Ok, I am baaaaack.....
Life, life at last.....
Sorry folks - it's been a monumentous couple of weeks with the net access going down, power going down, proofs for DRAGON'S RING needing to be rushed through, and finally, on a more personal front, our visa allowing us to emigrate to Australia coming through too. South Africa - that I had once been so hopeful about - has been on a slowly increasing slide with crime and corruption leading into an abyss. The murder rate has now climbed to 87 per day (from medical records - the government records show a decline from 52...) collaping healthcare, and corruption everwhere, and while the country is far from Zimbabwe, with patches of wonderful success, I am afraid I am calling it a day. It may recover and become the dream rainbow nation, but I believe that's a long way off, and some distance down before it starts to turn. I will always have an affection for the place and people (and many are good people) but it's time to move on.
Ok -on the subject of writing again: In the discussion of genres and sub-genres it always strikes me there is one sf sub-genre -- which I love -- which no one else seems to acknowledge exists. Yes, now that you mention it, that is typical of me - loving something no-one else even admits is there... officially anyway. Authors... because it is hard-work-to-write (and the pool of authors who CAN do it is even smaller than the pool that can write humor), and readers because they don't realise it is hard-work-special-clever-author-required. It's what I call the 'problem solving subgenre' and its a nearly extinct branch of hard sf (generally) but you do get right across the spectrum (even into fantasy). You might say it was the sf version of a whodunnit: the science-howdunnit - the clues and cues are there hidden in plain sight, but the problems seem insurmountable. Yet a bit of science and thought and there is your answer. Yeah, no dreadnoughts slugging it out with pyrotechnics in deep space, and no superhero stuff - except as background special effects. Just thinking, really. Poul Anderson wrote a fair number of these (you might say he was the real master, and I wouldn't disagree with you, although Heinlein and Asimov wrote quite a number too) -- since then, Larry Niven a good few. Other subgenre examples - in Space Opera for eg is Jack Vance's BLUE WORLD and in alternate history Sprauge de Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL or Eric Flint's 1632 (alternate history really lends itself to this more easily - the solutions have been thought of elsewhere. If it is done well, it still takes a lot of research and ingenuity on the part of the author.) The trouble is it really takes a scientist or an engineer -- or someone who will research the subject damned carefully to write them -- and someone who has the many-ways-to-skin-a-cat attitude. Often, let's be honest, character is neglected for clever science. Still, I love the science-howdunnit dearly. But there seem to be a shortage of authors out there doing this sort of thing (or maybe a shortage of publishers buying it).Anyone got any recommendation of authors who do this, possibly more recently (although I'd be nostalgic/curious about your ideas on old ones)?
And do you have to be a scientist to enjoy these?
Posts
