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Isaac comments on Spoiled Discussion of Permutation City, A Fire Upon The Deep, and Eliezer's Mega Crossover - Less Wrong
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Comments (26)
I felt the same way. I feel the same way about a lot of science fiction - interesting ideas, often worth reading for the ideas alone, but falls flat on plot, or characters, or writing, or all of the above.
With Permutation City I got the sense that he was trying hard to make his characters 3-dimensional, but it didn't work for me. [SPOILER WARNING] For example, one supporting character spent most of the novel trying to overcome the guilt of murdering a prostitute. The idea is promising, but the execution was irritating.
(In fact, I have a theory that some popular works of genre fiction - I would include thrillers and romances as well as sci-fi - are popular because of their flaws. For example, when reading The Da Vinci Code, you don't have to worry about any interesting characters or beautiful prose distracting you from the puzzles and conspiracies.)
I so rarely encounter good characters even in non-sci-fi that the book better be based on a damn interesting premise or it will be a total waste.
Yeah, I felt like that character and all his scenes could have been cut entirely without damaging the book.