> You don't know SF until you've read "Mitkey the Star Mouse." Oh, yeah. :) I haven't read any really good, very recent SF, but I think The Matrix qualifies.

That was a movie. Unless you're talking about the novelization of the movie which I really don't think qualifies. Bear with me here.

I've always felt that a novelization of a movie -- or even fiction based off of movies or television shows -- really isn't as good as original fiction. With an original work, you usually have one author with an Idea or a Vision. The author takes that idea and brings it to life through the written word. The result is something interesting: the author's private works are made public. It's something about the purity of the art, the writing being the result of one man's labors. At the very least, the writing is touched by an editor, but (in my world at least) that is just a minor filter the artwork has to pass through.

A novelization or any work that's based on someone else's property may be good, but the author is limited in what he or she can do. Instead of being able to play on a large never-ending field, you've got to play within a set of walls. Not only is the author confined to What Has Been Established, he's got to deal with committees: the licensing people, the marketing people, the editing people. With this type of property, the editors have much more say in what the author writes. Instead of correcting punctuation and looking for the odd typo, these editors can force the writer to rewrite entire chapters.

Sure, you don't have to sit down and explain what a lightsaber or a stargate is and sure, you're probably going to sell about ten times as many copies of a Star Trek novel than you are of your own original science-fiction novel, but the purity of the art becomes diminished.

Novelizations are even worse in my book. The story is already written. The visuals already exist. What's the author to do but place "He said" and "She said" around the dialog? Instead of reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, you've got the novelization of the movie of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Of course, if you're referencing the short story in Virtual Realities that the movie The Matrix was based off of, that's entirely different. (And in my opinion, it isn't an example of "good fiction".)

-Faux Pas