...
Adding to the Pet Peeve list:
Shopping lists. Really, I don't want to know what's in your suitcase/car trunk/bag of holding unless you're going to use all of it later. The only writer who could pull these sort of lists off was Hunter S. Thompson, and only then because some of it was too bizzare to ignore.
Polysyndetonic syntax, or Cormac McCarthy Syndrome. Hemmingway may have popularized replacing a good period with "and," but it's McCarthy who beats the thing until it bleeds. Run-on sentences don't make you sound erudite or poetic, they make you sound like the crazy guy on the street corner.
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One last point on this subject: it's not just sci-fi that deals harshly with religious figures. Remember Chaucer? Shakespeare? I seem to recall they took their swipes at the "corrupt priest" from time to time. Piety begs mockery, and false piety begs utter derision.
Well, there is a difference between Chaucy-Boy and Willie the Shake drawing out a nice villian hiding within the church and folks building straw men because they've got nothing else to burn. Considering the scope and reach of the power the church had during both men's lives, those characters my be more analgous to the sinister goverment agent in modern fiction than the "child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic" Mfitz is decrying. Villians come from power more than from derision.
Though dersision is good too...
An excellent point, Jared, and probably more along the lines of Mfitz's complaint; it is always frustrating when you count yourself among a group of people you believe to be good and noble while the rest of the world chooses only to see them in a negative light. (That seems to be how many muslim folk feel these days.)
I still counted myself a Southern Baptist when I started reading Stephen King's novels (we're going back a ways, now) and I remember being bothered that he always had a dangerously addled fundamentalist in his cast. Of course, part of what was making me uncomfortable with it was the fact that I recognized some of those character flaws in the people of my congregation... not dangerous psycopath flaws, mind, but they did share many of the prejudices and "non-PC" attitudes that King was playing up in his books.
These days I don't count myself among the numbers of any particular group, and Mr. King tends to develop his religious characters with more sympathy (and attributes their dangerous psycopathies to things other than their faith), so he and I get along a lot better.
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*** I recently picked up Robert Sawyer's Calculating God, which uses the story of the first arrival of aliens on Earth to frame a set of arguments in favor of intelligent design. The aliens all believe in the existence of the creator, and the protagonist, a paleontologist, gets to agonize throughout the book over his lack of faith. ***
I've read that book and although Sawyer makes no secret which side of that debate he think is right, [Calculating God as some of the most intelligent discussion/debate on the topic I've ever seen. As a long time volunteer at a natural history museum and a hobby paleontologist, I've been on the front line of that battle more than once so I've seen a bunch of ranting and raving on the topic from both sides.
I also love the alien's final definition of God as the ultimate unexplainable natural phenomena.
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An excellent point, Jared, and probably more along the lines of Mfitz's complaint; it is always frustrating when you count yourself among a group of people you believe to be good and noble while the rest of the world chooses only to see them in a negative light. (That seems to be how many muslim folk feel these days.)
Its just lazy characterization, really. Crusaders, be they heroes or villians, carry a motivation coupon: God told them to it. This is not to say that compelling stories about people motivated by god can't be told, just that their motivation coupon is too easy to slip in and never elaborate on.
I remember a villain from the old Denny O'Neil QUESTION comics who was a one-note religious crusader until it was revealed that he believed God told him he had to corrupt the world so horribly it would need to washed away like Noah's Flood. A nice twist, but still a motivation coupon.
Adding to the pet peeves list:
Motivation Coupons: simple motivations--"God told me," "it is my destiny," "my parents are DEAD!!!" that are given, never elaborated on, and taken at face value. Most often used for villians, but also for supporting characters, and most egregiously, main characters by authors who have watched STAR WARS way to many times.
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... authors who have watched STAR WARS way to many times.
Is that possible?
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... authors who have watched STAR WARS way to many times.
Is that possible?
Phantom Menace? Yes.
Empire Strikes Back? No.
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Of course. :)
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I've read that book and although Sawyer makes no secret which side of that debate he think is right, Calculating God as some of the most intelligent discussion/debate on the topic I've ever seen. As a long time volunteer at a natural history museum and a hobby paleontologist, I've been on the front line of that battle more than once so I've seen a bunch of ranting and raving on the topic from both sides.
I also love the alien's final definition of God as the ultimate unexplainable natural phenomena.
I was pleasantly surprised with it, myself. I was constantly braced for the "conversion moment", and what came was not what I was expecting. I did have some discomfort with the two Yanks (as it relates to this thread, I suspect most here would probably object to them on the same grounds), but the debate was handled well.
There is another good PP (that this book mostly avoided):
Polemic disguised as debate: When the whole point of the story is to set up an outrageous setting that justifies an extreme view, just so the author can pretend to be an intellectual. (I've gone back and forth on how many of Heinlein's books fall into this category.)
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Sawyer tends to be preachy and he almost always casts Americans as the bad guys. It is interesting to read his stuff and see the Canadian view of the US but the consistancey his preachyness ruined he otherwise fairly brilliant Hominids series for me.
I agree about Heinlein. He is so obvious in his political preaching and even as a kid I thought his politcs were nieve.
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French.
I studied Spanish in high school, so when an author throws in a little expression in French I don't know what it means or even how to pronounce it. It might as well be ASCII garbage. The author is including an expression that he knows for sure many of his readers will not understand. It just seems rude to me.
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I know this is a standard thing, but it still bugs me, and I can't help it.
When writers use "the" instead of "a." For example starting a story with "Plumes of fire erupted from the great ship as it landed." I don't know what ship he's talking about, so "the" feels phony. It feels like a trick.
I know that prizewinning writers do this in prizewinning stories, so maybe it's just me.
P.S. "Prizewinning" is one word?
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French.
I studied Spanish in high school, so when an author throws in a little expression in French I don't know what it means or even how to pronounce it. It might as well be ASCII garbage. The author is including an expression that he knows for sure many of his readers will not understand. It just seems rude to me.
You can do what I do when I run across a faux-French word: pronounce it "oungh" and add that horrid, snotty back-of-the-throat French laugh, like the chef in the "Les Poisson" scene of Little Mermaid.
It doesn't improve the story any, but at least you're laughing after you do it, instead of cursing the author for annoying your sensibilities!
(For the record, the French actually laugh like that about as often as the English say, "Good show, ol' chap." I am merely suggesting this technique as a kind of mental 'Sumo' trick for avoiding unnecessary tension.)
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French.
Moi aussi.
Seriously, I was bilingual in French as a child, but in about 5Th grade I realized they spelled things differently than English, it was one of the major traumas of my childhood. Spelling and I aren't friends in any language and the though of having to know two ways to spell everything was about the worse thing I could imagine at that age. I had weeping bouts over it for days. My relationship with French was downhill from then on until I had such bad French Prof in college that I've pretty much lost all the French I had left.
