Quote of the Week!

"When I arrive, I'll bring the fire..."-Kevin Rudolf, Let It Rock

Quote of the week this week comes from the Tor.com blog: "One of the things that reliably distinguishes it from other genres is that in SF the world is a character. In fiction generally, characters have to change during the story...SF is the literature of changing the world."

Booyah! I think this is pretty spot on, and an easy aspect of Sci-Fi/Fantasy to ignore, especially when writing. SF/F worlds are characters, at least ideally. They have internal struggles, they generally have something to say about what is taking place upon them, and they shape the narrative moreso than perhaps anything else. That's worth remembering, and it's important to develop the world in tandem with the characters in it and the story you want to tell. None can really exist independently of the others, and to try to get there is asking for trouble.

But I really took to this quote because of its last sentence, which is what I think lends SF/F its value in the world. Changing the world really is one of the few unifying themes that runs through almost all the SF/F I've read. Even when characters fail to change the world, or don't think to try to change the world, there's usually an implicit criticism of the world in which the characters are living that leads the reader to question why that world is the way it is. And in my eyes, that sort of behavior should always be encouraged. If an SF/F story does nothing other than give someone practice in questioning the way a world works, it has performed a valuable social service.