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Originally Posted by iansales  I think most of you have misunderstood what Mundane SF is. It's not a sub-genre, it's not a descriptive label for a type of science fiction or techno-thriller. It's a Movement. Like the New Wave was. This wikipedia article lays out its aims quite well, but what its proponents are essentially saying is that we're concentrating on the furniture to such an extent that we've forgotten what sf is really about. We've turned it into an action-adventure genre tricked out with sfx. So let's put away the toys, the rocketships & rayguns, and trying writing stuff that actually does what sf is supposed to do. |
OK, got it now, thanks for the link. I'm tempted to suggest (tongue in cheek) that an alternative name might be 'Boring SF'; that might be a little unkind, but 'Mundane' certainly seems appropriate. It seems to be writing SF while wearing a straight-jacket; in fact, if it's limited to 'believable use of technology and science as it exists at the time the story is written', the problem might not be in defining it in terms of SF, but in distinguishing it from mainstream non-SF.
I can see that there might be a market for such material, but I would be alarmed if it became a dominant force in SF. The novel which first drew me into SF - and which I regard as one of the all-time classics - is Bester's
The Stars My Destination. The Wiki definition of Mundane SF would appear to exclude that as 'not what SF is really about' (as you put it), so I don't think much of the new movement.