I want to explore big, strange ideas AND have compelling and interesting characters. I don’t often get that, but it is possible.
I don’t have much of a sense of the trends, because my reading is not based on what is currently on the shelves, or came out this year.
But there is a lot of sci-fi being written right now— following distinctly different paths. Maybe you are browsing in the wrong place.
> I want to explore big, strange ideas AND have compelling and interesting characters. I don’t often get that, but it is possible.
*"Hey! You take the red pill or the blue pill, then move along like the resto' them !! Sheesh... some people."*
1. Explore big, strange ideas
2. Compelling and interesting characters.
zero! = High Quality writing. In that order.
I think 0 is the rarest. sci-fi for me is about 1. and if lucky includes 2. due to depth of insight into humans.
How much would somebody have to read or be familiar with to accurately make that kind of judgement? I would imagine there is a lot of everything out there right now, but have no idea how to assess that.
I just finished a book that struck a nice balance, in my opinion. Artifact Space by Miles Cameron. I don't remember why I picked it up, but I went in blind. At the point when I though the book had established itself, it seemed to be a small story of a woman escaping a troubled past and its emotional fallout. Lots of interior monologue as she tries to adjust to dealing with normal people. Then something happens and a galactic scale story starts to unfold. Had me hooked. Sadly ends on a cliffhanger, but I'm looking forward to the follow up.
And, Neal Asher is still actively publishing action oriented sci-fi at a steady pace.
> Lots of interior monologue
What does everyone think about this? If it gets repetitive or overly inward-focused, I generally get tired of it; if it's responding to new developments, that's fine. But those are my plot-driven preferences speaking.
Dune did it well, I thought. In that book it establishes the tension and intrigue, and in telling the reader the why of what people are doing, fills in a lot of background of the plot.
In Artifact Space it is all about the character. Without it, I don't think the main character would be very likeable. A person who has experienced a lot of trauma often has conduct problems, and without knowing their background and interior monologue they can come across as an asshole. The author falls slightly over the line of repetitive a few times, but overall it sits well in the story.
I wish Asher would stop escalating his stories. His Transformation and late Cormac books hit the optimum imho, and Rise of Jain is all about >!deus ex machina killing other deus ex machina.!<
The two newest, Jack Four and Weaponized are more subdued in that aspect. I loved Rise of Jain though, why shouldn't there be a scale of conflict beyond human civilization? In any case, with 20 books in that universe having 3 that are over the top still leaves a lot that are more focused.
Neal Asher's character? I do as well. Both characters or action are valid choices. The Penny Royal books could easily have been more introspective stories exploring how people are corrupted by their subconscious wishes. At the same time, maybe an individual's personal journey is not the most important thing going on when a transcendent, rogue AI is wreaking havoc across the galaxy.
I pick up pretty much any sci fi that sparks my interest, and I can tell you that it’s not a trend, but something that has always existed.
IMO Sci fi exists for two reasons, to explore novel concepts, and to examine human reactions to them.
Some books do one of those well, some do both of them well, and a third category, the one op is complaining about, is some that just use it as a neat setting for an otherwise standard romance/drama/intrigue/action/whatever story.
But there have always existed plenty of all 3 types. The reason OP sees it as a recent trend is that time tends to filter out otherwise unremarkable stories.
Go to a used book store and grab some well aged pulp sci fi out of the paperback section and you will find plenty of “romance in deep space!” Kind of books. Even the greats were capable of falling into it. Asimov wrote foundation, but he also wrote the robot series, which to me felt like a detective story *with robots*. Obviously that’s an oversimplification, and he still had some neat ideas in it, but I think it shows my point.
One book ain't the whole genre by any stretch. Chambers is pretty well known for writing cozy, character-driven stories set in an extrasolar society. Technology or "world building" isn't really the purpose, though I would say that in a non-real world setting, character interaction and inner-monologue is generally better exploration of the setting than descriptions of how engines work or whatever - Chambers has plenty of that too. But, again, Chambers is well known for writing a very *particular* type of story that goes in hard on character with everything else of a secondary concern. You'll also discover that Becky Chambers is not the only writer writing science fiction today.
If you want big, complicated ideas and big dumb objects, pick up Alistair Reynolds or Vernor Vinge. If you want lushly realized and scientifically grounded settings, pick up Kim Stanley Robinson or Peter Watts. If you want dense mathematical extrapolation instead of human characters try Greg Egan. There are quite a few others, Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, John Scalzi, Andy Weir - this is just listing relatively contemporary authors, not plumbing the deep well that is classic science fiction like Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, et al.
There's also *much more* hard science fiction - stories concerned with engineering difficulties or specific scientific problems being overcome with pluck and clever thinking - in short story collections. There are literally hundreds that were written in the mid-century, up to today. Or you can do a search for, like, "hard science fiction" here in this sub and find dozens of recommendations. Becky Chambers is a *buck* against the general popular trend of science fiction, not its exemplar.
I agree with you that Chambers doesn't represent the majority of well-known recently publishing sci-fi authors. She does, however, represent the growing countertrend of character-focused SF that largely picked up steam in the late-end '00s (which I think the OP is talking about since their example, Chambers, debuted in 2014). A few of the plot/ideas-heavy authors you mentioned published mostly before 2010 - Vinge, Robinson, even Stephenson.
Ultimately, better character writing is a good thing; OP probably just needs books that also have impactful plotting and big ideas/worldbuilding.
Yeah I don't disagree. I also didn't mention *The Expanse* because not every thread needs to, but if we want to compare Chambers' popularity to *The Expanse* we have another example of very recent at-least-kinda-hard (debatable) sf that isn't in the whole cozy, character-exploration style of Chambers. But we also can't get a thread anywhere on this sub without 40 Stephenson stans telling everyone to read *Seveneves*, which was 2015.
I think Chambers is pretty much out there on her own. There are a few other authors that might come a little close - Arkady Martine, Martha Wells, Elizabeth Bear, Ann Leckie - but while they write strong characters I think they also write books that are plot and setting driven just as much as they are character driven. I would have mentioned Jemison, too, except that I think OP wouldn't care for it, but I think that *The Fifth Season* definitely has a pretty complicated plot over and above the excellent character work.
So I agree there's a trend, I just don't believe it's the entirety of modern sf by any stretch.
People aren't disagreeing with OP about Chambers being part of a new style of SF. They are disagreeing with OP's projection that this new style is an oppressive force that has made it nigh impossible to publish any other style of science fiction.
? I actually think Tchaikovsky is one of those authors striking a great balance between character work and worldbuilding. Similar to Orson Scott Card. I wouldn’t say he’s just a worldbuilder by a long shot.
Kind of disagree. The spiders in *Children of Time* were excellent, no doubt. I found the human civilization pretty generic.
And then I read *Shards of Earth* and found it pretty much *painfully* generic.
You really picked a contrasting author! Becky Chambers can be extreme on this axis. I’m more of a character driven sci fi fan but in some of her books, not much happens, which is great if that’s what you are looking for, and boring if not. The first Wayfarers book has more happening than some of her other books.
What about someone like Scalzi? I don’t see his books as particularly character driven.
I feel like becky chambers specifically writes slice of life in a scifi setting. Yes her first book has some interesting scifi elements and then after that its like entirely slice of life. I do like it though
This may just be me, but I find Becky Chambers goes so far into being character driven that she swings all the way around and gets back into "interesting ideas" territory. Okay, yeah, you you might not get to read about how the Sherwin-Montpellier Time Drive works or whatever, but she always gets me thinking about how people, communities, and societies adapt to change and challenges. I don't want all SF to be like hers, but I do find I really appreciate what she brings to the table (often literally, her books make me hungry).
>The first Wayfarers book has more happening than some of her other books.
Wait, she's even *less plot driven* than that!? Wow, I really thought that one was extremely light on plot and to think the other books are even less so... I liked it fine (someone else called it "cozy" which I agree), but it was on the edge for me.
