Now it is very well known that I have almost never met a dog I didn’t like, and likewise most dogs seem to like me (even the ones trained to supposedly not like anyone). My brother always kept Great Danes (just as we always chose OES, which I love). They’re massive. Huge jaws. Magnificent teeth. They were, I believe, bred for boar-hunting – a dangerous and aggressive target.

However, generations of selection have made them very gentle animals with tails like a table-clearing whip. Their tails are far more destructive than any other part of the dog. Well, barring a widely distributed slobber-shake. This, in a creature that lives indoors with humans that it could fit quite a lot of into its mouth, at once, is probably a good idea. A Great Dane with the biting propensity of a sausage-dog or chihuahua would not end well.

I was very fond of them, a sentiment they seemed to share, expressed by an almost irresistible urge to sit on my lap. Sometimes two would try and do it at once. I am not really designed for this, as the male weighed more than I do. Love thus expressed is very hard to resist, however. Heavy too.

Anyway, the reason I brought this up – besides missing my brother and the dogs, was that they’re a great example of the market tailoring something to what the buyer wants. You might want a really, really big dog around the house, but at that size, you really, really don’t want one with a chihuahua’s temperament. Genre fiction too has been tailored by generations of selection. Yes, there are outliers and people try new things – which occasionally work. But the pacing, language, accepted tropes and shared underpinnings (you don’t have to explain FTL for example) are there because they work.

For heaven’s sake – don’t try and write that genre if you haven’t read and learned its form. Yes, you can break the mold. But like Picasso – who was competent and very able painter, first, it helps a great deal if you know and understand the rules before you break them. That way you know what can break, bend and change.

(Yes I am reading contest entries again. This one the writer has only ever read sf by Margaret Atwood. Says it all, really. It’s marginally better than the ones who have never read anything since school, and think movie scripts a great model.)