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Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
Expert Consumers and Genre
December 4th, 2008
Jim Harris talks about how it takes 10,000 hours to master a talent.
I agree that is the right ballpark figure.
He also talks about what he has mastered — reading books and watching TV/movies.
That is probably the norm for the USA and the world.
When you show movie virgins projected images, they don’t want subtlety or clever shots. They want the novelty of the medium. You have to introduce it to them slowly.
The same is true of any specialized medium, particularly genre.
People with access to books and TV consume, voraciously, and become experts.
Those of us who are sf writers and readers are experts on the field. Maybe not every little thing, but we know the tropes and we know how things go. If you don’t pander to us, we are not patient enough to consume your work.
This creates a gulf in expectations between the experts and the mass consumer.
Star Wars is made and designed for mass audiences, as is Star Trek and many other TV/movie enterprises. The more sophisticated, expert shows are for the more hardcore fans.
Most sf books are written for the expert consumer. The expert consumer drives niche markets. There exist niche markets. It’s hard to transcend the niche. Easier to do from the start, or not at all.
What I am getting at here is that the phenomenon of expertise, leading to sophisticated niche markets, exacerbates ghettos.
I have little patience with standard romance or literary stories, which have expert audiences attuned to nuances of those genres. Readers of those fields have little patience with hard science fiction. This phenomenon of expertise further separates the genres and sub-genres.
I am torn as to whether this is a good thing or bad thing. I like to imagine that every great work is accessible to everyone, but the fact of the matter is that some great works are only well appreciated by the expert readers in those fields. You’d have to translate them for others.
I fear I am being too abstract, although I think this phenomenon is self-apparent when pointed out.
My conclusion is that a writer needs to be acutely aware of audience from the start, and aim for the desired level.
I remember writing a space-based sf story for a creative writing class in college. It was an okay story, not great but neither terrible. One girl in the class, an English major, was blown away by it. Not because of the characters or plot. Just blown away by the genre conventions. She’d never read much sf at all, and it was eye opening to her and quite challenging.
I offer this up not as a prescription to write, or not to write, for sophisticated genre audiences, but as an observation of the interaction between marketing and audience. I don’t know if it helps to be aware of this or not, from either side — I just prefer to write the kind of books I like to read. But awareness may help me reach a wider audience without compromising much in the way of concept or sophistication.
I hope that is the case.
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December 6th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Interesting — and true. However, there’s often a range. That is, while I’ve watched and read a whole lot of science fiction, and appreciate hard science fiction and some of the more fringe shows, I’m also very much in love with the original “Star Wars.” Even though that’s written for mass audiences, those of us who are well-versed in science fiction appreciate it and enjoy it as well.
It is possible to write and create things that appeal to those with a broad range of experience in the particular genre. I’m not sure it’s always possible, and I don’t think you can’t do this without some sacrifices (that is, there are things you can do when you admit you’re writing for “experts” that you can’t when you want to please everybody). But I think it’s a fallacy that many (*) fall into that for something to appeal to experts, it must be impenetrable to beginners. I’ve seen some judge physics colloquia this way; they assume that if they understood everything in it, it must not have been all that great…..
(*) Note, to be clear, I’m not accusing you in particular of falling into this fallacy, but I have seen it out there.