It's not the telephone, it's flagpole-sitting.

[mrissa]

A lot of conventions have panels about who can write SF, or who can write hard SF, what the qualifications are. And I always want to say that the people who do write hard SF should read more social histories, because it would get in their way more in ways that it should get in their way, and then we wouldn't have those embarrassing stories that are all concept and the concept is outdated before the story is published.

When I wasn't looking, because I don't tend to look at the front inside page, because it's all gossip, the Strib started running a celebrity tweet of the day. A celebrity tweet. Of the day. People. This is not cutting edge. This is not what the wave of the future looks like, a celebrity tweet of the day. This is not adjusting your thriller plots so that people's cell phone batteries have been accounted for. It's the bit in the history of the turn of the millennium where the historian has this baffled tone where she's describing how the old media tried to latch onto this new phenomenon that was perfectly good for writing haiku about backup catchers for those who cared but really stupid for reprinting a randomly selected singer's not particularly trenchant observations about his lunch from the previous day.

This is exactly like my ability to tell you that you will look just fine in that shirt in pictures fifteen years from now, but those trousers, eeeesh, not so much, I think. You can have that ability, too. I believe in you. It's not hard. I was not bitten by a radioactive historian.

Comments

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Only those who are A) literate and B) know history are allowed to write fantasy, obviously. (I would suggest acquaintance with unicorns or dragons or somesuch, but I *really* don't want to only read fantasy written by people who would claim to have met such beasts, or to know actual magic. Because seriously, I've *met* those people, and no.)

I would strongly suggest that only people who've had actual romantic relationships should write romance, but I don't know if that filter would help any.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I would strongly suggest that only people who've had actual romantic relationships should write romance, but I don't know if that filter would help any.

There doesn't seem to be any correlation-- I've read plenty of believable romance (and scorching smut) by people with no romantic experience. And I've read plenty of the opposite, from people who've had romantic relationships but don't seem to have learned anything from them.