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French.
Just French? Not foreign languages in general? So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?
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Yep pretty much just French
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French.
Just French? Not foreign languages in general? So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?
Well, with any other language the writer usually does a little translation for you. But for some reason they usually don't when using French. I just had a big SF reading blowout weekend, and it happened to me twice.
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French.
Just French? Not foreign languages in general? So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?
Well, with any other language the writer usually does a little translation for you. But for some reason they usually don't when using French. I just had a big SF reading blowout weekend, and it happened to me twice.
German
They also do it with German. They never use it properly. I always end up going, "that's not right is it?" Then if my wife is still awake, I have to read it to her and ask what they mean. She normally says it doesn't mean anything the way it was used.
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Yep pretty much just French
Of course the French are the natural enemy of us, the British, and so the use of thier language in an otherwise English book does tend to wound.
I dont expect anyone from the colonies to understand, you were of course, allied with them at one time, so your feelings on the matter are likely to muddied.
(I live in denial, so any mention of any world war alliances will strictly be ignored ;D)
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French.
Just French? Not foreign languages in general? So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?
Well, with any other language the writer usually does a little translation for you. But for some reason they usually don't when using French. I just had a big SF reading blowout weekend, and it happened to me twice.
So, wait, do you mean a bunch of dialog, like in Elizabeth Bear's Hammered? Or do you mean those French phrases that have pretty much migrated to English, like "laissez faire", "le mot juste" and "l'espirit d'escalier"? I'm kind of fascinated by this annoyance.
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Of course the French are the natural enemy of us, the British, and so the use of thier language in an otherwise English book does tend to wound.
Of course you did get your revenge on them by stealing half their language and refusing to give it back...
(To which the French responded by locking down their language so thoroughly that now no one can touch it, even for maintenance.) >8->
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I dont expect anyone from the colonies to understand, you were of course, allied with them at one time, so your feelings on the matter are likely to muddied.
Hardly muddied. We love the French. Why, Napoleon is my middle name!
...oh, wait, it's yours. ;D
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So, wait, do you mean a bunch of dialog, like in Elizabeth Bear's Hammered? Or do you mean those French phrases that have pretty much migrated to English, like "laissez faire", "le mot juste" and "l'espirit d'escalier"? I'm kind of fascinated by this annoyance.
"laissez faire" I can do. I also can handle "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez" only because I'm from Louisiana. But I have no idea what those other two expressions mean or how to say them. I was also annoyed when suddenly New York was up to its derriere in Pret a Manger restaurants, and that Pret a Manger is not pronounced Pret a Manger.
I haven't read Hammered. Does she write paragraphs of non-English dialogue? That sounds insane.
And it has nothing to do with French culture. It's that the author is using a language that I don't know. Pronunciation is part of it. When Spanish or Latin goes unexplained at least I can create an image of a character making those sounds. But in the case of French I have to make an English approximation which sounds terrible and I know is wrong. Maybe all this makes me feel stupid, like it's something I should know.
It would be easy to say that the author is showing off that he speaks French, and it's my uneducated fault if I don't understand. But I think the author believes that almost all English speakers know these phrases. Maybe they do.
Is it an American thing? Are British more familiar with the language?
And I don't think I'm a stereotypical uneducated American bumpkin. I live in Japan now and speak passable Japanese. I can even read some of it. If I were writing a story and slipped some J in there, it would be presumptuous of me not to explain it. And it would be ridiculous to write in kanji.
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Hah! Found some.
--insert throaty French laugh here--
From Nebula nominee "Helen Remembers the Stork Club" (http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/ef01.htm) by Esther M. Friesner.
Each winter here seems to last just long enough for her to start a serious flirtation with making the move to Florida at long, long last. But then what? There's not enough money left in any of her accounts to pay for a little Pompano Beach pied-à-terre and still keep up the payments on her mint cond. pre-war high ceil. 2 BR, LR w/FPL, frml DR gem.
Not to impressed with the real estate classifieds encryption, either.
Every time he sees her, he looks at her with hot, hungry eyes. She knows it's no longer her flesh he craves to possess, but her real estate. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même damn chose. That's how it was with her first husband, too.
It's within character for this person to think French expressions, but I still don't know what it means. So I just tell myself しょうがない and continue with the story.
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I've got a major pet peeve about foreign languages in fiction as well, but for a different reason.
The time it bothers me is when a character (let's say he's french) is able to deliver a long, empassioned speech about the nature of reality without any problem, but throughout the entire book, he'll answer any yes/no questions with 'oui' or 'non'.
This is probably done by the author to remind us of the character's nationality, and probably to make him more distinct, but it has the knock-on effect of making him seem like he's either extremely pretentious or a moron, due to the fact that he can learn the English word for, say, 'Quantum Velocity Cyntrascope' but not for 'yes'.
To be fair, I've found this is most common amongst thriller writers (yes, you there, Mr Brown. I can see you trying to sneak out) though I still see it from time to time in SF.
My other major Pet Peeve, and this is pretty petantic I expect, is the constant mis-use of the term 'Solar System'. This usually occurs when you'll have a group of explorers rocketing off into unknown space and comment about arriving in this or that 'solar system' which they aren't, unless they're back home (Solar System, as I'm sure you all know being the name for the particular *Star System* that we live in).
It's not a serious problem, but I see it appearing an awfull lot all over the place.
I may one day calm down enough to talk at any length about Present-Tense Narration without trying to throw things at the monitor :P
Simon Painter
Shropshire, UK
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I haven't read Hammered. Does she write paragraphs of non-English dialogue? That sounds insane.
Noooo, I wouldn't say paragraphs. Her characters are Canadians, so there's lots of French mixed in, especially endearments and such (which I suppose would irritate Simon like "oui" and "non"). There are entire sentences of dialog in French from time to time, but I just grokked them for flavor and moved on, without worrying about the word for word. Nothing plot critical was conveyed in French. From what I understand, the French usage is a fairly big complaint people have had with her book (well, the series, really, those Canadians are major characters in every book), but it only bugged me very little, and not enough to diminish my enjoyment.
I'm curious, now, since twice you've mentioned that you can't hear the French words in your head and that bothers you, whether you enjoyed the reading of "Clockwork Atom Bomb" here on Escape Pod. I both heard it and read it, and found the French (and the endless UN acronyms) much easier to decipher when I could see them on the page, as opposed to hearing them. In fact, I thought it was particularly poorly suited to audio, but I know it got picked because it was a Hugo nominee, so I'm not going to hold Steve responsible for that. Still, it's possible that worked exactly opposite for you, that hearing them was just fine, but seeing them would have driven you crazy.
