Vault101 said:
[sci-fi is somehow bad according to some people]
I might say they have only read badly written fan-fics [footnote]I'm not discussing the quality of fan-fics as a genre but you
know there is a sizeable portion of them that are bad. And that gives the others a bad name...[/footnote] and cannot appreciate written works, no matter what the genre but that would mean lumping everybody in a single category, as you suggest people do to sci-fi. So, I wouldn't do that, because blindly categorizing everything is stupid.
First, simply there being people that are vocal in their dislike, does not mean anything. Maybe some people have genuine reasons to dislike science fiction, and why not, I don't like romantic books, for example, but that doesn't make them a lesser form of written work. Even if I gather a bunch of people with similar beliefs and we start shouting everywhere how bad romantic books are, that still wouldn't diminish their literary value.
Second, disliking the genre just because of certain aspects of it (that aren't guaranteed to be present) is, quite frankly, stupid. Yes, it's almost expected to have space ships or aliens in sci-fi, but you don't
have to have them. Besides, even if they are there, those elements are not inherently bad - why would having a space ship be any different, than, say, having a regular ship? Instead of the crew exploring the seas in the ages past maybe the same thing happens in space. Protagonists from both stories can have similar hardships, or problems. Does that mean that the same people that bash sci-fi, would immediately dislike a story set in the past which features ships? I don't think so. Similar thing can be said for aliens - just by being there, they aren't bad for the story - it depends how are they used. And are aliens really that dissimilar to other creatures in fiction? Are we going to brand elves (for example) as "bad for fiction" because they could bring the element of "alien" in the story? Instead of wielding advanced technology, they wield magic and instead of hailing from the stars, they come from the from the mysterious forests. If talking about hostile aliens, then perhaps orcs or similar staple evil creature can take their place.
No, certain elements of a story do not automatically make it worse than others just by being there. I practically grew up with sci-fi, I started reading Robert Sheckley's stories when I was around 8. I read
a lot then, especially short sci-fi stories, thanks to the books my father had collected [footnote]Thankfully, he was a sci-fi fan himself. Also a fan of novels with indians but I the latter never really appealed to me. My father was a bit disappointed.[/footnote] slightly after the time I hit was 11-12, I had probably read a three digit number of sci-fi stories and books. I've read things that range from amazing through mediocre to really boring and, frankly, bad. I don't think I'll never broadly generalize the sci-fi genre because they are too varied to pin down. Same can be said for any genre, though, can we expect magic and elves from "traditional" fiction? Sure, there are a lot that have those elements but not all of them - from the top of my head I can think of Stephen King's
The Eyes of the Dragon that doesn't feature elves at all, just boring old humans.
I can sit here and give examples of all kinds of sci-fi stories but let me just throw a few here that don't have neither spaceships, nor aliens:
A Thief in Time by Robert Sheckley - the person who is going to invent a time machine is hunted by people from the future for his crimes there;
Something for Nothing by Shekley again, where a person happens to get a machine that seemingly fulfils any wish;
Weapon but I can't remember the author[footnote]Although the story itself is my favourite one of all times, I can never seem to remember the author for long. Which is a shame, really.[/footnote] where scientists discover the weapon of the next century. Oh, but let's not forget some more widely known examples, such as
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and
Neuromancer.
But there are excellent sci-fi plots that do feature aliens or spaceships,
Strata by Terry Pratchett comes to mind, Dune, Firefly/Serenity, Warhammer 40k, or perhaps Mass Effect[footnote]It seems people quite enjoy it, well, more than I did, anyway. It didn't appeal to me that much, although I would admit it's not really bad - just personal taste[/footnote].
Sci-fi is a broad term, there was a short story about a person that managed astral projection (while trying to learn telepathy) but his body was hijacked by a ghost in the mean time. And that was science fiction. Compare it to Star Wars and they are nothing alike. How about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Star Wars - are they alike? Generalizing the sci-fi genre is really hard, it's like trying to generalize PC games or maybe first person games.
