I'm not 'hot'

This week has been one when I've had to take regular breaks from Twitter.  My Imposter Syndrome has been triggered big time by several of the posts I read.  So what got my Imposter going full-bore?  It was reading tweets about 'hot takes' on AI, on gender, on... you name it.  

Reading these posts from agents brought on an attack of the Imposter.  Their manuscript wish lists are full of words like 'hot', 'edgy', 'wacky', 'quirky'.  So how to reconcile these Twitter posts with the quieter posts on their websites about what they're interested in?  How does 'edgy' become 'grounded SF?'  And how does that fit with what they all say they want: a unique voice?  What happens when that 'unique voice' isn't writing a 'hot take' on something?  What if the story isn't 'quirky' or 'edgy' but just quietly gets on with telling a damn good story?  

There seems to be a huge divide between their ideas-driven wish lists and the books that become memorable.  I'm thinking of two SF books which were both described as 'high concept', books where 'wacky' ideas were at the heart of the story.  In both cases I finished reading the book, but in both cases I left the story feeling nothing for the characters.  I still didn't care about the protagonists by the end of the book.  And that, in my opinion, is a failure of the story.

I've come to realise that I'm not a fan of exotic, ideas-driven SF.  I have trouble believing in many of the scenarios far-future books posit.  Humans with an all-powerful interstellar union that cracks down on every dissenter? Come off it.  Ain't gonna happen.  Humans are too messy for that.

Let's take the idea of introducing 'diversity' to stories.  Yes, we need broad representation, but not through token characters. I have a gay relationship in my novel Combined Cognition, but Mai and her partner Eris are engineers, and Mai's examination of sabotaged craft is central to the story.  In the new novel I'm writing, Renaissance, I have a gay relationship between a security chief and the ship's first officer. One of them is white, one black.  But that's just background.  Those characters have to earn their keep aboard that recycling ship.

So I'm ignoring the 'hot' and 'wacky' labels, and writing what I care about.  Anything else would be an attempt to chase the current fads and trends, and that's a quest bound to end in failure.  

Because what is one man's 'hot' is another man's cold.  I'll keep my own voice, and my own grounded SF stories.  You can keep your 'hot tickets'.