Bad genre writing

by Posted on Posted fromExcelsior SF

I read a Star Trek nov­el recent­ly. Or actu­al­ly, I’ll admit to read­ing two of them. The first was pret­ty decent low-rent enter­tain­ment. The oth­er was hor­ren­dous­ly bad.

I’m try­ing to think up a term for an entire cast of char­ac­ters that are reflec­tions of the author’s own van­i­ty. A «Mary Sue» is a char­ac­ter in genre (usu­al­ly fan) fic­tion who rep­re­sents the author’s fan­ta­sy of her­self. She’s usu­al­ly the extra crew mem­ber who becomes well-liked by all the main char­ac­ters and some­times will save the day with her pluck. The male ver­sion of «Mary Sue» is «Gary Stu.»

Well, this «New Fron­tier» nov­el I read includ­ed a cast where every char­ac­ter was very obvi­ous­ly an aspect of the author’s fan­ta­sy to live in the Star Trek uni­verse. There were a cou­ple char­ac­ters from the TV shows who showed up to express their high regard for the main char­ac­ters, but most­ly it was a ship full of Gary Stus and Mary Sues.

So I’m think­ing of call­ing them col­lec­tive­ly a «Drea­ry Crew».

Published by splicer

5 Replies to “Bad genre writing”

  2. (whining)“Is this really

    (whining)“Is this real­ly necessary?”

    “Trust me, Clark.”

    LOL!

    Of course, the “Man of Steel, woman of kleenex” prob­lem takes on entire­ly dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions when, say, Clark gets tak­en to town. I don’t even want to think about that. Dis­turb­ing in the extreme.

  3. (whining)“Is this real­ly
    (whining)“Is this real­ly necessary?”

    “Trust me, Clark.”

    Wow. I just heard their voic­es in the most vivid way. You should total­ly start writ­ing Lex Luthor fanfic!

  4. Ahhh haha I nev­er thought of
    Ahhh haha I nev­er thought of it that way. Haa­ha that’s the fun­ni­est thing I’ve read all month haha. It’s true though, all of the Star Trek book are like that.

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