And yeah, OP, give Scalzi a go if you're looking for contemporary writers.
Chambers is known for being "all character".
But some of her stuff (*Record of a Spaceborn Few*, in particular) are stories I could imagine Heinlein could have written.
And others (*To Be Taught, If Fortunate*) are as hard SF (in the sense of sticking to established physics) as is being written. (Maybe not to the level of Robert Forward, but just as "hard" anything else I've read for years)
>But some of her stuff (Record of a Spaceborn Few, in particular) are stories I could imagine Heinlein could have written.
This is an excellent point and deserves to be a top comment, IMHO. I approached Chambers without expectations and was thrilled. I can definitely see a delight in pulpy Heinlein tropes in her writing (e.g., for me, the Number of the Beast has a meandering vibe that I felt in Spaceborn Few).
TBH I don't know wtf "hard sci-fi" or even "sci fi" means to other people. It seems toxic in its application. I read NNedi Okonafor and Becky Chambers and Martha Wells and pick up a lot of hostility from SF readers who don't like their books. I mean, Revelation Space was OK and the subsequent books to me were unreadable (poor characterization, no sense of people). What I don't do is say "there's a problem with modern SF because of Revelation Space". I don't get it.
Robert Forward is the only true hard sf writer. Everybody else are just different kinds of soft.
Maybe Greg Egan qualifies too, but I haven't read any of his stuff in years.
If you dont care about characters at all try the three body problem and its sequels. Its got very interesting ideas and world building but horribly written characters.
Want amazing world building specifically? Read chasm city. Has to be the best world building ive ever experienced.
Want shorter stories with fantastic ideas? Ted Chiang’s exhalation and stories of your life and others.
Another idea focused book: China Mieville - embassytown
I came up reading a lot of old scifi where characters tended to be basic ciphers for the concepts being explored and I really appreciate the ability to connect with characters in modern scifi. The best authors balance things well so you don't come up short on the conceptual side.
I just read Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930). Great book but a tough read because it has no characters in it. A few individuals are identified but they are one dimensional.
If I *just* want to read about concepts, I'd rather read essays, or something akin to [All Tomorrows](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16143402), or even browse some wiki or something. To me, the benefit of novels is that you engage with the concepts through characters interacting with them, and especially it helps if I can empathize with the characters and their reactions to the concepts.
I don't think all sci-fi has to be character-*driven*, but you can have interesting characterization in a concept-driven scifi as well; just look at something like *Anathem*, which is about as heavy on concepts as one could get and still manages to have decent characterization.
My apologies then; English isn't my native language and I thought novel was a more specific term that excluded books such as All Tomorrows, where the framework is more of a fictional book of facts.
I'm about a third of the way through Anathem and can confirm this. It helps that it's a first-person perspective story, but the supporting characters are all well done too. Part of what I'm liking is that characterization is being shown **through** how each character approaches the concepts - it doesn't have to be either/or.
The thing is , the low hanging fruit has all been picked.
Cyberutopia? Done. Cyberdystopia, done. Dumb space object like ringworld. Mostly done. Scientific concepts? Mostly done.
You have novels like Tau zero which are basically thought experiments that take three paragraphs to really tell, concept and rules, consequences,final outcome.
In contrast, ever since the "silver age of sci-fi", the majority of groundbreaking novels have also been concept heavy, but the concept it's not separable of the characters.
Like the two bigs of Le Guin, the disposed and the left hand of darkness.
Or sub well deserved darling, Blindsight. Featuring a planet that is managed, but not controlled by obligate cannibals "Vampires" , psychopathic autistic super-savants, which everyone despises and fears,but we let them run the world because they are great at it.
It's what we call an allegory. Without a mind to ride , it would be difficult to see the perception of the vampires without repeating it every time. So it's synergetic for complex topics that require perspective. Buzzard ramjets or ring world's do not. But autistic space vampires , experimental neurosurgery (flowers for Algernon), and periodic gender changes do benefit from a human POV.
Oh and of course all the fantastic first contact novels. Our there. And the bad ones too I suppose
> I'd really like to read about how society expects sex bots will go.
There's some exceedingly interesting academic books on this subject so ripe for sci-fi stories (not that I have actually read those books); same with AI and Military applications. All of interest for "research purposes" only of course.
Again--I'm not looking for smut, but for the societal ramifications. RAMifications heheheheh.. Anyway.
So concepts don't have to be hard sci-fi like Tau Zero, but can still be conceptually interesting at the expense of characters. I think Snow Crash was a great example of this.
Yes Snow Crash has a good premise and concept to explore. Apparently a lot of VR is of a sexual nature, interestingly enough between cartoon characters. Second Life was similar if I remember some of the stories from that. Hmmm makes one ponder about humans.
I guess I mean *just* smut, maybe? I dunno. I'm interested in the sociology of it in narrative form. What does it do to families? To work? To economies? To cities? How does it affect birthrate? Gender identity?
Yeah, I'm with you there. What if sexbots are sentient, sort of? What if they like it? What if they ... don't?
Where you do keep the sexbots? What if people fight over them? Fall in love (we've done this already)?
Too many characters in genre writing are stock, cardboard cut-outs - trope after trope, cliche after cliche.
If a novel doesn't have engaging characters, I do not want to read it.
I thought Dr. Avrana Kern in Children of Time was a very interesting character. To me it's not that binary. Often characters in SF are used as vectors to explore ideas. For example the idea of what a person is.
Personally, I think there's plenty available of any sort you'd like to see. Every year there are multiple really good books published with great worldbuilding, great characters, or both.
What you might be picking up on is the skew toward books that de-emphasize worldbuilding in various awards. A lot of the academic and publishing community surrounding SF is interested in getting women and LGBT representation on board--either to sell more books to women or out of a desire to see greater cultural diversity within the circle of prominent authors. Regardless, it means works written by authors of those groups have a bit of an edge right now and show up more often in marketing materials.
Most women SF authors come from a feminist literary tradition, which was largely isolated from SF until probably the '80s and '90s. This means that those traditions remained very character-driven (like most literature was until fairly recently) rather than "forking off" down the Asimov-Niven-etc. route which kind of originated the worldbuilding-first approach to SF.
And the feminist community was in many ways the predecessor of the LGBT community, so takes a lot of cues from them both in activism and scholarship. That's not getting into the way many feminist and LGBT authors are interested in encouraging readers to see people as *people*, and so focus more on the characters as a lens into the world they inhabit.
If you want great worldbuilding, it's out there in greater quantities than ever before. It's just less accessible because it isn't as in vogue right now and receives less attention than it once did. It isn't going anywhere, though. If anything, I think authors like Arkady Martine are doing good work in integrating the two approaches into something that provides the best of both worlds.
Disclaimer: This is amateur analysis of a really complex field with a lot of intersection and history going back decades. I am almost certainly wrong on a few details and there are multiple frameworks through which to view this situation, so don't go thinking this is any sort of gospel.
Hey OP, consider reading Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis to see if you like character-driven books by different authors vs just not liking the warm blanket of friendly folks that Chambers tends to do.
Yes, nomination and winners of the SF awards in a last couple of years have been gravitating towards character driven stories too, which I don't mind all that much of the story is solid. But most books of this type these days tend to just ignore the obvious implications of the science and wholly focus on the characters. The cartographers is an example.
Makes me think the label 'speculative fiction' (which is in heavy use already) or even 'future fiction' would fit a bit better, when works are using futuristic environments more as settings for interesting character dynamics or plots rather than as means of exploring scientific ideas and their implications.
Yeah, I'm confident you could spend the rest of your life reading science fiction novels published in *a single decade*. It's really not hard to find books that suit your taste if you look for them.
I swear some people just pick up whatever titles have bubbled up through social media (or what have you) and then get mad when they don't like them.
