Trapped in a spaceship and I just don't care

[alias_sqbr]

I've started reading "Pushing Ice" by Alistair Reynolds, and it's not bad, but it's a particular type of story I tend not to like, and I've been thinking about what other stories have hit the same buttons and why they irritate me.

Vague spoilers for "Pushing Ice" and maybe "Sunshine".

GENERALISED SUMMARY:
Setting: usually present day or near future. A remote outpost or spaceship or submarine or something.
A group of people are in this place on some mission. They are, to a certain extent, trapped there.

The story spends some time introducing the characters and setting. All good.

Either as the centre of their mission or by sheer luck they encounter a Mysterious Alien Thing. We learn just enough to make me intrigued.

And then we spend the next hundred pages or whatever bogged down in interpersonal drama and random generic thriller shenanigans that have nothing directly to do with the Mysterious Alien Thing but threaten to Kill Them All, and probably will kill quite a few of them in pointless, frustrating, unnecessary ways. Government conspiracies, selfish human greed, miscommunication and petty stubbornness, jealous ex lovers blah blah blah MAYBE THE TRUE MONSTER HERE IS MAN. And I don't care, I'm not here for the human drama, for some reason the way the worldbuilding of this future society and the characterisation of the characters is done I don't usually care much about them, especially not now they're all killing each other and getting in the way of the plot, I'm here for the goddamn Mysterious Alien Thing and the author is refusing to tell me anything about it except for the odd tidbit sprinkled amongst all the blah.

And then if I do sit through it to find out about the Mysterious Alien Thing half the time it's unoriginal and boring and I end up wishing I hadn't wasted my time. I've heard good things about Alistair Reynolds so hopefully this one won't be.

Another example that comes to mind is Ice Station by Matthew Reilly. I gave up on "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson when it got bogged down in similar boring frustrating interpersonal drama and the carrot wasn't a Mysterious Alien Thing but the terraforming of Mars. I don't find find terraforming very exciting.

None of this is to say the genre is inherently bad, I can intellectually understand why the formula is so popular, but personally I find it really frustrating. There's just something about the way these stories go that makes me Just Not Care about the characters.

I guess the genre can blur into the sort of horror story where a Mysterious Freak is slowly killing off the cast one by one ("Sunshine" is, as far as I can tell, in the intersection). I like that genre even less, from what little I've seen of it.

I had some examples of similar books I've liked, but I realised they were all in far future settings where the plot of investigating the Thing takes us through a world that is interestingly science fictiony all by itself. And maybe that's my problem: minus the Thing "Pushing Ice" could almost be set on an oil rig or Antarctic mining base or something. There is nothing inherently bad about thrillers set on oil rigs, but they are not what I am interested in reading.

So: do other people recognise the type of story I'm talking about? Any other examples? Do you like them? Not like them? Think I'm missing something?

Comments

[aris_tgd]

Heh, I don't know in general, I just got really frustrated when Sunshine turned from a submarine/survival movie INTO a horror/monster movie without any real warning. I mean, IMHO it would have been better with less monster and more evil, if that makes any sense.

And yeah, I get irritated when the alien force is just a metaphor, too. I sort of feel like the Doctor Who episode "Midnight" did that, and I was disappointed in that episode. I feel like if the alien force doesn't have a motivation which is explored and explained, it's just externalized drama. And that's not really cool.

[kerravonsen]

I feel like if the alien force doesn't have a motivation which is explored and explained, it's just externalized drama.
The alien force was a Monster. Monsters don't have motives.

[aris_tgd]

The alien force was a Monster. Monsters don't have motives.

Sapphire and Steel did it better, though.

[kerravonsen]

Did what better? Motiveless monsters, or "trapped in a cave" stories?

[sqbr]

You know, this conversation is making me realise I don't like The Monster as a trope. I can deal with The Incomprehensible and Deadly, but prefer when it feels like you could write a whole other story about all the stuff going on in the "monster"'s life that doesn't revolve around the protagonists, even if all they see of them is "ACK IT"S TRYING TO KILL ME". Then again, I don't tend to like natural disaster movies either, where the "Monster" really is mindless.

[kerravonsen]

So you'd probably like C.J. Cherryh's work; she's good at the Incomprehensible Alien.

Then again, I don't tend to like natural disaster movies either, where the "Monster" really is mindless.

In some ways I prefer them, because I don't think of nature as a Monster or an enemy; which means that there isn't a villain being demonized, and yet the people in the story have the opportunity to be just as heroic. And I like heroism.