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pied-à-terre
See, now, without looking that up, I would just use my Spanish and knowledge of Latin root words to translate that as "piece of dirt/earth". I've not looked it up, but that's plenty for me to move on.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même damn chose.
Maybe I'm revealing too much indoctrination from those Canadian Ambassadors of Music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_%28band%29), as opposed to standard American culture knowledge, but that's "The more things change, the more they stay the same", and I don't even have to think twice about it (though now I'm singing "Circumstances").
Curse this board, that's two albums in a week I'm reminded of that I don't have access to hearing for lack of a record player. I'm going to sulk.
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Is it an American thing? Are British more familiar with the language?
I don't know the answer to this, but I call amusing anecdote time: A British friend of mine who has been living here for a couple of years often meets me for lunch. One day we were talking, and I asked her why she wasn't getting her dessert a la mode. I knew she really liked American ice cream, see, because we'd often joked about how pathetic British ice cream is. And she looked at me and said "But I don't know how it will come! And I don't trust it. "
"What do you mean you don't know how it will come? A la mode is with ice cream."
"But a la mode means 'of the day'," she protested,"It could come with whatever whim they have in the kitchen."
"In America 'of the day' is 'ice cream'. Trust me. It's always ice cream."
So there you go, we've not only adopted the French into our language, we've actually perverted it to mean ice cream. Mmmmmm, ice cream.
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Not to pick on our UK cousins, but I have always found it hilarious the way the British bastardize French words. I don't know if it is a National Conspiracy to corrupt the neighbors' tongue, but invariably I would run across French spellings with bizarrely Anglicized pronunciations. If I pointed it out, I was usually either told "we have adopted that word and made it our own" or "we pronounce foreign words the way their native speakers do". Neither answer was strictly true, of course. There were numerous pubs named "Marquis of Something", but spoken as "Marcus of Something". There was the Belvoir Castle, not pronounced "Bell-vwar" as we do with Fort Belvoir, VA, but instead as "Beaver".
My favorite example wasn't even French; the Spanish resort town of "Ibiza", which usually came out sounding like "Eye-BEE-ther". (My Welsh friend was the most severe culprit with foreign placenames; ironic considering Welsh spelling...)
Being from Arizona, I found it especially painful to hear the way they said words like "taco", "Jalapeno", and "tortilla". "Tore-tillah", anyone? And they would tell me I was wrong when I said it my way! We eventually found common ground though; I brought in a case of frozen burritos one night, and one of my female colleagues swooned, and vowed to pronounce it however I chose, as long as I gave her another one!
I point all of this out, not to counter the accusation that Americans are often clueless about other languages... but to demonstrate that we are not wandering alone in our linguistic fog! :)
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I'm curious, now, since twice you've mentioned that you can't hear the French words in your head and that bothers you, whether you enjoyed the reading of "Clockwork Atom Bomb" here on Escape Pod. I both heard it and read it, and found the French (and the endless UN acronyms) much easier to decipher when I could see them on the page, as opposed to hearing them.
I haven't heard or read it. I'll give it a listen and see how it goes. My guess is that I will have the opposite feeling as you do. I think I would have an easier time listening and being able to ignore it, than getting stumped on words I don't know how to pronounce. It sounds like your knowledge of European languages is better than mine, so maybe that's why you don't mind so much.
Now that I think of it, I recently listened to a CATO institute podcast. It was an American interviewing a French person. The only French used was when the caster introduced the interviewee and said that they worked and L'institute de blahblah de Frahnce in a French accent. Great, I thought, now there is no way I can look this person up on the web if I'm interested in hearing more.
The time it bothers me is when a character (let's say he's french) is able to deliver a long, empassioned speech about the nature of reality without any problem, but throughout the entire book, he'll answer any yes/no questions with 'oui' or 'non'.
Yes, I think this is really stupid. I have never met anyone in real life who does this. I don't say "Yes" and "No" when speaking Japanese, and Japanese people don't say "hai" and "iie" when speaking English with me. I've been to a few international conferences and everyone speaks English without reverting to their native language.
This reminds me of those TV reporters in the US who insist on pronoucing Spanish as a Spanish speaker would, presumably a Mexican. Again, not something that happens between Japanese and Americans as far as my experience goes.
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So there you go, we've not only adopted the French into our language, we've actually perverted it to mean ice cream.
That's a good story. I had no idea. I remember arguing with an English person about whether the entree comes before the meal or is the main meal, itself.
And don't get me started on Japanese English...ok, ok, here you go:
makudonarudo->McDonald's. In Tokyo they say maku and in Osaka they say makudo.
Skinship is any personal relationship that envolved affectionate physical contact. It can be sexual or familial.
My pace -> One's own pace. "He works at my pace" means "He works at his pace." Same thing with "my house".
herusu mehtah -> health meter -> Bathroom scale.
burapee -> burado peetu -> Brad Pitt
They generally believe that these are standard English words and will use them when speaking English.
If you are every stuck on a word while speaking to a Japanese person, try saying it with a goofy Japanese accent. This has a 50/50 chance of success.
http://www.engrish.com/ (http://www.engrish.com/) is one of the funniest sites on the web.
Not to pick on our UK cousins, but I have always found it hilarious the way the British bastardize French words.
Yes. Yes. I always thought that Americans were the linguistic dopes compared to the Europeans who all seem able to speak five languages. Until I heard a British person talk about Mexian food. At least we try.
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Proper nouns with an imbalance of consonants and vowel, and far too many apostrophes.
Examples: Goa'uld, Phssthpok, Muad'Dib, Kaled'a'in.
Also pseudo-Gaelic-Tolkienesque names. (Unless it is by Tolkien).
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Proper nouns with an imbalance of consonants and vowel, and far too many apostrophes.
Examples: Goa'uld, Phssthpok, Muad'Dib, Kaled'a'in.
Fantasy words with apostrophes in them in general. Real languages generally don't work that way, and even when they do, it's a pain in the butt to have to read for fun. I knew the trend was getting ridiculous when I saw there was a major fantasy series with titles like Wit'ch Fire.
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Proper nouns with an imbalance of consonants and vowel, and far too many apostrophes.
Examples: Goa'uld, Phssthpok, Muad'Dib, Kaled'a'in.
Also pseudo-Gaelic-Tolkienesque names. (Unless it is by Tolkien).
I'm with you on that, esp the pseudo-Gaelic names.
I also go crazy over long names for everyday things, and thing like that, especially if I can't pronounce the words at a glance.
