I read a lot of Christian fiction growing up because that's what people gave me to read. (Actually, that lasted until I got a divorce! The MIL insisted on only having Christian fiction in her house and only gave Christian fiction as gifts. It was considered an affront to not read and duly comment on said book.) Most of it made me sick to my stomach. How many times can you have Native American's portrayed as "Red Devils" before you want to retch? The Christians overcome all obstacles because, yes, God is on their side. If a character is not a Christian they will 1) convert or 2) die and go to hell. If someone is a Christian but is bad, i.e. read homosexual, then either they will 1) rededicate their life to Christ and be "cured" of their homosexuality or 2) die of aids and go to hell. Every Christian book ever put in my hands had some moral lesson, like say, masturbation is evil and leads to sexual immorality or popular music turns kids into Satan worshipers. Thankfully, I no longer have to read that crap. As far as I'm concerned the genera is no better than romance; it's filled with crap. I'm not going to suffer through a bunch of bigoted material just to find the one or two gems.
I'm not going to dispute you on the fact that there is a ton of badly done Christian fiction on the market - there's a lot of badly done FICTION on the market. However, that does not make all Christians bad nor does it make Christian Fiction inherently wrong or bad by design - it's just like any other genre (including Romance, which also includes any number of good books). If you don't want to read the genre, fine, and be my guest picking apart it's prevailing assumptions (I'll join you in some of it). However, that doesn't make it futile to attempt to write well within the genre - and hopefully enrich the genre itself in the process. Also it sounds like your Mother in Law just had horrible taste in books.
True--there is a lot of crappy Sci-Fi out there too. The difference is I don't pick up a romance or erotica novel, then be irritated because the characters have sex great sex, but the technology is poorly thought out. I was referring to a post where the person was complaining that in a Christian fiction novel the Christians were well written, but the Palestinians weren't. It's like picking up a Western and being shocked that the cowboys are good and the Indian's are bad; you know what's coming based on the genera.
Actually I'd dispute you in both cases - I'd be angry if I picked up a Christian novel with badly rendered Palestinian characters...and I'm probably the biggest Zionist on this board. If you're going to write Palestinian characters, do your research and humanize them. Heck, I'm actually planning to humanize jihadist at some point in my plot - that's called writing well. That's doubly true for Native Americans in Westerns - they're a major part of the narrative. I don't write Westerns but I would assume anyone attempting to write the genre today has to at least TRY. Has it been done wrong a lot of times in history? Yeah, but that doesn't mean the genre can't get better...most genres have gotten better on race issues (not perfect, but better). Although, personally, I keep saying I want to see a Western written from the point of view of the Chinese cook. I've seen that character stereotyped enough that I really think he deserves to be the hero for once - not to mention it gives you a chance to open up the story of the role of Chinese immigrants in the Old West.
Another take on this: Authors who (possibly?) overdo it a bit. I was reading a big name thriller by an American author. Very complex plot, lots of action. Somebody was being chased and ended up in a holy pilgrim town in Spain (Santiago Compostela). I haven't been there, so don't know much about it. But at this point, the author stops the plot and goes into several pages worth of history lesson about the very long history of this town. Somewhat interesting, but hey, we are in the middle of a dramatic twist of the plot here! After this extremely lengthy lecture, the person promptly gets shot at the main tourist plaza and then there is nothing more from that city in the novel. So what was the point of this little encyclopedia rant?
That should be a really exciting research project, getting up to scratch on Mars! That interests me too. I'd run anything scientific or Mars related past the Mars geeks in the space forums first. And there are lots of non-fiction books and films on Mars.
Yeah, but...... this is famous authors doing this. The book I was talking about was a major bestseller by Ludlum or someone similar. Oughtn't they be above rants for the sake of improving the word count? Plus, I mean editors read these books prior to publishing. If that's going on, wouldn't that be the oldest trick in the book that the editor can spot a mile away?
My example is Peter James, who isn't exactly an unknown; and if you're churning out books (27 in 30 years for Ludlum, 28 in 34 for James) to meet a deadline agreed when you signed the deal with your publisher, there's got to be a temptation to "pad" if the muse just isn't getting through. And the editor? He's going to bounce it back to Ludlum and say "rewrite this WITHOUT the padding, but something else in its place"? He's got a publishing deadline to meet, too; he's just going to think, sod it, they'll buy it because it's His. After all, 9 of Ludlum's were published after his death - no chance of a rewrite there! And, since his death, another 8 authors have published a total of 22 novels "under the Ludlum brand". The name sells.
I can't speak for any other authors or stories, but I can tell you that in my novel, I can do whatever I want wherever I want and it won't matter because my book is set in a totally different world - there's been a nuclear war and an alien invasion, plus there is no longer any religion or national governments, so really, the most "familiarity" I'd ever really have to have with a place is just to know the streets and the geography. Other than that, everything is a decrepit bombed-out ghetto craphole. Take New York City, for example, where my story begins - all I need to know is the street layout, where any famous buildings/landmarks are (that still exist, anyway) - such as the Empire State Building, One Times Square, the Waldorf-Astoria, etc., but as for the rest of the city, I can make up whatever I want and just conjure up buildings of any shape or size wherever I want to and it won't matter because the NYC in my book is so radically different than any other version of NYC you could ever possibly be familiar with. In that regard, my setting is particularly unique in that the circumstances allow me to do that. I'm taking "artistic license" to a whole new level.
You can even rename the places...Umpire State Bleeding, Won Times Squared, the Walled-off-A-Store...after all, the people who even know the names will be dead, only the memory lingers on...and we all know that memory can play tricks.
Hey-hey, there's an idea! Kinda reminds of the TV show The 100, where Washington, D.C. is known only as "Ton d'c", presumably from the partial remains of a sign that only had the last part of the name.
