McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Derivative Plots?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Shecky on May 06, 2008, 07:08:15 PM ---I think that the point of those arguing that there really is "nothing new under the sun" is that, when you boil a story down to its essentials, it's still going to be about how humans react to certain situations.
--- End quote ---
See, that's what I disagree with.
The best of edge-pushing SF can go beyond that because, unlike mainstream, it can ask what if human nature itself changed in non-mimetic ways.
Shecky:
Interesting. You'd think that with as much SF as I've read, at least one example would come to mind. Can you provide one? I'd very much like to explore that possibility.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Shecky on May 07, 2008, 04:51:27 PM ---Interesting. You'd think that with as much SF as I've read, at least one example would come to mind. Can you provide one? I'd very much like to explore that possibility.
--- End quote ---
Greg Egan's Permutation City and Diaspora would strike me as good examples; so would Peter Watts' Blindsight, in which pretty much all the central characters have distinctly stretched versions of human nature.
Shecky:
Not familiar with those; could you provide a summary as it pertains to this topic?
Hasufin:
The thing about the theory that there's nothing new under the sun is, if you distill the stories down far enough of course they're the same. It's like saying that all life is identical because they all contain Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, and Thymine.
But, I'm pretty sure there's a significant difference between a horse and a hawk. Having identical base elements does not mean the result will be identical.
Thus, while I recognize thematic similarities between Hamlet and The Lion King, and between Shoujo Kakumei Utena and Gilgamesh, they're not the same thing.
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