bookzombie | Just for fun: a fannish question

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Just for fun: a fannish question

I've noted in conversation many times in the past that there's a tendency to a sort of 'hive mind' about what you are supposed to like and not like in fandom (though this is maybe not as true as it used to be.) So, just for fun, what important/critically lauded/popular sf books, movies or tv series can you just not get what the fuss is about? Or understand the fuss but don't work for you?

Okay, so here's a starter from me:

I can understand why people consider 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner to be classics of sf cinema, but try as I might to like them I find them a bit...boring. I'd rather watch Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan or Back to the Future again than either of them.

*Prepares for brickbats...!*

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Anything by Gene Wolfe.

I don't think he is being ironic: I think he means every word and is embedded in a mind view in which torture of various types are a genuine route to spirituality (torturer or tortured). I thought Wizard-Knight was basically C.S. Lewis does Conan the Barbarian, but without Lewis's self-awarness and wit.

Oh, me too! I have never been able to understand the adoration of his books.

For me it depends on the book. I like the New Sun/Long Sun/Short Sun books (okay, it's a long time since I read the 'New Sun' ones but I remember liking them at the time.)

Others I find almost unreadable. I did read the Wizard-Knight books but it really was like pulling teeth. I think it was just sheer bloody-mindedness that was getting me through it! 'An Evil Guest' I abandoned.

My biggest problem with his is that his main characters all tend to question and lecture people in the same voice.

I don't get Blade Runner, either.
Nor do I understand the fuss over China Mieville's books. They're okay, but they don't strike me as so very ground-breaking. Same with Richard Morgan and Joe Abercrombie.
The marquis and I have a history of being 90 degrees to the received wisdom, though. So we may not count.

I read Perdido Street Station, which convinced me not to bother with any more - it had a lot of factors that just didn't work for me.

We haven't found a China Mieville book we've got on with, either :-S

I actually like a lot of China's books, but I really didn't get the fuss over 'Perdido Street Station'. I've upset several people by describing it as a 'feature length Doctor Who story'!

I mainly dislike Morgan's. I've read several I'm okay with, but I hated, hated, hated 'Altered Carbon' with a passion. I think mainly the level of violence was more than I'm really comfortable with.

On the other hand I like Abercrombie a lot. While his books are also violent, the violence has consequences. Mainly, though, they are saved for me by being quite funny - pitch dark humour maybe, but nevertheless...

Geniunely gratuitous violence. Apparently surgeons and nurses are ok to gun down?

I never read another one.

I assume you're referring to Morgan here?

I had major problems with 'Black Man' as well. It starts off as an interesting examination of someone who is created to be a warrior but is fighting that. But 2/3rds of the way through the book his girlfriend is put into a refrigerator to give him the excuse to put his growth aside and go on a revenge-fuelled killing rampage. That was my reading anyway. I have been told that I was 'wrong head' about that by a certain ex-Vector editor of our mutual acquaintance!

Edited 2012-02-29 10:22 (UTC)

I think Mieville is okay. I enjoyed Perdido Street Station and The Scar, but I find his books to be overlong and in need of editing. I didn't care much for The City & The City, which I thought was a pedestrian story with low ideas content. I'll probably read more by him sometime, but he's not on my must-read list.

I don't care much for Iain Banks as a writer. I've read two or three, but probably won't read any more.

I liked a few of his mainstream books, and by 'a few' I mean, I believe, two (The Crow Road and Espedair Street) but his science fiction was so dense that I found it impenetrable, and not worth the effort of trying.

I read China Mieville's kids' book. It could have done with a really heavy edit.

A mixed bag for me. Some I like, some not so much. Some are a complete drag...

I'm with you on Banks, Chris. I quite enjoyed The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, and, more recently, Surface Detail (http://www.fascinationplace.org/2012/02/19/iain-m-banks-surface-detail/). Other Culture novels I haven't enjoyed as much. Overall there's usually enough there to keep me reading, but he's very uneven and even his best stuff is clearly not for everyone.

I haven't read any of his non-SF (without-the-middle-initial) books.

I have absolutely no urge to read the Song of Fire and Ice series, less still after watching four or five episodes of the TV adaptation ("the tits 'n' incest hour"). And I don't worship at Neil Gaiman's feet, as seems to be de rigeur (smelly, I should think, too) these days. His books are not-bad to very good, depending, but most of his short stories are just blah.

There's not very much I do like, though, really, so I suppose I'm not typical.

The Windup Girl.

Neuromancer.

I was a teenager when I read Neuromancer. Not sure what I'd think of it now.

The Windup Girl is on the shelf to read, but I'm approaching with caution given the very mixed comments I've heard (it seems to be really divisive - one of those books people either love or hate.)

Neither of these books do it for me, either. I don't really buy virtual reality as a dramatic premise for a story, so every such novel I've read has not worked for me. I struggled to get through The Windup Girl, finding the writing tedious, its plot a jumble, the characters unlikable, and its ideas uninteresting.

It always surprises me when people say "Neuromancer," in response to this type of question because I don't know anybody who actually thinks it's a great book, so it feels like a reaction against a position that doesn't exist. I'm a huge fan of Gibson in general, but even I don't think it's a great book. I think it was in some ways seminal, and I've seen other people refer to it in the same sort of way, and I think a lot of people who read it when it first came out found it to be important to them and their development within the context of the time, but I think that's different from saying that it's a great, enjoyable novel.

Personally, I think he really honed his writing chops over time, and if I were to recommend books of his to someone, they'd all be much more recent works. (For example, I really love Pattern Recognition.)

