{"id":2061,"date":"2008-03-12T07:11:22","date_gmt":"2008-03-12T11:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/2061"},"modified":"2008-03-11T21:25:08","modified_gmt":"2008-03-12T01:25:08","slug":"why-michelle-doesnt-like-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/2061","title":{"rendered":"Why Michelle Doesn’t Like SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being the geek that I am, I deeply hate to admit that I do not like to read science fiction. It feels akin to saying an a Luddite or something. The strange thing is I’ve never been quite able to explain why I don’t like it, but Kate<\/a> sums it up in her post on dystopian futures<\/a> and science fiction.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of SF I have read or attempted to read is terribly depressing. There are plenty of exceptions, and when I have read those books I generally have enjoyed them (Ender’s Game, Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille, the Callahan series) but the vast majority of what I come across looks like it’s going to make me even more depressed than I already am.<\/p>\n

And I just don’t need that.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say only SF is guilty of that. I felt off kilter for several DAYS after I finished reading Joyce Carole Oates “Blonde” because it was so terribly depressing. But I don’t read a lot of “literature” either. Possibly for the same reason.<\/p>\n

So I suppose my question about SF now would be, what SF is out there that isn’t terribly depressing? <\/p>\n

I loved “Ender’s Game” but felt the series went steadily downhill, and quit reading after “Xenocide.” I enjoyed Spider Robinson’s Callahan series, but that’s all but straight up comedy. (Same thing for Steven Brust’s “Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grill.”) I read a book called “Becoming Human” that I very much enjoyed, as it dealt with the issues of human rights and who is and is not deserving of them. And of course I loved reading the Han Solo books by Brian Daley when I was younger–those were pretty much straight up action\/adventure.<\/p>\n

But some of the stuff my dad loved? Take “A Canticle for Lebovitz.” I couldn’t stand it. When they did the radio play when I was a teenager, I would leave the room so I wouldn’t have to hear it because I found it so depressing.<\/p>\n

So is there SF out there that isn’t horribly depressing? And if so, how do I find it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being the geek that I am, I deeply hate to admit that I do not like to read science fiction. It feels akin to saying an a Luddite or something. The strange thing is I’ve never been quite able to explain why I don’t like it, but Kate sums it up in her post on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-xf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}