Why do so many readers lack the ability to separate fact from fiction?

If this has been said, I apologize...

The most of the readers here at lit are ignorant or stupid and believe everything on the internet is true.

Just check any story in LW and you will most likely find comments about the authors wife and how much they hope she catches AIDS.
 
If this has been said, I apologize...

The most of the readers here at lit are ignorant or stupid and believe everything on the internet is true.

Just check any story in LW and you will most likely find comments about the authors wife and how much they hope she catches AIDS.
I used to post the death wishes in my .sig but too many.
 
At the other end of the scale, there are some readers who get most upset by characters who practice safe sex and contraception, such as by using condoms. I've had negative comments to this effect on some of my stories, and I read another story where a reader was most upset that the female character was on the pill stating that 'this was storyland, and there is no risk of babies'.

It seems pretty realistic that people would practice safe sex to avoid an unwanted pregnancy, or minimize the risk of an STD.
 
On the other hand, if you were to go to the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, you would find a real plaque honouring Slip F-18, home of the Busted Flush and her master, Travis McGee. The real slip is gone, but the memorial to my favourite fictional detective remains.
 
At the other end of the scale, there are some readers who get most upset by characters who practice safe sex and contraception, such as by using condoms. I've had negative comments to this effect on some of my stories, and I read another story where a reader was most upset that the female character was on the pill stating that 'this was storyland, and there is no risk of babies'.
Some of my tales are explicitly safe-sex, approved by Prof NaokoSmith, with no bad response.

I'm cooking a tale, based on real news, of a guy getting lots of unsafe sex, but it'll be in Group where such is expected. Young guy is held over in summer school and impregnates the entire class, including teacher, in the first week. No risk of babies? The denouement comes nine months later.

On the other hand, if you were to go to the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, you would find a real plaque honouring Slip F-18, home of the Busted Flush and her master, Travis McGee. The real slip is gone, but the memorial to my favourite fictional detective remains.
Fuck, I loved McGee. Major impact on my style. One approving reader comment suggested I'd read a lot of Spider Robinson, and I have, but I credited Ross MacDonald as my mentor. Observant and snarky 1st person POV with tricks, FTW! And language of perfect clarity, like Sir George Martin producing the Beatles.

ObTopic: Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.
 
Several years ago - no, many years ago (time flies) - I took a course at Cambridge (Cambridge in the Fens, not Cambridge Massachusetts) during which the lead instructor, a successful short story writer, spoke for an hour or so on the value of 'fictional facts' - facts that were entirely made up by the author, but which 99 percent of readers took to be factual. I confess to being a bit of a fan of fictional facts. They can be very useful. :)

I've never quite forgiven Heinlein for including a bogus science "fact" in one of his stories, which so many of his readers then took to be true.
 
I've never quite forgiven Heinlein for including a bogus science "fact" in one of his stories, which so many of his readers then took to be true.
Heinlein messed up a few things. Besides some of his social-political views, he held that technologies start simple, develop complexly, then become simplified. I've never seen that. Stuff always gets more and more complicated, busier and busier. Yow.

Which factoid annoyed you?
 
My older stories (under my old name) usually included safer sex practices. So did the things I had published... except with one publisher, whose head editor informed me that my characters were not allowed, on-page, to use condoms or clean up after sex because "it breaks the flow of the story, and readers want fantasy. That stuff isn't fantasy."

I then had readers of some of my stories with that publisher complain about the characters not using condoms and not cleaning up after sex...
 
I've never quite forgiven Heinlein for including a bogus science "fact" in one of his stories, which so many of his readers then took to be true.

Heinlein messed up a few things. Besides some of his social-political views, he held that technologies start simple, develop complexly, then become simplified. I've never seen that. Stuff always gets more and more complicated, busier and busier. Yow.

Which factoid annoyed you?

I loved Heinlein's books and as they were label science fiction...why would I believe anything in them? But I guess just like readers here, they who believed Heinlein are just as stupid.
 
I've never quite forgiven Heinlein for including a bogus science "fact" in one of his stories, which so many of his readers then took to be true.

Out of curiosity, which one in particular?



Heinlein messed up a few things. Besides some of his social-political views, he held that technologies start simple, develop complexly, then become simplified. I've never seen that. Stuff always gets more and more complicated, busier and busier.

Well, more complicated in design, certainly. On the other hand, the use of many high-tech things has steadily become simpler, more reliable and cheaper. Consider computers. What were once custom-made, house-sized, hideously expensive items requiring a host of highly-trained priests and acolytes to use are now available in any strip mall for a couple of hundred bucks and usable by people with a Grade 3 education.
 
Hypoxia said:
Stuff always gets more and more complicated, busier and busier.
Well, more complicated in design, certainly. On the other hand, the use of many high-tech things has steadily become simpler, more reliable and cheaper. Consider computers. What were once custom-made, house-sized, hideously expensive items requiring a host of highly-trained priests and acolytes to use are now available in any strip mall for a couple of hundred bucks and usable by people with a Grade 3 education.
Those simple gadgets are some of the most complex constructs in human history accessing zillions of lines of cobbled-together code over dynamic nets. Heinlein meant powerplants going from steam gins to intricate internal-combustion mills to a 'simple' fission pile. Right.

