Comments on: How Would You Describe My Work?

By: Neil

Neil — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:20:04 +0000

As Justin says, Character-driven SF is a pretty good description.

By: Ben Cooper

Ben Cooper — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:36:29 +0000

I agree with Justin (sorry for the first name informalities, “first poster” sounds so inhuman). Personally I see more soft sf elements in the work I’m familiar with. The focus on character puts it in that bracket for me.

When I think of Hard SF I tend to think of writing centred on scientific/technical accuracy and less on character and the wider world the characters exist in. But I guess that depends what you class as Hard SF.

There are definitely space opera tropes in some of your stories as well as mundane, though I hate the mundane tag.

Ultimately most categories in everything in life blur and smudge into each other.

OK I’ll come down and say: Soft SF (as a general category from what I’ve read so far).

By: Jason Stoddard

Jason Stoddard — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:48:14 +0000

Ha, it’s funny how we fall into the same, er, tropes? Trips? But I suspected I was getting too close to a been-there mode when my wife said, “Oh yeah, the government falls, the money is revalued, everyone goes to Mars, typical Jason story.”

I think it comes down to: keep exploring.

By: Gareth L Powell

Gareth L Powell — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:55:28 +0000

Jason Stoddard is having a similar moment of introspection over on his blog, and I have added comments: http://strangeandhappy.com/2009/02/10/monetized-reviews-and-a-moment-of-self-inspection/

By: Gareth L Powell

Gareth L Powell — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:55:47 +0000

Hmmm… “Character-driven SF”. That’s a label I could live with.

By: Justin Pickard

Justin Pickard — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:26:44 +0000

The stories I’ve seen are a fairly diverse mix of hard and soft, mundane and space opera … but they seem to have more in common with each other than the labels would imply. They’re all character-driven (rather than plot-driven) and quite literary in structure and pacing.