james_nicoll

It IS so possible to write science fiction that is ever so realistic and doesn't play with six dozen impossibilities before breakfast!

Except if you do so, you get reviews that denounce it for not being real science fiction at all, but a second-rate thriller like Michael Crichton:

This tension between quality and lack of critical success has, on the other hand, led to a tradition in SF that tried to make the genre palatable, relatable, clean, acceptable, slowly draining the genre of everything that made it as powerful as it was. Charles Stross’ 2007 novel Halting State represents a kind of end point for this development. It would be silly and facetious to compare it to accomplished works of science fiction. In fact, the author it most resembles is not strictly speaking a SF writer, it’s Michael Crichton.

Draining the genre of power by eschewing zero-point energy and FTL!

Edited at 2011-02-08 11:35 am (UTC)

Not a book: a series. Which is absolutely not science fiction, despite the presence of extradimensional narcoterrorists, paratime machines, secret US government agencies building said paratime machines, and, and, and ...

But! Horses! Nobles! Women in frocks! Ergo, fantasy!

Edited at 2011-02-09 07:01 pm (UTC)