My central objection is that in speculative fiction there are new and good ideas woven into detailed theories about how the ideas could relate to worlds and people and planning and social processes and so on.
And these ideas are worth talking about sometimes.
And if you put an idea into writing that people feel like they’re consuming for some sort of primarily hedonic appreciation, all of the sudden the idea spreads in conversation through society slower than otherwise.
And then because of “people who care about spoilers” there’s all this dancing about where people can’t just say “I read a cool book at it had a cool idea which was X”. Because of the ambient culture, and the sense that talking about fiction in plain words is considered rude by some people, now people have to hem and haw and hedge to figure out what it would be polite to say.
Its crazy. Publishing an idea in a delightful format shouldn’t slow the idea’s propagation down!
Screw it. For me: spoil away! The faster, and more interestingly, and more relevant to the conversation, the better.
My central objection is that in speculative fiction there are new and good ideas woven into detailed theories about how the ideas could relate to worlds and people and planning and social processes and so on.
And these ideas are worth talking about sometimes.
And if you put an idea into writing that people feel like they’re consuming for some sort of primarily hedonic appreciation, all of the sudden the idea spreads in conversation through society slower than otherwise.
And then because of “people who care about spoilers” there’s all this dancing about where people can’t just say “I read a cool book at it had a cool idea which was X”. Because of the ambient culture, and the sense that talking about fiction in plain words is considered rude by some people, now people have to hem and haw and hedge to figure out what it would be polite to say.
Its crazy. Publishing an idea in a delightful format shouldn’t slow the idea’s propagation down!
Screw it. For me: spoil away! The faster, and more interestingly, and more relevant to the conversation, the better.