fubarobfusco comments on Three Worlds Collide (0/8) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (95)
I thought this was very, very good, probably my favorite of your writings that I've read so far. I think it's quite a bit better than the Harry Potter fanfic--which is itself good fanfic, but "good for fanfic" is a much more forgiving category than "good fiction." When you mentioned trying to get a Hugo for HPMOR I thought you were revealing an embarrassing inability to self-calibrate your own skills as a writer: HPMOR is not good enough to be publishable (even leaving copyright issues aside), and it's very far from being at a Hugo-winning level. It is not, however, ridiculous to think that fiction of the "Three Worlds Collide" caliber could compete for Hugo-type prizes.
In summary, I'd like to see more of your original fiction, and if you chose to I don't doubt that you could publish stories in major-market genre magazines.
Really? What makes HPMoR not good enough to be publishable?
50 Shades of Gray was a twilight fanfiction, and apparently it was good enough to be publishable.
What does it actually mean for a piece of fiction to be 'good'? HPMoR can be an author tract at times, but it also has one of the most intricate plots I've ever read, specifically designed so that thinking about it with knowledge of bayesian cognition and rationality allows the reader to discover more things about the story. There aren't many stories like this.
What about the actual quality of the writing isn't good enough? I would say it is at least as good, in terms of whatever it is that makes me enjoy it, as 80% of all fiction I've ever read.
And sometimes when I read Humanism Part 3 I think it's better than 100% of other fiction I've read.
I've not read it, but I'm given to understand that it has more fucking in it than HPMOR.
Also, I'm under the impression that people read it out of curiosity because it's famous for having lots of fucking in it, but when they've read it they don't think it's actually that great. (I haven't read it either, and I'm not going to read it in the foreseeable future either.)
It's the first book I've ever had to put down after a few pages because the writing was so very awful.