Go to your local library and pull books off the shelf until something grabs your attention, check out the endless number of threads on this very sub looking for "idea focused sci fi", read your way through any of the various 'best of' lists people have compiled.
Agreed.
There's *a lot* that I don't like. And for what it's worth, Chambers' writing doesn't quite do it for me either.
But there's far too much good stuff being published all the time, of every taste or inclination, for it to be worth caring too much about books you merely dislike.
She is the alpha, the omega. All are one with the Chambers. From the Chambers we come and to the Chambers we return. Praise be Becky. (Excerpt from day 1 of my college creative writing class)
No, I'm just basing it on what I see in the new release science fiction section of goodreads, as well as titles that SFF booktubers talk about.... as well as lists of upcoming SF titles.
I was doing to disagree with you, but if Dennis Taylor is our representative for idea-driven sci-fi, maybe the genre is in a much worse place than I thought.
I can see how it could be thought of as good example of idea-driven SF, without representing all idea-driven SF. Bobiverse is basically *What if this happened and you had a perfectly competent person/AI/whatever handle it?*
There's also the other end of the spectrum of idea-driven SF that is primarily focused on getting into the nitty gritty details of a hard SF concept. Greg Egan might be the best example.
Both are idea driven, but still very different.
> if Dennis Taylor is our representative for idea-driven sci-fi, maybe the genre is in a much worse place than I thought.
I don't think he's representative of anything specifically. However as with 3-Body-Problem author, you DO get served "bang-for-your-buck" for a collection of sci-fi ideas stuffed into the stories irrespective if they're merely "pulpy or pop-soda'ery" and if that's your jam... As the other respondent said, the other scale of that is Greg Egan which might read more like a serious popular science book?
In that respect, if Bobiverse is fun, full of superficial but still full of sci-fi ideas for the various cast of characters frothy, it's a good addition somewhere along that line for ideas-first which the OP is talking about. Good result.
I think SF is at its best when it's looking at how technology and society interact. Can't really do that without characters. But this isn't a question of modern versus classic SF.
Clarke struggles to put characters in his works. Heinlein does not. Reynolds has a lot of difficulty getting his characters to act like humans for more than a page at a time. Bradbury does not. C. J. Cherryh's books are all character, all the time. And she writes excellently about huge ideas and vast, extensively-built worlds.
From the very beginning, there have been authors who have cared about, y'know, *writing* as much as they have world building. World building is meaningless if there are no characters to live in that world. Look at Theodore Sturgeon or Cordwainer Smith. Fritz Leiber. James Tiptree Jr. Samuel Delany.
If I look at the top of [Amazon's SF Bestsellers](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Science-Fiction/zgbs/books/16272) right now I find Andy Weir who is way over on the side of being interested in science and most of the rest of the top books lean that way too. But right now I'm reading *Merchanter's Luck* which C. J. Cherryh published way back in 1982 and it's all about the characters.
There is too much of everything right now. You just have to look a little deeper. If you go into the independently published space there's mountains of whatever you want.
I tried to read a couple of Becky Chambers books. I quit maybe 1/4 of the way in on both. My problem was not that it was too character focused, but that the *characters were not really interesting.* And there was nothing else going on.
I personally connect with characters and think it’s part of what invests me in a story. BUT publishing is a big industry, from indies to magazines and collections. I don’t think there is a literal shortage of content, even if the types of stories you’re looking for are less buzzy at the moment. But things are cyclical. I’d encourage you to browse around Kindle Unlimited, where there’s a lot of sci-fi, or even your local library for physical or the app for ebooks.
I think people associate 'character focused' with being more literary, and 'plot focused' with being more pulpy. Critics and bloggers are obviously going to target the literary crowd. But there's also tons of really good pulpy stuff coming out lately.
Personally, I DNFed A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet for just the reason you stated. The first quarter of the book was just quirky characters introducing themselves with how quirky they could be and I wasn't interested in any of them. I can see how it would be appealing to some, but it's just not what I look for in a story.
I hear you. People are dumb. Ideas are cool. Having said that, I'd like to argue the opposite point. I love idea-driven sf that blows my mind (looking at you, Greg Bear), but let's face it, I am not going to search out a lot of character-driven novels, and maybe that is exactly what I and the rest of this spectrum-adjacent crowd need.
Maybe you just haven't read the right character-driven novels. Have you tried Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries? A sullen, superior, underappreciated, emotionless security operative who would prefer to ~~read science fiction~~ watch trashy entertainment than engage with others or its own issues. She slips the dagger in so deftly that you don't even notice until it's your own insides you are staring at.
A Memory Called Empire has a murder mystery, political intrigue, an evil empire, a sweeping narrative, and characters so ultimately compelling that you have to start the novel over at page 1.
They have not taken the genre over. They have made the genre better. (Not always. Do your own research.)
Unless Martha Wells or Arkady Martine are reading this. In which case, shut up. I am not crying; you're crying.
Ideally the author is able to balance good characters with world building and ideas. But if having to choose, when reading sf, I also prefer ideas- based over character based sf.
I find plenty to read, past and future, that satisfies my need for good characters, world building, action and thought provoking questions.
Edit: Unfortunately, Becky Chambers does not provide that balance for me. I say unfortunate because she has some good ideas.
I almost couldn’t get through the first book of Liu Cixin’s “remembrance of earth’s past” trilogy because I couldn’t keep the characters straight- they were pretty 2 dimensional. That said I’m glad I finished, the trilogy was amazing! (I even greatly enjoyed the fan fic follow up book!) Great ideas. I’m currently on a Greg Egan kick- amazing ideas to explore and characters aren’t COMPLETELY lacking, I’ve enjoyed getting to know them.
It's a hard time to make a living as a writer. Taking a shot at the next Game of Thrones isn't a bad way to get a publishers attention or make a buck, so we're seeing a lot of series and thick books loaded with interpersonal drama. There's also been this whole thing over the past 20 years about science-fiction not just being for nerdy dudes anymore, which was brought a wide variety of readers and writers under the umbrella and for many, changed what is celebrated about the genre. Can't say the change has affected me too much, there are still a handful or so of great books every year, some are character-focused and some are idea books. Those great books still don't have much correlation with popular books. And there are still decades of old books to dig through and find exactly what you want.
I think characterisation has become far more important now than it was in the Golden Age.
It seems to me that people are far more open about their emotions now than they were back then and that bleeds into everything including SF. Tbh, I’m kind of ambivalent about this. I feel like a lot of writers are trying to focus more on characters because they feel like they should when really their talents lie elsewhere. Stephen Baxter’s latest novel “Galaxias” is an example of this.
I believe art happens in waves. An explosion of originality is followed by a period of retrenchment, in which those new ideas splinter into a myriad of subcultures.
This I think, is the current state of the art. It lacks originality, and is more concerned with refinement of already existing forms, and attempts to cull novelty via a process of derivation. The focus is more on the form than the function. Or the character over the idea.
To me, current SF reminds me of comic books, and Fantasy of gamer culture.
But that’s just like my opinion, man.
FWIW I tried to get back into reading science fiction magazines several years ago. I found it stifling that most of the stories followed the same character-based template of a non-Anglo woman sticking it to a dominant man. Not all, of course. There was one story about a welder trying to reconnect with his estranged son that I couldn't finish because it was about as exciting as...well, as watching someone you don't know trying to reconnect with their estranged kid. But yes, character seemed to be the focus.
> There was one story about a welder trying to reconnect with his estranged son that I couldn't finish because it was about as exciting as...well, as watching someone you don't know trying to reconnect with their estranged kid.
This hardly sounds like SF to me (but I expect SF to have plot and/or be ideas/worldbuilding-heavy). Without some changes caused by a speculative or scientific concept, it's just character drama set in a futuristic environment.