Kyrhigha, got out of her bumpalorft and put on her farhaphenictlilgers before leaving her humble phla'psrhuum to start her job.
I'd go so far as to say if you aren't a professional linguist, most of the time even if you are, just skip the made up language and write in English. Also there is no need to make up wacky alternative names for everyday things unless the different name somehow ties into a worldview necessary for the plot of the piece.
Kyrhigha got out of her dreaming platform and put on her foot cases before leaving her plasterboard and stone un-yurt to start her daily public duty.
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Kyrhigha got out of her dreaming platform and put on her foot cases before leaving her plasterboard and stone un-yurt to start her daily public duty.
Was it a tearless un-yurt? With a sad history? >8->
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Kyrhigha got out of her dreaming platform and put on her foot cases before leaving her plasterboard and stone un-yurt to start her daily public duty.
Was it a tearless un-yurt? With a sad history? >8->
?
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Was it a tearless un-yurt? With a sad history? >8->
?
Flash contest in-joke. (http://forum.escapeartists.info/index.php?topic=316.0) Sorry.
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Nice to know it wasn't me.
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Swords in modern fantasy.
There's been thousands of years of weapon development, and hundreds of years since the sword stopped being a useful weapon.
I used to think that too, but recall that fairly recently (like two years ago?) a British commander of some small group in Afghanistan or Iraq ordered a bayonet charge, which was successful. This is in an age of cruise missles, satellite surveillance, stealth bombers, rapid-fire rifles, night-vision goggles, etc.
But yeah, I know what you mean. Unless they're ceremonial, swords do not mix well with phasers.
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I recently read a story that started out awesome. There was character development, and the science was sound, and it was really interesting. So some characters go up into space and decide to orbit the sun, and what to they discover? Another planet sharing Earth's exact orbit, exactly six months behind. WTF. The explanation for why this planet hadn't been discovered until people went into space and saw it didn't make any sense. But I can forgive bad science if the rest of the story is good. I just hated this ending because it had nothing at all to do with the rest of the story. The author spent pages and pages building up round characters, that I really got to know and like, and the discovery had nothing at all to do with them.
For what it's worth, It sounds like the story that was dramatized as Worlds Apart for 2000 Plus, an anthology-type radio show in 1950. You can download it here: http://www.archive.org/details/otr_2000Plus .
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But yeah, I know what you mean. Unless they're ceremonial, swords do not mix well with phasers.
Come on! Swords are always 1) awesome and 2) helpful
Examples:
Ex of 1: Michael in the Grave Peril (Dresden Files book 3)
Ex of 2: Klingon sword (if I don't know the name am I still a geek?) in ST:FC
Ex of 1: Highlander (They could have shot the guys in the head)
Ex of 2: Kill Bill Vol. 1 Crazy 88 scene
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Similar to the swords in modern fantasy complaint, how about the aliens who are somehow defeated when they attack Earth. Humans have the ability to destroy all life on Earth. How could aliens master interstellar travel and yet fail to bring along some nukes?
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Similar to the swords in modern fantasy complaint, how about the aliens who are somehow defeated when they attack Earth. Humans have the ability to destroy all life on Earth. How could aliens master interstellar travel and yet fail to bring along some nukes?
because conquering something is a lot harder than just destroying it.
(insert obligatory War in Iraq comment here.)
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Hey,
If I was a world leader and the aliens attacked and I knew I was screwed, I'm pretty sure I would just go all out even if it did destroy all humanity. We're probably all gonna die anyways...
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This is not just SF, but I'm tired for being told that New York City is the center of the universe.
"So I took the N train (the R never seems to come) to 23rd street and met my friend at a cool little coffee shop on 6th. He had just come from a poetry reading in Dumbo..." The details are nice, but meaningless to anyone who hasn't lived in New York. I think it's presumptuous of the writer to assume that everyone this stuff.
The weird thing is that this kind of thing only started bothering me after I moved to New York.
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Similar to the swords in modern fantasy complaint, how about the aliens who are somehow defeated when they attack Earth. Humans have the ability to destroy all life on Earth. How could aliens master interstellar travel and yet fail to bring along some nukes?
because conquering something is a lot harder than just destroying it.
(insert obligatory War in Iraq comment here.)
I don't know, man. If the aliens can cross interstellar distances, and are planning on conquering Earth, their technology would be so far ahead that we would have a hard time mounting an insurgency. I think a more apt analogy would be European colonialism and the indigenous people of North and South America and Australia.
What I'm thinking about here are the beam weapons that aliens seem so fond of. In Independence Day the aliens terrorize humans by zapping the Empire State Building, and in War of the Worlds they have that heat ray. Why not just nuke...not even nuke, drop an asteroid on every major city. That would get our attention.
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Similar to the swords in modern fantasy complaint, how about the aliens who are somehow defeated when they attack Earth. Humans have the ability to destroy all life on Earth. How could aliens master interstellar travel and yet fail to bring along some nukes?
because conquering something is a lot harder than just destroying it.
(insert obligatory War in Iraq comment here.)
I don't know, man. If the aliens can cross interstellar distances, and are planning on conquering Earth, their technology would be so far ahead that we would have a hard time mounting an insurgency. I think a more apt analogy would be European colonialism and the indigenous people of North and South America and Australia.
What I'm thinking about here are the beam weapons that aliens seem so fond of. In Independence Day the aliens terrorize humans by zapping the Empire State Building, and in War of the Worlds they have that heat ray. Why not just nuke...not even nuke, drop an asteroid on every major city. That would get our attention.
Please don't confuse Independence Day with Science Fiction. :P
If their technology was that far ahead, they would probably already know we are here, and have already found a way to have beaten us before they got here. The European colonial analogy is a pretty good one, but even assuming the Europeans had a 2000 year technological advantage (and there are people on these boards who could answer establish that number much better than I could), that probably doesn't come to close to what the aliens would have. Isn't the universe 13 billion years old? Given that amount of time, a space faring civilization would probably have a technological advantage of several million or even hundreds of millions of years. Sure, they would have obstacles to overcome that the Europeans didn't have (like brining food and atmosphere), but they would have a long time to have figured that one out. In order for something like "War of the Worlds" or "Independence Day" or "Signs" to happen, you would have to a civilization that was just far enough ahead of us technologically, just close enough to get here, just war like enough to want to attack us, and either just desperate enough or just stupid enough to commit that many resources to the job without a full proof plan. There are so many coincidences that would have to come together that the odds of it happening are pretty much nil.
