Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony G Williams  One of the characteristics of SF is that the setting and the plot can both be far more important than in most other types of fiction. That "sense of wonder", of having one's imagination stretched, is what pulled many readers (including me) into the genre in the first place.
A quote from Bob Shaw's book on writing science fiction (attributed to a friend of his): "Why should I turn to science fiction for character studies when I still haven't read all of Dostoevsky?"
Of course, there should be characterisation which is adequate for the purpose - but I have stopped reading, out of boredom, SF books which have devoted so much time to building up the personalities of the characters that the plot has ground to a halt. |
The easy answer is because Dostoevsky never wrote about how a character might deal with living in extreme conditions in space. How might that character cope or what might that character do? The character studies you talk about are written mostly in the modern settings of the time. You shouldn't limit yourself, or your expectations of your favorite genre, because of the mistaken belief that sci-fi is more about setting than character. I want to read stories with deep characterization in detailed settings with a good story emerging from the relevance of the two.
That's just me though.