As for the fictionalized science: Heinlein generally wrote hard science where it fit and extrapolations otherwise. Don't take telepathy seriously, or intellectual Venusian dragons, or travel into the past. Do regard stellar distances as accurate. And remember, he invented waterbeds and waldos.
 
Those simple gadgets are some of the most complex constructs in human history accessing zillions of lines of cobbled-together code over dynamic nets. Heinlein meant powerplants going from steam gins to intricate internal-combustion mills to a 'simple' fission pile. Right.

As for the fictionalized science: Heinlein generally wrote hard science where it fit and extrapolations otherwise. Don't take telepathy seriously, or intellectual Venusian dragons, or travel into the past. Do regard stellar distances as accurate. And remember, he invented waterbeds and waldos.

And Microwave (radar) ovens.
 
Back to faction. I am free to invent chemical elements (unknownium. transium, etc), planets (and other locales), aliens (and weird people), and esoteric physical principles (like induced karma). Y'all are free to believe or search any of that. Staying within the bounds of known reality is challenging. It keeps me from being too lazy, when I bother.

I like playing the old hard-SciFi game of taking physical reality and tweaking just one little bit of it to see what happens. So you ARE plopped a lifetime or more into the past. Or you CAN build an antigravity engine from an iPhone and a smoke alarm. Or you DO exercise sexual mind control, at a cost. What then?

My factions are usually personal. Someone doesn't die; how would we interact?
 
I recall, many years ago, reading hate comments on fictitious stories by G. H. Lawrence and BaronDesage. There were comments saying they had "copied" and/or "plagiarized" they're own material.:D

Not sure if I spelled those authors' names correctly.
 
I loved Heinlein's books and as they were label science fiction...why would I believe anything in them? But I guess just like readers here, they who believed Heinlein are just as stupid.

I feel like we already discussed this extensively in this thread, but: just because the plot is fiction doesn't mean that everything in the story is to be taken to be fiction. In sci-fi - in particular, hard sci-fi - it's pretty common to take RL science as a constraint on the story. So if I read, say, a story by Clarke which tells me that Phobos is tide-locked to Mars and turns on its axis once every seven hours thirty-nine minutes, I can expect that to be accurate, even though I know the spaceship and the war in that story are fictional.

Sometimes authors just make shit up for the sake of fiction, but other times they just get their facts wrong, and it's usually not hard to tell the difference. If I wrote a "military fiction" story where sergeants outranked colonels and sailors called their warships "boats", I'd expect readers to chastise me for not doing my homework.

Out of curiosity, which one in particular?

"The Long Watch". Specifically the bit about plutonium toxicity; it's certainly not good for you, but from all I can find, Heinlein rather exaggerates its lethality.
 
Sometimes authors just make shit up for the sake of fiction, but other times they just get their facts wrong, and it's usually not hard to tell the difference. If I wrote a "military fiction" story where sergeants outranked colonels and sailors called their warships "boats", I'd expect readers to chastise me for not doing my homework.
Submariners refer to their vessels as "boats." There are no such things as "ships" to a submariner - any other vessel is a "target." This is RAN, other navies might be different.
 
I had an interesting experience with one story series I wrote called 'My Best Friend's Crazy Fat Sister', where in the last chapter the two main female characters Zoe (the fat girl from the title) and the brother's short tempered fitness fanatic wife Emily get their periods, and are suffering from PMS, both women giving the two male characters a really hard time, plus crying, yelling and binging on sweet foods.

One reader left a comment saying that the PMS scenes were completely unrealistic and were like a 90s sitcom, letting the story down. Given that Zoe is completely nuts, Emily is as bad tempered as a paper wasp at the best of times and soap-opera like conflict rages through the story series from start to finish, it seemed an odd comment. Having both girls simply be 'mildly irritable' would seem like a let down.
 
I feel like we already discussed this extensively in this thread, but: just because the plot is fiction doesn't mean that everything in the story is to be taken to be fiction. In sci-fi - in particular, hard sci-fi - it's pretty common to take RL science as a constraint on the story. So if I read, say, a story by Clarke which tells me that Phobos is tide-locked to Mars and turns on its axis once every seven hours thirty-nine minutes, I can expect that to be accurate, even though I know the spaceship and the war in that story are fictional.

Sometimes authors just make shit up for the sake of fiction, but other times they just get their facts wrong, and it's usually not hard to tell the difference. If I wrote a "military fiction" story where sergeants outranked colonels and sailors called their warships "boats", I'd expect readers to chastise me for not doing my homework.

...

It might be. I know I won't go running off to the library or google to find out as I could care less...as it is a work of fiction to be enjoyed, not used at a bible of what's to come or trust that what the author writes in true facts.
 
I feel like we already discussed this extensively in this thread, but: just because the plot is fiction doesn't mean that everything in the story is to be taken to be fiction. In sci-fi - in particular, hard sci-fi - it's pretty common to take RL science as a constraint on the story. So if I read, say, a story by Clarke which tells me that Phobos is tide-locked to Mars and turns on its axis once every seven hours thirty-nine minutes, I can expect that to be accurate, even though I know the spaceship and the war in that story are fictional.

