I feel like I’m swimming upstream in polluted water when I read other works out there for purposes of trying to see how something I would want to write might fit in.
It’s bad.
A lot of what I skimmed over were Mass Effect clones, but somehow further right wing than Mass Effect already was, with the names changed and the numbers filed off.
A lot of what’s left involves “humanity fuck yeah” space imperialism, grizzled tough guys with cold piercing stares and powerlifter physiques well into old age and their adventures with brilliant and hot scientist women that are defined more about who their father is/was and less by their actual job, that try to prove they are Independent Strong Willed Women but of course swoon for the timeless grizzled ego insert’s blandly stoic charms. Also, a space bureaucracy usually interferes with the grizzled tough guy’s very important imperialistic mission and his only chance to save humanity is to go rogue with a ragtag bunch of renegades and kill those filthy aliens before they threaten colonial interests. Or something.
I got some pretty harsh negative feedback for my inclusion of ideas in my own work. The idea that billionaires wanting to colonize Mars aren’t actually going to save humanity by doing that and it would be an insatiable resource sink that would further accelerate Earth’s decay was especially incendiary. Maybe I should have already become a rich and influential writer first before trying something like that, but that seems like it might have involved writing one of the above reactionary works instead and hoping another off-brand Mass Effect got more traction instead.
I’m demoralized, but I’m also nearly done with the third book in my self-published trilogy. It’s a weird place to be.
EDIT: I may as well post a link to the website my wife and my friend helped set up. It has the first five chapters available for free and some other stuff.
Primarily from two beta readers I had.
One was a religious fundamentalist that boasted that his church published a number of books he wrote already (mostly “self-help” stuff with a fundie flavor), but he also had his first sci-fi work which was painful to read because it was written from the perspective of someone that had a passing knowledge of sci-fi tropes and themes but didn’t actually want to say anything that was against his authoritarian beliefs, which were stifling enough to remove conflict altogether. He had an eccentric genius billionaire (who else) singlehandedly (of course) create an entire race of immortal near-omniscient artificial superbeings with cool neon-gridded skin that he called “Bionics” (he sort of misunderstood what that word meant and he refused to be corrected). They got to roam and play and do whatever they liked in a sealed-in paradise arcology, and when I asked the writer why these “Bionics” were made in the first place and what the corporation’s profit motives were, he piously replied “there was no profit motive!” It got worse. Apparently, the “Bionics” also wanted full legal citizenship, which is a fine starting point for a conflict in a story, except THERE WAS NO CONFLICT. No one opposed that, no one in the story, except some misguided pathetically-portrayed terrorists that got nowhere near the magic paradise arcology at any point and were just jealous about how these conspiciously-angelic beings (yep that was the plot twist, the eccentric billionaire somehow brought angels into the world and it was actually part of the divine plan all along) were better than humans in every way.
The other was a wine obsessed arrogant rich neoliberal. He was very short with me, saying he “won’t talk about my politics” as the opening line of his first beta reading feedback message, indicated how provoked he was. He also wanted that book’s protagonist to have what he called the “necessary and inevitable” shower scene, and in dressed up language complained that I didn’t talk about her naked body. She was in her late teens, so I guess not illegal, just gross for a 60something to demand out of a work where said protagonist was a child of refugees and literally lived among trash piles under the shadows of massive projects sprawl when she wasn’t borrowing a couch. He wasn’t asked to, but he took it upon myself to be the very first reviewer when that book came out and slapped three stars on it, which is actually more algorithmically-damaging than a one star in many cases, and said “I was the beta reader. Not bad for a first attempt.”
One of them was from a website and forum specifically intended for writers to beta read work in return for having their own work beta read in turn.
Most of my inquiries were people wanting me to subscribe to their own website projects in exchange for beta reading.
The only one I got from there was the guy with the fundie scifi robot book.
In my desperation, I took some bad advice and got my sister in law’s father to be the other beta reader.
Mistakes were made. To be fair, the fundie actually gave some good advice even if he utterly hated my work.
Not a direct response to this, but I think a lot more book writing should be collaborative. I feel like the hyper-individuated single-author “I can’t talk about this because you will steal the idea” thing is harmful and leads to a lot of re-treaded ground. Then again, I’m naturally the sort of person who shoots their mouth off about whatever projects they are working on.
