Please post here if you are NOT interested in science fiction or fantasy

Cafe Society
1

In every thread about movies - recent examples being the “crowning moments of awesome/stupid” thread, and about videogames for that matter, it always seems like there’s a deluge of people talking about sci-fi or fantasy, and I always feel like there’s a little club forming and I’m left out of it because any post that I make that is unrelated to either Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Star Trek or Babylon 5 is completely ignored as the thread turns into in-depth discussions of Joss Whedon minutiae. Similarly videogame threads tend to turn into discussions about fantasy RPGs, and any posts about first person shooters are ignored.

This is fine, I mean, if the majority of the people here are interested in that stuff, then please, by all means talk about it. Nothing against you guys, really.

But sometimes I feel very lonely here, being totally uninterested in sci-fi, not a fan of fantasy (either futuristic fantasy or sword-and-sorcery type fantasy,) and completely turned off by Joss Whedon and his universe of ass-kicking hot ninja badass super-assassin babes (I get the strong impression that the guy is a “sub” and, like Tarantino, would love to have some woman in a leather suit stomp on his face with spiked heels for two hours.)

I don’t give a shit about any of that stuff. I like traditional movies set in real-world environments, with characters who have real names and real lives and whose world is roughly the same as the one that we live in. There are people who I like whose work falls into the category of surrealism, such as J.G. Ballard and David Lynch, but the worlds that these men create are fundamentally realistic, with the avant-garde elements manifesting themselves in the characters’ behaviors and psychologies. In the case of Ballard, he writes dystopian fiction, often but not always taking place in the future, but there is rarely any undercurrent of either science or fantasy. The real elements at play in Ballard’s writing are peoples’ individual neuroses or their reactions to a demented world - in the tradition of people like Kafka or William S. Burroughs.

But when it comes to space-travel, teleportation, laser guns, aliens, Matrix-type life-simulations, elves, dwarves, paladins, medieval kings, magic, ninjas, or any of that stuff - I’m not interested.

Is there ANYONE else here who’s in the same boat? Or am I alone?

2

I mentioned in a thread a while back that I really liked* Mockingbird* by Walter Tevis author of The Color of Money, The Hustler, Queens’s Gambit etc, because it is just a good book. I realised while posting that I used to read quite a lot of SF while I was a teenager but at some point in my late teens found it all kind of “silly” - there is a real world with real stuff in it without resorting to making up things with bizarre names and weird attributes. And that real world is hard enough to understand.

I have never been able to read fantasy stuff other than Jonathon Carroll whose Land of Laughs doesn’t seem like fantasy at all and seduced me in to all his works. Coincidentally, I discovered in linking that his father wrote the screenplay for The Hustler.

I watched TLOTR movies with my teen sons but couldn’t have read the books on a bet. I don’t believe I have ever made it through an entire episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Star Trek or Babylon 5 and don’t feel that I have missed anything by failing to do so.

I saw Star Wars and loved it but didn’t see the next two - I didn’t care about the characters and had seen all the special effects. I saw the crappier, but visually better, second trio with my kids, but still have never seen the two missing ones and I don’t care.

Even the X Files, which one son watched religiously, seemed pretty good on the odd occasion I saw an episode but still wasn’t compelling enough to get me in.

3

Oh God, me! I hate both genres, but I have a specific hate for fantasy. Goblins, dragons, dwarves, aliens, laser zappers etc.—God, how I hate them. Some science fiction stories get a pass for creating a “believable world”, where the cool gadgets come second fiddle to the story, but fantasy, how I wish that genre would just die.

4

What he said, verbatim.

5

I don’t hate them, am pretty well versed in both genres, but they aren’t preferred. And I do wish this board were more well rounded in terms of Cafe Society discussions.

6

I do like both science fiction and fantasy, so forgive me for stepping in here, but I have to point out that sf/fantasy is not a monolithic whole, and that it’s not required, or even characteristic of people who like it to be obsessed with Joss Whedon minutiae, or be obsessive fans of Stargate, or whatever. Aside from Firefly, I’m not a Whedon fan. Most sf films or TY series don’t begin to approach the caliber of the written medium. An awful lot is " traditional fiction set in real-world environments, with characters who have real names and real lives and whose world is roughly the same as the one that we live in. " Have a look at ** Creator** sometime.

7

I think I’ll stop here, before I start to play with sizes and fonts. But really, if you are judging SF and fantasy by what you see on the big or little screen, you really haven’t given it a fair chance. SF and fantasy readers are actually conditioned to be comfortable with message boards and online communities, and that’s why you’ll find a lot of us online.

I used to watch some Dr. Who, and some Star Trek (in its various incarnations), but I never really got into Buffy or the rest. SF and fantasy fans really are not homogenous, and what we like will vary from fan to fan. For instance, I got bored of the Wheel of Time series considerably earlier in the saga than many people did, and I wouldn’t have read the first few books except that my daughter bought them and they were lying around the house. Similarly, I don’t like Anne Rice, and I never really understood why people raved about her.

I think that a lot of the SF/fantasy enthusiasm that appears online is because it’s not mainstream, and when fans find other fans, they tend to be enthusiastic about finding kindred souls. I know that I was pretty much ostracized when I was a girl because not only did I read that weird stuff, I was a GIRL reading it, and it was decidedly unfeminine. I had nobody to discuss it with, other than my grandfather.

As for FRPGs as opposed to FPS, I just don’t have the reflexes I once did. I need a game that will allow me to take turns, rather than being able to fire at the first glimpse of an enemy.

