Reviews for Science Fiction For Dummies

Reviews For: Science Fiction For Dummies - Reviews: Page 1 of 15

Kenny's Friend 2008-05-01 ch 17,	abuseCheers here as well. The human mind is the best component for horror writing: the psychological stuff is the scariest thing on the planet, and it's the driving force behind everything from abuse to murder to rape to genocide to nuclear war. Thrilled with your writing as usual.
Kenny's Friend 2008-05-01 ch 10,	abuseIn browsing the reviews you got for this chapter, it seems to me that the fantasy genre is a topic highly contested and far from settled. Everyone and their mother has "original" ideas, after all. When it comes to writing what we call fantasy, I've come to the conclusion that no one can write fantasy stories without some aspect the cliche elements resurfacing. But that's not always a bad thing, because it's the cliche that instills a sense of commonality and draws readers in. Granted, not everyone is an original reader or author, as evidenced by all the pouplar emo/romance crap filling FP's "Just In" page on a daily basis. What I'm trying to say is, there are extremes and there are compromises. As for me, I like to take elements of Tolkein and give them entirely new dimensions. Elves are the classic fantasy race, and I have no problem using them in stories, and I personally like to see other authors exploiting them - so long as they're not used like cookie-cutter people ripped from age-old classics. If you go to the extreme of creating entirely new everything, you end up with creatures called "Gloks" and "Uputus" and everything else George Lucas tried in his new Star-crap-Wars flicks by trying to be original. Using the template set out doesn't make you a cliche author, so long as you use those guidelines well (AKA, manipulate them). I'd like to personally thank you for discrediting those awful vampire/monster "horror" stories too. This is a whole another dimension to the "recycled character" issue. "Horror", my butt. Nothing could be less original or frightening. I read Bram Stoker and Richard Matheson, and that was all well and good, and I praise them for their use of the vampire because it was groundbreaking then and still frightening. But no one today can touch what they accomplished. I'll stop the ranting now, because you've done that already. I have to be honest with you. Any time I read anything you've posted, I find myself impressed by how well-thought out your biases and opinions are, and I appreciate the blunt delivery. Nothing is worse than a lunkhead babbling without a point of authority to back his/her claims. Nice work, although you don't need an author of lower standings to tell you that. God bless.
Yinzhe Lu 2008-03-15 ch 12,	abuseWhile I do appreciate your suggestions for alternatives to Directed Energy Weapons (a major cliche in most Sci-Si works), I still think that accurate portrayals of energy weapons could be relevant to Hard Sci-Fi and in someways, more difficult than circumventing their usage. The fact that you recognize that lasers travel at the speed of light and are invisible due to their frequency demonstrates your superb understanding of physics. I would also like to add that lasers are invisible in a vacuum due to the fact that there isn't a medium in space to illuminate a beam of light. So it would be impossible for lasers of any frequency to be visible during a space battle. Despite the high energy consumption associated with weapons utilizing electromagnetic radiation, they still possess one advantage over projectile weapons- they travel at the speed of light. When efficient superconductors and high energy storage devices come around in the future, I believe that laser-based weaponry could potentially allow spacecrafts to engage one another light-seconds apart. Since there isn't any atmospheric blooming in space, this could theoretically be possible. You neglected to mention particle beam weapons in this chapter. Particle beams operate on a different principle in laser in the sense that damage is done by the kinetic energy transfer of charged particles colliding with the target. With that said, I completely agree with your point on hand-held energy weapon. There is no advantage for a hand-held laser due to the limited range of close-in engagements.
Yinzhe Lu 2008-03-12 ch 1,	abuseI've just started on the Basics of Creativity and thought it was pretty informative and your instructions resonated with my philosophy on story writing. Great instructions! I agree with your idea that Sci-Fi stories should take the laws of physics into account. While the "sufficiently advanced technology" argument has its merits, it is abused way too often and is the recipes for cliched Sci-Fi.
