Hmmm, I'm a little unsure of some of these, for example, the only times I've really hated infodumps in a story, are with really old vintage SF such as Hugo Gurnsbachh, where basically the entire story is nothing but look how awesome this new idea or machine or scientific process is.
I don't even mind facts and figures, as long as they're interesting and relevant, heck in Becky Chambers' latest novella, the infodumping, or at least the descriptions of the various alien worlds her ship's crew visit, were some of my favourite parts of the book.
Then of course, there's infodumps used to increase characterisation, as in harry potter.
The bit about women and sf also seems nuts to me as well (I just finished reading Women of wonder, classic sf stories by women from the 1940's to the 1980's), so even needing to actually say this is now a belief which anyone with half a brain cell would hold seems slightly odd to me, or at least if this is a mainstream belief, I've never run into it much in any of the sf fans I've actually met.
The tenses point is interesting though.
There seems to be a fad at the moment for present tense stuff, even third person present tense. While I agree that it can make things more immediate, my problem, is that it also seems to make a lot of characters feel far more shallow and egotystical, since in present tense it's far harder to suggest say that a character is feeling more than one thing at once at any given time, or harbouring a belief that they're always in the right.
Btw, I rather disliked the sandman slim books which Anders mentioned partly for that reason.
the only times I've tried present tense stuff myself, is when writing really short, under 1k word pieces that are intended as impressionistic views of very immediate circumstances.
Actually, I sort of like portal fantasy, or at least, I like the idea of someone being lost and powerless in a world they know nothing about and having to cope with circumstances entirely outside their experience or control, obviously, someone who just turns into a total succeedinator and is awesome at everything, is a different matter.
I wonder if the hatred for the idea is partly due to the prevalence of the latter?
I'd not say the "sympathetic" character thing is one easily answered with a rule either, since while I do hate the "oh look! this character's an edgy hero! look how bad ass and uncaring they are!" trope, at the same time, I'm not really a fan of the above mentioned succeedinators either. And a character who is so very moral that they don't care about themselves or their own suffering, definitely seems to be going that way.
Again it seems the only logical rule here is probably:
"generalisations are always wrong!"
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io9.gizmodo.com
