Ed asks: Now that it’s gone endemic, what will the impact of COVID be on “contemporary” fiction?
Resources Mentioned:
Unfolding the World: http://jdanielsawyer.substack.com
heinleinsecrets.com
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Ed asks: Now that it’s gone endemic, what will the impact of COVID be on “contemporary” fiction?
Resources Mentioned:
Unfolding the World: http://jdanielsawyer.substack.com
heinleinsecrets.com
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
“That book is crap, it had nothing about masks.”
In the omnibus collections of her vampire novels, Tonya Huff mostly discussed why she wrote those before the fantasy novels she got a contract for at the same time (for the curious, she had a mortgage and vampire fans were more loyal than fantasy fans). The first book was published in 1991.
One of the other things she noted was how many of the plots would be derailed if the characters had cell phones. The fact stood out to her and she worried about it impacting readers.
That was in 2006. In just 15 years the cell phone had gone from a curiosity/business tool/rich guy’s toy to ubiquitous.
Yet, I read the books for the first time around 2000, when the cell phone was becoming the norm.
I never worried about them missing. That’s about something that even the author admits could derail the plot. Why did not I not care? For the same reason the thermodynamic issue that breaks the reason the machines keep the human in the Matrix does (at least in the first movie). Because while I was in the story I didn’t even think about it.
That’s a very different direction than Dan took, but I think it is a useful one for a working writer. A compelling story keeps the reading for caring while reading. Even when the reader realizes it later they tend to shrug it off or explain it away because the story is worth suspending that bit of disbelief.