I've noticed 2 things in my myriad writing classes since I dumped the J-major.

1. If you're writing science-fiction, you can NOT write anything similar to anything else that's written.

2. If you're writing "literary fiction," you can NOT write anything unless someone else has already written something very similar.

You know, the old shakespeare excuse--everything worth writing, is already written, so we don't have to bother being creative anymore.

My problem is that I like to write the same kind of stuff I read. People like, obviously, OSC. Also Alfred Bester, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and so forth. The "classic" science-ficiton.

So if I write a story that is set in a military school for children, in a future military state, no matter where I go with that story, is it too similar to Ender's Game?

If I write about a near-future version of our own world, where Telepaths are a normal facet of our society, no matter where I go with that story, is it too similar to The Demolished Man?

In one of my fiction classes, one story got ripped apart for having a premise (god/space/future) too similar to Clarke's, "The Star." Yet the student who penned a re-itteration of Catcher in the Rye (of all things to choose) was praised.

Writing science-fiction, are some premises forbidden to new authors, because older authors have already been there and done so much with them? Is it because sci-fi has a stronger emphasis on premise than story? I just don't get it.

If a story's premise is clearly derived from Ender's Game or Demolished Man then sure, it won't sell. But if it merely involves a military school in a military state, or telepathy, then it will sell--or not--on its own merits.

We've had several stories here featuring robots, one just recently. Since it did not try to compete with Asimov on his territory (for example, the story made no mention of Asimov's three laws) it seemed fine to me. Now, if it had featured a detective with a robotic sidekick packing three laws and a dry female cybershrink, it might have run into trouble.

I think the key is this: if a story includes ideas that have been done before--and most ideas have already been done somewhere before in SF--it needs something to set it apart from the others. The robots have to be different or better in some sense than Asimov's, in order not to invite comparisons and fail.

SF is an infinite field of futures. There's surely room for your ideas, Fox.

Cheers,
Pat

Same with philosphy: I don't read philosophy, I invent it myself when the need arises. So when I have an interesting idea, people can't say I've copied because I haven't read those things. Just last week someone has (playfully) accused me of copying something from Dungeons and Dragons (which I went to check later). And I could freely tell them that I don't have clue what they are talking about. And it wasn't a lie.

I do read science fiction but when I write I try not to think of what is right and what is not. I let the story flow through me and that's it. If you don't like it, well... nobody forced you to read my stuff, did they?

Literature is not like science. You can't make progress in science alone; you have to learn what others have done so you can take the next step. With literature, there is more freedom than that.

I agree with Talespinner, you can always do something that's been done, if you make it your own. I just read a zombie story a few days ago, a sub-genre which I normally consider so overdone that there's rarely anything new or interesting (to me). Nothing new in the plot at the beginning of the story, same old zombie stuff. But the style and the narrative voice were enough to keep me reading until the ending, which was quite different from the usual zombie fare.