That doesn't stop it from being the basis for some great stories, though. :D
Another possibility that I just thought of is this: Perhaps there is some factor that we currently don't know about that defines some kind of upper limit to intelligence, regardless of what organism develops that intelligence, i.e. the most in intelligent that a mammal or an insect or a worm could ever become is all fixed at the same level. I could see a species reaching that point, inventing everything it is ever going to invent and then just treading water, technologically. If that level allows for interstellar travel and if these different species evolve far enough apart, I could see a situation where lots of different races, all on equal footing, would be competing for the available resources of the universe - interstellar war.
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Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote an alien invasion book called "Footfall." The aliens in this one inherited their technology from an extinct race on their planet. So they had greater technology than humans, but humans were more intelligent. That made for a good fight.
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Why not just nuke...not even nuke, drop an asteroid on every major city. That would get our attention.
Well, for one thing that pretty much would make the planet useless if they want it for the same reason we do, because it's a nice enough place to live.
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Similar to the swords in modern fantasy complaint, how about the aliens who are somehow defeated when they attack Earth. Humans have the ability to destroy all life on Earth. How could aliens master interstellar travel and yet fail to bring along some nukes?
because conquering something is a lot harder than just destroying it.
(insert obligatory War in Iraq comment here.)
I don't know, man. If the aliens can cross interstellar distances, and are planning on conquering Earth, their technology would be so far ahead that we would have a hard time mounting an insurgency. I think a more apt analogy would be European colonialism and the indigenous people of North and South America and Australia.
What I'm thinking about here are the beam weapons that aliens seem so fond of. In Independence Day the aliens terrorize humans by zapping the Empire State Building, and in War of the Worlds they have that heat ray. Why not just nuke...not even nuke, drop an asteroid on every major city. That would get our attention.
Please don't confuse Independence Day with Science Fiction. :P
If their technology was that far ahead, they would probably already know we are here, and have already found a way to have beaten us before they got here. The European colonial analogy is a pretty good one, but even assuming the Europeans had a 2000 year technological advantage (and there are people on these boards who could answer establish that number much better than I could), that probably doesn't come to close to what the aliens would have. Isn't the universe 13 billion years old? Given that amount of time, a space faring civilization would probably have a technological advantage of several million or even hundreds of millions of years. Sure, they would have obstacles to overcome that the Europeans didn't have (like brining food and atmosphere), but they would have a long time to have figured that one out. In order for something like "War of the Worlds" or "Independence Day" or "Signs" to happen, you would have to a civilization that was just far enough ahead of us technologically, just close enough to get here, just war like enough to want to attack us, and either just desperate enough or just stupid enough to commit that many resources to the job without a full proof plan. There are so many coincidences that would have to come together that the odds of it happening are pretty much nil.
That doesn't stop it from being the basis for some great stories, though. :D
Another possibility that I just thought of is this: Perhaps there is some factor that we currently don't know about that defines some kind of upper limit to intelligence, regardless of what organism develops that intelligence, i.e. the most in intelligent that a mammal or an insect or a worm could ever become is all fixed at the same level. I could see a species reaching that point, inventing everything it is ever going to invent and then just treading water, technologically. If that level allows for interstellar travel and if these different species evolve far enough apart, I could see a situation where lots of different races, all on equal footing, would be competing for the available resources of the universe - interstellar war.
Clint, others, have you guys ever read William Barton's "When Heaven Fell"? If not, based on this conversation, you may REALLY enjoy it if you can find a copy. Here's a quick teaser -
The world -
Earth was invaded by the Spahi Mercenaries under employ of "The Master Race". They subdue the Earthlings in a few weeks. 5+ Billions humans are killed. The remainder live among the ruins. A very select few can test for a position in the Spahi Mercenaries. Athol Morrison is one of the select few who passes the entrance exam (effectively a survival test) and goes off to do the bidding of the overlords.
The actual invasion is only talked about in past tense, though Athol was old enough to remember when it actually happened. He is in his mid 20's when we meet him (coming home on leave), he was a little kid when the Spahi invaded. The only world he's really ever known is the devestated mess that is post-invasion Earth.
The bulk of the novel is about his three week leave, reconnecting with his family and friends among the rubble and destruction of his home town. He's an outsider now because he is a soldier of the enemy army. The peripheral bits of the novel are about how the Master Race has expanded and absorbed so much of the galaxy that they are starting to butt up against the borders of another super-powerful race and they may be overrun.
Athol learns that resistance movements are occuring not only on Earth, but even on the home planet of the Shrahh, a race that resembles Tyranosaurs who are the largest and strongest soldiers in the Spahi.
Athol Morrison -
He's big and broad shouldered, in his mid 20's, and has no regrets about the military organization to which he belongs because it's better than eating food cooked over garbage fires and doing forced labor among the subjugated Earth.
The Master Race -
A superintelligent race of self-replicating little black boxes that were created by a race of small furry creatures who have reverted to an almost pet-like mentality and intelligence - they are sort of like hamsters when we meet them.
The War -
Earth had just put her first FTL ship into Earth Orbit when the picket force of Spahi arrived to stake claim to Earth's resources. The captain of the Earth ship kamikaze'd the picket force and destroyed them. It took 50 years for the full might of the Spahi to return to Earth. Fifty years gave humanity time to turn ALL of their industrial production over to military development to try and fight off the incoming invaders.
The war lasted just three or four weeks. 125,000 Spahi were killed, 5+ billion humans were killed. Estimates in the book suggest only a few tens of millions of humans survived globally.
It's a really good and compelling, if depressing, read.
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Why not just nuke...not even nuke, drop an asteroid on every major city. That would get our attention.
Well, for one thing that pretty much would make the planet useless if they want it for the same reason we do, because it's a nice enough place to live.
Nuking the place wouldn't make it very nice. :P
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Clint, others, have you guys ever read William Barton's "When Heaven Fell"? If not, based on this conversation, you may REALLY enjoy it if you can find a copy. Here's a quick teaser -
...
It's a really good and compelling, if depressing, read.
No, I haven't, but I'll look out for it. Thanks for the suggestion.
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This is not just SF, but I'm tired for being told that New York City is the center of the universe.
"So I took the N train (the R never seems to come) to 23rd street and met my friend at a cool little coffee shop on 6th. He had just come from a poetry reading in Dumbo..." The details are nice, but meaningless to anyone who hasn't lived in New York. I think it's presumptuous of the writer to assume that everyone this stuff.
Did "Helen Remembers the Stork Club" bring this peeve to the fore?
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Hmmmmm....
I recently read Helen Remembers the Stork Club.
I posted a peeve about unexplained French.
And I posted one about excessively specific references to New York City.
I think I see a pattern.
Next peeve: Why all the male escorts in Sci Fi?
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Next peeve: Why all the male escorts in Sci Fi?
?
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Next peeve: Why all the male escorts in Sci Fi?