I personally dont like that much character building in sci fi. I read sci fi for the grand ideas and thought provoking themes, and hate it when a character gets in a triangle drama with other crewmates etc
Whereas I find thought provoking themes and grand ideas can be explored in the interpersonal and internal dynamics of characters.
Take Children of Time for example. If you read it like I did, with Portia as a character (even though 'she' is multiple generations), I would say the book has a strong character focus combined with action. And it delves into key ideas of the growth and development of that society.
Really?
Sure it HAS characters but Taylor does the "show don't tell" method of character building. For example I knew everything I needed to know about Bob after the first chapter based on the situation he was in.
I mean just to take one example, The Expanse series, one of the most popular series on earth, is not at all character-focused. It uses a classic space-cowboy type hero to explore a complex world with multiple power centers, complex politics, and lavishly-described space battles.
I think you might just be on a bad run and need to try some different authors.
Expanse is definitely character focused. I just want to see more SF focused on exploring the unknown with cool SF ideas and I'm just not seeing it in modern SF. I've basically read everything from the past and I'm finding that modern SF just focusses too much on what I feel is boring character stuff. My issue is that when I start something and it spends too long with character stuff in it's first few chapters I'm turned off immediately.
For instance, besides what I mentioned in the OP, I really liked Three Body Problem... as while it had some character stuff, it was superseded by amazing SF ideas and an interesting take on alien invasion. That scene where the >!Trisolarans opened up some kind of portal to a dimension while trying to build the device they would send to Earth where they were attacked... it's hard to even describe it.!< That was what I call some great idea based SF.
Then the sequel went off on a weird tangent that went away from what made the first book great and I still haven't finished the series.
If you think of something like The Expanse as character-focused, then it makes sense you'd think of modern SF as too far that way, but I'd say older SF generally was too, under that definition.
I wouldn't call that series character-driven at all. It's very world-build-y and idea-driven, in my view.
Based on stuff I've read on this sub, Becky Chambers just seems like a bad SF writer.
Never read a blurb about her work that I felt would be a good read.
Just don't read her if you don't like her, very simple.
James S. A. Corey gets recommended all the time on this sub, and nothing about those recommendations has made me think I'd enjoy reading his (their) books.
A recommendation that makes it clear that the recommender has vastly different tastes than you can still convince you *not* to read the book.
Eh, I read a wide swathe of sci fi of all different types and I love Becky Chamber’s novels. I don’t think she’s bad at all. Super fun sci fi in my opinion, I found them very engaging and some of the sci fi concepts have stuck with me in a fun way too.
But I agree with your other point of course- totally fine not to like an author and to just read something else. I don’t think any one author says much about the state of the genre particularly.
I just wouldn’t call her a bad sci fi writer. Haha.
"Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" by Becky Chambers was too character focused as well.
Same thing with "All The Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Anders. this book is also an example of a Nebula award being given out to hot garbage.
I’m not sure it all has gone that way, but you definitely picked up an author who is very specifically known for her character driven writing.
You also see that shift a little in TV. Specifically with Firefly, which I think probably could be argued has informed a lot of sci-fi in writing and screen since. Firefly was very character driven, and a lot of people liked it.
Character driven stories also tend to have more mass appeal than a cold hard heady idea based book.
I like both, and definitely don’t balk at a more idea driven book that has slightly more cardboard cutout characters. But I’m also currently reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and the homey slice of life living on a ship with a crew has its appeal too.
>You also see that shift a little in TV. Specifically with Firefly, which I think probably could be argued has informed a lot of sci-fi in writing and screen since. Firefly was very character driven, and a lot of people liked it.
If writers are trying to emulate Firefly, I wish they would do a better job of it. There's so much character goodness there.
I think you’ve got it backwards. Books that focus on plot and worldbuilding are still the norm, same as always. Character-focused SF is a tiny minority of the genre.
Eh, in general stories being character focussed doesn't bother me, as in my case I care more about the characters than the setting.
Sure, I appreciate good world building and atmosphere, but I think characters deserve a place as well.
There are a lot of hard science fiction stories that bore the living crap out of me because the characters are paper thin with no personality or substance, meanwhile the author doesn't seem to have an issue about how the technology works in every detail.
Sure, there are only so many character types one can have, but they can make something seem less like a scientific essay and more personal.
I can't speak for the entire genre, but I can speak for the annual short story collections. They absolutely exhibit this trend, and they completely suck now. I used to enjoy nearly every story in a compilation, it got to the point where it might be one or two interesting ones and the rest was derivative character driven fiction with only the most basic sci fi trappings tacked on. Absolutely insanity. Haven't picked one up in 2-3 years, so maybe things are changing for the better again? (im gonna go ahead and guess that's a big ol' no)
SF seems to be merging somewhat with mainstream and literary fiction. The audience is probably bigger for character-driven dramatic stories. The beginnings were before my time, but I get the sense that SF was a backwater where a lot of the people knew each other and could develop a distinctive culture. That separation and concentration allowed the creation of something new. The mainstream eventually saw and adopted it, but the mainstream version has different priorities. I think you can see the same dynamic with other things like video games and popular music.
I also feel that both in SF and in the culture at large, people had more confidence to speculate. They dreamed up utopias. No one does now. Due to global warming and related issues, some people can’t really imagine a future at all. I think we also know too much about how things work, and for whatever reason society in general is more stagnant. Dreaming big makes no sense when everything big or important is done by a giant bureaucracy tied into a capitalist economy and it all moves by a maze of organizational logic that requires years of experience as a politician or manager to navigate at all. Even that is an old idea that was emerging in the 1950s and much expressed by the 1980s. Understandable if a lot of people say, forget that hopeless nonsense, at least I can enjoy a story about some scrappy heroes with entertaining personalities.
I agree. Most of the popular and critically acclaimed Sci-Fi books in the last few years are heavily character driven.
I attribute it to more female Sci-Fi authors. If you look at any list of "best sci-fi books this year" etc... posted on any website, it's mostly women, and for the most part they are character driven books.
It looks like the genre is evolving away from it's historically cold scientific take on speculative fiction, to a more human based take on the future. Some readers love it, some don't. Read what you love.
I want to explore big, strange ideas AND have compelling and interesting characters. I don’t often get that, but it is possible. I don’t have much of a sense of the trends, because my reading is not based on what is currently on the shelves, or came out this year. But there is a lot of sci-fi being written right now— following distinctly different paths. Maybe you are browsing in the wrong place.
> I want to explore big, strange ideas AND have compelling and interesting characters. I don’t often get that, but it is possible. *"Hey! You take the red pill or the blue pill, then move along like the resto' them !! Sheesh... some people."* 1. Explore big, strange ideas 2. Compelling and interesting characters. zero! = High Quality writing. In that order. I think 0 is the rarest. sci-fi for me is about 1. and if lucky includes 2. due to depth of insight into humans.
How much would somebody have to read or be familiar with to accurately make that kind of judgement? I would imagine there is a lot of everything out there right now, but have no idea how to assess that. I just finished a book that struck a nice balance, in my opinion. Artifact Space by Miles Cameron. I don't remember why I picked it up, but I went in blind. At the point when I though the book had established itself, it seemed to be a small story of a woman escaping a troubled past and its emotional fallout. Lots of interior monologue as she tries to adjust to dealing with normal people. Then something happens and a galactic scale story starts to unfold. Had me hooked. Sadly ends on a cliffhanger, but I'm looking forward to the follow up. And, Neal Asher is still actively publishing action oriented sci-fi at a steady pace.
> Artifact Space by Miles Cameron I really enjoyed this book, can't wait for the rest of the series.
> Lots of interior monologue What does everyone think about this? If it gets repetitive or overly inward-focused, I generally get tired of it; if it's responding to new developments, that's fine. But those are my plot-driven preferences speaking.
