SF Signal is right: Mundane SF is essentially about shutting up, sitting down, and learning to like eating your vegetables, since vegetables are what adults eat, and it's only going to be vegetables for the rest of eternity.
Traditionally, SF has been about entertaining new ideas and exploring possibilities; Mundane SF is about denigrating ideas and closing off possibilities. Luckily, that will mean that it won't last for very long.
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- Andrew Wheeler was Senior Editor of the Science Fiction Book Club and then moved into marketing. He currently works for Thomson Reuters as Manager, Content Marketing, focused on SaaS products to legal professionals. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day multiple times. He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame children (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else. There are many Andrew Wheelers in the world; this may not be the one you expect.
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11 comments:
And a drive-by comment, since I don't have time right now to go read the original and I think if I wait until I do, I will forget that I want to do this:
I don't see it that way at all. I think mundane sf is like writing sonnets or something. What can you do with these limits?
I like some of both -- mundane and not -- (I know, you can make more categories than that, but I have no time and I ought to be out the door!) and I write some of both too: when I write mundane, I'm nto thinking "the future is crabbed and limited, no glory or wonder there." I'm thinking "there's a bit of wonder and intrigue in this story"
I was just posting about the MSF guys.
According to the lastest entry by goatchurch on the MSF blog:
"Gibson, below, mentions that he dropped the space travel and aliens in order to make his seminal book, Neuromancer."
As I recall Neuromancer, it has giant O'Neill-style space colonies, Rastafarian space navies and alien signals from Alpha Centauri.
Lucy, this:
Or you can hypothesize that the problem is due to the pernicious weeds that have grown up within the genre, such as faster than light travel, aliens, brain downloads, etc. which strangle all other development.
doesn't make this sound like they (or at least goatchurch) really think that there should room for other approaches.
Do I need to point out that HALTING STATE is fairly clearly Mundane? Clearly, yes: which is to say, it *is* possible to do Mundane SF and have fun.
(Although I'll concede Lucy's point about it being like writing sonnets: it's a discipline you can adopt for various reasons, should you so desire.)
It's possible for you to write MSF and have fun. I don't think "have fun" is the driving motivation for people like goatchurch.
Lucy: SF Signal was talking about this post from the Mundane SF blog, by someone named "goatchurch," which just quotes some physics speculation from Michiko Kaku and expresses extreme indignation that anyone could possibly believe such unMundane rubbish.
I'm surprised, following the SF Signal comment thread, to find that "goatchurch" is evidently Geoff Ryman; Ryman always struck me as an interesting and thoughtful writer, and "goatchurch"'s comments have all of the intellectual vigor of the diversity commissar of a minor Ontario university.
There's a strong strain of "...and anyone who thinks otherwise is an Enemy of the Revolution and should be purged" to the Mundanistas, which is what I object to. If they write good stories, more power to them. But if they're spending their time scoffing at actual physics for political reasons, they're worse than useless.
The blog entry that goatchurch links to about the shadowy menace of astrophysics is fairly eyebrow-raising as well.
James: Did you mean this one, from the Freesteel blog?
That's credited to someone named "Julian," who goatchurch claims to be the same person as (so maybe neither of them is Geoff Ryman? or both are?)
One quote:
"... the fact that astrophysicists are full of crap, what with their going on about reading the handwriting of god. Nothing that they’re doing goes anywhere close to the real mystery of life, which is: How do our brains think?"
Ah, yes, that famous bleat of crackpots everywhere: "Never mind {your field of study}! The only important question in science is this thing I care about!"
I bet they laughed at him at the University, too.
Yes, that's the one.
BTW,
"goatchurch"'s comments have all of the intellectual vigor of the diversity commissar of a minor Ontario university.
Hrm. Do I protest or steal it as sigfile fodder?
If goatchurch does turn out to be Ryman, I will be saddened and dismayed.
I doubt that they are the same people. I may not be impressed at all with the interview with him in Locus, or even his writing style, but he doesn't look the same guy, and I don't think he's stupid enough to write under names like that and not get caught.
That being said, the fact that Ryman doesn't mind associatting with those type of people is still pretty saddening without him being one of them.
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