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.
A Weblog by One Humble Bookman on Topics of Interest to Discerning Readers, Including (Though Not Limited To) Science Fiction, Books, Random Thoughts, Fanciful Family Anecdotes, Publishing, Science Fiction, The Mating Habits of Extinct Waterfowl, The Secret Arts of Marketing, Other Books, Various Attempts at Humor, The Wonders of New Jersey, the Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life, Science Fiction, No Accounting (For Taste), And Other Weighty Matters.
Networks and Contacts
Who Is This Hornswoggler?
- Andrew Wheeler
- 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 credentialed corporate 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 sons (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.
The Latest Editorial Explanations
Previously on Antick Musings...
-
▼
2007
(823)
-
▼
August
(73)
- HELP 8: Retro
- Blogalyization In Progress
- One Part Test, One Part Mindless Sheep
- Quote of the Week
- Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Weapons & Te...
- SFWA's Andrew Burt Shows His Worth Again
- Welcome to the Land of Wishing-Makes-It-So
- I Think I've Just Been Insulted...
- Movie Log: Puccini for Beginners
- Three Days of Links
- The Players
- HELP 7: Poison Blonde
- Movie Log: Becoming Jane
- Wordless Growl of Frustration
- HELP 6: Sinister Heights
- No Comment
- Hopeless Savages by Jen Van Meter, Christine Norri...
- Movie Log: Cashback
- HELP 5: A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
- Movie Log: Happy Endings
- HELP 4: The Hours of the Virgin
- Three Days of Links
- Stately, plump G.B.H. Hornswoggler...
- Itzkoff on Gibson
- Incoming Books, Week of 8/25
- I Can Give It Up Any Time I Want
- HELP 3: Never Street
- Movie Log: Hot Fuzz
- Regular Blog Service Resuming
- The Annoyance of Uncommentable LiveJournals
- Quote of the Week
- What's Making Me Grind My Teeth Today
- Play the Home Game!
- The Ol' ComicMix Shuffle
- Movie Log: Starter for 10
- Those Whom The Gods Wish To Destroy...
- HELP 2: Sweet Women Lie
- HELP 1: Downriver
- The Heart of a Goof by P. G. Wodehouse
- World Fantasy Award Liftetime Achievement Awards
- Movie Log: Underdog
- Powers, Vol. 7: Forever by Brian Michael Bendis an...
- Things Fall Apart; The Center Cannot Hold
- Cleaning Up Saved Posts
- What's Confusing Me Today
- Political Compass Revisited
- You Miss the Point Completely; I Get the Point Exa...
- Quote of the Week
- The Hornswoggler Family Vacation
- Another ComicMix Update
- Whee! It's a Random Pointless Milestone!
- World Fantasy Award Nominees Announced
- A Drive-By Posting
- Reading Into the Past: Week of 8/5
- Incoming Books, Week of 8/11
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
- TimesWatch: Hitchens on Potter
- Quote of the Week
- Excuses and Explanations
- Mid-Week ComicMix
- British Fantasy Award Nominees
- Today's Pointless Holiday
- Movie Log: Miss Potter
- A ComicMix Weekend
- Things You Didn't Know About Me: The Meme
- Success vs. Acclaim
- Dave Truesdale is Looking for Market Data
- Quote of the Week
- Mixing Things Up, Comically
- National Ice Cream Sandwich Day
- Read in July
- Handicapping the Hugos
- Congratulations to Nicholas Sica!
