Coherency is another word I would use. Very much a physicists' word, I know! But when I use it in the context of fiction, it actually means, to me, more than just consistency - a fictional world may be consistent, but still not feel coherent, not a whole belonging together, not something bigger than what is explicitly written.
Yes about the characters, very much yes. If they don't feel real (sometimes real people, sometimes, to stay with the more fantastical, gods or whoever the author intends them to be), the book is lost on me. Which is, by the way, not the perfect prerequisite for a science fiction lover that I am, given how much science fiction is idea-driven. But then again, there are writers like LeGuin.
In a way, there are two kinds of books for me: world that I dive into, that I dream and live while reading, books of the heart, to be a bit poetic (Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never let me go" would be an example from the last year; also a lot of my favorite science fiction and fantasy books). And books that I enjoy more intellectually, books that write their own commentary; books tgar actively undermine the believability, as you say it; books where the author suddenly starts talking to me about her or his creation (Borges and Kundera would be the examples that come to mind first here). It's a very crude division and a lot of books manage both or parts of both, but I do find it sometimes a useful one.
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Date: 2014-04-28 11:45 pm (UTC)Yes about the characters, very much yes. If they don't feel real (sometimes real people, sometimes, to stay with the more fantastical, gods or whoever the author intends them to be), the book is lost on me. Which is, by the way, not the perfect prerequisite for a science fiction lover that I am, given how much science fiction is idea-driven. But then again, there are writers like LeGuin.
In a way, there are two kinds of books for me: world that I dive into, that I dream and live while reading, books of the heart, to be a bit poetic (Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never let me go" would be an example from the last year; also a lot of my favorite science fiction and fantasy books). And books that I enjoy more intellectually, books that write their own commentary; books tgar actively undermine the believability, as you say it; books where the author suddenly starts talking to me about her or his creation (Borges and Kundera would be the examples that come to mind first here). It's a very crude division and a lot of books manage both or parts of both, but I do find it sometimes a useful one.