Miss Toadstool 2008-02-27 ch 10,	abusewhere might I find this 'Guide to Writing Fantasy'? I did a search for it on fp and didn't come up with it...
Miss Toadstool 2008-02-27 ch 1,	abusewow, you have an awesome guide going! I don't write any scifi just yet, but I'll have to add this to my C2. It's very useful!
Nostalgia for Infinity 2007-12-09 ch 41,	abuseHey there, Interesting guide. I'll be using this to help me with my science fiction story! I have one question, though. Have you encountered Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space series? If so, what do you think of it? You haven't mentioned it in any of the chapters, so I was wondering if you've read it. It's an excellent hard sci-fi/space opera and is consistent with physics (no FTL technology, though it comes close). I'm in love with the series!
Edcrab 2007-11-28 ch 41,	abuseHey, you updated. Glad to see one of us manages to...! Very interesting read, even though ultimately it can be summarised as another common-sense observation. Still, as blatantly obvious as the advice might be (i.e., making sure that engineering projects are viable in an economocial, functional, and even a believable sense) ... the fact that a lot of us totally fail to consider such aspects when we turn to SF proves that it's advice worth giving. Hmm. Interesting when you think about what SF readers put up with compared to material outside of the genre...
Crownbreaker 2007-08-10 ch 40, anon.	abuseSo far so good. This does a nice job of helping with the problems of bad sci-fi. It would be cool if the next chapter you did was on a much abused group in military sci-fi, special operations.
Edcrab 2007-08-05 ch 40,	abuseNice update! Glad to see you touching on one of the core staples of the fantasy genres (and also one of the core cliches, come to think of it). As always, great selection of ideas and summaries and a choicy bit of analysis delving into why superheroes are such an endearing concept.
Monev 2007-07-15 ch 40, anon.	abuseThe clear solution for the "Experiment" one is to have a superhero use super-tumors.
Jai Akari 2007-05-21 ch 31,	abuseI find "Science Fiction for Dummies" very informing and some parts are just hilarious. On a more serious note: you obviously are seeing things in black-and-white when it comes to the view-point of "The Lord of the Rings". Tolkien wrote LOTR when he was in the trenches during WWI, so he's not going to write in the antagonists POV. Tolkien's point in writing LOTR was to show the dangers of industry on the environment. He also wrote more books than just the LOTR trilogy that extend the history of some of the characters and their forerunners and give more background information about LOTR. From what you wrote, it sounds like you've only seen the movies. (And the movies leave out a lot of stuff and add totally put new stuff into it.) I would write more, but I am on a limited time schedule right now and cannot write anymore at this moment (the dismissal bell just rang). My suggestion to you is to watch National Geographic's "The Making of The Lord of the Rings" for the full history behind the story.
Le Creature 2007-04-12 ch 38,	abuseYou know, you might want to start "Part Two" to this series after 30 chapters. Just saying you have so many chapters you have to scroll down through the list and that that's probably a bad thing. Also, why do you even want dummies writing science fiction? Why do you want dummies doing anything?
Le Creature 2007-04-12 ch 39,	abuseWhat about "We have thingymajiiggies that can materialize gold instanteously therefore money is irrelevent" science fiction ala star trek?
Le Creature 2007-04-12 ch 30,	abuseThere's no real good reason to presume the aliens can't travel faster than light. Even within the existing framework it's hypothetically possible through wormholes or somesuch. Also, physics already can't account for Dark Energy in any sort of coherent way, and it's entirely possible that physics as we know it will be completely undone within the next century, perhaps even within the next few decades. Ultimately, if we were up against a "technologically advanced" species, the only reason to presume that aliens couldn't instanteously completely annihilate humans completely would be because, if they had the capacity to do so, they probably would be so advanced that they a) wouldn't need to because they have the technology to sustain an infinitely large society for an infinite period of time and b) wouldn't even be remotely threatened by humanity. The only compelling reason for an alien invasion really comes down to the hitchhiker's guide version, where aliens don't really invade, earth or our solar system or perhaps our galaxy just happens to be in the way.

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