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I think the main problem with science fiction today is that it's really, really difficult to write believable hard science fiction. It's relatively easy to wri
by randallsquared 17y ago
I think the main problem with science fiction today is that it's really, really difficult to write believable hard science fiction. It's relatively easy to write about the future as seen from the 1940s to 1960s (and lots of SF writers continue to do that... Bova, Niven, Pournelle, even Varley, these days), but it's really hard to write about a medium-distance future that plausibly follows from our world. The only book I've read recently that mostly managed it was Halting State, and it was set only ten years from now.
More and more, the kind of "SF" I find myself reading is stuff that doesn't even try; it's just fantasy with science fiction trappings, and while that can be briefly entertaining, it doesn't have the "something like this could really happen" of the midtwentieth SF I used to read.
Edit: awkward flow of text
- warwick 17y agoThe weird part for me was that Halting State took me more than one read to feel like I 'got' what the book was about, much like Neuromanancer did. Science Fiction of the rocket ship and little green men variety is easy to imagine. A realistic world ten years from now, less so.
- billswift 17y agoI haven't read "Halting State" yet, but Stross's "Accelerando" is pretty good. You might also try Vinge's "Rainbows End".
- randallsquared 17y agoYeah, Accelerando was a book I thought important, and wanted to love, but only like. Rainbows End was entertaining, but not like Vinge's earlier stuff, in my opinion. Ah, well. :)
- ido 17y agoI read many of Stross's and liked them, but I can't help but feel most (all?) are pretty similar to one another.