Are they all downers??
Jul. 1st, 2006 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patgundI recently read that New Line Cinema is planning to do a movie series based on the young adult series "His Dark Materials",
News that I greeted with.....well, apathy.
Don't get me wrong, the series was well done, and I think it will make a decent movie series.
But it's *DEPRESSING*!!
One of the reasons I got into reading SF and Fantasy was that it gave a hopeful view of the future (for SF), or a hopeful view on how problems can be solved (Fantasy), Even at its worse, I could feel optimistic about how things would take place. (Which was one of the reasons I HATED the Thomas Covenant series.)
But it seems like anymore SF and Fantasy is depressing. "His Dark Materials" had a major downer of a ending, major angst and self-sacrifice, and nothing but noble suffering for the heroes at the end. Which made me want to toss the series across the room when I was done. The book "Freehold" sparked the same reaction - very well done SF, but after a while you lost all interest in characters and just wanted to open a vein in despair.
It seems like the only moderately hopeful recent fantasy series, (at least in the "Young Adults" genre, which really is misnamed), is Diane Duane's "Young Wizard" series. Yes, bad things do happen. People die in the series. But there's always Timeheart, and the people go into their endings knowing what will happen to them - and why. "His Dark Materials" is more "pain, loss, pain, more pain, stuffering, tragic discoveries, pain, loss, and, oh yeah, pain." And the infamous "Wheel of Time" series makes you want to bitchslap all the characters and then use the hardbacks to beat the writer senseless.
Modern SF seems to be the same way. "Realism" has taken the place of optimism, and there's an overlay feeling of "yeah, it's the future, but people still suck." There's nothing like optimism left in the future, just same crap different day, day after day.
It seems like that's all there is with the modern stuff. No wonder I find myself reading the "classics" more and more.
News that I greeted with.....well, apathy.
Don't get me wrong, the series was well done, and I think it will make a decent movie series.
But it's *DEPRESSING*!!
One of the reasons I got into reading SF and Fantasy was that it gave a hopeful view of the future (for SF), or a hopeful view on how problems can be solved (Fantasy), Even at its worse, I could feel optimistic about how things would take place. (Which was one of the reasons I HATED the Thomas Covenant series.)
But it seems like anymore SF and Fantasy is depressing. "His Dark Materials" had a major downer of a ending, major angst and self-sacrifice, and nothing but noble suffering for the heroes at the end. Which made me want to toss the series across the room when I was done. The book "Freehold" sparked the same reaction - very well done SF, but after a while you lost all interest in characters and just wanted to open a vein in despair.
It seems like the only moderately hopeful recent fantasy series, (at least in the "Young Adults" genre, which really is misnamed), is Diane Duane's "Young Wizard" series. Yes, bad things do happen. People die in the series. But there's always Timeheart, and the people go into their endings knowing what will happen to them - and why. "His Dark Materials" is more "pain, loss, pain, more pain, stuffering, tragic discoveries, pain, loss, and, oh yeah, pain." And the infamous "Wheel of Time" series makes you want to bitchslap all the characters and then use the hardbacks to beat the writer senseless.
Modern SF seems to be the same way. "Realism" has taken the place of optimism, and there's an overlay feeling of "yeah, it's the future, but people still suck." There's nothing like optimism left in the future, just same crap different day, day after day.
It seems like that's all there is with the modern stuff. No wonder I find myself reading the "classics" more and more.