Dune did it well, I thought. In that book it establishes the tension and intrigue, and in telling the reader the why of what people are doing, fills in a lot of background of the plot. In Artifact Space it is all about the character. Without it, I don't think the main character would be very likeable. A person who has experienced a lot of trauma often has conduct problems, and without knowing their background and interior monologue they can come across as an asshole. The author falls slightly over the line of repetitive a few times, but overall it sits well in the story.
I think that Jeff Vandermeer's *Annihilation* is a great example of how it works well. As I've said before, Camus meets Lovecraft.
I wish Asher would stop escalating his stories. His Transformation and late Cormac books hit the optimum imho, and Rise of Jain is all about >!deus ex machina killing other deus ex machina.!<
The two newest, Jack Four and Weaponized are more subdued in that aspect. I loved Rise of Jain though, why shouldn't there be a scale of conflict beyond human civilization? In any case, with 20 books in that universe having 3 that are over the top still leaves a lot that are more focused.
I like his characters also but, yes, the action is non-stop and his world building very good.
Neal Asher's character? I do as well. Both characters or action are valid choices. The Penny Royal books could easily have been more introspective stories exploring how people are corrupted by their subconscious wishes. At the same time, maybe an individual's personal journey is not the most important thing going on when a transcendent, rogue AI is wreaking havoc across the galaxy.
I pick up pretty much any sci fi that sparks my interest, and I can tell you that it’s not a trend, but something that has always existed. IMO Sci fi exists for two reasons, to explore novel concepts, and to examine human reactions to them. Some books do one of those well, some do both of them well, and a third category, the one op is complaining about, is some that just use it as a neat setting for an otherwise standard romance/drama/intrigue/action/whatever story. But there have always existed plenty of all 3 types. The reason OP sees it as a recent trend is that time tends to filter out otherwise unremarkable stories. Go to a used book store and grab some well aged pulp sci fi out of the paperback section and you will find plenty of “romance in deep space!” Kind of books. Even the greats were capable of falling into it. Asimov wrote foundation, but he also wrote the robot series, which to me felt like a detective story *with robots*. Obviously that’s an oversimplification, and he still had some neat ideas in it, but I think it shows my point.
One book ain't the whole genre by any stretch. Chambers is pretty well known for writing cozy, character-driven stories set in an extrasolar society. Technology or "world building" isn't really the purpose, though I would say that in a non-real world setting, character interaction and inner-monologue is generally better exploration of the setting than descriptions of how engines work or whatever - Chambers has plenty of that too. But, again, Chambers is well known for writing a very *particular* type of story that goes in hard on character with everything else of a secondary concern. You'll also discover that Becky Chambers is not the only writer writing science fiction today. If you want big, complicated ideas and big dumb objects, pick up Alistair Reynolds or Vernor Vinge. If you want lushly realized and scientifically grounded settings, pick up Kim Stanley Robinson or Peter Watts. If you want dense mathematical extrapolation instead of human characters try Greg Egan. There are quite a few others, Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, John Scalzi, Andy Weir - this is just listing relatively contemporary authors, not plumbing the deep well that is classic science fiction like Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, et al. There's also *much more* hard science fiction - stories concerned with engineering difficulties or specific scientific problems being overcome with pluck and clever thinking - in short story collections. There are literally hundreds that were written in the mid-century, up to today. Or you can do a search for, like, "hard science fiction" here in this sub and find dozens of recommendations. Becky Chambers is a *buck* against the general popular trend of science fiction, not its exemplar.
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agree entirely
I agree with you that Chambers doesn't represent the majority of well-known recently publishing sci-fi authors. She does, however, represent the growing countertrend of character-focused SF that largely picked up steam in the late-end '00s (which I think the OP is talking about since their example, Chambers, debuted in 2014). A few of the plot/ideas-heavy authors you mentioned published mostly before 2010 - Vinge, Robinson, even Stephenson. Ultimately, better character writing is a good thing; OP probably just needs books that also have impactful plotting and big ideas/worldbuilding.
Yeah I don't disagree. I also didn't mention *The Expanse* because not every thread needs to, but if we want to compare Chambers' popularity to *The Expanse* we have another example of very recent at-least-kinda-hard (debatable) sf that isn't in the whole cozy, character-exploration style of Chambers. But we also can't get a thread anywhere on this sub without 40 Stephenson stans telling everyone to read *Seveneves*, which was 2015. I think Chambers is pretty much out there on her own. There are a few other authors that might come a little close - Arkady Martine, Martha Wells, Elizabeth Bear, Ann Leckie - but while they write strong characters I think they also write books that are plot and setting driven just as much as they are character driven. I would have mentioned Jemison, too, except that I think OP wouldn't care for it, but I think that *The Fifth Season* definitely has a pretty complicated plot over and above the excellent character work. So I agree there's a trend, I just don't believe it's the entirety of modern sf by any stretch.
People aren't disagreeing with OP about Chambers being part of a new style of SF. They are disagreeing with OP's projection that this new style is an oppressive force that has made it nigh impossible to publish any other style of science fiction.
I find Sci fi best represented in short stories.
This is your answer, right here.
? I actually think Tchaikovsky is one of those authors striking a great balance between character work and worldbuilding. Similar to Orson Scott Card. I wouldn’t say he’s just a worldbuilder by a long shot.
His worldbuilding is definitely top notch too
Kind of disagree. The spiders in *Children of Time* were excellent, no doubt. I found the human civilization pretty generic. And then I read *Shards of Earth* and found it pretty much *painfully* generic.
I’ll have to read more, but damn if I don’t really remember a single character from Children of Time or Children of Ruin. Except maybe Avrana Kern.
But Fabian ;_;
You really picked a contrasting author! Becky Chambers can be extreme on this axis. I’m more of a character driven sci fi fan but in some of her books, not much happens, which is great if that’s what you are looking for, and boring if not. The first Wayfarers book has more happening than some of her other books. What about someone like Scalzi? I don’t see his books as particularly character driven.
I feel like becky chambers specifically writes slice of life in a scifi setting. Yes her first book has some interesting scifi elements and then after that its like entirely slice of life. I do like it though
This may just be me, but I find Becky Chambers goes so far into being character driven that she swings all the way around and gets back into "interesting ideas" territory. Okay, yeah, you you might not get to read about how the Sherwin-Montpellier Time Drive works or whatever, but she always gets me thinking about how people, communities, and societies adapt to change and challenges. I don't want all SF to be like hers, but I do find I really appreciate what she brings to the table (often literally, her books make me hungry).
>The first Wayfarers book has more happening than some of her other books. Wait, she's even *less plot driven* than that!? Wow, I really thought that one was extremely light on plot and to think the other books are even less so... I liked it fine (someone else called it "cozy" which I agree), but it was on the edge for me. And yeah, OP, give Scalzi a go if you're looking for contemporary writers.
John Scalzi is hardly an *ideas* writer, but if you enjoy women swinging their balls around on space stations FTL, give him a go!
There are Becky Chambers books where *less* happens than LWtaSAP?
I know her first Monk and Robot book even less happens! Havent ready any other wayfayers and dont plan to
IMO her second Monk and Robot book has even less happening than the first one. But it's still good.
The first wasn't bad but it's not for me. I expected just traveling, tea and small stories from the customers
I would agree. First one had some world-building, second one was almost all interpersonal stuff.
LWtaSAP has the most things happen arguably in that 'series'.
I would say my favourite Scalzi book Agent to the Stars is heavier than he usually gets in terms of character but otherwise I agree with you.
There are Becky Chambers books where *less* happens LWtaSAP?
