>many professional authors I've read do worse.) What gets my goat is
>the way *oodles* of source material (from anime, occidental-SF, etc.)
>-- personas, characters, ships, entire political unions -- have been
>jammed together, just because they're "cool". Given my personal

But that's the *ENTIRE POINT* of UF! It was created precisely to combine things because they'd be cool. UF got more serious later, but the roots have always been in "hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." And then trying to make that work a way that is at least believable and internally consistent with the rest of the universe as written. That's still how a lot of the stories work - we'll be talking about things, maybe just joking, and we'll be like "hmm, you know, that might work..."

>preference for fictional universes that evolve according to *rules*,
>not *fiat*, it just *grates*.

Personally I don't read much SF, because that which I have read I didn't much like. Especially the stuff with stodgy rules to the way things evolved. I tend to read techno-thrillers, Stephen King, and I rather like the Shadowrun books I've read. They have loose rules, but they're fun to read.

I don't like 'rules based' SF, so I don't write it.

I find stories that explain how and why things exist tiresome. Who cares, they exist, if the connection isn't important to the story - shut up and get on with the story. I don't care how the Dantrovians evolved, they exist *fiat* and that's all that matters.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
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