I had the good luck to be able to ask Terry Pratchett once which writer he most admired. He said "Elmore Leonard" immediately.
Every rule can be bent and broken, if you're good enough. And sometimes you do have to mention the green antennae protruding from your character's head. But you can find some of the best science fiction authors sticking to the general shape of these rules. Kurt Vonnegut springs first to mind. John Scalzi is another master of this style of writing. And while he's not a science fiction author per se, Terry Pratchett shows a lot of Leonard's influence.
Some of these rules are "how not to sound like an amateur", especially #3 through #6. I think these are nearly universal.
Others are how to keep the fiction feeling fun, like the rules about not physically describing characters. This is much more particular to what the author is doing with the novel, and I think they're better understood as defaults that you should overrule only if you really want to. And I think that this is so largely regardless of genre.
My personal taste in SF largely obeys all of these rules. But my girlfriend, who is also an SF fan, definitely loves books that violate some or all of 7, 8, and 9. Perfect example, I think I'd have enjoyed Feersum Endjinn a lot more if it had followed these rules. But then again, maybe if it did, it'd be nothing special (as it is, it's a pretty special book that happens to be not-really-for-me).
I once got into a somewhat vicious argument with a friend who was working on a doctoral thesis. My background was English literature and journalism, his was psychology. I said that his thesis was poorly written, he said that it was "the style" and I didn't "get it."
The thing is, "writing" isn't a convention, or a style, or a science. It is the craft of making an idea understandable. A couple semesters of journalism should be required to any scientist or doctor or basically anyone who feels like they should ever bother sharing their lifetime of knowledge.
In his short stories Philip Dick pretty much followed these suggestions. He always cuts to the chase. His characters are mostly nondescript; their only importance is how they directly impact the story (if he ever dwells on something, it's his characters' jobs and their connection to, say, an ex-wife). A particular sci-fi gadget will be minimally described, if at all, as PKD wasn't very interested in technology for its own sake. In general he kept descriptions to a minimum and dialogues very short.
> In particular, some of it is surely wrong for science fiction...
I think they are all overstated, but for the most part the points underneath them are equally valid for most fiction writing, including science fiction.
I think Neal Stephenson's Anathem outrageously violates rules 9 and 10.
> 9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
> 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.
I'm sure that Stephenson isn't every science fiction fan's cup of tea, but on the other hand there's quite a lot of science fiction where the exposition is a big part of the appeal.
Those names shine so brightly because the sky is so dark ;). China Mieville is awesome, as is Michael Chabon. And I’ll throw in Charles Yu ( How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe). You’re right that there are lots of talented writers out there in the field. I love science fiction, and my criticism was a bit of “making fun of your own.” You can’t deny there is also a huge mass of third rate hackery - same as with other genre fiction like Crime, Romance, Historical Fiction, etc. Its not all Ursula LeGuin and Samuel Delaney ;).
Fair enough. And I did see your wink. :) I do think the trend is increasingly towards literary sci-fi, though, especially in print (less so in film and TV where it's become almost synonymous with action).
