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Message from discussion Quickly fixing science fiction
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James Nicoll  
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 More options Oct 9 2012, 5:19 pm
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2012 21:19:09 +0000 (UTC)
Local: Tues, Oct 9 2012 5:19 pm
Subject: Re: Quickly fixing science fiction
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In article <k5219a$19...@dont-email.me>, Kurt Busiek  <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
>On 2012-10-09 19:38:27 +0000, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) said:

>> In article <k51u2i$al...@dont-email.me>, Kurt Busiek  <k...@busiek.com> wrote:

>>> I'm happy to read that stuff if it's done well.

>> I got sent something from one of my mystery editors that was all about
>> the complicated relationships adults can find themselves in. The failure
>> for any crime to materialize early on added considerably to the tension
>> as it looked like it was building to an enormous trainwreck of carnage
>> and needless tragedy or at least it would have been building to that
>> had it actually been a mystery and not a mainstream novel about the
>> complicated relationships adults can find themselves in. It was engaging
>> but in my case only because I was reading it as the wrong genre.

>As I recall, there's a (fairly nonsensical) bit in Fredric Wertham's
>SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT about how comic books ruin kids for quality
>fiction because their tastes will become so debased they can't read
>anything without expecting a murderer to enter the story and splatter
>blood everywherre.

>It's nice to see that actually crop up, in admittedly-very-specific
>circumstances.

I got sent another one, this one actually a mystery. Let me refresh my
memory on this:

Spoilers for The Dog Park Club, which is subtitled A Mystery so it's not
a case me interrogating the text from the wrong perspective:

Opera singer Max Bravo and the other people he knows casually from the
park they all take their dogs to become concerned when one of their
number, Amy, vanishes. Their suspicions fall on Amy's husband Steve and
so the collection of amateurs sets out to catch a killer.

Except it turns out a random collection of dog walkers doesn't really have
applicable skills, to the point they are just awful at their attempts to
detect. Their covert surviellance on Steve is interrupted when Steve brings
them all coffee, for example, and in the one instance of possible physical
threat, Max gets rescued by his granny. They are never really sure anything
bad happened to Amy and in any case certainly never prove it or that Steve
had anything to do with it if indeed Amy was the victim of foul play. It's
even possible Amy fled because she is a criminal.

It's definitely a mystery. What it isn't is an Answer.

Some readers found the book frustrating:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/99sdubh

--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)


 
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