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Why Charles Stross Hates Star Trek

daria42 writes "British sci-fi author Charles Stross has confessed that he has long hated the Star Trek franchise for its relegation of technology as irrelevant to plot and character development — and the same goes for similar shows such as Babylon Five. The problem, according to Stross, is that as Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore has described in a recent speech, the writers of Star Trek would simply 'insert' technology or science into the script whenever needed, without any real regard to its significance; 'then they'd have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.'"

4 of 809 comments (clear)

  1. utopian socialism by savuporo · · Score: 1, Troll

    The one reason to not like Star Trek is its political system. I mean, a socialist utopia. http://colossus.mu.nu/archives/287079.php Theres no business, theres no enterpreneurship anymore.

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  2. Re:hmmm by Red4man · · Score: 1, Troll

    What happens if you mix plot and anti-plot together?!
    Star Wars.

    May the force be with you (even if it is just a bunch of midichlorians), dumbass.

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  3. Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST by Draek · · Score: 1, Troll

    and by using sci-fi instead of trying to fit the story into a historical setting or the present day, the writer gets an easy way to create his own world that's however he designs it, while still being plausible (unlike pure fantasy works with dragons and knights and swords and magic and such, which is also rather limiting)

    If you think fantasy is about "dragons and knights and swords and magic and such", you don't have any business criticizing him. In fact, fantasy is such a huge, diverse genre of literature many have called for the "soft" sci-fi you describe to be considered a sub-genre of it rather than of sci-fi proper, providing very compelling arguments for doing so.

    Maybe the difference is that Arthur C. Clarke had no trouble selling tons of books with his hard sci-fi stories, so he never felt like he needed to trash popular "soft" sci-fi, and this guy, whatever his name is, is such a crappy writer that he has no sales and feels like he needs to attack someone.

    If you don't know who Charles Stross is, you *certainly* do not have any business talking about sci-fi. He may not be Asimov but he's *far* from an unknown writer either, do some research.

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  4. Re:Scalzi on Stross on ST by dov_0 · · Score: 0, Troll

    The divide between high and low culture is in a way, bigotry. The divide between high and low quality ART (eg. all forms or art - writing, music, cinematography, tribal body painting, cooking etc) is present in every field. This being said, I enjoy poetry, films, music and graphical arts from many centuries, cultures and classes.

    When tussling with the concept of what 'art' is many years ago, I came to the conclusion that art is known by the elegance of it's expression. Most TV doesn't actually express anything with any eloquence, so I have never actually bothered to have a TV set of my own. Even many ancient cave paintings on the other hand can be high art as the imagery and expression of form or concept is so beautiful.

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