Joseph Campbell Killed Genre Fiction

[t3knomanser]

This has been irking me for a long time, but in light of Stross's anti-Star Trek rant and this rant about sexist/feminist influences in SF, I think it's time for me to put this idea down on page

Comments

[lordindra]

My essay on Asimov acutally brought up his "cardboard cutout" characters. My argument on that was that this actually helped. If his characters were more diverse, the stories would have needed much more exposition before the reader could start reading the actual story and exploring what Asimov was doing with them. I went into this at great length with several examples.

It's a risky technique to use, if you go too far with being formulaic, the formula will get in the way of the ideas you are presenting. But Asimov used it well. Just enough to lower the barrier to entry, without it getting in the way of his point.

[t3knomanser]

For what Asimov was writing, it definitely helped. It's a matter of "what is the story about?" Asimov was writing stories about ideas. About how we might make robots and what that would do to society. About how we might develop the tools to control our own destiny, and what that foresight might mean for us.

In a story like that, deeply complex characters detract from the deeply complex ideas.

[manycolored]

One the one hand you have {insert cardboard tech

[nephilimnexus]

"Star Wars is the most obvious example of this: sword and sorcery fare in spaceships"

Actually, Star Wars is just the Ride & Fall of the Roman Empire. Everything in it is stolen from history, not fantasy. Hence opening "Long, long ago..."