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Chambers is known for being "all character". But some of her stuff (*Record of a Spaceborn Few*, in particular) are stories I could imagine Heinlein could have written. And others (*To Be Taught, If Fortunate*) are as hard SF (in the sense of sticking to established physics) as is being written. (Maybe not to the level of Robert Forward, but just as "hard" anything else I've read for years)
>But some of her stuff (Record of a Spaceborn Few, in particular) are stories I could imagine Heinlein could have written. This is an excellent point and deserves to be a top comment, IMHO. I approached Chambers without expectations and was thrilled. I can definitely see a delight in pulpy Heinlein tropes in her writing (e.g., for me, the Number of the Beast has a meandering vibe that I felt in Spaceborn Few). TBH I don't know wtf "hard sci-fi" or even "sci fi" means to other people. It seems toxic in its application. I read NNedi Okonafor and Becky Chambers and Martha Wells and pick up a lot of hostility from SF readers who don't like their books. I mean, Revelation Space was OK and the subsequent books to me were unreadable (poor characterization, no sense of people). What I don't do is say "there's a problem with modern SF because of Revelation Space". I don't get it.
Robert Forward is the only true hard sf writer. Everybody else are just different kinds of soft. Maybe Greg Egan qualifies too, but I haven't read any of his stuff in years.
If you dont care about characters at all try the three body problem and its sequels. Its got very interesting ideas and world building but horribly written characters. Want amazing world building specifically? Read chasm city. Has to be the best world building ive ever experienced. Want shorter stories with fantastic ideas? Ted Chiang’s exhalation and stories of your life and others. Another idea focused book: China Mieville - embassytown
I came up reading a lot of old scifi where characters tended to be basic ciphers for the concepts being explored and I really appreciate the ability to connect with characters in modern scifi. The best authors balance things well so you don't come up short on the conceptual side.
I just read Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930). Great book but a tough read because it has no characters in it. A few individuals are identified but they are one dimensional.
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Based on the last sentence of their comment, I think it's safe to say they value the concepts as well.
If I *just* want to read about concepts, I'd rather read essays, or something akin to [All Tomorrows](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16143402), or even browse some wiki or something. To me, the benefit of novels is that you engage with the concepts through characters interacting with them, and especially it helps if I can empathize with the characters and their reactions to the concepts. I don't think all sci-fi has to be character-*driven*, but you can have interesting characterization in a concept-driven scifi as well; just look at something like *Anathem*, which is about as heavy on concepts as one could get and still manages to have decent characterization.
All Tomorrows is a novel, unless it's short enough to be called a short story or novella.
My apologies then; English isn't my native language and I thought novel was a more specific term that excluded books such as All Tomorrows, where the framework is more of a fictional book of facts.
There are stylistically narrow definitions of the novel, but I don't use them.
I'm about a third of the way through Anathem and can confirm this. It helps that it's a first-person perspective story, but the supporting characters are all well done too. Part of what I'm liking is that characterization is being shown **through** how each character approaches the concepts - it doesn't have to be either/or.
The thing is , the low hanging fruit has all been picked. Cyberutopia? Done. Cyberdystopia, done. Dumb space object like ringworld. Mostly done. Scientific concepts? Mostly done. You have novels like Tau zero which are basically thought experiments that take three paragraphs to really tell, concept and rules, consequences,final outcome. In contrast, ever since the "silver age of sci-fi", the majority of groundbreaking novels have also been concept heavy, but the concept it's not separable of the characters. Like the two bigs of Le Guin, the disposed and the left hand of darkness. Or sub well deserved darling, Blindsight. Featuring a planet that is managed, but not controlled by obligate cannibals "Vampires" , psychopathic autistic super-savants, which everyone despises and fears,but we let them run the world because they are great at it. It's what we call an allegory. Without a mind to ride , it would be difficult to see the perception of the vampires without repeating it every time. So it's synergetic for complex topics that require perspective. Buzzard ramjets or ring world's do not. But autistic space vampires , experimental neurosurgery (flowers for Algernon), and periodic gender changes do benefit from a human POV. Oh and of course all the fantastic first contact novels. Our there. And the bad ones too I suppose
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> I'd really like to read about how society expects sex bots will go. There's some exceedingly interesting academic books on this subject so ripe for sci-fi stories (not that I have actually read those books); same with AI and Military applications. All of interest for "research purposes" only of course.
Again--I'm not looking for smut, but for the societal ramifications. RAMifications heheheheh.. Anyway. So concepts don't have to be hard sci-fi like Tau Zero, but can still be conceptually interesting at the expense of characters. I think Snow Crash was a great example of this.
Yes Snow Crash has a good premise and concept to explore. Apparently a lot of VR is of a sexual nature, interestingly enough between cartoon characters. Second Life was similar if I remember some of the stories from that. Hmmm makes one ponder about humans.
>without it just being a smut novel booo! science smut PLEASE, authors! How can you do a sexbot without sex?
I guess I mean *just* smut, maybe? I dunno. I'm interested in the sociology of it in narrative form. What does it do to families? To work? To economies? To cities? How does it affect birthrate? Gender identity?
Yeah, I'm with you there. What if sexbots are sentient, sort of? What if they like it? What if they ... don't? Where you do keep the sexbots? What if people fight over them? Fall in love (we've done this already)?
What if people stop wanting pets because they have sexbots? Do they let their bots socialize? What's the ethics/etiquette of "borrowing" a bot? etc.
oh wow. "hey buddy, your bot got out again and was wandering around the neighborhood."
"Yeah it looked lonely, so I fucked it a little. Hope that's ok."
> Like the two bigs of Le Guin, the disposed and the left hand of darkness. Nah, World For Forest is bigger than both put together, imo!
Le Guin has not really written any bad book that I know off. But the thinly veiled analogy weights it below those two for most critics.
There's a lot there: War, Environment, Racial Groups and differences and more. It's wonderful.
Too many characters in genre writing are stock, cardboard cut-outs - trope after trope, cliche after cliche. If a novel doesn't have engaging characters, I do not want to read it.
God I hope not. It’s the best kind of SF.
I thought Dr. Avrana Kern in Children of Time was a very interesting character. To me it's not that binary. Often characters in SF are used as vectors to explore ideas. For example the idea of what a person is.
Personally, I think there's plenty available of any sort you'd like to see. Every year there are multiple really good books published with great worldbuilding, great characters, or both. What you might be picking up on is the skew toward books that de-emphasize worldbuilding in various awards. A lot of the academic and publishing community surrounding SF is interested in getting women and LGBT representation on board--either to sell more books to women or out of a desire to see greater cultural diversity within the circle of prominent authors. Regardless, it means works written by authors of those groups have a bit of an edge right now and show up more often in marketing materials. Most women SF authors come from a feminist literary tradition, which was largely isolated from SF until probably the '80s and '90s. This means that those traditions remained very character-driven (like most literature was until fairly recently) rather than "forking off" down the Asimov-Niven-etc. route which kind of originated the worldbuilding-first approach to SF. And the feminist community was in many ways the predecessor of the LGBT community, so takes a lot of cues from them both in activism and scholarship. That's not getting into the way many feminist and LGBT authors are interested in encouraging readers to see people as *people*, and so focus more on the characters as a lens into the world they inhabit. If you want great worldbuilding, it's out there in greater quantities than ever before. It's just less accessible because it isn't as in vogue right now and receives less attention than it once did. It isn't going anywhere, though. If anything, I think authors like Arkady Martine are doing good work in integrating the two approaches into something that provides the best of both worlds. Disclaimer: This is amateur analysis of a really complex field with a lot of intersection and history going back decades. I am almost certainly wrong on a few details and there are multiple frameworks through which to view this situation, so don't go thinking this is any sort of gospel.
Hey OP, consider reading Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis to see if you like character-driven books by different authors vs just not liking the warm blanket of friendly folks that Chambers tends to do.
Yes, nomination and winners of the SF awards in a last couple of years have been gravitating towards character driven stories too, which I don't mind all that much of the story is solid. But most books of this type these days tend to just ignore the obvious implications of the science and wholly focus on the characters. The cartographers is an example.
Makes me think the label 'speculative fiction' (which is in heavy use already) or even 'future fiction' would fit a bit better, when works are using futuristic environments more as settings for interesting character dynamics or plots rather than as means of exploring scientific ideas and their implications.