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What you haven't noticed all the male escorts?! Well, let me start with ... umm ... OK. I got nuthin.
Actually this was an inside joke. You would have had to have read Helen Remembers the Stork Club.
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What you haven't noticed all the male escorts?! Well, let me start with ... umm ... OK. I got nuthin.
Well, there was Mur's story "I Look Forward to Remembering You (http://www.escapepod.org/2006/07/06/ep061-i-look-forward-to-remembering-you/)."
And Jude Law's character in the movie A.I.
Mister Michael's wife had a minotaur in "Little Worker (http://www.escapepod.org/2006/03/02/ep043-little-worker/)," and of course there was the robot in "Snow Day (http://www.escapepod.org/2005/06/09/ep005-snow-day/)," but I'm not sure you could consider either of them "escorts" since they were pretty much property and didn't leave the house.
To take your question at face value, though: why not more male prostitutes in SF? With all of the SFnal ideas orbiting around the binary stars of sex and money, it's only reasonable that it should go both ways.
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What you haven't noticed all the male escorts?! Well, let me start with ... umm ... OK. I got nuthin.
Well, there was Mur's story "I Look Forward to Remembering You (http://www.escapepod.org/2006/07/06/ep061-i-look-forward-to-remembering-you/)."
And Jude Law's character in the movie A.I.
Mister Michael's wife had a minotaur in "Little Worker (http://www.escapepod.org/2006/03/02/ep043-little-worker/)," and of course there was the robot in "Snow Day (http://www.escapepod.org/2005/06/09/ep005-snow-day/)," but I'm not sure you could consider either of them "escorts" since they were pretty much property and didn't leave the house.
To take your question at face value, though: why not more male prostitutes in SF? With all of the SFnal ideas orbiting around the binary stars of sex and money, it's only reasonable that it should go both ways.
I would say it's just parallelling real life. Most male prostitutes are for gay men. The market for paid for sex is over 99% geared to male clients.
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Hmmmmm....
I recently read Helen Remembers the Stork Club.
I posted a peeve about unexplained French.
And I posted one about excessively specific references to New York City.
I think I see a pattern.
Next peeve: Why all the male escorts in Sci Fi?
I'm with you. I think it was a weak story. I don't see in what sort of universe it deserves a nebula. Almost everything I read in the Dozois' Years Best was better than HRTSK (and several of the other stories as well, I thought they were mostly meh). Even the stuff I hated, like the Turtledove story and the Baxter story, was better. It does make one scratch one's head a little.
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This is not a Sci-fi pet peeve, but a language pet-peeve.
It drives me batty when I hear people say "I could care less." One, because I know they mean "I COULDN'T care less," and two, because I remember when people used to say it correctly.
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It drives me batty when I hear people say "I could care less." One, because I know they mean "I COULDN'T care less," and two, because I remember when people used to say it correctly.
Perhaps they mean to acknowledge that they'd be capable of more apathy, but just don't want to bother? >8->
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This is not a Sci-fi pet peeve, but a language pet-peeve.
It drives me batty when I hear people say "I could care less." One, because I know they mean "I COULDN'T care less," and two, because I remember when people used to say it correctly.
One that's always bugged me if when people say...
"You cant have you cake and eat it."
Yes, Yes you can you dim wit! You cant EAT your cake and KEEP it!
Grrrrrrrr
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One that's always bugged me if when people say...
"You cant have you cake and eat it."
Yes, Yes you can you dim wit! You cant EAT your cake and KEEP it!
Grrrrrrrr
Well, technically you could (and do for a very small amount), but I don't think you'd want the majority of it.
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This is not a Sci-fi pet peeve, but a language pet-peeve.
It drives me batty when I hear people say "I could care less." One, because I know they mean "I COULDN'T care less," and two, because I remember when people used to say it correctly.
One that's always bugged me if when people say...
"You cant have you cake and eat it."
Yes, Yes you can you dim wit! You cant EAT your cake and KEEP it!
Grrrrrrrr
And if I can't eat the cake, why would I want it in the first place?
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And if I can't eat the cake, why would I want it in the first place?
To keep it out of the hands of terrorists.
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"You cant have you cake and eat it."
For the longest time I couldn't make any sense of this phrase. I think I had to have someone explain it to me.
For some reason it reminds me of the definition you always hear of the word "pun." It's a play on words. Great. What the hell does that mean?
To keep it out of the hands of terrorists.
But then the terrorists have already won!
Or maybe the cakes win...
Or we win because we get to chose to either have keep or eat the cakes. I don't know, but I guess I can't bring one on a plane.
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This is not a Sci-fi pet peeve, but a language pet-peeve.
It drives me batty when I hear people say "I could care less." One, because I know they mean "I COULDN'T care less," and two, because I remember when people used to say it correctly.
One that's always bugged me if when people say...
"You cant have you cake and eat it."
Yes, Yes you can you dim wit! You cant EAT your cake and KEEP it!
Grrrrrrrr
Well, if you eat your cake, then it's gone, so you won't have it any more.
That would make "You can't have your cake, and eat it too." correct.
But for some historical context I turn to:
Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Y. Titelman:
"You can't have your cake and eat it too -- One can't use something up and still have it to enjoy. This proverb was recorded in the book of proverbs by John Heywood in 1546, and is first attested in the United States in the 1742 'Colonial Records of Georgia' in 'Original Papers, 1735-1752.' The adage is found in varying forms: You can't eat your cake and have it too. You can't have everything and eat it too; Eat your cake and have the crumbs in bed with you, etc. ..."
So, even though it bugs you, "and eat it too" is a proper quotation with the same meaning as your preferred phrasing. :)
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French.
I studied Spanish in high school, so when an author throws in a little expression in French I don't know what it means or even how to pronounce it. It might as well be ASCII garbage. The author is including an expression that he knows for sure many of his readers will not understand. It just seems rude to me.
Important annoying use of foreign languages update!
I just started the Hugo nominated novel, Eifelheim by Michael F. Flynn. So far I've been hit with French, German, Latin, and I think one or two more languages that I don't know. Whole sentences with no explanations. OK, Mr. Flynn and his characters, we get it. You guys are smart and you know languages. Of course it makes sense that the scientists wouldn't exchange witty banter in Japanese, Korean, or Chinese because those countries are so unimportant in the scientific community. Not nearly as important as those Latin speakers.
Other than that, though, the book is really interesting so far.
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This is not just SF, but I'm tired for being told that New York City is the center of the universe.
The weird thing is that this kind of thing only started bothering me after I moved to New York.
