Some years ago, I read an article online criticizing the tendency of mainstream writers to try to write science fiction without doing any reading in the field, and thus accidentally recreating the most ancient cliches of the field. The parody featured a “literary” writer calling his agent excitedly to report that he was going to write a novel about a “detective” investigating a “crime” (“No, this isn’t some mere genre detective story; I’m doing something novel and exciting!”) with the twist that the detective would gather all the suspects together and (here’s the exciting new part!) explain all the evidence and reveal the name of the killer, etc., etc.
Does this seem familiar to anyone? I’d like to read it again (and cite it).
Well, shucks; now I regret not prefacing it by saying that I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here, and then explaining how a stray remark from one of you put me on the right track and yet there was one thing that puzzled me…
How the hell did you find that with only that description? Especially since it’s more of an editorial than a parody.
Well anyway since you are all here let me tell you my idea for a story. It’s two astronauts, a man and a woman, they get shipwrecked on a planet. I’m thinking Matt Damon and Jennifer Lawrence. So they start off hating each other then as the movie goes along they fall in love. Just as it about to end we hit the audience with the twist:
Their names are Adam and Eve and it’s Earth they crashed on!
Heh. See, the vagueness of that description was actually the whole point, sure as I meant what I said about a stray remark putting me on the right track: Bo was correct about how hard it is to google the decisive specific when there are so many to search for.
After all, Andy is a smart guy – and so would’ve found it, if he’d searched for the right specific. So I figured: why search for specifics? Why google clichés if I can just google “clichés”?
So I googled “clichés” and “science fiction” and “mystery” and “genre” and “literary” and nothing else; and it popped right up.
