On an unrelated note

I've been reading a couple of books on writing recently, starting with Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, and moving onto Ben Bova's The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells. Card's book tends to be theoretical and comparative, while Bova's offers some practical illustrations of its main points in the form of some of his own short stories.

Both have been quite helpful, in that they've given me a lot to think about (on the other hand, just what I need... more to think about...), but I've been quite perturbed by some of the things Bova has written about contemporary sci-fi... Particularly describing the likes of Alien as 'space opera', which he describes, essentially, as all-action, no character development.

Um. Pardon me?

Maybe I'm just getting flashbacks to the time I tried to get some of my friends to sit down and watch Alien at my house, only to end up throwing them out because they did nothing but complain about the lack of characterisation during the scenes where the characters were being introduced, but I really do take exception to that.

If there was no character development, there would have been no survivors. Ellen Riply would have died. She did not begin the story with the ability to beat the Alien. Granted, it took a lot more luck than skill on her part, but she survived, and was changed by her experience - as evidenced by her character in the sequels.

All of the crew of the Nostromo were faced with something of which they had no prior experience, and all of them were changed by it (mostly by dying but, hey). Some gave in to their fear, others rose above it.

There are even a couple obvious of conflicts: When Kane is brought back the the ship having been attacked, Ripley and Dallas are at loggerheads - both with Rules vs Compassion. Dallas wants to being Kane into the ship, into the medical centre. Ripley elects to follow the rules, and leaves Kane, Dallas and Lambert in the airlock, quarantined. Ash goes against that decision, apparently representing the victory of compassion over the rules.

Of course, it later turns out that he has his own agenda... or rather, that he represents The Company's agenda.

Before that, however, Ripley and Dallas are in conflict again, over who goes into the Nostromo's air shafts to seek out the alien - both with Fear vs Duty - and, while one might automatically suspect Dallas' overruling of Ripley, taking her place in the search, as being chivalrous, he's actually just reasserting himself as the Captain... To his own cost.

Even the initial trip down to the planet, to investigate the signal, is a conflict on several levels. The crew is contractually obliged to respond to distress calls and, while the signal is not definitively identified as a distress call, there's enough doubt for them to set down an investigate... And at least one of the crew is hoping to get rich on whatever they find (expressed better in Alan Dean Foster's novelisation than in the finished movie). Their own mission, however, is simply to bring their cargo back to Earth.

So, with such a glaring error in his text, can I really make use of what Ben Bova has to say about writing?

Actually, in the main, I think I can... His examples - his own short stories - almost seem to be written for purpose, rather than having been chosen to illustrate his points. However, the points he makes are useful... as a guideline.

I may look into books on writing other genres... possibly Horror, as that might be useful, too... but it's already after 11pm, and so too late to go trawling Amazon now.