Reading Neil Gaiman’s essays on his favorite science fiction, from past to present, inspired me to revisit the Sci-Fi authors I loved as a child and to explore new Sci-Fi novels. Overall, it’s been less enjoyable reading these works of fiction than reading Gaiman’s stories about these authors and his own childhood love of reading.
Ray Bradbury, was one of my childhood favorites. I borrowed one book of short stories and the novel “The Martian Chronicles”, which I don’t think I ever read. The short stories leaned more toward horror. I didn’t make it past the first few chapters in the Chronicles. In both, he wrote a lot about romantic relationships: he wrote about inattentive husbands, wives who wanted more attention from their partners, marriages drifting apart or suddenly torn asunder by a twist of macabre fate.
Yawn.
Another award winning book that caught my eye was a dystopian novel about life after the Earth stopped spinning. Permanent sunlight scorching half the globe and permanent darkness shrouding the other half set the scene for a dystopian rearrangement of global power, survival and authority.
By the end of the first 100 pages, I returned it to the library. It focused too much on the protagonist’s failed marriage, her relationship with her estranged brother and her “innermost feelings” about love, romance and happiness.
Yawn. It bores me to read about the trials and tribulations of love and romance gone wrong. When I watch movies and TV shows, I fast forward through the gratuitous sex scenes because they’re so cliché.
It’s the same for books. I suspect it is because, I’ve seen and read it all so many times before.
I have a friend who has been searching for his perfect mate his entire life without success. He is convinced he has found “the one” and tells me he is falling in love.
The thing is, I’ve heard this story from him before too. As happy as I am for him to be enjoying time with his new girlfriend, I have little interest in talking about the ins and outs of their relationship. When he gets too deep into the boring mundanities, my “Uh-huh” machine turns on while I busy myself with some other task.
I seen and heard it all before.
Love, romance, happily-ever-after fairytales and doomed star-crossed lovers have been the subject of stories, plays, movies and conversations forever. I imagine it’s because they capture our attention and our imagination.
Just not for me anymore.
On the other hand, I’ll write posts about how much I adore my dogs, about doing pullups and about dog shit. So I’m not making a value judgement. My interests simply take me in a different direction.