Sometimes authors just make shit up for the sake of fiction, but other times they just get their facts wrong, and it's usually not hard to tell the difference. If I wrote a "military fiction" story where sergeants outranked colonels and sailors called their warships "boats", I'd expect readers to chastise me for not doing my homework.

I agree. It's the concept of verisimilitude. A work of fiction doesn't have to be realistic, per se. It needs to create the appearance of realism that is sufficient to envelop the reader in the story. Even in a sci fi story, an author can mess around with basic facts and reality only so much before turning off the reader.

If I'm reading a space sci fi story and the author tells me that Mercury's orbit is farther from the sun than Earth's, I'm going to be pissed off. The story will lose me. The author can make some shit up, but not everything can be made up shit. If everything is made up shit, there's no drama, and there's no story.

Sci fi and fantasy stories always run the risk of having "too much magic." As you say, the best sci fi stories are those that introduce one, or a few, magical/fantasy elements, but not too many. It's not hard to suspend disbelief about a few unrealistic things, but if there are too many you just feel like you're being played with. There's no drama.

This was my problem with the latest Star Wars movie, Last Jedi. I've gotten bored of the Force. It's an infinitely plastic thing that can be whatever the movie director needs it to be to advance to the next scene. It's infinitely malleable story magic. Fly through space without a helmet? Check! Fight enemies on distant planets by projecting yourself? Check! Lift rocks when it's convenient even though you've never been taught to do so? Check! I love Star Wars (well, other than episodes 1-3, which suck, hugely), but I'm bored and frustrated with it now.
 
I believe Groucho Marx once remarked that if you invented a fat, venial, cigar-smoking New Orleans shyster named Hiram P. Quackenbush, you would be sued for defamation by a fat, venial, cigar-smoking New Orleans shyster named Hiram P. Quackenbush. Moral: Be sure your fictions are fictive enough.
 
I've wondered this every since I could read.

It's getting worse as time goes on.

See the article that explains it well here, which contains observations and data from a Stanford Graduate school study. I see it every day. Couple that with excessive use of smartphones and instant gratification and you have an entire generation growing up only to react and being unable to analyze on a basic level as the book Disconnected proves through various observations and studies.
 
Sci fi and fantasy stories always run the risk of having "too much magic." As you say, the best sci fi stories are those that introduce one, or a few, magical/fantasy elements, but not too many. It's not hard to suspend disbelief about a few unrealistic things, but if there are too many you just feel like you're being played with. There's no drama.

I would put it slightly differently to that.

IMHO, fiction usually works best when it has some sort of internal logic and rules, so the reader has some sense of what is and isn't possible. A lot of art is about doing something clever within constraints.

Realistic science is one way to define those constraints. It's not the only way; "No man can slay the Witch-King" or "Voldemort can't be killed until all his Horcruxes are destroyed" are examples of how it can work in a high-fantasy setting. Either way, there's a tacit promise that the author is going to stick by the rules they've adopted, and try to do something impressive within that framework. We're not going to get "but then Harry pulled out a shotgun and blew Voldemort's head off"; that would feel like cheating.

So, there's plenty of stuff I enjoy which is far less "realistic" than The Long Watch. I don't get annoyed at Rowling (or even Lucas) for putting in stuff that breaks the laws of physics. But in that particular story, the style and framing suggests that the science is intended to be realistic... and on that point, it isn't.

(For all that, it's still my favourite Heinlein story. Just that one element could've been handled better.)

This was my problem with the latest Star Wars movie, Last Jedi. I've gotten bored of the Force. It's an infinitely plastic thing that can be whatever the movie director needs it to be to advance to the next scene. It's infinitely malleable story magic.

Wasn't it always, though?

I'm an atypical geek in that I didn't see the original trilogy until I was an adult, and I feel like a lot of the reaction to the recent films is influenced by people seeing the OT as kids. Let's face it, kids have a tremendous capacity for fun; then they grow up, and become much harder to impress, so any sequel is competing at a major disadvantage. We already know dead Jedi can project, and that their bodies can vanish, so "Jedi projects and then vanishes" doesn't seem too far from the original. Luke did plenty of Force stuff untrained, so I didn't have an issue with that.

Fly through space without a helmet? Check!

Yeah, that bit was just perplexing. I agree that it wasn't in keeping with the sort of stuff we've seen the Force do, but TBH that was the least of my issues with that scene.

I don't have a lot invested in Star Wars, but I was very fond of Carrie Fisher. TLJ came out a year after she died, and I don't think I was the only person who went into that thinking, well, this is where we say goodbye. She takes the hit that we all knew was coming, my eyes got a bit leaky... and then, wtf, she's alive after all? Maybe Episode 9 will surprise me, but I just don't see any emotionally satisfying resolution to that one.

I love Star Wars (well, other than episodes 1-3, which suck, hugely), but I'm bored and frustrated with it now.

We are in agreement on Episodes 1-3. Caravan of Courage and the Holiday Special weren't all that hot either...
 
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