Sure, you have to hang yourself out there when you write near-future SF, and maybe you're wrong. That doesn't bother me so much, because I don't think it's about being "right" or "wrong" as a matter of prediction. You have to get things right with regard to narrative logic and worldbuilding logic. It may mean you end up with an obsolete vision. But people still read and enjoy "Red Star, Winter Orbit" even though it's totally obsolete. (hey, the Soviet Union collapsed! whaddya know!)
I'm really down on far-future SF these days, myself. Most of it seems kind of devoid of imagination. I mean, will we really be drinking coffee 250 years from now? We weren't 300 years *ago*. Will we still put on clothes and feed and mate and evacuate our bowels in the same way in space ships 500 light years or 500 solar years distant? Given just recent advances in genetics and nanotech, I find it difficult to believe. Of course you have to find familiar things for people to relate to, so you can say "well, the ship's captain is going to share a glass of scotch with his first officer" (which assumes the preservation without replacement of scotch, human control of ships, 19th-21st century shipboard chains of command, a fascination with imbibing toxins for entertainment, and so on), but I guess for me it kind of strips away the pretense at extrapolation and turns it into fantasy. That is, it's not believably different enough, for me. I'm much more interested in far future SF visions that are really very different from the present. Vonda McIntire's "Little Faces" is an example of what gets me jazzed: A geniunely different vision of a human future, not something that gives us comfortable lifelines into our present. (I have quibbles with her cavalier treatment of long time passages, but that's a minor point.) Sometimes even when I think the vision isn't far out enough, the strength of the project, so to speak, wins me over. *The Forever War* was like this for me. I didn't think there was nearly enough change going on back home while the protagonist is zooming around at relativistic speeds. But it worked for me because the whole thing was a pretty naked metaphor for Haldeman's experiences as a Vietnam veteran. OK, I'll come out and say it: Most far-future SF is, in my analysis, more Fantasy than SF. I think SF is really properly a sub-division of Fantasy, anyway, which is why as a more or less middle-aged guy I'm now liking the term "speculative fiction" whereas when I was a kid I thought it was a wimpy term. (I was all about aggressively claiming my geekhood.) "Fantasy" isn't a good over-arching label because it has too many established connotations, even though I think it's accurately descriptive if you strip those away. Which we can't do, as a practical matter, so nowadays I'm happy to settle for "speculative fiction." On 2008-09-12, Alicia Henn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I would add that near future SF is more difficult to write because > you're proven wrong quickly, as opposed to 100 years after you're dead > and don't care. You have to write something you can live with. > > > Alicia > > On Sep 11, 2008, at 11:20 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > > > ...Not so easy: > > > > > http://futurismic.com/2008/09/11/why-near-future-science-fiction-is-diffi > > cult/ > > > > > > Frank > > > > Check out my web page at: > http://www.geocities.com/stardolphin2/link3.htm > > > > "A perfect test teaches you nothing, but you learn a lot from > > failure." > > - Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun > > ____________________________________________________________ > > Turn your passion into a profession. Click here to find a film > > school near you. > > > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3l7QB2DVhbMlsTCkVtE7wCGqNht5rf8IvRqd532iJnswuyJv/ > > > > > > > > > > -- eric scoles ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
