Why most of the science fiction novels suck?

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Science fiction books can't match the visual impact of something like Interstellar and 2000AD, or the gross spectacle of mandibles and tentacles of Alien, Predator, etc.

But they can examine human behavior and social psychologies, and play with tensions between interesting ideas, in a way that movies can only do superficially. At least, this is what a lot of high-minded literary SF tries to do.

There are still plenty of adventure tales and rollicking space operas as well, to rival the likes of Star Wars. This has been going on for a hundred years, since Edgar Rice Burroughs. So there's no shortage of escapist thrills either.

Maybe the problem is you don't know where to look.

>>9355122
>What the hell is wrong with this genre?
SF fans will buy anything with a neat premise, and most don't know enough to tell good prose from bad (or just don't care). Also the people editing and commisioning books are themselves fans, so they only think about SF books in terms of other SF, not actual science - Redshirts won a major award just for being a parody of Star Trek, and Ready Player One is popular despite being a nonstop stream of cringeworthy "nerd" references.

>And I’m not going to enter in universes like ‘Star Wars’, for example, which demand an imagination of a wide spectrum from the writer.
Could you clarify what this sentence means?

>Can, someone, drop some suggestions for real good science fiction?
Philip K. Dick. Mieville's Embassytown. Watts' Blindsight.

>>9355250
>>9355259

Well, sure, with visual, things are way easier to achieve. Sometimes you don’t even need to create a narrative since the visual per se helps to develop an idea of the world being portrait and you get immersed on it. But, nonetheless, from my explorations, it seems something is really lacking on this genre. Star Wars, for example… If you strip Star Wars from its futuristic narrative / looks, its story is about common things of everyday: ambition; revenge; desire to have power; etc. These are common themes. But they managed to create a world around all those themes and cloth it something interesting: multiple worlds with diverse characteristics; etc. And cinema is not the only place where you can get interesting science fiction: cinema; video games; and animation for example, we can pretty much find more interesting things than the ones being published. Those things have scripts; are based on a corpus of text, which means they could had been books. If they had been books originally, they had been more interesting than all things he have on those top science fiction books lists, for example.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

Sturgeon's law
90% of Science Fiction is crap because 90% of everything is crap

>>9355454
Well, the Campbellian school of Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov turned science fiction aware from adventure stories and pulp to problem solving narratives and scientific realism. And then New Wave came along in the 60s/70s and played with post modern methods, experimental forms, and psychological/philosophical themes. And then Cyberpunk came with its cynicism.

But before all this, escapism and adventure stories were the dominant mode. It sounds like this is what you are looking for, tales of action, romance, and visual wonder. Leigh Brackett is one of these writers (she wrote an early draft of Empire Strikes Back.) But there is a large tradition of writers who are foremost entertainers and crowd pleasers, rather than navel-gazers and dispassionate cynics.

So look at the tradition of pulp and thriller writers. Lovecraft wrote SF, C.L. Moore wrote a whole lot of things with a Han Solo-like smuggler way back in the thirties. And Edgar Rice Burroughs' romantic Mars setting. Robert Heinlein's buoyant coming-of-age stories (his juveniles.) Jack Vance's stuff is very visually interesting.

I'd recommend pretty much anything you can get by Philip K Dick. Minority Report and Second Variety are great ones

The best SF stories are usually good because of their premise, not their plot, prose, or characters.
Because of this, the best SF works tend to be short explorations of interesting concepts.

>>9355122
you had me going up until you mentioned wool

>>9355122
Since I can think of a hundred SF novels I enjoyed, and maybe five SF films, I really can't relate. Also, your criticism of Neuromancer is nonsensical to me. "It pretends to be everything and have it all in one book"?

>>9355469
but science fiction isn't 10% of everything

>>9355122
Limited imagination.
Shitty cop out lore.
Trying to start a cult.

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>One the books commonly enthroned is, for example, ‘Neuromancer’, written by William Gibson. That book is unreadable
so because you have the attention span of a flea the book is bad?
>. You just needed to read Stephen Hawking books and develop a story around some real science concepts

Oh yes you are totally a mongoloid

> And I’m not going to enter in universes like ‘Star Wars’, for example, which demand an imagination of a wide spectrum from the writer.

That shit ain't even SF you little shit

>>9355552
So close >>9355555