I hate modern fiction

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It is too extroverted, too focused on people, their trite emotions and the mundane details of their lives. Even modern science fiction is people-centric. If you look at older science fiction, you will see that the focus of the story is the experiment or the new planet or the technology or whatever the story is actually about. There is lots of descriptive narration. Modern sci-fi is full of people talking. I think maybe that is the main difference between modern and pre-modern fiction: pre-modern plots unfold mainly via narration, modern plots unfold far more via dialogue.

Dialogue is unpleasant to read. The text on the page is broken up into very short paragraphs to reflect the quick back-and-forth nature of conversations, and following the words down the page is a jerky, unfluid process. In contrast, narration occurs in substantial paragraphs that I can get my eyes around, like a nice mug I can get a grip on rather than a dainty glass that is constantly slipping out of my fingers.

Also, there are so many freaking characters in modern fiction! I can't keep up with them all, especially since so many of them have unremarkable English names like Henry or John, or equally unremarkable American names like Kevin – in other words, they're indistinguishable in my mind. In a page full of dialogue, I'll eventually forget who is talking.

Modern fiction is also plagued by a peculiarly unintuitive phenomenon: lack of a plot. Books like this aren't so much about something happening as they are about painting a picture...usually a picture of people. You can identify them by summaries that read like: "portrait of a colonial family, portrait of a killer, portrait of a young woman..." etc. Portrait of this or that. In other words, just a setup of people who are supposed to be interesting more or less in and of themselves. They might do one or two interesting things in the book, and spend the rest of the novel talking and crying about it. It seems so self-absorbed, repetitive and boring.

When I wrote my book, Wetland and Other Stories, I was cognizant of a lot of facts you brought up. Where plot didn't exist, I made sure at least one did in my novellas. My stories briskfully move along so you can say they're action driven as opposed to narrative driven. I, too, would get bored with a stories that doesn't move along towards some conclusion that's why I don't write those.

I can appreciate both stuff by the late great Joseph Conrad, with the likes of his Heart Of Darkness, and The Secret Sharer, and yet I can also enjoy stuff like Stephen King's Salem's Lot, and Thinner. In other words, good fiction, whether old or new, is always a joy to read.

A lot of my favorite authors are what some would call "old", but in general I can't say I necessarily prefer older over newer fiction or vice versa. Older fiction does seem more descriptive which I like, but on the other hand it obviously tends to suffer from obsolete tropes (of course, it doesn't help that I tend to gravitate towards adventure stories set in exotic far-flung countries). That said, I can't say I've noticed a growing predominance of dialogue in fiction.

I think people are interesting. They're much more complex than technology beneath the surface.

Like modern movies, a lot of modern popular novels are great bloated things with no structure and no direction, produced with an eye to starting a franchise. I haven't found many new "original" writers - too many seem to be scrambling to appeal to everyone, especially the lucrative Young Adult market.

I tend to prefer older books, because they more frequently use elegant and economical prose. As Starkid says, they were generally more focused on ideas , rather than on endless, shapeless soap opera.