Customer Reviews

Conceiving the Heavens: Creating the Science Fiction Novel

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Melissa Scott starts the book off with "A brief defense of science fiction, or why does someone who went to Harvard write this stuff anyway?" - and the book takes off. Even though the book is less than 200 pages long she covers important points of world building, characters, research, ideas and provides suggestions for getting published.

This incomplete book is not as much help as it could be. If you are looking for a good book on craft. Look elsewhere. I suggest the books of John Gardner, Gardner Dozois and Damon Knight as better places to start.

The author is more self-possesed of foisting her feminist ideology on would-be writers than she is of helping them to become writers. It is far better to take advice real editors/professionals like Gardner Dozois, Damon Knight or John Gardner (who all have published books on craft) than to read this overly preachy book. The book is condecending and downright insulting to the readers and writers of Science Fiction in that it assumes that we are all lazy, twinkie-munching, television. Don't waste your money on this one. There is so much that is better out there!

Although the book has an inspiring title, it hardly ammounts to much of anything. It fails to discuss conflict, plot, and other aspects of narrative that are fundamental to "creating" any novel. There is some broad discussion of how to think about about the physical and the social and political environment of your novel, but this discussion is not deep enough for someone who has not studied in depth subjects like politics, science, history, etc to be able to really think of the issues on his own.