I think the two things may actually be linked. I think the reason it doesn't bother me, and many other people, is that to us, New York is a fictional place, divorced from the real city. Like Paris, London, (ancient) Rome, and maybe a couple of other places, the myth of the city has become a fictional backdrop we're very comfortable with. The details are what make this fictional place feel real to us.
Living in New York may have made it harder for you to separate the fictional city from the real. On those rare occassions that Oklahoma or Texas landmarks I know personally show up in films, it jerks me out of the movie. You may be experiencing something similar.
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I think the reason it doesn't bother me, and many other people, is that to us, New York is a fictional place, divorced from the real city. Like Paris, London, (ancient) Rome, and maybe a couple of other places, the myth of the city has become a fictional backdrop we're very comfortable with.
That's an interesting point. I hadn't thought of it. I don't mind it when they get details wrong. But maybe now that New York City is no longer a mythical place for me, I end up wondering what the big deal is. I do think NYC is a fantastic place, but there are other places.
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I have to answer before I read all the others because I'm afraid I'll forget mine. :)
1. If it takes you several pages to describe a door--or a plant, or a candle flame, or whatever--chances are I won't make it past that unless the story is otherwise stellar (Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (a cathedral door), all of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children books, but most especially Plains of Passage (every freaking plant Ayla sees).
2. Characters get written into a corner so that the only way out is to use deus ex machina (L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth springs to mind).
****3. "But little did Alicia know it was to be her final French 101 class forever!" That says to me "HEY! YOU'RE READING! A STORY! YOO-HOO! DID YOU FORGET!? HOW 'BOUT A LITTLE REMINDER!? THIS IS THE OMNISCIENT AUTHOR SPEAKING!" Stop it. Just...stop it.
4. Gratuitous sex. (Dear mother of GOD, John Varley's Titan, Demon, and Wizard.)
5. I don't know how to describe it, but I'll name the chief example I can think of: Mitichlorians. Egad. Foul. (Pseudoscientific "explanation" for a perfectly good mystical aspect of the story that doesn't need any explanation.)
That being said, I didn't actually stop reading any of the above (or watching for #5). The only books I've ever put down and never finished are just boring. They don't hold my interest. I typically read three or four at a time, and if one of them is really way more interesting than the others, I'll finish it first. If I've had one sitting there with a bookmark in it for, say, more than a month, chances are it's just not interesting enough to hold my interest.
Examples: Fire Time by Poul Anderson. The Silmarillion by...oh, you know. Evolution by Stephen Baxter. Moonseed by Stephen Baxter...
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I have to answer before I read all the others because I'm afraid I'll forget mine. :)
1. If it takes you several pages to describe a door--or a plant, or a candle flame, or whatever--chances are I won't make it past that unless the story is otherwise stellar (Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (a cathedral door), all of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children books, but most especially Plains of Passage (every freaking plant Ayla sees).
My dad complains that Tom Clancy does this. It killed me to read "The Name of the Rose"... I kept hoping it would get better, and it never did.
2. Characters get written into a corner so that the only way out is to use deus ex machina (L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth springs to mind).
I think I'm guilty of this in a couple of stories. Non-SF though.
****3. "But little did Alicia know it was to be her final French 101 class forever!" That says to me "HEY! YOU'RE READING! A STORY! YOO-HOO! DID YOU FORGET!? HOW 'BOUT A LITTLE REMINDER!? THIS IS THE OMNISCIENT AUTHOR SPEAKING!" Stop it. Just...stop it.
What do you think about this: I wrote an adult fic story (not erotica, but about sex) where I incorporated IMs, phone calls, chat logs, and journal entries. One journal entry I preceded with:
When everything shook out later, Lynn said that if she'd just shown this to Adam, none of this would ever have happened.
(Paraphrased.) See, I don't say WHAT happened, just that something COULD happen.
"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said no. But we missed it. Now it's too late." -Tom Stoppard
4. Gratuitous sex. (Dear mother of GOD, John Varley's Titan, Demon, and Wizard.)
...and everything Laurell Hamilton has written after "Narcissus in Chains".
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What do you think about this: I wrote an adult fic story (not erotica, but about sex) where I incorporated IMs, phone calls, chat logs, and journal entries. One journal entry I preceded with:
When everything shook out later, Lynn said that if she'd just shown this to Adam, none of this would ever have happened.
(Paraphrased.) See, I don't say WHAT happened, just that something COULD happen.
"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said no. But we missed it. Now it's too late." -Tom Stoppard
That's the good use of that kind of trick (IMHO), because it doesn't slap you so hard across the face. It suggests things; it doesn't fling them to the floor in front of you, naked.
...and everything Laurell Hamilton has written after "Narcissus in Chains".
Oh yeah. I forgot her. I started reading that series and all my friends who were already reading it warned me and said, "Unless you like vampire- and were-critter-porn, beware." I wish I'd listened. I actually counted in the last book of hers I read. There were over 120 pages of gratuitous sex and about 100 pages of actual, non-sex plot.
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What do you think about this: I wrote an adult fic story (not erotica, but about sex) where I incorporated IMs, phone calls, chat logs, and journal entries. One journal entry I preceded with:
When everything shook out later, Lynn said that if she'd just shown this to Adam, none of this would ever have happened.
(Paraphrased.) See, I don't say WHAT happened, just that something COULD happen.
"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said no. But we missed it. Now it's too late." -Tom Stoppard[\quote]
That's the good use of that kind of trick, because it doesn't slap you so hard across the face. It suggests things; it doesn't fling them to the floor in front of you, naked.
...and everything Laurell Hamilton has written after "Narcissus in Chains".
Oh yeah. I forgot her. I started reading that series and all my friends who were already reading it warned me and said, "Unless you like vampire- and were-critter-porn, beware." I wish I'd listened. I actually counted in the last book of hers I read. There were over 120 pages of gratuitous sex and about 100 pages of actual, non-sex plot.
Yeah, it sucks because, except for "The Laughing Corpse", they were ALL very good up through "Blue Moon". Then, after the Edward book, she started trying to cram too much into each book and you end up with like 50 pages at the end of "let's kill the monster of this book before I forget".
*sigh*
And I'll keep reading in the hopes that she turns it around.
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4. Gratuitous sex. (Dear mother of GOD, John Varley's Titan, Demon, and Wizard.)
...and everything Laurell Hamilton has written after "Narcissus in Chains".
Amen!
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About all my pet peeves about Fantasy can be summed up by reading Eragon (reluctant hero from modest means, a just king overthrown by a tyrant, swordplay, dragons, demonic wizard). People marvel that it was written by a teenager. I didn't. I've read better stories by seventeen year old's but their only handicap was that mummy and daddy wasn't in publishing. I guess Palolini had a choice between getting his amateur drek published or a new Volvo as a graduation present.
