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Writing speculative fiction without finger-wagging gatekeepers
The moralizers wanted to eliminate 'adventure stories' and gave us garbage moralizing with shallow characters instead
I would like to see more psycho-literary ideas, more meta-biological and meta-chemical concepts, private time-systems, synthetic psychologies and space-times, more of the remote, sombre half-worlds one glimpses in the paintings of schizophrenics, all in all a complete speculative poetry and fantasy of science.
- J. G. Ballard
Why is it that popular adventure, weird/horror, and space opera stories never seem to get made?
Your Host grew up imbibing 80s action/adventure films starring Stallone and Swarzenegger and Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver.
Those films all nod back to an older age of wild and weird stories, back in the days of the pulp magazines.
How'd that happen? And why is it that we don't see so much of this genre anymore, written or filmed?
Be warned: deep dive means deep. This is a close reading of a book outlining the conscious agenda forced on readers of the fantastic.
A small clique of self-appointed gatekeepers decided to remake the realm of fantastic literature into the vehicle for a materialistic ideology.
Here at rogue planet, Your Host is far more interested in the lay of the land before all these geeks took over.
Give me E. E. Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Clark Ashton Smith any day.
They got the science wrong, you say? Get this:
I'm not reading fantastic stories so that the author can cough up last week's physics tutorial.
I want bodybuilder action stars punching monsters in the face.
I want psychedelic experiences with cruel mega-corporations and off-world colonies.
I want adventure stories that cook up the wildest and most fun experiences that the author's imagination can bring to the page.
Around here, we're partial to that small but growing movement of writers calling themselves Superversive.
I'm glad to see the NewPub -- that's independent self-publishing by entrepreneurial authors unafraid to write their own unique stories -- take over from the dying publishing houses who insist on forcing "woke" down our throats.
I want to see the PulpRev authors succeed in resurrecting the hard-boiled noir detective, the Western, the space opera, even the planetary romance.
Forget the science. I want them to butcher the science.
For the sake of storytelling, forget the science.
To anger the sputtering nerds who think that realistic science trumps story, forget the science.
Tell me a fun, exciting, breath-taking story that I can't put down.
Writing that elevates and entertains is more enjoyable, and sells more books, than critical, nasty, snarky, moralizing stories about unlikeable characters.
Futuristic/Mythic Adventure Fiction has a bigger and brighter future than today's "award winning" stories and novels.
Write fun stories that people want to read and you can't go wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByS1Rlk_AL8
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