8

I second Cal. There’s plenty of science fiction and fantasy that are set in real world environments and deal with real people (if fanciful situations). Even in your OP, you say you like J.G. Ballard. There are plenty of science fiction authors who deal with exactly what you want to see.

So you really can’t say you’re not interested in science fiction while praising a science fiction author with the old critical rationalization, “If I like it, it’s not science fiction.” If you like Ballard, then you are interested in science fiction – at least one particular form of it. The trick is to find other science fiction authors who write about individuals and their reaction to a demented world.

And remember, all fiction is fantasy of some sort. Pick your favorite mainstream novel. Did all the events in it really happen? Did all the characters really exist? No – the author made it all up.

9

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Star Trek or Babylon 5 "

Of that list, Star Trek is the only one I know anything about.

10

I get the OP.

Despite the clarifications required upthread, IMO it’s to do with the stuff that is heavily marketed/pigeonholed as “genre” fiction, sitting in those particular sections of the book store, rather than bits of novels that are literary fiction that contain elements of sci fi (e.g. The Cloud Atlas) or fantasy/magical reality (Isabel Allende or Life of Pi) - or both (The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith), but are largely incidental to the plot/characterisations.

Me, I have no interest in sci fi or fantasy TV series. None whatsoever. Never watched anything other than the first series of Star Trek, back in the 1970s. Haven’t seen a single episode of the new Dr Who. Never seen Buffy or Firefly. Haven’t seen a sci fi movie for many, many years. Last one was Bladerunner, which I came to nearly a couple of decades late.

I used to read a bit of genre sci fi, but lost interest in it as a teenager, while reading Iain M Banks. But as conceded in my first paragraph, I do read novels that contain “traditional” sci fi themes when they are incidental - e.g. The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Lost interest in Fantasy as a genre when I was a teenager, halfway through Lord Foul’s Bollocks. Have never read LOTR. Read a couple of Harry Potter books until I got bored. Loved His Dark Materials.

That’s as far as I go though.

11

Yeah, I’m not to into them. I’m down with harry Potter and the occasional cyberpunk novel, but most sci fi/fantasy has such terrible character development- especially of women. They are so often written like the author has never actually met a woman in real life. The “world” of any book isn’t half as interesting to me as the characters, and so much sci fi/fantasy is about the setting, not the people

12

Right here. Don’t read 'em, don’t watch 'em.

13

Where does Steampunk fit into this? I ask because I’m writing a Steampunk adventure at the moment…

I’m not a fan of the “Sword & Sorcery” genre (I like my fictional realms to have A) no magic and B) have discovered gunpowder), and while I like Science Fiction, I don’t tend to like “TV” science fiction; with the exception of the original Star Trek.

14

I’m not as big a fan of sci-fi as I once was. Would still read the odd novel but most of the tv series just are not good to begin with or date very badly.

I’ve never been into fantasy, I find it bizarre how popular it is as literature.

15

You mean authors like Anne McCaffrey, Joan Vinge, Esther Friesner, Pamela Sargent, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Leguin, Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold, Kristine Katherine Rusch, or Suzy McKee Charnas don’t understand about women? Really?

Hell, Charnas and Willis won Hugos for stories for subjects that probably could only be written by a women (with “Boobs” and “Even the Queen”).

If you don’t like science fiction, that’s fine. But one should not make sweeping generalizations about it from small samples.

Good news! Much science fiction and fantasy is about the characters. You’re in luck!

16

I have little to no interest in most works along those lines, though I don’t mind sci-fi so much…it’s not like that stuff engenders any particular disinterest, really, just not my cuppa.

17

I don’t like them in general. I solved the text adventure game Zork III on my Commodore 64 when I was about 10 years old and the same for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy soon after. I liked those and I liked the first Star Wars movie when I was very young but that is about it.

I can’t deal with science fiction that violates the laws of physics whenever it feels like it. That destroys the whole thing for me. You can’t just start screwing around with the speed of light and then stopping on a dime under my watch.

18

I do have some residual fondness for the original Star Trek, but other than that I am right with you.

19

I’m not into SF or fantasy either. I have a passing interest in some aspects of SF, like I watch the odd episode of the original Star Trek or any Dr Who with my brother. I also eat up Neal Stephenson’s books but I am more into “the Shaftoe opera” books rather than, say, Snow Crash.

I tried to get into *Harry Potter *but I just found it really boring. I read the first book and watched the first movie and didn’t enjoy either.

I do like Lost…not sure if people consider that SF. I think I just got caught up in the mystery of the whole thing. I did NOT like Heroes. I couldn’t even finish the first season.

Honestly for me I think the main turn-off for SF and fantasy is the whole deus ex machina aspect of it. In a made-up world, anything can be made up on the spot to fix or further complicate the situation. This sort of thing stuck out for me a lot in Harry Potter, Heroes and in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, too.

20

I find it interesting how many of the people who say they don’t like SF or fantasy are basing this solely on their experience with TV or movies. I know people who read a lot of SF who don’t like the way it’s done there either, or who watch it just so they can point out the errors or talk about how it “should have been done”.

If “anything can be made up on the spot to fix or further complicate the situation” than it’s bad SF. Actually, it’s bad writing; I’ve seen the same thing in mysteries and other fiction, where wild coincidences and previously unknown events or people become major plot points. Goren on L&O:CI sometimes gets on my nerves with how much he knows about every conceivable topic which comes up while investigating a case.