Interesting reading this morning. Still on How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Card makes an interesting point, one I hadn't thought of before. In speculative fiction, things are taken literally, at least early on in a book or story. He gives an example of a story where the author talks about people getting off of an airplane and onto a "reptile bus." Experienced readers of speculative fiction took that literally, thinking that it was some sort of dinosaur pulling a tram, or something. People who don't read speculative fiction took it to mean, as the author intended, one of those long buses with squishy connectors, so that it wriggled around like a reptile. Basically, the idea is that, when you are writing in a genre where anything can happen, people will be perfectly willing to believe that anything has happened. Expect it, in fact. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.
The other thing I got from this morning's reading is that I think I want to read Octavia Butler's Wild Seed. Card uses it to demonstrate various things, and he also recommends it as a really great book. I saw Octavia Butler at Readercon over the summer, but I've never read any of her books.
