Controversy Time

[rolanni]

This subject has come up in three different conversations, under three different guises in the past 24 hours, so I thought I'd bring it here and see what y'all think.

What, exactly, is with the need to have stories be "realistic"?  I mean -- a news story, that has to be "realistic," because you're reporting facts; events that actually happened, words that were actually spoken, actions that were actually taken or not taken. 

A fictional story, though -- note the use of the word fictional, as in science fiction -- that can be any dern thing the author wants it to be, provided she can bring it off.  Back when I was learning how to write, there was this thing that readers brought to a story called, "The willing suspension of disbelief," which is that piece of human consciousness that says, "Tell me a story."

It's not my job as a science fiction writer to teach piloting, or math, or genetics, or, heck, the fine art of gambling.  It's my job to tell the best dern story I can, right now, and if I do it right, and don't jostle the elbow of that  willing suspension of disbelief, then the story will deliver an emotional punch far different, and (IMNSHO) far deeper than that delivered by a "factual" story.

To recap -- I don't care if the premise of "The Cold Equations" is "realistically" flawed, or if the "realistic" math "proves" that that 98 pounds of extra cargo wouldn't make a bit of difference in the med ship reaching its port.  What I care about is the melant'i play -- the working out of the relationships; the exploration of human error, and necessity.

What about you?  Does a story have to be "realistic" in terms of what we know now in order to engage your interest and your heart?  Why or why not?

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. I guess one of the things I've been thinking about recently is how broken the Star Wars universe feels to me. It's really nothing to do with the authors. It's just that I cannot believe anymore than in a galaxy with thousands of inhabited planets, where people live by the billions of trillions, that main characters could be familiar with the obscure little things about the other side of the galaxy that they do. To know who local rulers, smugglers, prominent citizens, on hundreds of worlds, is just more than I can imagine. Let alone things like being able to give very small ships unique but generic names. The stories are intensely personal, about individuals affecting galaxies, but it feels as if it's the story of how the deployment of one soldier to Iraq managed to change the entire war. If you want to write at the "thousands of planets" scale, I think Asimov's Foundation series does it a lot better.