-
▼
August
(73)
My Life As a Twit
Hornswogglets
Recurring Motifs
- 246 Different Kinds of Cheese (92)
- A Series of Tubes (50)
- Abandoned Books (8)
- Adaptations (3)
- All Knowledge Is Found In Fandom (15)
- Alternate History (8)
- Amazon Pimpage (80)
- America Fuck Yeah (3)
- Art Books (27)
- Awards (227)
- Backwards Glances (1)
- Belated Review Files (41)
- Blog in Exile (78)
- Blogging About Blogging (262)
- Book Marketing 101 (5)
- Book-A-Day (1319)
- Books Do Furnish a Room (9)
- Books Read (243)
- Brain and Brain What Is Brain (2)
- Burned Book Contest (5)
- Candy (1)
- Captain Underpants (7)
- CauseWired (1)
- Circles of Hell (3)
- Class War Follies (6)
- ComicMix (222)
- Comics (2262)
- Confuse-o-vision (5)
- Conventions (59)
- Corrections (6)
- Crazy People (10)
- Critics and Their Criticism (2)
- Crowds and Their Funding (1)
- Deep Dark Secrets (13)
- Deep Thoughts (287)
- Don't Talk to Me About Love (2)
- Dungeon Fortnight (20)
- Editorial Explanations (13)
- Eisners (14)
- Exceptional Writers (2)
- Fan Fiction (8)
- Fanciful Family Anecdotes (41)
- Fandom (11)
- Fantasy (661)
- Favorites of the Year (30)
- Flame Bait (3)
- Food Porn (10)
- Foreigners Sure Are Foreign (251)
- Free Stuff (18)
- Gadgets and Gewgaws (13)
- Grammar (4)
- Great Mass Movements of Our Time (12)
- Great SF Novels of 1990s (4)
- Hard Case (8)
- High Finance (29)
- Holidays (89)
- Hornswoggler's Estleman Loren Project (12)
- Horrible Images That Will Never Leave Your Brain (12)
- Horror (80)
- House Rules (2)
- Hugo Thoughts (16)
- Humor: Analysis Of (249)
- Humor: Attempts At (61)
- I Love (And Rockets) Mondays (32)
- I Never Metafiction I Didn't Like (7)
- In Memoriam (23)
- Incoming Books (248)
- Inexplicable Occurences (8)
- Infographics (3)
- Interviews (12)
- It Must Be Mine (7)
- It's Only The End of the World Again (1)
- It's the Economy Stupid (51)
- Itzkoff (37)
- J'Accuse (2)
- James Bond Daily (59)
- Kids Today (1)
- Lego (11)
- Lies Damned Lies & Statistics (1)
- Linkage (873)
- Literature (162)
- Live Theater (8)
- Lurking Under Bridges (3)
- Magazines (8)
- Maps and Territories (1)
- Matters of Commerce (103)
- Measurements (1)
- Meme-o-riffic (212)
- Memoirs (71)
- Movie Log (352)
- Music (197)
- Mystery (159)
- Nature Red in Tooth and Claw (2)
- Navel-Gazing (1)
- Networks of Socialists (1)
- New York Times (20)
- No Context For You (3)
- Non-Fiction (430)
- Notable Quotables (106)
- Numbers Wonkery (10)
- O Canada (9)
- Old Posts Resurrected (82)
- One of Us One of Us (5)
- Pedantry (4)
- Podcasts (4)
- Poetry (17)
- Politics (44)
- Polls (3)
- Portions for Foxes (46)
- Quizzes (1)
- Quora (1)
- Quote of the Week (680)
- Rants (110)
- Reading Into the Past (100)
- Reading Neepery (22)
- Reading Projects (1)
- Realms of Fantasy (3)
- Reportage (25)
- Reviewing the Mail (758)
- Reviews (2963)
- Rising Suns (13)
- Romance (8)
- Royalty (1)
- Saturday Is Bond Day (18)
- Scandals (4)
- Schadenfreude (4)
- Science Fiction (631)
- Secret Arts of Marketing (52)
- Self-Indulgence (1)
- SFF Art (30)
- SFWA (8)
- Short Fiction (40)
- Skeletons in the Attic (1)
- Skiffy (1)
- Smouldering Masses of Stupidity (40)
- Smutty (84)
- Snap Snap Wink Wink Grin Grin (5)
- Snark (16)
- Spam (6)
- Splendors of Publishing (351)
- sports (4)
- Starktober (33)
- Such A Deal I Have For You (6)
- Techno-Wonkery (13)
- Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life (352)
- That Old-Time Religion (4)
- The Criminal Mind (4)
- The First Thing We Do Let's Kill All the Lawyers (6)
- The Great Idiot Box (3)
- The Horrors of Geography (1)
- The Joys of Bookselling (73)
- The Making of Lists (33)
- The Past Is a Foreign Country (182)
- The War Between Men and Women (26)
- The Working Life (11)
- There Will Always Be an England (56)
- This Year (53)
- Those Crazy College Kids (4)
- Thrilling Tales of Science (14)
- Tie-Ins (1)
- Towering Stacks of Unread Books (14)
- Travel Broadens The Mind Until You Can't Get Your Head Out the Door (94)
- True Names (3)
- Twelve Days of Commerce (17)
- Universal Laws (2)
- Video Killed the Radio Star (3)
- Vintage Contemporaries (17)
- Western (4)
- WFA Judgery (57)
- What These People Need Is a Honky (1)
- Wide World of Wheelers (9)
- Widgets (2)
- Wonders of New Jersey (42)
- Words Words Words (29)
- Years of Unremitting Toil (2)
- Years Prematurely Declared to Be Over (3)
- You Know: For Kids (279)
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.
Post a Comment