Fan Fiction For Sale - Page 4

narf poit chez BOOM · #31 February 5th, 2004, 11:01 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Atrocities:
I walked through the book store today after dropping my truck off to be worked on and I could not help but notice all the sci-fi books. My God just about every aspect of sci-fi has been written about. I ponder this for a while as I browsed through the books and finally came to the conclusion that there is nothing new that one can write about that at some point in the past has not already been written.

This is why we are seeing the move from free fan fiction posted on the web to Fan Fiction for sale in stores.

As the population grows, more and more original ideas are going to become harder and harder to find as more and more poeple are going to be working on or thinking the same thing but knot realize that someone else is also thinking or working on the same thing.

I fear now that the day of ground breaking new ideas for stories is gone and a new dawn of copy-cat and rehashed stories is upon us.

I cannot help but feel depressed by this knowning that in my life I have seen the invention of so many wonderous things, and the publishment of so many wonderful books and such and now, half way through my expected life span, I have nothing new to look forward to except the old renewed.

It has all been done, there is nothing left that can be done that is new, so let us review the past for new ideas on old things.

I am so depressed. Time to have a flavored coke.

well, according to a short blurb written Arther C. Clarke, we are not running out of ideas. there are still plenty. the article was written a while ago and the ideas he suggested have been written about, but he sees no problem with taking old stories and adding your own ideas to them. in the article, he said that 'what is needed is not no imagination or more imagination, it's some imagination.'

what your saying is like saying that every kind of food that can be invented will be invented. you *may* be close to the truth if all you look at is broad catagory's, bread, pastry, cake, pie, meat, dairy, etc. but people still manage to take the old and put them together in ways that are new and different.

heh. the whole Honor Harrington series could have come out of one sentence: 'what if a woman commanded a starship?' that would be all that was needed to start thinking 'what kind of culture would the woman live in' and 'what type of person is she?' and pretty soon, you got 11? 12? very good novels.(actually, HH was inspired by horatio hornblower and i think that also makes my point and much more simply.)

like the guy said, 'some imagination'.

gregebowman · #32 February 5th, 2004, 11:17 PM

I agree. I don't think every idea has been used to death yet. Heck, there are probably a lot of the old sci-fi books I've never read and will probably never get a chance to read. But that doesn't mean that if I were to write a novel and it happened to be close to what someone wrote 50 years ago, that the idea has already been used. It would just be a coincidence. As a matter of fact, I have 2 story ideas I've been toying with for years, but have never actually written them down. I can't say they're original ideas, but I've never seen a similar story in print, at least not yet. Maybe one of these days I'll actually write them out. And I'll continue to buy and read the books I find interesting. Not that I find all sci-fi and fantasy books interesting, at least from the brief description on the back of the book. But if a story is good, it doesn't matter to me if 20 different authors have used a similar formulae. As long as I get pleasure from reading it, that's what counts to me.

dmm · #33 February 5th, 2004, 11:23 PM

Hey, just don't try to READ all those sci-fi books. You'll wind up posting all sorts of wierdness, and starting dozens of retarded threads, and getting into bizzare flame wars, and eventually get yourself kicked off the forum.

narf poit chez BOOM · #34 February 6th, 2004, 07:54 AM

you might even LEARN something! we can't possibly have that, can we?

gregebowman · #35 February 6th, 2004, 10:55 PM

Some authors have PhD's, and you can actually learn a thing or two while reading the sci-fi books. Even Michael Crichton books seem plausible, given the science (maybe except for Timeline, although I'd love to see a time machine in action). The only reason I didn't pursue my interest in astronomy was because I didn't want to take physics and the higher math courses. I barely passed basic algebra. I can't imagine trying to do calculus or trigonometry.

Atrocities · #36 February 8th, 2004, 02:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

quote:
Originally posted by Atrocities:

It has all been done, there is nothing left that can be done that is new, so let us review the past for new ideas on old things.

It has not been all done. There are still millions of ideas if not more out there that we haven't even thought about yet. Sure maybe the basic principle has been touched upon but we will not run out of fresh innovative ideas for years to come. Just think of what could be accomplished if the human mind used all of it's capacity! I look forward to the day when I will be able to enjoy such a time.

Go try and patented something.