"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4ad4c199$1@news.povray.org...

>
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/why_i_hate_star_trek.html
>
> This pretty much says why I consider science fiction to only be that where
> you couldn't write the story without the technology. Could Star Trek be
> written as a western or a Spanish Armada kind of story? Yes. Could
> Ringworld? Not hardly.
>
> If you can still tell the story without the technology, it's not SF. Oddly
> enough, most of the original Star Trek series that people liked the best
> (say, the one with the Horta) were ones where you couldn't take out the
tech
> and tell the same story.

Sci-fi is inherently a very difficult genre to work with, since there are
several conflicting goals to simultaenously satisfy, and good and
half-original ideas are exceedingly rare. Entire Star Trek soap opera
franchise has maybe one hour's worth of sci-fi. For that matter, Asimov had
maximum of half a dozen good ideas in his lifetime. Commercial reality
necessitates fluffing it up, but variations on delivery and formula scripts
can only go so far before it becomes a waste of reel or paper.

Post a reply to this message