Mind you, the thing not to like about natural disaster movies is when they're just retreads of cliches. In that case, I just watch them for the action-adventure aspect, since the characterisation is sure to be flat. Hey, I still enjoyed "Dante's Peak" - Pierce Brosnan, yum.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, if there must be incomprehensible aliens I prefer them well written, but on the whole I prefer them to be comprehensible in the first place :)

I do like the fact that there's no demonised Other in a disaster film, and they tend to avoid the things that make Monster films annoying for me, but I also tend not to find them very compelling.

[sqbr]

Yes, Midnight was annoying. And the lack of any interesting motivation is my main issue with serial killers too, it allows for too much lazy writing. ("Why are they doing this?" "They're EVIL of course." Blah)

I think aliens with no known motivation can be interesting if done right, Stanislaw Lem has done some good things with the genre eg in "Solaris" and "The Invincible", but the thing with those aliens is they don't feel like plot devices doing whatever is most dangerous/scary etc to suit the writer, it feels like they do have consistent logical motivations, we just don't and can't know what they are.

[aris_tgd]

*nod* Oh, I like aliens who have motives we can't comprehend--I don't mind not knowing! I just like knowing they HAVE motives!

That's sort of why I brought up Sapphire and Steel above, actually. Okay, half their episodes were rubbish, but the ones that were really good, the Awful Force definitely had a purpose and a plan, even if it was only "protect its Stuff" or "kill people for power". I feel like Midnight would have made a decent S&S episode, if only because they were set up for that kind of plot.

[alias_sqbr]

I have never seen Sapphire and Steel, I didn't even realise it was sf!
*googles*
Huh!

[aris_tgd]

Oh, man. S&S is a kick. It's like if Classic Who had a smaller budget. It's the source of the immortal crew complaint "How am I supposed to light 'total darkness'?"

It was produced in serialized stories much like Who was. If you check it out I recommend skipping to #2 (The Haunted Railway Station) or #4 (The Man Without a Face) or #5(Dr. McDee Must Die). Don't watch #3. It's bad. I mean, it's really really bad.

[alias_sqbr]

Noted, thanks.

[trs80.ucc.asn.au]

There was a panel on "big dumb objects" at Worldcon, which I attended. Unfortunately it was one of those topics where there was very little to say and rapidly turned into the audience listing books, so I napped through it. I think one of the points was that it was a way to do Science! outside the lab, so authors feel it needs some interpersonal drama otherwise it'd be too dry? Or it could just be padding to take a novella to novel length (which was a better panel btw).

Red Mars really does underdeliver on terraforming and doesn't do the interpersonal well at all. Blue and Green Mars are more coherent, but are even less about terraforming and more about social change and environmental management. Pushing Ice does get significantly more science fictiony towards the end after they arrive.

[sqbr]

I was sad to miss the novella panel. And yes, having read and enjoyed a bunch of novellas a lot of novels do feel like novella + filler.

Personally I'd rather a shorter, dry, idea rich story with minimal characterisation to the same story padded with dull unnecessary and not very well written character drama. If I want character drama + spaceships I'll read a scifi romance novel. But I guess different people like different things!

[kerravonsen]

Perhaps you were frustrated because what you were expecting was Science Fiction, and what you got was a Thriller crossed with a Soap Opera. That the story was not about what you thought it was about.

blah blah blah MAYBE THE TRUE MONSTER HERE IS MAN
A theme which might have been Avante-Garde once, but it has been repeated so often that it's become a cliche. A cliche which annoys me because I already know that human nature is rotten. I want to see people rising above that, I want to see ordinary people being heroic, not the leaders being petty. I suppose these things go in cycles, from one extreme to another - you get the "man is a monster" trope at one end, and Pollyanna at the other end. And I'd rather have something in the middle.

I would say that I probably am in it for the human drama, so long as it is drama and not soap opera or melodrama. A little bit of politics can make things more interesting, but too much and I just get annoyed. Which is why I gave up on the Honor Harrington novels; too much politics and not enough heroism.

[sqbr]

I can be in it for the human drama when it's done well (I mean: I like romance novels) But if it's done badly it just feels like irritating filler.

"Pushing Ice" isn't man being a monster per se so much as people who aren't all bad getting in each others way and having misunderstandings and value conflicts etc. Which in some ways is more annoying, I keep wanting to shake them and say "Stop bickering!".