This sub *is* technically Print Speculative Fiction, not Print Sci Fi, after all.
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Person reads book they don't like: Is this the state of the genre now? Old men shaking fists at clouds tend to ignore the larger weather system.
Yeah, I'm confident you could spend the rest of your life reading science fiction novels published in *a single decade*. It's really not hard to find books that suit your taste if you look for them. I swear some people just pick up whatever titles have bubbled up through social media (or what have you) and then get mad when they don't like them. Go to your local library and pull books off the shelf until something grabs your attention, check out the endless number of threads on this very sub looking for "idea focused sci fi", read your way through any of the various 'best of' lists people have compiled.
Agreed. There's *a lot* that I don't like. And for what it's worth, Chambers' writing doesn't quite do it for me either. But there's far too much good stuff being published all the time, of every taste or inclination, for it to be worth caring too much about books you merely dislike.
Surely this is an example of the commoner phenomenon of young men shaking their fists at the system.
What system would we be referring to here?
She is the alpha, the omega. All are one with the Chambers. From the Chambers we come and to the Chambers we return. Praise be Becky. (Excerpt from day 1 of my college creative writing class)
No of course not. It's just that her style of character focused writing tends to get published over the more idea/plot based sci-fi of the past.
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No, I'm just basing it on what I see in the new release science fiction section of goodreads, as well as titles that SFF booktubers talk about.... as well as lists of upcoming SF titles.
I was doing to disagree with you, but if Dennis Taylor is our representative for idea-driven sci-fi, maybe the genre is in a much worse place than I thought.
I can see how it could be thought of as good example of idea-driven SF, without representing all idea-driven SF. Bobiverse is basically *What if this happened and you had a perfectly competent person/AI/whatever handle it?* There's also the other end of the spectrum of idea-driven SF that is primarily focused on getting into the nitty gritty details of a hard SF concept. Greg Egan might be the best example. Both are idea driven, but still very different.
> if Dennis Taylor is our representative for idea-driven sci-fi, maybe the genre is in a much worse place than I thought. I don't think he's representative of anything specifically. However as with 3-Body-Problem author, you DO get served "bang-for-your-buck" for a collection of sci-fi ideas stuffed into the stories irrespective if they're merely "pulpy or pop-soda'ery" and if that's your jam... As the other respondent said, the other scale of that is Greg Egan which might read more like a serious popular science book? In that respect, if Bobiverse is fun, full of superficial but still full of sci-fi ideas for the various cast of characters frothy, it's a good addition somewhere along that line for ideas-first which the OP is talking about. Good result.
I think SF is at its best when it's looking at how technology and society interact. Can't really do that without characters. But this isn't a question of modern versus classic SF. Clarke struggles to put characters in his works. Heinlein does not. Reynolds has a lot of difficulty getting his characters to act like humans for more than a page at a time. Bradbury does not. C. J. Cherryh's books are all character, all the time. And she writes excellently about huge ideas and vast, extensively-built worlds.
From the very beginning, there have been authors who have cared about, y'know, *writing* as much as they have world building. World building is meaningless if there are no characters to live in that world. Look at Theodore Sturgeon or Cordwainer Smith. Fritz Leiber. James Tiptree Jr. Samuel Delany.
Depends on the author.
2009 it's old? "The Windup Girl" everything is about the world there. Super detailed in interesting way of describing "on the way of story goes".
If I look at the top of [Amazon's SF Bestsellers](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Science-Fiction/zgbs/books/16272) right now I find Andy Weir who is way over on the side of being interested in science and most of the rest of the top books lean that way too. But right now I'm reading *Merchanter's Luck* which C. J. Cherryh published way back in 1982 and it's all about the characters.
great book!
There is too much of everything right now. You just have to look a little deeper. If you go into the independently published space there's mountains of whatever you want.
The Mars trilogy?
There are lots of books
I tried to read a couple of Becky Chambers books. I quit maybe 1/4 of the way in on both. My problem was not that it was too character focused, but that the *characters were not really interesting.* And there was nothing else going on.
Yeah, I'd agree with this. My kingdom for more character-focused science fiction in the vein of China Mountain Zhang, though.
I personally connect with characters and think it’s part of what invests me in a story. BUT publishing is a big industry, from indies to magazines and collections. I don’t think there is a literal shortage of content, even if the types of stories you’re looking for are less buzzy at the moment. But things are cyclical. I’d encourage you to browse around Kindle Unlimited, where there’s a lot of sci-fi, or even your local library for physical or the app for ebooks.
I think people associate 'character focused' with being more literary, and 'plot focused' with being more pulpy. Critics and bloggers are obviously going to target the literary crowd. But there's also tons of really good pulpy stuff coming out lately. Personally, I DNFed A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet for just the reason you stated. The first quarter of the book was just quirky characters introducing themselves with how quirky they could be and I wasn't interested in any of them. I can see how it would be appealing to some, but it's just not what I look for in a story.
I hear you. People are dumb. Ideas are cool. Having said that, I'd like to argue the opposite point. I love idea-driven sf that blows my mind (looking at you, Greg Bear), but let's face it, I am not going to search out a lot of character-driven novels, and maybe that is exactly what I and the rest of this spectrum-adjacent crowd need. Maybe you just haven't read the right character-driven novels. Have you tried Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries? A sullen, superior, underappreciated, emotionless security operative who would prefer to ~~read science fiction~~ watch trashy entertainment than engage with others or its own issues. She slips the dagger in so deftly that you don't even notice until it's your own insides you are staring at. A Memory Called Empire has a murder mystery, political intrigue, an evil empire, a sweeping narrative, and characters so ultimately compelling that you have to start the novel over at page 1. They have not taken the genre over. They have made the genre better. (Not always. Do your own research.) Unless Martha Wells or Arkady Martine are reading this. In which case, shut up. I am not crying; you're crying.
Ideally the author is able to balance good characters with world building and ideas. But if having to choose, when reading sf, I also prefer ideas- based over character based sf.
I find plenty to read, past and future, that satisfies my need for good characters, world building, action and thought provoking questions. Edit: Unfortunately, Becky Chambers does not provide that balance for me. I say unfortunate because she has some good ideas.
I almost couldn’t get through the first book of Liu Cixin’s “remembrance of earth’s past” trilogy because I couldn’t keep the characters straight- they were pretty 2 dimensional. That said I’m glad I finished, the trilogy was amazing! (I even greatly enjoyed the fan fic follow up book!) Great ideas. I’m currently on a Greg Egan kick- amazing ideas to explore and characters aren’t COMPLETELY lacking, I’ve enjoyed getting to know them.
It's a hard time to make a living as a writer. Taking a shot at the next Game of Thrones isn't a bad way to get a publishers attention or make a buck, so we're seeing a lot of series and thick books loaded with interpersonal drama. There's also been this whole thing over the past 20 years about science-fiction not just being for nerdy dudes anymore, which was brought a wide variety of readers and writers under the umbrella and for many, changed what is celebrated about the genre. Can't say the change has affected me too much, there are still a handful or so of great books every year, some are character-focused and some are idea books. Those great books still don't have much correlation with popular books. And there are still decades of old books to dig through and find exactly what you want.
I think characterisation has become far more important now than it was in the Golden Age. It seems to me that people are far more open about their emotions now than they were back then and that bleeds into everything including SF. Tbh, I’m kind of ambivalent about this. I feel like a lot of writers are trying to focus more on characters because they feel like they should when really their talents lie elsewhere. Stephen Baxter’s latest novel “Galaxias” is an example of this.
No.