I am so with you on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dull, pretentious wank, I thought it. (It is not the only Kubrick of which I have thought this.)

Right now I'm several books into the Vorkosigan saga, which is fine as a casual pick-it-up-and-put-it-down bedtime kind of read, but I am entirely failing to understand all the awards and so forth. I don't believe the psychology, I don't feel the romance, the plots are complicated rather than complex, the writing is so dull and direct it's a kind of anti-style... Why all the fuss, forsooth?

I have never seen 2001. I have watched it, but I have usually fallen asleep (complete with snores) about fifteen minutes in.

As yet, no luck with:

Jon Courtenay Grimwald
China Mieville
Karel Capek's R.U.R.
Samuel R. Delaney's novels (though I've liked some of his shorter works)

and most notably:
Jules Verne! Don't care for the style at all?

Oh I've struggled with Delaney too.

I assume you mean Jon Courtenay Grimwood here?!
The first few are really pretty horrid, but he does get much better (He's also one of those examples of a writer who writes some quite nasty & violent stuff, but in person is as sweet a guy as you could hope to meet. I've known him since I reviewed (not terribly positively) his second book and we served as Clarke award jurors together. He also only lives just down the road!)

I heart Blade Runner, but also Wrath of Khan. 2001 (and Solaris, the Russian version) should be buried under 20 feet of ice.

"Firefly" was also dull, dull, dull. Just couldn't do it.

Iain Banks is dull. So is Gene Wolfe. George R.R. Martin makes me murderous. I liked Anansi Boys but most of the rest of Gaiman's longform prose seems basically workmanlike but not stellar to me.

I rather publicly bounced off Mira Grant's "Feed," too.

I did actually have the opposite experience with "Dhalgren," where everyone said it was genius but SO DIFFICULT and I found it a breezy (and quick) read.

I get the, "I don't get the appeal," reaction to television more than books and movies (although I don't get the appeal of a lot of books and movies). To that end:

Any Star Trek series other than the original. I don't think the original is fantastic either, but it's at least campy fun cheesiness some of the time. Everything beyond that, I recognize that a lot of people love it, but it just strikes me as Abysmal.

The new Dr. Who. I limit it to "the new," simply because I haven't watched any of the pre-new episodes since I was a kid, so I can't opine either way, but every episode of Dr. Who that I've watched recently has been terrible save for Blink. And then when I asked all my die-hard Dr. Who fan friends if Blink was indicative that the show had improved in quality in general, or if it was an anomaly, they all admitted to it being an anomaly. The cheesiness of it for me fails to become fun camp and instead just falls into "low quality", and I'm not sure what else there is to enjoy unless you're really into fandom and get a lot out of that end of things, which I'm not.

Torchwood. Again, I've watched a sampling of episodes, and just couldn't get any interest up at all.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I actually enjoyed the original movie, despite it being mostly terrible, but the show, as much as I've watched of it, just seemed boring. Likewise Angel. Likewise that other show Joss Whedon did. I think the only Whedon thing that I've liked has been Firefly, which I love.

Stargate. We own the movie primarily because my wife likes it. I don't mind elements of it, despite it being a huge dose of "what these people need is a white guy". But the television shows again just seem totally boring.

Farscape. I know a lot of people who LOVE this show, but the acting is awful, I find the whole "Muppets in Space," element impossible to get past.

There are some authors whose appeal I don't understand at all, but I feel weirder about posting that, especially since some of them actually do have journals and such and might theoretically come across it. :/

Edited 2012-02-27 16:53 (UTC)

I think the situation is different with TV series as there doesn't seem to be a (and I really hesitate to use the word) 'canon'. There is little feeling that you 'should' like any particular series. For everyone who loves, say, Star Trek, you'll get as many who hate it. Similarly for all the series you list here (which includes several of my absolute favourites!)

The only exception I can think of - certainly from the viewpoint of UK fandom, which is traditionally rather sniffy about non-book sf - is 'The Prisoner', which frankly I just don't get.

I don't get 2001, either. I don't care for any film by Stanley Kubrick (http://www.fascinationplace.org/2012/01/06/why-i-dont-like-stanley-kubricks-films/), actually. I think Blade Runner is pretty good, but it's certainly not a "you must watch this" kind of film.

A few SF things I don't get:

1) Robert A. Heinlein: Not as good a wordsmith as Clarke (and nowhere near Bradbury or Bester), not as good an idea man as Asimov, and his political views are, well, "loathsome" seems too strong a word, but certainly not likable.

2) Neal Stephenson: I read Snow Crash and thought it was a tedious, lightweight novel with aspirations of being humorous (best joke: Hiro Protagonist. Next best joke: Uhhh....). Only good idea was the mind-rewriting virus. I really hated the "Deliverator" sequence, thought it was just relentlessly stupid and couldn't wait for it to be over. Its depiction of virtual reality was about par for the course. I simply don't understand why people love the book, and I've never been able to bring myself to read anything else by him. (Though I'll probably read The Diamond Age someday as part of my "read all the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novels" project.)

3) Firefly: I hated the characters, hated the faux-western setting, and found the stories to be pedestrian. 5 episodes and I couldn't bring myself to watch any more. (This was my introduction to Joss Whedon, as I've never seen Buffy or Angel). I watched the last 30 minutes of Serenity on TV not long ago and thought the dialogue was cringeworthy - somewhere due south of J. Michael Straczynski's. Consequently, I'm not optimistic about Whedon's upcoming Avengers film.

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Just for fun: a fannish question

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