And here we are, decades later, still making the 'but then 90% of everything is crap' protestations, and still fighting the critical ignorance that insists that SF is all about rocket ships and ray guns. For every 9 books of the Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (did someone think Asimov?) variety there's a “Venus Plus X”. guy goes voyaging for golden fleece, gains it by sweet-talking girl for advice on how to avoid the guardian monster, marries her and has children, ditches her and sacrifices their children to escape, wife becomes justifiably homicidal and wreaks vengeance from a dragon-drawn chariot.) and go straight for the academically agreed 'first ever' science fiction story - Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus - it's generally been about the characters. 'Dune' when they tried that.Even if we ignore ancient stories that could be categorised as SF (e.g.

big bucks to be made though if they do it well! How will you cram, what, 1500 pages of well-crafted prose into 90 minutes of Hollywood glitz? We all remember what happened to e.g. I wonder when they will do a film based on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars stuff? It has to be high-quality to do justice, casting & special effects both, so it’s going cost a bunch, also there are some themes they might not want to show the masses at this stage, perhaps that is some factor why, surprisingly, they haven't tried a film yet. This existential part is what makes the genre so appealing to me. I've seen it.felt it!', one can sense what makes us human even in a SF milieu. Quoting from “Blade Runner”, in one of the most wonderful Roy Batty lines, just so you know how geeky I am: 'I've felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. But they say SF at its best is allegorical and because contemporary versions are all about we live in navel gazing times, this one was much up my alley.

Back in the day, this was the stuff that interested me less. It is a smell of the sea, and of the sweat of so many bodies, their heat and their warmth, and it is the smell of humanity’s spices and the cool scent of its many machines.'In “Central Station” by Lavie TidharThis is a navel gazing novel a friend of mine would say it's a novel about the human condition. 'The Shambleau called Carmel came to Central Station in spring, when the smell in the air truly is intoxicating.

Seven Vampires by Lavie Tidhar