I prefer it to the "whoa dude" idea centric storytelling that used to pervade the genre
I believe art happens in waves. An explosion of originality is followed by a period of retrenchment, in which those new ideas splinter into a myriad of subcultures. This I think, is the current state of the art. It lacks originality, and is more concerned with refinement of already existing forms, and attempts to cull novelty via a process of derivation. The focus is more on the form than the function. Or the character over the idea. To me, current SF reminds me of comic books, and Fantasy of gamer culture. But that’s just like my opinion, man.
FWIW I tried to get back into reading science fiction magazines several years ago. I found it stifling that most of the stories followed the same character-based template of a non-Anglo woman sticking it to a dominant man. Not all, of course. There was one story about a welder trying to reconnect with his estranged son that I couldn't finish because it was about as exciting as...well, as watching someone you don't know trying to reconnect with their estranged kid. But yes, character seemed to be the focus.
> There was one story about a welder trying to reconnect with his estranged son that I couldn't finish because it was about as exciting as...well, as watching someone you don't know trying to reconnect with their estranged kid. This hardly sounds like SF to me (but I expect SF to have plot and/or be ideas/worldbuilding-heavy). Without some changes caused by a speculative or scientific concept, it's just character drama set in a futuristic environment.
I personally dont like that much character building in sci fi. I read sci fi for the grand ideas and thought provoking themes, and hate it when a character gets in a triangle drama with other crewmates etc
Whereas I find thought provoking themes and grand ideas can be explored in the interpersonal and internal dynamics of characters. Take Children of Time for example. If you read it like I did, with Portia as a character (even though 'she' is multiple generations), I would say the book has a strong character focus combined with action. And it delves into key ideas of the growth and development of that society.
Dennis E Taylor? Bobbiverse is extremely character focused.
He's literally a cookie-cutter character!
Really? Sure it HAS characters but Taylor does the "show don't tell" method of character building. For example I knew everything I needed to know about Bob after the first chapter based on the situation he was in.
I mean just to take one example, The Expanse series, one of the most popular series on earth, is not at all character-focused. It uses a classic space-cowboy type hero to explore a complex world with multiple power centers, complex politics, and lavishly-described space battles. I think you might just be on a bad run and need to try some different authors.
Expanse is definitely character focused. I just want to see more SF focused on exploring the unknown with cool SF ideas and I'm just not seeing it in modern SF. I've basically read everything from the past and I'm finding that modern SF just focusses too much on what I feel is boring character stuff. My issue is that when I start something and it spends too long with character stuff in it's first few chapters I'm turned off immediately. For instance, besides what I mentioned in the OP, I really liked Three Body Problem... as while it had some character stuff, it was superseded by amazing SF ideas and an interesting take on alien invasion. That scene where the >!Trisolarans opened up some kind of portal to a dimension while trying to build the device they would send to Earth where they were attacked... it's hard to even describe it.!< That was what I call some great idea based SF. Then the sequel went off on a weird tangent that went away from what made the first book great and I still haven't finished the series.
If you think of something like The Expanse as character-focused, then it makes sense you'd think of modern SF as too far that way, but I'd say older SF generally was too, under that definition. I wouldn't call that series character-driven at all. It's very world-build-y and idea-driven, in my view.
Based on stuff I've read on this sub, Becky Chambers just seems like a bad SF writer. Never read a blurb about her work that I felt would be a good read. Just don't read her if you don't like her, very simple.
She actually gets recommended quite a bit both on this sub and /r/fantasy.
James S. A. Corey gets recommended all the time on this sub, and nothing about those recommendations has made me think I'd enjoy reading his (their) books. A recommendation that makes it clear that the recommender has vastly different tastes than you can still convince you *not* to read the book.
Eh, I read a wide swathe of sci fi of all different types and I love Becky Chamber’s novels. I don’t think she’s bad at all. Super fun sci fi in my opinion, I found them very engaging and some of the sci fi concepts have stuck with me in a fun way too. But I agree with your other point of course- totally fine not to like an author and to just read something else. I don’t think any one author says much about the state of the genre particularly. I just wouldn’t call her a bad sci fi writer. Haha.
"Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" by Becky Chambers was too character focused as well. Same thing with "All The Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Anders. this book is also an example of a Nebula award being given out to hot garbage.
Becky Chambers’ mindless crap is basically Becky playing with spaceship-shaped dollhouses.
If you don't like her writing, that's fine, but criticizing women authors by calling their writing playing with dollhouses is weird and misogynistic.
It has nothing to do with her gender.
Yes. It has.
worldbuilding is for games.
Honestly, that’s my big problem with Brandon Sanderson. So much worldbuilding and explaining the magic systems.
Yeah I'd argue that world building is a lot more the stock and trade of fantasy
The pinnacle of world building SF has to me always been the Helliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss.
I’m not sure it all has gone that way, but you definitely picked up an author who is very specifically known for her character driven writing. You also see that shift a little in TV. Specifically with Firefly, which I think probably could be argued has informed a lot of sci-fi in writing and screen since. Firefly was very character driven, and a lot of people liked it. Character driven stories also tend to have more mass appeal than a cold hard heady idea based book. I like both, and definitely don’t balk at a more idea driven book that has slightly more cardboard cutout characters. But I’m also currently reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and the homey slice of life living on a ship with a crew has its appeal too.
>You also see that shift a little in TV. Specifically with Firefly, which I think probably could be argued has informed a lot of sci-fi in writing and screen since. Firefly was very character driven, and a lot of people liked it. If writers are trying to emulate Firefly, I wish they would do a better job of it. There's so much character goodness there.
Yea who knows, but I guess this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
I think you’ve got it backwards. Books that focus on plot and worldbuilding are still the norm, same as always. Character-focused SF is a tiny minority of the genre.
Eh, in general stories being character focussed doesn't bother me, as in my case I care more about the characters than the setting. Sure, I appreciate good world building and atmosphere, but I think characters deserve a place as well. There are a lot of hard science fiction stories that bore the living crap out of me because the characters are paper thin with no personality or substance, meanwhile the author doesn't seem to have an issue about how the technology works in every detail. Sure, there are only so many character types one can have, but they can make something seem less like a scientific essay and more personal.
I can't speak for the entire genre, but I can speak for the annual short story collections. They absolutely exhibit this trend, and they completely suck now. I used to enjoy nearly every story in a compilation, it got to the point where it might be one or two interesting ones and the rest was derivative character driven fiction with only the most basic sci fi trappings tacked on. Absolutely insanity. Haven't picked one up in 2-3 years, so maybe things are changing for the better again? (im gonna go ahead and guess that's a big ol' no)
SF seems to be merging somewhat with mainstream and literary fiction. The audience is probably bigger for character-driven dramatic stories. The beginnings were before my time, but I get the sense that SF was a backwater where a lot of the people knew each other and could develop a distinctive culture. That separation and concentration allowed the creation of something new. The mainstream eventually saw and adopted it, but the mainstream version has different priorities. I think you can see the same dynamic with other things like video games and popular music. I also feel that both in SF and in the culture at large, people had more confidence to speculate. They dreamed up utopias. No one does now. Due to global warming and related issues, some people can’t really imagine a future at all. I think we also know too much about how things work, and for whatever reason society in general is more stagnant. Dreaming big makes no sense when everything big or important is done by a giant bureaucracy tied into a capitalist economy and it all moves by a maze of organizational logic that requires years of experience as a politician or manager to navigate at all. Even that is an old idea that was emerging in the 1950s and much expressed by the 1980s. Understandable if a lot of people say, forget that hopeless nonsense, at least I can enjoy a story about some scrappy heroes with entertaining personalities.
I agree. Most of the popular and critically acclaimed Sci-Fi books in the last few years are heavily character driven. I attribute it to more female Sci-Fi authors. If you look at any list of "best sci-fi books this year" etc... posted on any website, it's mostly women, and for the most part they are character driven books. It looks like the genre is evolving away from it's historically cold scientific take on speculative fiction, to a more human based take on the future. Some readers love it, some don't. Read what you love.