My other pet peeve is one I'm actually struggling with in my amateurish dabblings in SF. In every dystopia story, there is always and old, wizened character which I call "Mr. 'splains-it-all". He tells the hero how the evil rulers or the authoritarian world came to be and how better the world was before. Some writers get around this with a Prologue or a narrative device like using a passage out of an old book or historical annal.
Also, anything vaguely King Authorian or derivative of Tolkein. Elves should make cookies and shoes and stay out of warring.
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About all my pet peeves about Fantasy can be summed up by reading Eragon
Me too. Why? Because when they get round to making a Dragon Riders of Pern film everyone will think its an Eragon rip off.
While I'm moaning here's a quote from todays BBC news
Targets of the so-called denial-of-service attacks have also included the Estonian
I hate that phrase "so-called", especially here. Its not a so-called denial-of-service attack, it IS a denial-of-service attack. Bafoons!
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I hate that phrase "so-called", especially here. Its not a so-called denial-of-service attack, it IS a denial-of-service attack. Bafoons!
Well, now, while we're on that type of pet peeve, I "may" become "violent" the "next" time I see "scare-quotes" used "inappropriately." I'm not at all saying you did, it just brought it to mind. Yours was a proper use. :)
A sign I saw recently at a service station announced--proudly, I might add:
Come See "Our" "NEW" Prices!
or something like that. (Talking about cigarettes or some such nonsense.) I wanted so badly to go in there and ask, "Why are you hinting that the prices are neither new nor your own?" But, they would have just looked at me in confusion.
Have I mentioned I'm a bit of a grammar-Nazi? :)
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Well, now, while we're on that type of pet peeve, I "may" become "violent" the "next" time I see "scare-quotes" used "inappropriately." I'm not at all saying you did, it just brought it to mind. Yours was a proper use. :)
A sign I saw recently at a service station announced--proudly, I might add:
Come See "Our" "NEW" Prices!
or something like that. (Talking about cigarettes or some such nonsense.)
Right there with you. I recently saw one of those "please do not do x" signs (I forget the value of x, atm) and at the bottom it said: "Thank you".
I'm thinking, what, you're not really thankful? You're just pretending? You're giving me a facsimile of thanks? You're trying to piss me off? Make my brain hurt? What?!
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About all my pet peeves about Fantasy can be summed up by reading Eragon (reluctant hero from modest means, a just king overthrown by a tyrant, swordplay, dragons, demonic wizard). People marvel that it was written by a teenager. I didn't. I've read better stories by seventeen year old's but their only handicap was that mummy and daddy wasn't in publishing. I guess Palolini had a choice between getting his amateur drek published or a new Volvo as a graduation present.
As someone who's sort of self-published a book -- it really wasn't very good, so I won't be sharing the link, sorry, like, I mean, REALLY bad and in need of serious revisions -- it bugged the hell out of me when I heard this kid got Eragon published at his age.
I like Sean McMullen's fantasy because, while there are a few characters in the above mold, many of them come from diverse backgrounds -- monasteries, sorcery groups, politics, royalty, et al.
I also dislike -- in Fantasy, anyway -- these two conventions that suffuse Robert Newcomb books:
* When the author sits down with the first draft and a thesaurus and proceeds to replace every instance of "said" (Rowling has done this), overuses adverbs (the last two Dune books were great about having almost no adverbs along with said), and tries to find the most obscure word possible.
* A "factual" writing style -- "due to the fact that" is one of the worst phrases to use in fiction, I think. Even in the sex scenes -- many of them unnecessary, IMO, and I'm a reader/writer who enjoys sex scenes in fiction -- Newcomb has a problem with being overly factual.
Also, even though I'm doing this in my own fantasy novel, I sometimes feel that the "journey" is an overused cliche. It's like, okay, here's your hero, now go on a long quest, collect plot coupons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_coupon), and then kill the bad guy at the end. I think a lot of fantasy authors use the journey as a way to fill space.
That leads me to my final pet peeve about fantasy: NOT EVERY BOOK NEEDS TO BE A DOORSTOP! And a corollary: not every book needs to be a trilogy. Many of them can't even support the 700 pages of the first volume!
The publishers of the Star Trek novels were really bad about this up through about the middle of last year. Diane Duane's 3rd and 4th Rihannsu books had font that was so large and line spacing that was so wide that all we were really getting was one book for the price of two.
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Prologues annoy me. The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about. Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is. (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.) I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.
Equally annoying to me are those snippets from the Encyclopedia Galactica, verses by some fictional poet with far too many apostrophes in their name, and quotations from The Future's pangalactic version of Sun-Tzu, maybe a bit of prophetic scripture, all of which appear the opening of every chapter. ::)I guess it's supposed to establish some kind of cultural background or provide short-term foreshadowing, but for the most part they are as effective as a banner advert on a web site, and I tend to skip over them.
I blame Frank Herbert for their popularity among (amongst?) authors. They were was mildly clever when he did it in Dune, but I think they're long overdue for retirement.
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Prologues annoy me. The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about. Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is. (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.) I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.
Equally annoying to me are those snippets from the Encyclopedia Galactica, verses by some fictional poet with far too many apostrophes in their name, and quotations from The Future's pangalactic version of Sun-Tzu, maybe a bit of prophetic scripture, all of which appear the opening of every chapter. ::)I guess it's supposed to establish some kind of cultural background or provide short-term foreshadowing, but for the most part they are as effective as a banner advert on a web site, and I tend to skip over them.
I rather like them, as long as they're not TOO long. And in the "Nikolai Dante" books, they're usually fairly amusing.
But if they're too long, as in Perdido Street Station, it is a bit confusing. I really didn't like PSS the first time I read it BECAUSE I was so confused, but thank goodness I went back!
Also, whole chapters in italics. That drives me crazy. Italics are really hard to read in large chunks.
And on that note, overuse of italics. My creative writing professor said if you need italics to say it, you can probably say it better another way. In Carolyn Clowes's ST novel "The Pandora Principle", which is a pretty good one, I feel like every fifth or sixth word is italicized. Drives me nuts.
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Prologues annoy me. The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about. Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is. (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.) I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.
I'm guessing that a prologue about a major character that happens thousands of years before is ok then? For example, the prologue to Going Postal.
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Prologues annoy me. The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about. Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is. (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.) I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.
It's extra annoying when they write it to sound like some kind of archaic language. I don't want to decipher. I want to read.
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It's extra annoying when they write it to sound like some kind of archaic language. I don't want to decipher. I want to read.
That's one nice feature of the movie Beowulf and Grendel. They pretty much stuck with modern English vocabulary, including the profanity, instead of inventing pseudo-archaic expressions.