Review of How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

This is for writers. There are a few good pieces of GM advice but, for most GMs and all players, not enough to justify reading it.

Were I a budding science fiction author, this would be a bible. But I'm a GM. There are still a few gems in here, but let me go through the book, and I will describe what's worth reading.

Chapter one defines the book markets for science fiction and fantasy, and where the dividing line is. ("What SF writers write is SF.") Not what we want to know.

Chapter two talks about the process of world creation, of letting ideas mull in one's mind, and putting them together in the story. For a GM who likes to create original one-off campaigns, this might make the book worth buying. ("All but a handful of my stories have come from combining two completely unrelated ideas that have been following their own tracks through my imagination"). After all, since an RPG story has a life of its own in a way a novel or play does not, world creation is more important in RPGs. He talks about the importance of defining how your world differs from real life, such as how magic, faster-than-light travel, time travel etc work), and the various options that exist for each of those. (In the midst of which, he is fairly critical of Star Trek, at least as something that claims to be Sci-Fi rather than simply good entertainment.)

Chapter three talks about putting the story itself together. There is some basic story stuff about choosing your main characters, which is mostly irrelevant to us. (Your protagonists, viewpoint characters, and main characters should be all the same, and all defined by the players. Authors get to choose those.) It also asks the reader to decide what the story is about - choosing from the setting, a mystery, change in the PCs, or putting the world to rights. Sound advice, but if you have read any competent writing on how to GM, you will have already heard it.

Chapter four talks about how to write. More specifically (because this isn't a general how-to-write book), it talks about handling the exposition and language barriers that turn up in sci-fi and fantasy. Exposition is when you sit your audience down and explain some piece of background information to them. It is usually boring, and best handled a little bit at a time - but is much easier to make interesting in RPGs than in static fiction. GMs can even simply state "your character would know this", and present information - a style that would get a novelist shot.

Chapter five talks about selling books for a living in the Sci-Fi and fantasy book markets, and is irrelevant to us. (Unless we also happen to be novelists).

In short, there are a few choice morsels, but probably not enough to buy the book for.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)