I remember one time I picked up an sf novel called, iirc, Floating Cities. And the further I got into it, the more confused and irritated I felt.
Like, "Waitaminnit, waitaminnit... They live in hollow spheres in orbit, OK, and so they're in freefall (aka zero-G), fine... and they set up a marketplace stall by plunking down a 'gravity mat' on the inner surface and bingo, they've got gravity?!! No other gravity tech? Uh..."
And I just felt lost, because even though the book was presented as sf the author wasn't following any of the sf conventions I unconsciously expected. She was doing something, though, following some conventions I didn't recognize at all. She was, so to speak, writing in some other language than sf.
Till about 2/3 of the way through, I had a revelation: "Oh! This isn't sf at all, it's ROMANCE!" With the accent on the first syllable, as in "this month's Harlequin Romance". And so it was. Romance with an sf false nose. And although I'd never read a romance, I guess I had read enough about the genre, and enough bits of parody, to recognize it.
So, as I was saying: maybe this reviewer was expecting historical fiction, and just didn't know what to make of fantasy.
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Date: 6/3/06 02:48 am (UTC)I remember one time I picked up an sf novel called, iirc, Floating Cities. And the further I got into it, the more confused and irritated I felt.
Like, "Waitaminnit, waitaminnit... They live in hollow spheres in orbit, OK, and so they're in freefall (aka zero-G), fine... and they set up a marketplace stall by plunking down a 'gravity mat' on the inner surface and bingo, they've got gravity?!! No other gravity tech? Uh..."
And I just felt lost, because even though the book was presented as sf the author wasn't following any of the sf conventions I unconsciously expected. She was doing something, though, following some conventions I didn't recognize at all. She was, so to speak, writing in some other language than sf.
Till about 2/3 of the way through, I had a revelation: "Oh! This isn't sf at all, it's ROMANCE!" With the accent on the first syllable, as in "this month's Harlequin Romance". And so it was. Romance with an sf false nose. And although I'd never read a romance, I guess I had read enough about the genre, and enough bits of parody, to recognize it.
So, as I was saying: maybe this reviewer was expecting historical fiction, and just didn't know what to make of fantasy.